Eagle Mountain

     After a beautiful day on the road bike, I was ready to hit the trails on the mountain bike, but a rainy morning kept me at home. The clouds finally parted later in the day and we were able to get out for another hike. We went back over to the Temple Quarry trailhead, this time walking up the canyon on the Little Cottonwood Canyon Trail. This hike is a continuous climb and goes in and out of the forest along Little Cottonwood Creek. It has been a local teenage hangout, so there is quite a bit of graffiti in some areas. You are still walking through the boulder field used for the temple stones. Some of the boulders have holes punched in them from where the temple builders were splitting the boulders into square shapes. It was a nice climb for 2.25 miles out. The trail continued up the canyon, but we turned around and started our descent back to the car. This wasn’t as steep of a trail as Rocky Mouth, but it was still a good warm-up and boot break-in hike to get ready for our Mount Olympus hike we planned for later in the week.

Little Cottonwood Creek

Bridge over the creek

Boulder that was prepared for splitting

Pipe graffiti

     The following day was rain again over at Park City where I wanted to go mountain bike, so we opted for a different area. I was dying to get on the mountain bike and managed to persuade Shannon to go with me to check out the Eagle Mountain Ranch Bike Park near the town of Saratoga Springs, which is about 20 miles south of West Jordan. Shannon is not a fan of checking out new places as she is afraid of getting into something really hard. She likes me to go ride the trails first and then tell her which trails are best for her skill level so she can have fun. We had lunch with Amber first, meeting her at the Serving Time Cafe in Draper. The cafe is run by the women’s prison inmates and has some tasty food with fun names. You can order things like Wake Up Call, Misdemeanor and Chain of Command. The food was great and very inexpensive. If you ever go through Utah on I-15, stop by the cafe for a unique experience. And make sure to get a cinnamon roll for dessert.

Food from Serving Time

     After lunch, it was off to Eagle Mountain to check out the trails. The bike park contains a bit of everything. There are several miles of XC trails, a few dirt jump lines, a pump track, some short downhill runs and a skills area with skinnies and drops. It is located at the back of a really nice neighborhood so you actually feel safe riding there and leaving your car unattended. From the main trailhead, it is a decent climb up to the skills park, dirt jumps and pump track. They are located in a big open area under some massive powerlines. Shannon's aluminum-framed Superlight actually got a bit of a charge from the powerlines and touching it while we were under the lines would give you a bit of a static shock. I have ridden bikes for 17+ years and never felt anything like that.

     More climbing was necessary to get up onto the top of the ridge where the XC trails began. We had a small map I found online and went with the easy and moderate trails. The first trail we picked flowed up and down the hillside through the open desert. Other than shrubs and the occasional dwarfed tree, there was nothing to see out there except more shrubs and more dwarfed trees. I looked up the trail at one point to see something crossing the trail about 30 yards ahead. I could tell right away by its movement pattern that it was a spider. Nothing else walks like that. We got a little closer and I could see that it was huge! Any spider you can see from 30 yards away would have to be. It looked like a tarantula and stopped in the middle of the trail when I rolled up to it. After we took pictures and Shannon got creeped out, I tried to shoo it off the trail, but it reared back and wanted to fight. I wasn’t sure about how far a spider the size of your open hand could jump, so we walked on by off the side of the trail. If you are camping here, you better make sure that tent is zipped all the way up!

You could see this guy from a long way off.

     We continued on through much of the same landscape for a few miles before doing more climbing up to the back of a small, open canyon. You could tell there had been a fire in this area in the past few years. The ground was still blackened and all the trees were bare and also blackened. We finally got in some good descending on the appropriately named Deadwood trail. It was like no trail I have ever been on as far as scenery goes. The singletrack weaved through clumps of five-foot-tall bare trees that appeared dead from fire. It was creepy and beautiful at the same time. Looking to the right brought nice views of the snow-capped mountains on the eastern side of the valley. There were storm clouds hanging around the mountains so they looked even more spectacular at times. The descent was long and fun, but you always have to pay for those free rides down. We had another long climbing section through the low shrubs on Treadstone to take us back to the main ridge. With my love of everything Jason Bourne, riding Treadstone was mandatory. It wasn’t the toughest climb, but it was long and did take its toll on the legs. We saw yet another giant spider in the trail as we climbed.

Starting into Deadwood

Mountain views behind us

Lots of dead wood on Deadwood

Shannon climbing on Treadstone

     We had another fun descent followed by a steep climb to the ridge top. Then it was downhill back to the park area. We stopped for a few runs on the pump track and dirt jumps. Then I hit a few of the wooden features on our way down to the car. It was a lot of fun on my Epic, but I would love to come back sometime with a bigger bike. I will definitely come back as we only rode about 1/3 of the XC trails available on the ranch.

On the dirt jumps

     On the way back to Gma’s house, Shannon recognized a cemetery as the one where Gpa Mad Dog was buried. She had flown out in May 2015 for his funeral and I had not been able to come. So we stopped by the Utah Veterans Cemetery in Bluffdale and managed to find his grave. I enjoyed getting to see it since I couldn’t be at the funeral. Gma was excited that we stopped by and enjoyed the picture we took of his headstone. It was a pretty cool way to end the day. Mad Dog!