Utah Fall Shoulder Season Vacation – Oct 25th – Nov 4th 2010
words and photos by Sharon Bader and Lee Lau unless otherwise noted.
St George – Thunder Mountain – Gooseberry Mesa
Utah is always a great place to visit in the fall. With the Shoulder season
making biking a bit more wet and dirty, our desire to put away the bikes and
put on the skies is a bit premature. It always seems like a good idea to head
south for a last minute summer reprieve!
This time instead of driving we opted to fly from Bellingham to Las Vegas
and rent a car to drive to some areas we wanted to revisit.
These included:
We packed out bikes into Goalie sized hockey bags,
padded them with thinsolate and avoided the ridiculous cost of flying with
your bike since Hockey bags are exempt from extra fees! This idea was inspired
by this pinkbike article. We then drove to St. Georges and stayed with Cimmaron
and Bryce. Our plan was to only stay there for two nights, but Bryce was able
to ride Little Creek Canyon with us on the Thursday so we accepted their hospitality
for a third night. Which was nice since it was FREEZING at Thunder mountain
when we drove there for our day ride on Wednesday.
Day 1 – Zen Trail in St. George.
Bryce
Sharon
Bryce
Red Rock Bikes in St. George
Zen Trail View Point
Thunder Mountain
On Wednesday we took the 2 – 2.5 hour drive from
St. George to Thunder Mountain via Cedar and over Brian Head. There was ice
on the road and the car temp guage indicated sub zero temps! All the way to
Bryce! Maybe its good we didn’t camp…
Cold and a bit snowy! Ground was mostly frozen except for the thawed spots…
Sharon on the trail.
Thunder Mountain Video
On Thursday we rode near Gooseberry Mesa
Thursday was Bryce’s day off so he played tour guide and photo slut at Gooseberry Mesa area
Reflecting
Rock work!
Red Rock Cycles – Ryan and Judd.
OTE in Hurricane
Pinkbike Video of LC @ Gooseberry Mesa