St. George Weekend

Chris and I wanted to get some early season riding in without having to wear 3 layers of clothes. We were going to ride an organized ride in Zion, but one of Chris' partners has a place in St. George and knows some great places to ride and offered to guide us on some fun loops. The weekend started off a little rough, though. Before arriving in St. George we made a long trek through Hurricane to get to the start of a mountain bike trail we wanted to ride. We are going to be racing the same trail in a few weeks and wanted to get an idea of what the trail was like. It was supposed to be Chris' debut ride on his new mountain bike, but that was cut short when the front brake pads fell off and we couldn't get them back on.

Here we are, all ready to go...

This is as far as we got.


We took the bike to a shop to get it fixed and found that the front disc was bent and the handle bars were too tight and caused stopping points. That started our trip off with a $100 dollars less in our pocket. While we were waiting for repairs Chris and I took out our road bikes and went down to the temple thinking that maybe we would osmotically absorb some spirituality to brighten our moods since we had both because somewhat testy. Didn't work. Later we found that the cure was a spicy mexican burrito for the both of us.

The next day we woke up and took Mike Nielsen's favorite mountain bike trail. It's a short, not very technical course (when I say not very technical it means I only had to get off my bike 5 or 6 times, instead of those 'technical' trails where I walk my bike more than ride). There were some great overlooks and beautiful scenery.







We took a lunch break and then headed out on the road bikes. We rode a beautiful loop that took us up Snow Canyon (unfortunately we didn't take any pictures of the road bike ride even though the camera took the whole trip). We looped over to Veyo, and through some great back roads to Gunlock Reservoir. Just when we were getting tired of the yellow walls framing the road leading from the reservoir it opened up and we could see the beautiful red cliffs again. By the end of the ride my rear end had had enough and we all took a sitz bath in a nice warm hot tub.

Before heading home we went to Pioneer Park and played on the rocks, along with the rest of St. George. We found some great places to crawl around in and on and through.

Mike Neilsen's son Aidan and I were the only two to fit through 'Fat Man's Worry', a slit in the rock where if you ate to much just before coming you might not make it through. Chris just looked at the space and said 'No, I think I'll pass'. It had been a while since I had tried it and realized it was much easier back in highschool. Aidan ran through the space face forward and kept saying 'This is so easy, because I'm skinny'. As I sucked in and squeezed through left side first, I just thought to myself, 'Enjoy it now, six-year old!'