Joined Kerry Smith and the U.R.M.B.(Utah Rocky Mountain Bikers) for their annual-ish attack on the Timpanogos Perimeter trail. Why would you do this?

Here's why. Okay, I stole the Auto-Stitch idea from Oilcan, I admit it.

Initially, I understood the info I got from Kerry to mean we were meeting at Timp Park at 6 am. No big deal I get up at 5 am most mornings. When I got home from Pioneer Day celebrations the night before, I was checking emails before I went to bed, and realized he wanted to be riding by 6 am, and wanted to meet at 5 am. It was midnight at this point. Luckily, I was unable to sleep for the next four hours which made things interesting. For the record, my rides aren't the only ones with "flexible" start times, Kerry arrived just before 5:30 am. Not to be bothered by such things as accuracy, the ride length was also a little "flexible" and this 30 mile ride worked out to just about 22.5 or so. Not that I was begging for more by the end.

I was a little worried when Nathan showed up, and he a Kerry busted out the cone wrenches and started working on Nathan's hubs. They ended up giving up on the front hub and Kerry loaned him a front wheel. This ended up being the only mechanical we had the whole day, and it was before we even turned a crank.

We piled into my truck and hauled up to the summit parking lot on the Alpine Loop. From here we rode Ridge Trail to Upper Pine Hollow. Ho-Hum, nothing new there. But the rain the night before had made the trail tacky and the flora soaking wet. We ran into TallSteve coming up Pine Hollow and convinced him to join us.

Soon we were grinding up Timpanooeke Road. So far I had ridden trails I knew and a road. Not the most epic thing I had done in awhile.I was hoping things would improve.

And improve they did, we opted out of the run up to Julie Andrews meadow and stayed on the road until Rock Canyon. This skirts the road just below the rock slide.

A nice trail and probably fun to ride if it's clear. Ends up that's a big IF. There are several places with gi-gumbous deadfalls blocking the trail. Kerry took some photo's to forward the forest service and I 'm hoping they get right on that. After making it back up to the road we began the climb over to the west slope. It's a steep technical climb. I think I walked at least a quarter of it. Not miserable, just tough. When I came over the top though I was floored. Wait, let me give you the Auto-Stitch version.

This is the back side of Mount Mahogany. You can drive here, there's a road through the bottom, but I'm betting most people don't. It was stunning.

From here you begin the first big descent. The freakishly wet spring has left the trail wildly overgrown. You can only just vaguely pick the trail out of the vegetation. And with the rain, you get soaked through before too long. By the end of this descent, I couldn't have gotten any wetter if I had jumped in a pool. But the wildflowers were like something out of Wizard of Oz. Not just the scale but the colors. It's not so bad getting your legs whipped into a blazing rash, when it's by lupines, and coneflowers. You'd have thought we were a bunch of florists riding through this place. Stopping to take pictures just so people would believe us. Nathan took a good digger because of the obscured trail, but it was all good because he crashed while laughing at Kerry's trip over the bars. Eventually we came around to the multiple intersections of the trails that run down onto the benches.

Here's the top of the Grove Creek Trail. It's tough to take it all in while you ride. The Lake and Utah Valley stretch out on your right, but if you focus on that, you miss what's behind you. Now from here things got interesting. The flowers started to thin out, and the trail got harder and harder to follow. And by harder to follow I mean, "Where the hell is the trail?"But, when you've been doing the "Pardon me,....Excuse Me." On Ridge trail for a month, it's wild to ride something so close, that obviously hasn't had any traffic yet this year.

Some bushwacking, some hike-a-bike, and you enter Floating Grass Meadow.

After the meadow, you can see the saddle between Mount Baldy and Timp. It looked like a long way. And it was.

You wind in and out of the individual little canyons. I think Nathan is crossing Battle Creek here.Then it points up. Holy hell, it points up. So much so, that I only took one more picture the rest of the day.This was about halfway up the switchbacks to the Baldy saddle. Pushing my bike, water squishing out of the top of my shoes with each step. Watching TallSteve scamper up the hill despite supposedly being in "recovery" from the Swine Flu. The brutality of this climb has got to be against the Geneva Convention. I kept looking up and realizing I wasn't getting any closer to the saddle. Eventually we did make it. And took a lunch break.

Thinking the hard part was over, we pointed our bikes down and headed for Provo Canyon. The trail was still covered with grass but now it was also steep and technical leading to sudden, violent trips over the bars for most of those involved.

Things started to open up a little at the top of Dry Canyon. And we picked up speed, all the way over to the Altar at the top of the Timp Foothill Trail network. The sun finally came out, and the climate went from a humid, steamy, rain forest. To an arid, oven-like, desert. Luckily, we were at the last leg of the journey. We picked our way down Betty, to the Race Course and finally back to the cars.

All in all, this was the toughest ride I've done this year.

I would have to say it's like a colonoscopy. There are a lot of unpleasant parts, but you really should do it once in awhile. And you usually end up with some pretty good stories.