A couple weeks back from this trip I messed up my right hand a bit rock climbing. Unlike most finger injuries for climbers I did something quite odd, especially for the area I injured it. Carly and I were in Maple. We were climbing the Box on a route neither of us had done before. I was top roping for Christ’s sake and I hyper extended the fingers on my right hand. I was near the top of the climb and there was really good pocket on for my right hand. Maple isn’t known for its pockets typically. Somehow as I was going for the next right handhold I didn’t pull my fingers out of this pocket quickly enough and starting moving my arm before my fingers had cleared the pocket. The result was some horrible knuckle cracking sounds and pain. After lowering I wasn’t able to belay much for the rest of the day. As the weeks have gone by things have improved so I don’t think there’s any lasting damage, but I’ve been taking it easy from climbing while it heals.
Juneteenth was on a Thursday this year so Carly and I took Friday off to make an extra long weekend out of it. Since I wasn’t climbing much and the weather was quite spotty—it was record heat in SLC as we left Thursday morning—we opted to do a biking and running weekend near Sun Valley, ID. We’ve been to the Sawtooths a few times, but this would be to the Sun Valley area specifically.
Thursday midday we arrived in Ketcham, ID and found a bike shop to get out bikes’ shifting tuned up. One thing that hasn’t improved in 20 years since I was last deep in biking is the shifting. It still seems fiddly and picky to adjust and tune. Perhaps the electronic shifting which is out there resolves thing, but at a premium.
The weather was forecast to cool of, significantly in fact. So we started in Galena to ride on Thursday. It was a great collection of trails, mostly easy grading but with still fun sections and slightly surroundings for us.
Friday we did a trail run as the weather started to pivot and cool off. The day’s objective was Pioneer Cabin in the mountains outside of Sun Valley. No summit or massive miles so not much to say other than it was a good run, but I wasn’t feeling great during the outing.
As we found places to camp in the van we were checking the weather on the occasions we had service. At one point we saw weather warnings for snow in the mountains above 7000′, which we were at. It was quite the departure from the 100F temps in SLC that we’d left behind on Wednesday.
So we headed a little south to Hailey, ID which is only 30-40 minutes from Galena but at couple thousand feet lower elevation. Here we rode at an awesome mountain biking and dirt biking system of trails. They were all built by the county. Despite the cool temps and sunny skies we so only a few other riders on the trails here. The dirt biking park only had one family brahping around too—it was pretty fantastic.
Trying to stay a head of rain and cold temps we stayed in the night at the foot of the Fins climbing area, which we’d done before. This time around we didn’t climb and just kept moving Sunday morning towards Pocatello, ID where we did a short ride in the grassy foothills overlooking town.
