Bob Saffell on course at the Park City Point to Point
The Park City Point to Point (PCPP) presented by Trek offers Utah riders a chance to push their bodies and bikes to the limit. The Point to Point is 75-miles of no nonsense mountain bike riding. The course includes over 90% singletrack trails, making it a mountain biker’s dream. The 12,000 vertical feet of climbing may make it a dream you won’t mind waking up from.
“Park City has an incredible trail system and the city has supported us from the start,” says PCPP co-director Brian Hester. “ The trails here are second to none. Each one has been built by mountain bikers for mountain biking they aren’t high jacked motorcycle trails or rutted out by ATV doubletrack they’re just outstanding mountain bike singletrack, period. The hardest thing about designing the course was deciding what we had to eliminate.”
Indeed, Park City has a well-established history of hosting mountain bike events dating back to the NORBA series of the late 90s.
Racers can choose to tackle the challenging course solo or on a two-person relay team with each rider completing roughly half the total distance. The race categories include Open Men and Women for the fastest riders as well as age groups for men and women as well as a singlespeed division. The relay teams will be split into Men, Women, and Coed Duo.
Although the race is technically a point-to-point, the start and finish are less than 4 miles apart and shuttle service will be provided from the finish to the start the morning of the race.
Trek Bicycles recently came on board as the title sponsor of the inaugural Park City Point to Point. They have provided $3,000 for the Open category prize purse and a Trek EX 8 full-suspension bike for the post-race prize raffle.The prize raffle will no doubt be one of the highlights of this year’s event. It includes clothing and tents from Ground, backpacks and grips from Ergon, and various products from Northwave, Garmin, Kuhl clothing, and Squirt lube.
PCPP Marketing Director Jay Burke puts it like this, “The amount of stuff our sponsors have come up with has just been tremendous. The first 200 riders to register will receive a Ground Tech-T t-shirt, a pair of Riot headphones from Skullcandy, a bottle of Squirt lube, and a Spudz lens cloth and that’s before they turn a pedal.”
Jen Hanks tears through some of the legendary Park City singletrack
PCPP organizers are expecting a strong turnout for the race with a top-flight group of riders already rumored to be attending including 24-Hour National Champion Pua Sawicki (Ellsworth), Kenda/Tomac rider Amanda Carey, the Topeak/Ergon race team, Utah strongman Bart Gillespie and his Monavie-Cannondale.com teammate Alex Grant.
The excitement around this one-of-a-kind event continues to build. The ultra-endurance racing format provides racers with new and exciting challenges not encountered on a cross country course. If you would like to prove you’re up to the challenge learn more about the Park City Point to Point at www.thepcpp.com. And good luck!
Discounted early registration closes on August 15th with all registration ending on August 31st, there will be no day-of registration.
Topeak/Ergon rider Yuki Saito is scheduled to attend
