Seattlest Notes From the Field: Utah Is Burning

We’ve been on a mountain bike clinic road trip smörgåsbord, starting in Bellingham a few weeks ago and then cruising through Hood River and ending up this past weekend near our hometown of Salt Lake City, Utah. This past weekend we coached a camp up in Park City, where it was a breezy 92 degrees for our afternoon rides—a temperature that is ridiculous in its own right yet still a respite from the record-setting spree of triple-digit temps currently being recorded down in the valley. This is not normal. Utah is generally populated by people who say they like the heat, in large part because it’s not too hot. That was our mantra when we grew up here: "It’s not like Arizona hot." Except now it is Arizona hot here.

After our camp finished up and we cruised back down into the city, the normally crystal-clear blue skies were covered in hazy clouds. Wait, that’s smoke, not clouds. Over 311,000 acres of Utah are on fire. There’s so much fire blazing down here, they actually have to shut down sections of I-5. Typically, our returns home are few and far between, and full of fuzzy memories that are increasingly happy as time conscientiously erases the crappy ones from our mind. But this visit is horribly bittersweet. We can't wait to return to the cooler environs of sweet Seattle. Oh dammit.

Photo of the Milford Flats fire by Chris Detrick for the Salt Lake Tribune.