Just got back from a short weekend trip to St. George to ride the famous Gooseberry Mesa trail.

Most guide books rate it as intermediate aerobic and ranging from mid- to advanced-technical. That seemed about right. The trail was a good mix of singletrack and slickrock, high chunk and low-flow. Though, I imagine the low-flow was exacerbated by the fact that we unknowingly rode it backwards—thus angering the Gooseberry Gods.

The views were picturesque, the weather was perfect (comfortable with a few layers—mid 40°s and dry), and the company was hard to beat.

But I don’t know if it was just bad luck, or that the Gooseberry Gods had it in for me, but it wasn’t the best ride for me. As I mentioned, we rode the loop backward making for a ride that seemed to have all chunk and almost no flow (and I really like flow).

This was likely not the best trail to tackle without a good tune-up; I found myself with multiple minor mechanicals that, while they didn’t kill the ride, made it difficult to keep moving. My favorite was a loose cleat that didn’t allow me to unclip and caused me to bash my shin on a rock. For a split second I was worried that I would break my leg. But, as luck would have it, I landed on the tibialis anterior rather than directly on the tibia which, I believe, saved me from a break. I do, however, have a nice gash to show off.

Within a few minutes of starting we found ourselves in God’s Skateboard Park taking stabs at some drops and generally fooling around. I took a couple of drops and, while walking up a particularly steep bit of slickrock to try another, slipped and I tore a hole in my knee and my brand-new tights. Let’s just say that that little experience put a damper on the rest of the ride. I was lucky in that I hit soft tissue below the patella rather than the bone because, again, I hit it hard enough to scour ever last bit of skin off and see some of the subcutaneous fat underneath. Hurt like crazy.

But skin heals, tights do not. I was irritated to no end that I had just killed a practically brand-new pair.

In one final attempt to put a damper on things, the Gooseberry Gods saw fit to cause me to forget to charge my camera battery and thus have no pictures for the day.

When we got to the look-out point my mood improved—helped by a few shots of Energy Beans, a half orange, some Gu and a crazy view—leading me to believe that my mood had less to do with the few things going wrong and more to do with low blood sugar.

But, things weren’t all bad. With some quickie calories and some trail music via my iPod, I hit the trail with a new outlook—and cleared nearly every stunt on the latter half of the ride. (And why not? Skin already gone, tights already ruined—nothing to lose, right?

When we arrived at the practice loop our fears were confirmed that we didn’t ride it in the right direction. Maybe next time we won’t bring down the wrath of the gods and remember to ride it the recommended direction.