mountain biking in millcreek

saturday morning we met up with quinn and lex and drove north for a bike ride on pipeline trail in millcreek canyon. we had heard about the trail from brandon who said that the trail was really steep in spots--so steep that in a few places he actually had to get off his bike! the trail has several entrance and exit spots along it so we drove to the top of the trail and left one car at the bottom. we got started and it was beautiful, the trail was nice and hardpacked dirt, not to steep up not to steep down, just nice and flat. then out of nowhere we ran into a couple of switchbacks. on the first one, i wasn't paying very good attention and crashed as i was turning. luckily a huge bush and rock were there to catch my fall {my left leg is very grateful} i have a pretty good side bruise and scratches that run up my thigh and down my calve. quinn was the next to bite the dust. his tire ran smack into a sharp rock/stick combo and caused him to fly over his bike and then the bike to fly over him. he scraped is arm up really good and he was covered in dirt. luckily he didn't get hurt any worse. his bike didn't fare as well though. the bike had tubeless tires and so he was stuck with a flat tire and no spare. we were a little over halfway down at this point, so chris and i decided to bike the rest of the way down while quinn and lex would walk out {we were right by an exit point} and wait for us. as we continued to ride, chris and i kept saying how the trail wasn't steep at all. we were really starting to wonder when the trail was going to head down because as far as it looked to us, we weren't going down like the road down below us was. then, almost out of nowhere, the trail turned and headed sharply downhill. i was squeezing my brakes as hard as i could and trying to avoid the large rocks scattered all over the path. a couple times i fell over off my bike. so i got off and walked a little ways. chris was way up ahead of me. i didn't give up though, i kept getting back on my bike and pretty soon i was slowly picking my way through the rocks {i was scared the whole time, gripping my handlebars for dear life}. when we got out to the parking lot my adrenaline was pumping and i was feeling pretty good. it was only about 5 or 6 miles and the scenery was perfect. we will definitely be riding pipeline trail again sometime soon.