Weekly Newsletter: December 30th, 2024 - January 5th, 2025

Happy New Year!!! 🍾 🥳 This week, we had an amazing holiday dinner, saw speedriders in Little Cottonwood Canyon (skiers with parachutes), and Keith found a new local training route.

Check out our new posts and videos 🆕 🎥 📝

Essential Camino Prep: Route Planning and Packing

Keith and I were inspired to walk the Portuguese Coastal Route of the Camino de Santiago. Planning the stages of the 170 miles and packing quickly became my focus for preparing for the trip.

Keith and LindseyLindsey Huster

Holiday dinner at Tuscany 🍝 🇮🇹

Earlier this year, we had received a gift from Lindsey's mom so that we could have a nice anniversary meal together. We decided to finally spend this gift by going out to dinner at Tuscany in Salt Lake City, UT. Tuscany is an old-school, classic Italian fine dining restaurant that serves amazing meals in an unforgettable atmosphere. The restaurant is also known for their over-the-top holiday decorations so we thought this would be the perfect opportunity to visit this establishment.

Our meal started with a complementary bread offering and we ordered an amazing meatball appetizer. For our entrees, Lindsey ordered the meatloaf (which was utter perfection 👨‍🍳) and Keith order the Spicy Seafood Puttanesca. Both meals were incredible. For dessert, we shared a slice of Tiramisu. I mean, when you are in such a wonderful Italian restaurant, can you really order anything else? The Tiramisu was spectacular!!!

Overall, we both gave this restaurant ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐. It truly has it all from the complementary valet, to the beautiful location/building, and the delectable meals.

New Year's Eve skiing at Snowbird ⛷️ 🪂

New Years Eve skiing at Snowbird was exciting! The day started off with spotting several speedriders (skiers with parachutes) dropping into a run across the street from Snowbird!

Skiing was excellent that day! Keith and his friend Brandon traversed out to some of the more difficult to access runs in order to track down some untouched powder from the recent storms. They found exactly what they were looking for. Unfortunately, they were having too much fun to stop and take any pictures. Brandon did capture one of the runs on his Insta360 X4 but unfortunately, Keith was just out of frame for most of the run.

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A post shared by Brandon Bargeloh (@bbski_mtb)

We did get some pics of the rest of the day though. Keith was even captured by one of the on-mountain photographers from 210 Photography. So, enjoy!

After a hard day of skiing, we headed home to celebrate the New Year. Our celebration was pretty low-key. We ordered a buffet of Dominos pizza, Lindsey had some wine, and Keith fell asleep way before the clock struck midnight. 😴

Keith's new bike upgrades 🔦 😄

Keith's parents sent him Christmas money this year and Keith was quick to buy some biking upgrades. Specifically, Keith replaced his lighting setup with a much more modern and functional set of bike and helmet lights. Keith ordered the following light set as they were on sale during the holidays:

• Headlight: Fenix BC26R
• Tailight: Niterider VMAX+
• Helmet light: Fenix HM70R
• Helmet light mount: Fenix ALG-03

These lights will benefit Keith tremendously during his attempt at the 2025 Tour Divide and he will also be able to use them on his local rides that often start and/or end in the dark.

Canyon traffic 💩 show 😩 🚗

We tried to ski this weekend but failed. 😔 A recent snow storm dumped snow all along the Wasatch mountains and especially heavily in the upper Cottonwoods. This meant the opportunity for great powder skiing... if we could reach the resort.

We lined up on Wasatch Boulevard around 7:30 AM as we patiently waited our turn to make the treacherous climb up to Snowbird. The area we were in typically meant that it would take us about another hour to reach the resort due to the volume of canyon traffic and snow-covered roadways. However, the traffic this weekend was a total 💩 show. There were cars everywhere!!! Vehicles were blocking intersections, nearly causing accidents, and spinning out on the snow/ice. It took us over an hour to travel about 1/4 mile (0.4 kilometers) and we were still nowhere near the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon.

We did eventually make it onto the main canyon road, UT-210, and we made it past the police snow tire checkpoint. Unfortunately, we didn't make it much further than that. The traffic slowed to a near halt and we were barely making any progress up the canyon road. We are fairly sure that slide-offs/accidents ahead of us were causing the lack of movement. We then got the bad news via a push notification from Snowbird; all parking was full!!! This meant that even if we did somehow make it to the resort, we wouldn't have anywhere to park so we wouldn't be able to ski.

At this point, we decided to cut our losses, turn around, and head back down the mountain... after nearly 3 hours of waiting. This is becoming an all-too-often occurrence. 😡 On our way back home, we were forced to take the road between Little Cottonwood Canyon and Big Cottonwood Canyon. To our surprise, the traffic continued to stretch for several more miles!!! Those people stood absolutely no chance of making it to the ski resorts.

Keith's new training route 🏔️😅

We didn't even attempt to ski on Sunday due to the madness that occurred on Saturday. The canyon road was planned to be closed until 8:30 AM due to avalanche mitigation work. This meant that we would need to leave our house by around 5:00 AM, sit in traffic until at least 8:30 AM, and then hope that the resorts open on time in order to have a shot at skiing. Neither of us wanted to deal with all that so we decided to forgo skiing this week. 😔

Instead, Keith decided to do another big training ride. This time, he went hill hunting to work on his climbing skills. Keith will spend a lot of time riding his bike up and down mountains during the 2025 Tour Divide. So, he wants to be as prepared as possible for spending hours at a time grinding away at a slow pace. Keith planned a route that would allow him to ride somewhere between 75 and 100 miles (121 and 161 kilometers) . This route also included two significant mountain pass climbs; Point of the Mountain and American Fork (AF) Canyon.

Keith started his ride at 5:30 AM, well before sunrise. He rode his typical route up to the Murdock Canal Trail. He then headed north to AF Canyon before circling back around the Point of the Mountain and eventually ending in Draper. This was Keith's "warmup ride" before the real challenge started.

Next up, Keith made his way up and over the north side of the Point of the Mountain to Suncrest. The snow was much deeper up there but thankfully all the roads were cleared. Keith then descended back down the south side of the mountain before making his way to AF Canyon.

Keith planned to ride up to Tibble Fork Reservoir in AF Canyon. Unfortunately, there was a motor vehicle accident that shut down the road to the reservoir. So instead, Keith continued up the main canyon road until he reached a good stopping point; the Mutual Dell campground. Keith then turned around and descended back down to the Murdock Canal Trail so that he could start his ride home.

All in all, Keith rode 83 miles (133.6 kilometers) and climbed nearly 5,600 feet (1,707 meters)! 😅 This turned out to be a great training route, especially since the mountain roads are maintained during the winter.

Upcoming posts and videos 👷‍ 👷‍♀️️

Lindsey has recently wrapped up a series of posts on our Quick Trip to New York City. If you haven't seen that yet, you should check it out. Lindsey has also started working on the post series from our three-week adventure along the Camino De Santiago, Portuguese Route! Those posts will be published soon. We also have several prior trips that we haven't yet shared, so be sure to subscribe to our blog if you haven't done so already.

We hope that you are enjoying our newsletters. How was your holiday season? Did you get to spend time with your family? Let us know in the comments section below.👇 💬