High Alpine Loop

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Ride Details

Mileage15.2 miles
Effort Level Advanced
Technical Rating Black Diamond
Key FeaturesPrototypical advanced singletrack
Elevation Gain:

Ride Summary

If you like variety in your rides, this one will make you smile broadly. It’s a vintage Park City mountain bike ride that set the tone for early riders and showed them how good the mountain biking in Park City could be. The High Alpine Loop ride just flows over the terrain amazingly well. If you’re an advanced rider or better, it will be hard not to show this one to your friends next time they’re in town with you.

This ride starts with a relentless, though not very technical, 2400 vertical foot climb over 5.9 miles. There are something like two dozen switchbacks involved, but you’ll probably loose count before you get to the top. The High Alpine Loop is all single track, and most of it is quite scenic. After that there’s about 9 1/2 miles of downhill, which is either nice and fast or very technical. Taken as a whole, this ride has great variety including a big climb, tough switchbacks, fast cross-mountain single track, tight trees, big roots, and some rugged rocks towards the end. It’s designed for advanced riders and beyond, but very strong, aggressive Intermediates (who don’t mind walking sections or falling occasionally) will also enjoy it. If you have a history of heart trouble, do not do this ride.