TAPEWORM

Any rider who has spent any time in the Seattle area has ridden the tapeworm.  Located just southeast of SEA in beauuuutiful Renton, WA, tapeworm is some of the best trailbuilding and maintenance I've seen.  Hand-sculpted on a slope just above Renton, it's a chunk of forest saved from certain cookie-cutter home development thanks to a power substation and some pretty thick powerlines overhead.  No worries.  Us mtbers don't mind cancer.

Tapeworm is actually a network of 3-4 trails, most of the time we start with DNA.  All of these trails are slightly different but similar in that they pack a ton of riding into a very small area.  They are constantly turning back and forth on each other, and keeping momentum and speed is key to both having fun and keeping the pedals turning.  It's a sublime example of urban trail building in a compact area, Belgians - take note!!!  The trail is dotted with little baby stunts to keep you on your toes.  After DNA and Tapeworm you finish on Parasite, which is more of the same but with several log crossings across the trail.

I did a solo ride here (GG once did solo rides before work here on a more than weekly basis) before a flight out, you can come to the tapeworm and do 1-2 hours and be super sweaty no problem.   Rocking the carbon single speed...

the colonnade

Seattle mountain bikers have always been creative (being the smart people that we are).  So when the Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance decided to make a mountain bike skills park under the I-5 freeway, right in downtown Seattle, it seemed like a good idea.  And it rocks.  You can go rip for a couple hours and stay dry and get real better at your skills. Unfortunately, when GG and I went to check it out, I had a Ridley carbon single speed with 1.9 inch tires.

The Colonnade is a muntain bike skills park located right under the freeway, with all types of structures from beginner to pretty gnar level stunts.  Teeters, skinnies, jumps, drops, rocks and bridges...  It's pretty short and not for getting exercise per se...but you could easily kill a couple hours there getting better at riding your mountain bike.

Rolling there on the carbon single speed was kinda silly but we just wanted to check it out and roll around, turn the pedals a few 

times.  There were some underage kids there making us look silly, I offered to race one of the downhill bikers up the hill but he declined.  It's a pretty amazing set up for a local group of people, tons of woodwork and very solid structures, and all very safe.

GG runs away from the big drop....

Damn this free rider looks talented...

MOAB

What else is left to say about Moab?  Best town in southern utah, cool people, good restaurants, stunning setting, sweeeet riding...  But...2 years in a row and 4 visits in the last 6 years...too much in my opinion.

That said, if you twist my arm...  And there's that new trail, Hazard County.  Which was itself reason to visit Moab.  So I conned the others to make the haul across Utah state for 1 day of riding.  Sweet.

Last year's hazard county ride was unbelievably fun and epic.  Top three in a lifetime ride.  This year we were expecting nothing less.  The dark clouds hovering above the La Sal mountains had a different idea...it was freezing and raining when we got out of the shuttle van so we donned the rain jackets and started pedaling.

Hazard starts out on a gentle downhill slope with sublime singletrack that winds in and out of the juniper trees, with spectacular views of the Moab valley below.  The trail was super slick with fresh mud, lucky me had big tires and had a blast.

Mike was the hero of the weekend, Porcupine Rim is not an easy trail on any bike and he did the whole thing on his 29er hard tail...studly.

Rain jackets...

As Hazard trail merged to Kokapelli, the trail had suffered under the rain and the soil had turned into something like nearly-set concrete.  Without a ton of momentum you couldn't go 10 meters without your bike coming to a complete stop.  Luckily for us Eric ignored the warning from the shuttle driving and bombed down, leaving the rest of us to walk...  After a bit the trail dried out and became rideable, but we missed a nice fun section of fast double-track.  Damn.

Since last year there had been a fairly big forest fire, and it wasn't too long ago as the burnt smell was still in the air and riding through the burned-out section was pretty surreal.
The beauty about this trail is that you descend for an hour plus, all single track, then come to the very top of Porcupine Rim (stunning views, don't let your gaze linger as that is a cliff there...).  From there it's another 1-1.5 hours of ridiculous fun in the hot desert - rain jacket long ago discarded.
By this part of the trail the hard tail was starting to kick Mike's ass a bit.  Long washboard sections of sharp rocks.  But it was beautiful as heck and a stop every now and then would let you to look around and appreciate the Moab desert. 
During the last 30 minutes or so we passed and got passed by a fairly old guy who was out there keeping it real on two wheels.  Pretty cool. Hope I'm half that active when I'm his age.
All in all a extremely excellent ride.  Would do it again in a heartbeat.  The conditions mixed it up for us and made it interesting.  But one day was all we had, from there we headed back to Vegas to board planes....

Utah - Hurricane Rim

Time for our annual post-vegas mtb trip, an exodus to escape the sin city as soon as possible and get somewhere...real.  Luckily some of the world's most beautiful, and best for mountain biking, places on earth are within striking distance from LV.

Our trip was a little balled up this year since the seattle crew went to moab with half the rest of the civilized world, plus half our crew could not leave until Saturday, not Friday like the rest.  So we did a more local ride on Saturday afternoon - Hurricane rim in Hurricane, Utah.

I had to scramble for a bike and managed to borrow an Endorphin from Knolly - usually a perfect bike for the Utah desert but it had big tires and a heavy fork and a huge coil shock, so it was a little heavy for pedaling.  But when the trail went down it was sublime.

We all felt pretty terrible after a week of Vegas, so pace was slow (well Eric and Chris were doing their best XC racer impersonation).  We were chased around the desert by thunder clouds but just managed to escape the rain.

Mike was rolling his custom hand-build and self-designed Proletariat 29er, perfect bike for this trail.
I was dead last but glad to be turning the pedals and the trails were siiiiiiiick...
Eric had 2 flats, setting a trend for the weekend...
A nearly lost phone and 2 hour car ride later we were in the general direction of Moab.