I say "Part 1?" because between the two of us we have nearly 900 photos and I've only sorted the majority of mine which are only ~200. If I have the gumption, I'll post the more interesting ones. If I had to come up with some dislikes I'd say don't bring your nicest set of cranks because the Western Spirit van rack holds your bike by the crank arm in a steel channel. Thicker XT and XTR cranks don't fit so well and get a bit chewed up. Also, as I've mentioned before, the confirmation packet tells you to tip your guides. Which I find offensive.
So we took off from the Emerald City at 7:30 am with the last stop out of town being Safeway since Western Spirit is BYOB and I don't trust Utah for beer or the hours it's for sale. That turned out to be unfounded since one of the stops the guides made on the way out to the canyon sold full cases of Dead Guy. Live and learn.
We drove straight to SLC to stay with some gracious friends after 13 hours on the road. Day two was much more relaxed with a drive over American Fork to have breakfast at Sundance with said friends and a few more. On the way into the restaurant we saw Alan Greenspan and Andrea Mitchell having coffee on the boardwalk. I figured that guy might have secret service people all around him but I didn't see a soul.
325 miles later we were in St. George and settled in for a couple nights to recover from the drive. The next morning we took in some of Zion Nat'l Park and hiked Angel's Landing.
I'm told they call that a "hog's back". It's a couple miles up a steepish, mostly paved trail and then .5 mile over the hog's back. This last .5 mile takes over an hour. 8-10 feet wide in places with ~1,000 straight down drop-offs on either side. Makes for some interesting hiking in many ways....
That's a 'must do' hike in my book and Zion is a 'must do' Nat'l Park.
The next 5 days we were coddled by our Western Spirit guides, Simon and Meagan. 6 other guests and 2 guide trainees filled the van to an almost uncomfortable 12.
This trip was well described on their website as recommend for couples with an imbalance of skillsets. I didn't go into this thinking of it as a riding vacation but rather to see the Grand Canyon with some riding thrown in. While the riding was a bit challenging being at ~8000 feet most of the time, and I can't say it was the most spectacular riding I've done, I still had a blast. Two highlights were coming up on what appeared to be a wild herd of bison
and riding the Rainbow Rim trail with parts of the trail coming close enough to the edge that it was easy to mentally go through landing a drop...
The main goal of the trip was simply to see the Canyon with my ulterior motive being to try and get my better half hooked on mt. bike trips. I succeeded in both.
One thing I'd change is that I'd bring more booze. You may have read about Simon in the most recent issue of Bike magazine. He and Meagan dragged those poor folks on parts of the same trip we did and they describe him as a "World Class Drinker". I can't say I witnessed this but the stories told in the mag and on the trip suggest a bottle of Anejo would have been a welcome addition to the booze stores. We had enough beer but the riding was easy enough and the evenings social enough that it would have been nice not having to ration the ale.
It's really nice to not even have to think about possibly being hungry. The first day we rode 5 miles and came upon lunch and chairs
Then we rode another 7 miles and came upon chairs, beer and dinner and pretty much repeated that the next 4 days.
Here's some of my favorite shots so far. I'm still learning photoshop so go easy on me.
View from camp:
On the last day before driving back to St. George, the group took off to ride the south part of the Rainbow Rim trail which I'd ridden the evening before. I decided to stay back, enjoy my coffee, watch the world go by and screw around with the 300mm zoom
A couple things I learned on this trip were that tequila is full of electrolytes and I might need a bigger frame
Last but not least, a sunset montage as seen from our last two nights in camp
We rounded out the trip with a zip over to Bryce,
camping and riding at Brianhead
and a couple days in Walla Walla wine country at the corporate headquarters of www.manninacellars.com
It was a good trip. It just didn't last long enough.
So we took off from the Emerald City at 7:30 am with the last stop out of town being Safeway since Western Spirit is BYOB and I don't trust Utah for beer or the hours it's for sale. That turned out to be unfounded since one of the stops the guides made on the way out to the canyon sold full cases of Dead Guy. Live and learn.
We drove straight to SLC to stay with some gracious friends after 13 hours on the road. Day two was much more relaxed with a drive over American Fork to have breakfast at Sundance with said friends and a few more. On the way into the restaurant we saw Alan Greenspan and Andrea Mitchell having coffee on the boardwalk. I figured that guy might have secret service people all around him but I didn't see a soul.
325 miles later we were in St. George and settled in for a couple nights to recover from the drive. The next morning we took in some of Zion Nat'l Park and hiked Angel's Landing.
I'm told they call that a "hog's back". It's a couple miles up a steepish, mostly paved trail and then .5 mile over the hog's back. This last .5 mile takes over an hour. 8-10 feet wide in places with ~1,000 straight down drop-offs on either side. Makes for some interesting hiking in many ways....
That's a 'must do' hike in my book and Zion is a 'must do' Nat'l Park.
The next 5 days we were coddled by our Western Spirit guides, Simon and Meagan. 6 other guests and 2 guide trainees filled the van to an almost uncomfortable 12.
This trip was well described on their website as recommend for couples with an imbalance of skillsets. I didn't go into this thinking of it as a riding vacation but rather to see the Grand Canyon with some riding thrown in. While the riding was a bit challenging being at ~8000 feet most of the time, and I can't say it was the most spectacular riding I've done, I still had a blast. Two highlights were coming up on what appeared to be a wild herd of bison
and riding the Rainbow Rim trail with parts of the trail coming close enough to the edge that it was easy to mentally go through landing a drop...
The main goal of the trip was simply to see the Canyon with my ulterior motive being to try and get my better half hooked on mt. bike trips. I succeeded in both.
One thing I'd change is that I'd bring more booze. You may have read about Simon in the most recent issue of Bike magazine. He and Meagan dragged those poor folks on parts of the same trip we did and they describe him as a "World Class Drinker". I can't say I witnessed this but the stories told in the mag and on the trip suggest a bottle of Anejo would have been a welcome addition to the booze stores. We had enough beer but the riding was easy enough and the evenings social enough that it would have been nice not having to ration the ale.
It's really nice to not even have to think about possibly being hungry. The first day we rode 5 miles and came upon lunch and chairs
Then we rode another 7 miles and came upon chairs, beer and dinner and pretty much repeated that the next 4 days.
Here's some of my favorite shots so far. I'm still learning photoshop so go easy on me.
View from camp:
On the last day before driving back to St. George, the group took off to ride the south part of the Rainbow Rim trail which I'd ridden the evening before. I decided to stay back, enjoy my coffee, watch the world go by and screw around with the 300mm zoom
A couple things I learned on this trip were that tequila is full of electrolytes and I might need a bigger frame
Last but not least, a sunset montage as seen from our last two nights in camp
We rounded out the trip with a zip over to Bryce,
camping and riding at Brianhead
and a couple days in Walla Walla wine country at the corporate headquarters of www.manninacellars.com
It was a good trip. It just didn't last long enough.
