St. George, Utah

Early wake up for me!! I decided to be one of the hikers that morning and wake up at 5:00 so that I could get out for Angel’s Landing hike early in the morning and hopefully beat the big crowd out there. Me and a pretty big group of people headed out together. I mostly hiked with Colleen, Angela, and JoBeth all the way up. It started off as a paved path all the way up to Scout’s Landing. The whole way up was all switchbacks and was extremely steep but very doable. After making up that part, we got to the actual Angel’s Landing part. According to the sign, it was a 1.1 mile hike on a cliff face 1400feet up off the valley floor. It was extremely nerve-wracking and not at all for people who are nervous about heights (which I am very nervous when it comes to heights but I had to overcome them and do it!) Angela helped me up the scary part where there are chains that you hold onto so that you have something to grip as you climb. Without her there, I would have been very distracted by the height of the cliff and I don’t know if I could have done it! Making it to the top was so beautiful. There was so much to see and you could see the entire park. The buses running on the valley floor looked so tiny from where we were. I was super proud of myself for making it all the way up there and I was so glad that I had gotten up in time to do something so awesome! By the time I got back to the camp, I was exhausted but I, unfortunately, had to get on my bike and make it to the next host! Luckily, we only had 40 miles that day but, unluckily, I was sweep. Emma and I were a sweep that team and ended up turning a short 40-mile day into the longest 40 miles of our entire lives. It took us 6 hours just to get to the host and that might be because of the laziness that’s associated with the late start or the long stops that we took, doing our sweep duties. The first stop was only like a mile out of Zion at a coffee shop, but I was ok with it because I got an awesome mint mocha frappuccino! The next stop was lunch at a trading post (which is one of my favorite things in the west). We got to hang out while people got burgers and shopped around. All we ate at that break was fries and Coke because we were still too full from the drinks we had earlier. We kept making our way to the host and the common joke of the ride was that there were “amazing views” along the route. We would be like “wow! Look at that view!!” and then point at a huge hill that was right in our face and couldn’t see around. It was pretty comical when we were so tired and over it with the biking. Before making it to the host, we came across an accident in the road and quickly realized that it was one of our riders that had an accident with a car. Shayan and Rhys had been going down a hill when a driver passed them, yelled at them from the window, and then got in front of Shayan and slammed on his brakes causing Shayan to crash into the back of the man’s car. Fortunately, the man didn’t drive away, he called the cops, hoping to get us riders in trouble but instead got huge fines for mistreating us. In Utah, they treat bikers like vehicles so you have to have the same respect for a biker as you do a car. I’m so grateful to those police officers for seeing the truth in the accident and responding appropriately. I’ve seen bikers get the short straw so many times in an accident with a car because the cops don’t agree with bicycles on the road. Shayan had really hurt his wrist in the wreck and messed up his bike so he was unable to ride the rest of the day. Later in the trip, we found that Shayan has actually broken his wrist in two places and was unable to ride the rest of the trip. Luckily, we found a really awesome bike shop that donated a new front wheel to him and a bunch of tubes! The graciousness of people we experienced while on the road was amazing! The rest of Emma and my sweep day was pretty good, ending with a quick trip to In-N-Out (even though we didn’t get anything besides more Coke) and chalking for ourselves because no one else on the team chalked for us! When we got into the host, we immediately got into the van and were shuttled to a community pool for showers. There was an awesome indoor/outdoor pool there where we went down the water slide numerous times and played in the kiddy playground for a long time! That night, we got another awesome dinner provided and then watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall on the projector as a big group. That was a lot of fun getting to stay as a group and do something all together!