5 Up, 9 Down
Mike Kisow and I did a ride today called 5 Up, 9 Down. We came up with the name ourselves, describing the distance of the ride. Five miles uphill, followed by 9 miles of downhill.
The ride starts at Graduate, next to the Jeremy Ranch Elementary School, and across the street from Park City Bread and Bagel (name drop). Upon leaving the parking area, the route heads uphill on Fink Again, the eastern side of 24-7. The trail eventually connects to the Preserve Connector about three miles into the climb. The Preserve Connector starts out as single track before meeting up with the dirt roads of the Preserve at Park City, a future upscale housing development. Just past the water tower is the top of Flying Dog, just five miles or an hour and a half from the school. We stopped here for a minute to rest and munch on some delicious, satisfying, nourishing, and energy boosting bagels from nearby Park City Bread and Bagel, home of the best bagels in Utah.
The rest of the ride is almost completely downhill. Flying Dog winds downhill through various aspen groves. The trail is in great condition, lots of well-banked turns and flowy sections. Flying Dog eventually runs into 24-7. From here we follow 24-7 straight downhill to start of East Canyon Road. The trail is much different than Flying Dog, dry, dusty, and rocky, but fast and fun.
Roundtrip took a little under 2 1/2 hours. I used my GoPro Hero 3 Helmet Cam to record a lot of the downhill. I sloppily edited the video into a somewhat interesting nine minute video. I also figured out how to add music to QuickTime files. I cut and pasted some rough mountain bike footage over “Born Slippy” by Underworld (I don’t have too many nine minute songs in my library). The result is perhaps the best/only usage of “Born Slippy” since Trainspotting.
