" Tour the Beaver, no really !"

those are the tushar mountains in south western utah, the tallest peak you see there is delano, ( not delauno for gods sake )its 12,175 feet above sea level, there are three other peaks 12,000 or better and three more 10,000 or better, they are freakin beautiful lizard fans ( and that other one of you ) when you head north on I-15 from st george utah you come to a town called beaver utah, the home of the "BEAVER, BEAVERS", im serious, thats the name of the high school team there, cool huh ? BEAVERS, teehheeheee...

thats about 15 miles in and about 3000 feet up, this was a really cool road ride, the forest was amazing, i saw deer three different times, theres a beautiful river flowing from the 12,000 foot peaks, it was just a fuckin bitchin ride today, it was a stroke of luck to do it, my dad needed help up on the mountain, see my mom was born and raised in beaver and they have a trailer parked on property by kents lake in the canyon, i know about these mountains for a long time, i just never rode my bike here before. tell you what, this canyon and this forest and these mountains stack up against anything in the state and this ride is now on my top 5 hill climbs, and im a mount evans topper, lest we forget....

so what we did was, my old man dropped me outside of town by the interstate and i used the run up into then through town to the canyon as the warm up, as you head east into the canyon you pass the horse race track and the golf course, the road just meanders through the country side past some houses and into the trees, the river runs right by the road most of the time so you can hear the water a lot which i found very spiritual today.

so you just climb very gradually for exactly 8 miles, i know this because i saw the mile marker, and them it swings up for about a half mile, then is swings up again, this time its hovering around 9 or 10 % for a couple of miles. then you get a chance to recover for about a mile, i think i even went down just a bit, then you come to the switch backs up the cliffs, thats where this pic was taken, i was suffering bad here, rubbing the wheel on the frame at times, im still fat damnit !!

from there its a series of 10 to 15 % grades with flats and even a bit of down again, when you get to the top you have gone from town 20 miles and 4200 feet of gain, the road has a lot of character, its always changing its mind on whether or not its going too punish you or give you a chance to breathe, thats delano peak in the back ground, remember, from the freeway ?

speaking of breathing, its been a minute since i have been to altitude, as you can see i was pretty fuckin happy to reach the top, more altitude is on the horizon though, i will be going to salt lake to rail the wasatch for a couple days with the zaun at 10,000 +, and at the end of the month the cali characters will be headed this way to banzi the brian head at 11,000 +, damn i love bikes, whos with me ???

p.s. thanx 4 the pics pop !