Activity: mountain biking
Location: Bonneville Shoreline Trail, including The Bobsled (Salt Lake City, UT)
Distance: 13.6 miles (mostly singletrack and fire roads)
Duration: 2:38
Weather: sunny and pleasant, 79 degrees
Avg HR: 150 (max 186)
Type: aerobic

A trip back to my youth, in a way. I used to ride these trails when I lived in Salt Lake City and did most of my riding on dirt. Since I left in 1993, the trail network has expanded markedly, and expansion that culminated with the creation of the Bonneville Shoreline Trail in 1998.

The trail is superb: lots of technical singletrack, fall-aways, loose rocks, wildflower fields, rock gardens, creek crossings, scrub oak thickets, drop-offs and The Bobsled. The Bobsled is a 1.5 mile descent down a small ravine called Perry’s Hollow. The top quarter mile is treacherous scree slope with loose rocks and washboards, but after that it’s a ton of fun: exactly like a bobsled track, only in the form of packed dirt, clay and gravel. The berms are huge, and it’s easy to pull more than 2 “Gs” off the corners.

All told, it was a great outing. I rented a Gary Fisher Cake 3 from Wild Rose Sports, my former race team sponsor during my teenage years. The ride on the Cake was sublime: cushy when it needed to be, and it climbed like a mountain goat. It made the downhills easier to handle, and I was able to quickly brush off any rust I may have had in my mountain bike handling skills. I’d seriously consider buying a Cake for my next mountain bike, and I may just do a bit more trail riding out here in the east after the fun time I had in SLC.