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Show Wasatch Canyon Reporter EDITORIAL: SKIPPING THE DEEP Onion Creek Mountain Bike Ride When you are heading to Moab, and you _§aren’t looking for the gnar-gnar, and you don’t want to deal with crowds, you should consider the Onion Creek area. About twenty four ties and Onion Creek was a correctly and you can soak good early season ride for our group. The aerobic Hemen trundled ahead as if it was a crucial Pirenees stage your riding partner, but one beat behind and you get dowsed by a Chris Craft size wake of stream water. The of the Tour De France, while game became a the lode-boy editor moved at terium/velodrome style of suspense ride. Timing your sprints so that you could arc a head-high wave onto the nearest rider...unfortunately all this horsing around in the miles outside of Moab, the Onion Creek area delivers a more sedate pace, pretend- incredibly beautiful placid riding and camping. The ride smell the flowers, and not a serious cardiac infarction which was itself is winding fire road with no single track that we ing it was merely a will to cadence. setting The the womenfolk streams led sort of cri- to a fifteen minute broken / lost chain — search in one of the crossings. On the day we rode there was some kind of Jeep Safari going on. Hundreds of massive honk- ing four wheel drives. The bad | side of it was the dust which \ 3) was kicked up “i by A good ae fora could discern, even though the map promised “expert singletrack.” Instead you ride a steadily climbing road which crosses and re-crosses a stream bed what seems like fifty times. The day we were ThCue poate the good was that couldn’t moved in_ between the groups, lording their aerobic capacity over the editor, yet unable or unwilling to play tag with the testosterone twosome. : Nine miles out the road _ riding it was baking hot, and leaves the fun curving uphills every trip through the stream © and meanders across a long was a welcome splash of flat desert.. .long enough to relief...although the dainty discourage us from attemptanal fellow in our group went ing to cross it. Quite possibly through the streams at a safe that is where the hidden sinand sane five MPH, as if the gle track lay. Turning around water was boiling oil. gives you a fast nine mile The pelleton we were rid- — downhill with the now exciting with was of mixed abiliing stream crossings. Timed trucks, | the side you find a nicer group with which to share the trail. The first Jeep in every group warmed of the number following, and almost all them waved and smiled. of The ride would have been about eighteen miles, if it weren't for Beth, ever anxious for a better workout, who skipped the turnoff to camp and made fast tracks towards West i. |’ Anew body in 10-30 sessions Call 582-4848 for more information ee all starts to make sense, and I ski now because I love it, and not because mom left me at the hill for the day. Yet every year I hold back more from the speed, air, and always the bumps. Its ness. | eo Yet when the last day at Alta rolled around, and it was time to muscles ee ee of the correct turn and tortoiselike won the race home. Aligns body and and improves posture and cootdination® Coe up to the top a tradeoff which I don’t consciously make, but once you have Relieves stress andtension —_—__ Workouts tailored to the individual. ability and needs || our “large frames” been laid up for a winter, injury starts to nag at the conscious- * Increases strength and support of back L and I hiked Wolverine Peak and checked out our options. Avalanche danger was medium on north facing slopes.... And as Bruce Tremper, avalanche guru said, “Would you get on an airplane which has a moderate chance of crashing?” Yet the chute was just sitting, loaded with over 200 untracked turns, begging to be skied. It descended a hundred feet and then dog legged left around a sharp rock precipice into mystery. A year earlier, and I would have dropped in regardless. Now older and supposedly wiser, I missed with a pang the pein. who would have ripped that chute. | So as the end of the season came upon me unexpectedly, I found myself longing to have that choice again, to ski the wrong chute on the wrong day. I watched the skies for big storms and hoped for one last shot at glory. It wasn’t some strange machismo, as I didn’t want anyone watching, and it wasn’t a death wish. Everyone chooses their form of spirituality, and mine has been the Wasatch backcountry for nigh on seven years. Standing at the top of that chute again would have been my opportunity to reaffirm my unhealthy sense of invulnerability, and stave off feelings of my impending mortality...and if I bought it in a thundering climax’of tons of crashing snow; then I would have died of surprise, because these things don’t happen to me. ButI didn’t ski it, and all this posturing about what I would do in that situation are bunk. Instead I spent the evensong of winter regaining shards of my youthful self. In Devil’s Castle on a knee deep day I cut nice long figure elevens straight down at Evan Dillon and Dave Peck. Coming by them at mach ten, as the wind ripped at my jacket, I planted myself firmly in the backseat to ride out the storm that comes with too much speed. And I felt better. I even dropped a small rock again...large enough that my back hurt the next day, which reminded me why I don’t do that anymore. Every year on skis I get better and worse. Technically it coast. | * Builds Pilates® Method of Bod y Conditioning muscular strength and flexibility tT and abdominal Jonny this scribe grabbed Wisely the Some days you age faster than others. When I stood looking down at the 45 degree shot, filled like a Christmas stocking with light lung burning powder, and turned away, I aged. There was something which made me edgy about that shot. Jon Atencio agreed that it wasn’t right. Instead we skied Patsy Marly...same line we had all skied a thousand times, but it was safe, stable, and we would be happily alive at the bottom. ee Katie Howard Certified Instructor | eed Page 4 head up to the top of the Highboy for the last run of the year...I passed on it. Last year, loaded with Jack and Coke, I launched into Alf’s High Rustler and crashed a three hundred yard longing spinning starfish...to the amusement of the crowd of five hundred people at the top. I got hammered with derisive yells, and even more snowballs. This year I hopped on my mountain bike, turned my back on a good winter and rode the first dry trail of the year. |