monsoon season

We are smack-dab in the middle of monsoon season here in Utah, which means that despite having almost no rain in July, we are getting pummeled with massive, fast-moving thunderstorms in the afternoons and evenings.  Recent, extremely wet storms are wrecking all kinds of havoc all over the state - flash floods, landslides - and they are even impacting us.

We went to Round Valley in Park City on Sunday for our regular MTB ride.  H hadn't seen anything on Twitter about the trails being too wet ("Mud is murder!") so we were optimistic that we could ride, despite seeing puddles on the side of the road.  The trails were fine, fortunately, with only a couple of easily avoidable soft spots.  It was nice and cool, and not very crowded, and although our legs were stiff from Saturday's awesome Storm Mountain hike, we got along just fine - except that the monsoon rains were starting to carve into the single track.  We didn't find any major washouts but there were quite a few channels wide enough to make trouble for our front wheels.  This meant we had to be cautious on the downhills and H had one briefly exciting moment riding up Hammerhead/Pladsen Hill when the channel tried to drag his wheel to the left as he wanted to go right.  (He still rode all the way up whereas my already sore and tired legs complained as I pushed my MTB to the top.)

En route to the Nouvelle Loop [so-called]

The Wasatch Front got a monster storm on Monday evening and then another, smaller one Tuesday afternoon.  I would assume that some of that weather made its way over the mountains to Park City - it'll be interesting to see what sort of shape the trails are in next weekend.