Never done lift-assist or any kind of assist while mountain biking. My typical MTB session is an hour or two of climbing and 15-30 min of downhill. Today at Deer Valley it was hours of downhill. I have sore muscles and knots in places I didn’t know existed and I got almost zero cardio. Wowsies.
It was an interesting experience. I was off a bit on my first couple of runs because I guess I’m used to climbing first and “warming up.” I also felt like my tires were at too high of a PSI. I let some air out and made sure my shocks were nice and soft and the riding got better.
I made a couple of wrong turns into areas I clearly did not belong. One was a “double black diamond” technical trail. After walking and sliding down parts of it on my feet, I smartly bailed to a different trail that was more in my wheelhouse.
Toward the end of the day I hit the Tidal Wave trail. It was quite fun and had a few jumps that I did ok on. I find it hard to mentally get enough speed to clear the tabletops on jumps, so I end up landing probably a lot harder than necessary.
All-in-all it was a good day, but I think my biking routing of climbing first is the way for me.
Lunch
I should do a mention of lunch. Deer Valley is known for its higher end culinary offerings and my lunch lived up to that reputation. I had a wild boar quesadilla.
Didn’t taste like chicken! It was more beef-like. Very good.
