Thursday up Mill down Tibble

For a September morning in American Fork Canyon it felt pretty warm, probably about 50 degrees.

I met Terry at the split at 5:30AM. The rest of the riders were on the Brian Head trip, probably riding Dark Hollow.

Terry and I parked at Tibble Fork Reservoir and began riding up to Mill Canyon. That's a pretty steep uphill and since it was still dark, it was especially challenging. Although when you can't see the obstacles, they are less scary.

I've descended Mill Canyon, but never climbed that route, but because we wanted to get some climbing in, we were willing to take the pain.

The uphill was very taxing to my cardio. There were rocks and gnarled trees and hidden gnomes grabbing my tire. After a while we made it to the part that has been groomed/rerouted. That smooth trailis great for an uphill ride. Lots of challenging switchbacks, but the trail was as smooth as a banker asking for bailout money.

We hooked up to the Ridge Trail (157) and rode over the the four way and decended down Tibble fork.Coming down I realized that my fork was not working. I have a Fox F29. Since the previous two rides I have ridden rental bikes, a Niner RIP and a Niner Jet, it became obvious that the forks on those bikes were absorbing shock much better than the ride I was now taking.

We stopped and adjusted pressure on the fork, and it seemed to help, but the fork really wasn't compressing.

As I rode down it became more evident that I had done something wrong in my oil change.

We came to a spot where the trail forked. The left fork was covered with logs to stop traffic. We decided to drop down that left fork and we ended up in the cabins. We saw Larry King's cabin.

We finished on the winding pavement through the cabins and crossed the dam to our vehicles.

Back at home, I researched the fork oil on my Fox. It turns out that I used the Fox Float oil to fill my fork. That is about 70Wt and only used on the soft float pads at the top of the fork. I should have used 7wt oil. So I had oil that was 10 times the viscosity of the oil that I should have used. No wonder my fork didn't move.

I took apart the fork and drained all the oil out. I wiped it and even took out the spacer to convert my fork from 80mm travel to 100mm.

I picked up some oil from Blayne's Cyclery on State Street in Orem. The owner, Blayne, just let me take his 7wt Fox fork oil and return it later without any ID or anything. The trust was kinda cool.
I spent Thursday night changing my fork oil, which for me was a two hour process. Then I packed and my family and I drove to Brian Head for a 3 day weekend of biking, hiking and recreating.