Salt Lake City Cycling Question

[Brady Smith]

Looks like the family and I are relocating to Salt Lake City. Question for fellow Utah listers: How big of a problem are goat heads? I was on the verge of ordering a new dynamo wheel a few months ago but held off in case going fully tubeless winds up making more sense. In New Jersey, where we have glass but not thorns, I've been running Rene Herse tires in 700x44 with tubes and had no flat issues. I gather that this setup is not going to serve me especially well out west. Do I put sealant in my tubes? Go fully tubeless? Or would something like the Soma Shikoro be enough as long as I'm riding mostly road/gravel?

Best,

Brady in NJ/soon to be Utah

[Jay Fichialos]

Goat heads are not a major issue in Salt Lake in my experience riding along the Wasatch front. Welcome to Utah! Fun riding, lots of climbing opportunities :)

Jay in Pleasant Grove

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[Glen]

The only area I am aware of that goat heads are an issue is one section of the main north/south multi purpose trail (Jordan River Trail) and SLCo has an active eradication program. The trail is usually very clear of them but the shoulders can trap them in the cinders/gravel. Your current tires will be perfect for most of your riding here. 

Feel free to DM if you have any questions you'd like to ask a fellow mid-atlantic transplant.

[Robert Hakim]

I'll echo the others- I only find goatheads a real issue in the central and western parts of the valley, particularly along the Jordan River Trail corridor. Most of the cycling on Wasatch Blvd and up into the canyons you won't have much of an issue with them, thought they do appear occasionally. I never found any near Park City. Good luck with the move! 

[Mark Anderson]

Brady,

First off, welcome to the neighborhood. I hope you and yours will like living here.

I suppose my experience since moving here a couple years ago is similar to that of Jay, Glen and Robert in that I rarely have trouble with goatheads in the Wasatch bench/front/up-on-the-hill areas and mostly encounter them down in the valley especially through the corridor along Jordan River Trail and connecting trails like the Denver & Rio Grande Western Trail going north towards Ogden.  However, I would note that most of Salt Lake City, its metro area and associated business/government/cultural services (e.g., breweries, bowling alleys, the Bicycle Collective, most but not all of the better Asian takeout food) are in the very same valley where all the goatheads lie.  That is also where I live and do much of my riding and I get lots of goat head punctures.

Regarding armored tires, my partner's 'round-town bike has Schwalbe Marathon green guard (MGG) tires and hasn't had any flats, but it also hasn't been ridden a heck of a lot. The MGGs are heavy, stiff and basically just so damn thick along the tread that thorns can't reach all the way through to the tube. My trike came with Schwalbe Marathon Racers which have a nylon fabric belt under the tread.  Thorns go through the belt pretty regularly, and the local thorns are long enough to get picked up in the sidewalls above the narrow belt.  A Shikoro might fare better, but I recall various kevlar tires getting punctured by thorns in my distant youth in northern California as well.  

My solution on the trike has been to use lightweight tires (Tioga Powerblock/Powerband S-Spec and Compass in ca. 40mm widths)  with inner tubes containing Orange Seal---a solution cribbed from Patrick Moore's posts on this list and on iBOB (thank you Patrick!).  With this setup I occasionally have a puncture which noticeably leaks sealant for several minutes and requires a few stops to add air as it leaks slowly before finally sealing.  In the past year (9 mo. riding, about 4500 mi. on the odometer) there have been two or three times when I had a puncture that wouldn't seal enough while riding and I had to change tubes.  Inspecting the tires and tubes at those times shows that dozens of punctures went unnoticed in that same period.  Unfortunately that meant having to put a new tube into a tire the still had a score or so of thorns still sticking through it, which is about as much fun as it sounds.  A few times I have gone out to the shed and found that a tire has gone flat overnight with all the sealant having leaked out between tube and tire through some hole making a big old mess.

I have not tried a tubeless setup yet.  Maybe after my current tires wear out, though I don't know that any of my current rims are tubeless-compatible.  My suspicion is that at least some of the poor sealing with tubes is due to the hole is the tube becoming misaligned with the hole in the tire, preventing the sealant from spitting out nicely and drying to form a plug.  Also, I find that some of the seals or plugs in the tube can be pulled open upon removing the tube from the tire or even just on fully deflating a tire so that the tube pulls away from the casing.  I imagine a tubeless setup could fix both of those problems. 

I have observed that most of the thorns I pull out of my tires, at least away from the very center, are stuck in grooves/holes/corners of the tread pattern as though the thorn tip was sliding away until grabbed by the shape of the tread.  Thus I suspect that slick tires may fare better w.r.t. thorns.

In short, goatheads can be a real scourge around here if you like to explore the low-lying (4500--5000 ft.) areas, but sealant in tubes can largely solve the problem. In addition, I think that using full-sized tubes (i.e., ones that need not stretch much to fill the tire) improves things further by helping to keep the tube and tire holes aligned, and that slick tread (e.g., as on your current tires) will help even more by avoiding some punctures in the first place.

Mark in Salt Lake City, Utah

[Brady Smith]

Thanks to everyone for you responses! We're really excited about the move, and I can't wait to explore the cycling scene. Sounds like thorns may be more of an issue for the commuter bike than my all road bike, which I imagine I'll be taking up the canyons more often than not, so I'll be sure to plan accordingly.