Best Ride 2010 Sun Valley, Idaho… My New Five Star Mountain Bike Location

This year, the boys elected to make our fall MTB adventure a trip to Sun Valley, Idaho.

In 1981 I had skied there during a season long trip across North America, and after reading about the riding in a few of the bike rags, I knew I had to make a return visit to check out it out.

Accessing Sun Valley requires a bit of patience unless you own your own private jet. (as we drove by the nearest airport to Sun Valley we counted 23 on the tarmac) The closest that we could get to by commercial air was Boise, Idaho. We then had to drive for about 3 hours in a rental car. Thankfully, Sun Valley has a number of good bike shops all willing to rent you state of the art equipment for your stay so you don’t have to bring your own bike.

We had our choice of several different brands in either 26 or 29 inch mode. As I had never had the opportunity to ride a 29er, I jumped on this plan. Accommodation is plentiful, and you definitely have the choice of some pretty nice digs. Sun Valley is known as a haunt of the rich and famous and by the average size of the houses we saw, the locals don’t seem too fazed by the current recession.

TL knew a few contacts that live in Sun Valley that he had met through other sporting endeavours and they kindly took us under their wings to show us the local area. We might have been a bit concerned when we first met this group of five as their average age was 67. After they put the boots to us on the first day, it became clear that these guys are die-hards, putting in 2 to 4 hour rides, 4 to 5 days a week, June to October. They then fill up their winter, doing the same thing on XC skis. The base altitude in Sun Valley is about 2000m with many of the climbs peaking out in excess of 3000m. i.e. These guys are riding at altitude. What an inspiration!!!

Day 1 was spent just north of town in an area known as Dry Horn Gulch. The altitude really seemed to make the climbs very difficult. Short kickers put you in the red zone, and although you would back off when the trail levelled, you never seemed to get your heart rate back under control before the next kicker arrived. In general the trails were very smooth and flowy with reasonable grip. (as long as your bike had tires with reasonable tread; a few of ours did not which we corrected for the rest of the week)

Sun Valley has some pretty cool terrain with trees appearing only on the western sides of the ridges. Clearly, precipitation must be at a premium and falls rarely on the eastern slopes.    They have also had a number of forest fires over the last few years and a constant feature of the whole trip was swooping down trails amongst burned out trees. The contrast of black and white makes for some pretty good pictures. Day 2 was spent a few miles south of town in an area called Greenhorn Gulch. The drive out revealed some awesome houses, quite a few were architectural masterpieces, and many seemed to exceed 10,000 square feet in size. What do you do with all that house?

The ride was amazing, especially the last 10 to 15 km which revealed some wickedly fast descents with bermed up corners. This trip was progressing as planned: Day 2 better than Day 1.

Day 3 saw us shuttle about 50 miles north of Sun Valley to an area around Stanley with the local Pink Fairy Shuttle Company.   Once again the riding was significantly different with a good portion of the ride through a recently burned area. We started high, and finished low, the definition of shuttling; but most of the riding was only slightly downhill requiring big ring hammering. There is nothing quite so fun as 5 guys completely pinned, trying to take each other down on a trail like this. The day ended with a quick trip to Redfish Lodge for a beer with a view of the Sawtooths in the distance.  Out last day of riding was absolutely the best of the week. We once again shuttled north of Sun Valley into the Stanley area. We met up with our local friends, and then drove up to the start of our ride.  By now, most of us were starting to acclimatize a bit to the altitude, and for all of us, this was the best that we felt on the climbs. We headed up into the Cloudburst Mountains and eventually peaked out at 3050m. The view was fantastic. We headed down into a big bowl that we all thought would serve up some sweet back country skiing in the winter.

Lunch was beside a mountain lake, and then the fun really started.  The first part of the descent was about an hour long and was quite technical with lots of rocks and creek crossings. Eventually we landed in a large valley bottom with all the fall colours on display.  The pitch continued down and the speeds reached quite ridiculous levels. After another hour, we reached the plum of the trip, the descent down Fourth of July creek. This one was off the chart. Smooth wide trails following the contours down the creek valley. The trail swooped into little side crevices of the main valley, and these always had huge bermed corners at the end. I swear the average speed for the descent down here was about 30kph with parts of the descent over 50. Pretty darn fun on a mountain bike. And, for the finish celebration, one of our local buddies was kind enough to remember to bring a cooler of Stella’s.

Sun Valley…. Don’t miss it!!!