Utah Cliffs - Day 6 Pine Valley Equestrian Campground to Cedars City
Tuesday Oct 9th, 2018
Start 6800'
High pt 50'
Lo pt 00'
End Elv. 00'
Climbing 00'?
Miles 46.4
Total time 5:45?
Ride time 5:00
Blues skies greet me this morning, after a night with most of my clothes and down jacket on in a somewhat successful effort to stay warm. I did have a session of being serenaded by the coyotes to help me drift back to sleep. Old Sol is a welcome companion for breakfast and packing. The few clouds over the wilderness mountains burn away by my 10 ish departure.
The snowy mantle still cloaks the mountains, bright in the morning sun.
My plan takes me north to Pinto then east a few miles before turning south for some more back roads through the Pine Mountains towards New Harmony.
I take off, warming up the lungs and legs as I pedal back through the village of Pine Valley. The gentle climb to Grass Valley through pînon juniper forest. Few cones on the pinons this dry year.
The the winding rollercoaster of the road generally down to Pinto. Pinto is a handful of home plus some surrounding ranches. A friendly local, in a side by side of coarse, points me in the right direction to New Harmony, including a landmark of where to turn to New Harmony. It is a historic old house and pond. Heading east I climb a small divide and look for a place to refuel a bit. The forest gives way to another grass land park area. I head down on the good forest service road. I see the house in the distant and as I get closer, it is a large ish brick home from long ago, boarded up, with ponds that have large cottonwoods with some old pale trees laden with fruit.
As I pull up to the plaque, I hear the loud ping from my bike, the sound of a rear spoke giving up, quickly followed by the rhythmic rubbing of my rear tire.
While I have replacement spokes, the broken 2 are on the freewheel side. I attempt in vain to find a way the thread them through. I have a choice now. Head up and further into the mountains and spend a night as planned, or take the forest road out 5 me to the highway to Cedar city. Given I have 2 spokes down, and fearing more breakage on rougher roads, it seems better to limp back into town on smoother roads, as cedar city has some bike shops.
The road out is rolling and slightly down, good shape though I hold back the Steed on the down hills. I reach hwy 56, and I give the steed some rein on the smoothment. It is a modestly winding down hill out of the Pine mountains, and soon Cedar mountain start peaking over the ridges at me. There is a mantle of snow from its 10000'+ peak down very low. This is the next 2 days of my route.
This visage accompanies me for the rest of my 18 mile ride back into town.
I score hotel room and talk to the bike shop owner and mechanic. The dirt roads on the mtn usually do not dry out til spring. And I have planned 3 or 4 more mountain sections. Rain is scheduled for Thursday. I need to digest and assess scenarios.
Digging through my maps and web weather, I could do most of the ride on busy highway variants (which I'm not a big fan off), but things are going to be chilly in the low areas, and downright cold up higher. I might be able to make it to the desert section before the next front comes through, but rain in the desert has its own challenges.
Sigh....
I reluctantly decide that one can't fight mother nature, and when the wind blows, one, at times, needs to bend.
So this is the end of the Utah biking, Glenda will come fetch me tomorrow and we will head home, to plan and plot future excursions and adventures (ski season is fast approaching this year!)
I was intending to ride some of the in town single track, but the bike shop indicated it was like too wet still, with the gripper clay waiting ....
I did snap a couple of photos up in the mountains on the trip home. I was planning on camping not too far from these last 2 photos. The dirt roads looks pretty crappy, the temp never got out of the 30s until I was out of those mountains.
The other mountain ranges were also trying on their mantles of winter cloaks.
