I guess after having made it as far up as I could go at SnowBasin, the only logical thing to do next was to start lower and try to get to the top, to do that you start at the Wheeler Canyon trailhead right next to the Pineview Reservoir dam. Wheeler Canyon is a wide trail, and is a lot of fun to come down riding over all the rock outcroppings on the trail. Only problem is horse crap, as usual with forest service trails. Anyway I was feeling like I could climb about 3000 vertical feet or more, but to do that I would’ve had to start a couple hours earlier. To get to the Needles Lodge from Wheeler Canyon would be 4300 vertical feet, just for reference. I only made it to the top of the Green Pond Loop Trail 20 minutes before the sun set. Around that point in time I pulled the sweetest move — my front tire found some rodents underground burrow, and since the rain had softened the ground, my tire dropped straight down about 4 inches, which wouldn’t have been a big deal except my front tire had a big rock in front of it that I was going to ride over. The sweet part is what happened next, I just endo’d, yup, right over the top. Since I was going up a small hill at the time it was a slow, graceful endo. That’s not the best part though; I endo’d right into a nice stretch of mud, and I had an impressive bloody dent in my lower leg! It just doesn’t get better than that, being all covered in mud looking like you went to war on your ride, with the wounds to prove it. Since I didn’t have much time to get down off the mountain I took the Old Snowbasin Highway back to the Art Nord trailhead (max speed, 39 MPH on the highway), and went from there to the Wheeler Creek trailhead.
All in all, 2,384 ft climbed over 14.3 miles