Downhilling at Sundance Resort

Today Rich, our friend Karen, and I loaded up our car & headed out to Sundance ski resort for some downhill action. We paid for an all-day lift ticket and headed up. Now up until this point, I thought I was a pretty good downhiller. After all, as long as I can see where I'm going, I'll ride without using my brakes and over anything (or so I thought). We get off the chairlift at the top, wait for our bikes and head off. I followed Karen and learned NOT to follow Karen's lines, because we both wound up sinking into some 6" deep sand/gravel. This was the first steep, gravely, loosy section that lead into some singletrack. By the time we stopped to gather at the start of the singletrack, I'd sceared myself silly. This was going to be a lot harder than I'd thought it would be!
I followed Rich & Karen down, but at a bit slower pace than they were going. There was one part where the trail was quite narrow with a loonnggg dropoff on the right side. We came to a "corner" where there was a panaramic view of the mountains. We got to chatting with some locals about life in SLC.(see pic)After some more sketchy, loose downhill, we got back into the woods where the trail was smooth and we were surrounded by evergreens. It was the prettiest part of the trail. After a short bit, we popped out onto a paved road & zoomed back down to the chairlift.



We jumped back onto the chairlift, since Karen promised she could take me onto an easier, but longer trail. Even though it was longer, it went a lot faster. It was smoother and basically criss-crossed the mountain with sharp switchbacks where you basically stop, point, & shoot your bike downhill. After that run we had some lunch of sandwiches we'd packed, then it was back onto the chairlift for Rich & Karen. I sat out to rest my arms, which were getting tired. After they got back, I took my final run on the "easy" trail. Rich & Karen took a different trail which turned out to be too short, so they went up for one last run.

Oh...and the other pic is these little squirrel-like creatures that were all over the mountain. Rich even managed to run over a couple!

It was a good & tiring day. I'll sleep good tonight!