return to glenwild

H is, understandably a little bored with Round Valley. We ride there all the time and we have the trails pretty well in hand.  So when he suggested that we change it up a little and go to Glenwild to do the loop he and Darren did last fall, I thought that sounded like a good idea.  Personally, I hadn't ridden Glenwild since 2011 so I was overdue for a visit.

Lots of sharp zigzags = many switchbacks

We met P at 10 a.m. at the trailhead behind the Park City Brewery.  H had printed out the route and noted all the trail junctions on it; he warned us that there would be a lot of climbing on the front end but it was a loop with a downhill finish.  H had also fixed my shifter cable so I was back in business for climbing ... which was a good thing because yes, there was a lot of climbing, and right from the start with no chance to warm up our legs.  Still that first climb was a good ride - Bad Apple to Drop Out to Fink Again to 24-7 to Flying Dog - long switchbacks through sage brush fields.  The trail surfaces were rockier than Round Valley but I could still manage to ride them (for the most part). 

Such focus

Flying Dog was a great section, both up and down, in through aspen groves and past beaver ponds.  I was still riding okay although my legs were starting to get fatigued; P and I traded places a couple of times on some climbing sections but he is much, much better at descending so I was glad to be the caboose again as we started downhill on Cobblestone.  The Cobblestone trail is aptly named: it is very rocky.  I'm a tentative descender, made more tentative with loose rocks and even more tentative as I get tired because fatigue makes me an even wonkier bike-handler.  That trail isn't very long, however, and then we got to swoop on some rollers on the smooth, sage-surrounded Glenwild Loop. 

After a truly epic hike-a-bike

Then we made a mistake.  We came to a trail junction where our options were left or right.  Left looked like it just went into the Glenwild neighborhood while right headed back towards the trailhead.  H promised us that there was just a little bit of climbing left, then we would go around the side of the mountain to a downhill finish.  So we turned right, heading back to the trailhead.

Except it was the wrong way.  The left hand turn was the trail that climbed just a bit and went around the edge of the mountain.  The way we went was the Stealth trail that went pretty much straight up and over the mountain.  Almost two miles of climbing.  My legs were shot at this point and I pushed my MTB the whole way up.  H rode the whole thing, putting his foot down only once on a rocky switchback, and said his legs were shaking by the time he got to the top.  When P and I joined him there, somewhat later, we confirmed that that was definitely not the trail we'd intended to take.

So. Much. Climbing.

No big deal because it was truly all downhill from where we were: Stealth to 24-7 to Drop Out.  All of us were a bit shaky with the bike-handling at this point but I managed to ride over three of the little bridges on the downhill portion without riding off them, so I totally counted that as a win.  Something else to count as a win?  A brewery with IPA on tap just around the corner from the trailhead.  All MTB rides should end that way.

Ride stats:  15.91 miles; 3:51 total time; 2400' climbing