Wheeler Canyon

Time again for another uplifting and informative blog on the bike trails of Utah. Today's adventure takes place on a little trail just south of Pineview Reservoir, known as Wheeler Canyon. The trail head begins right at Pineview dam and heads up along a double track, well groomed trail. The trail follows a path high above the creek of Wheeler Canyon. Again, it's a fairly easy ascent with a steady climb and smooth trail. My brother Chad decided to come along with me and seeing how this was the first time he's been mountain biking in a long time, I thought this would be a great tail to start out with. About a mile into the trail the canyon divides into a Y and a trail heads up either side. We stayed along the north end of the trail because eventually the trail loops back around and we can come back through the south canyon. The north end heading up continues as the double track well groomed trail. Again it follows a creek until it meets up with the Old Snowbasin Road at the ArtNod junction of the trail. From here many different trails spread out over the base of Snowbasin and the surrounding mountains like the coronary arteries of the heart light up under arteriograms. While talking with Chad I informed him that in the future we would be hitting up those trails as well. We followed the road until it met up again with the trail that would take us back down Ice Box canyon into Wheeler. At this junction where the road meets a trail is a beautiful meadow that later on in the spring will be filled with yellow wildflowers. The trail now is a single track trail with a fun descent into the meadow. However, because of the recent rain and ever increasing runoff the trail was muddy, slippery, and slow. When I got to the bottom of the meadow my black/yellow bike (from now on will be known as Bumblebee, you know...like the Camaro in Transformers) was brown and grinding. However, that's nothing compared to what happened to Chad. As he comes down the trail and over the bridge onto the flat, dry ground he immediately stops and has a look of extreme disappointment on his face. He yells saying that his chain had busted. When I pull up next to him I realize that it wasn't so much his chain was the problem as it was his derailleur had broken of at the hanger which connects it to the frame. The worse part for Chad was that we had done all the grunt work to make it up to this point and the single track trail that lied ahead of us was mostly down hill and fun. So after a brief laugh Chad hiked his bike back up to the road that we rode along while I continued down the trail. Now some might consider this inconsiderate of me, leaving my brother behind while I continued along the best part of the trail, but someone had to go get the Jeep. And seeing how I had done this trail before and knew the path back it only made sense that I be the one, right? Ok, I'm not going to lie, I had a blast flying down.
Now for Chad's sake the round trip trail was only about 5 miles long and we had done over half of it before the bike broke so it wasn't going to take me that long to get back. And it didn't. It actually took me longer to drive the Jeep up to where he was then it took me to ride back to it through the canyon. So I eventually made it to Chad and we loaded up the bikes and went on our way home.
Now for the best part...the bike wasn't even Chad's. It was the bike of a friend of ours named Taylor. Luckily the derailleur wasn't that much, around $20. The worst part was fixing the thing. I've never had to fix one before so it was a good learning experience...right? It took me over 3 hours! Now there is good reason why. I first bought the derailleur but hadn't bought the hanger that connects it to the bike (where it had actually busted at). So I had to go and get that. After disconnecting the derailleur I replaced the hanger and decided to put the old derailleur back on seeing how it hadn't broke (just the hanger, remember). Once I got it connected up and the chain back on I had to adjust the cable so that it shifted smoothly and into all the gears. That's where the problem begins. I had printed off some instructions on how to make these adjustments (and they are very fine tune adjustments) and was following those and doing what I thought they said to do. I tweaked a screw hear, pulled a cable there, shifted while adjusting and everything short of picking up the bike and throwing it in frustration when it just didn't seem like what I was doing worked. I couldn't get the stupid thing to shift into it's highest gear and when shifting into it's lowest gear the chain would fall off. So after a couple hours of making these hairline type tweaks to the screws and cables I decided to start all over. Maybe it's the derailleur I thought, maybe it's bent slightly. So I get the new one out, put it on, reconnect everything and it's time again to tune it. Who would've though, 10 minutes later I get it shifting perfectly! That right there is a testament to how important properly working equipment is. It makes life so much easier when things work the way they're supposed to.
So anyway, that's the trip for today. Hopefully since I have a couple of weeks off and the weather is supposed to be warm I'll be able to get another couple of rides in and posted.