T.J.'s story: Pocatello Fall Ultra

BaseCamp athlete T.J. Morton shared his experience at the 2025 Pocatello Fall Ultra Mountain Bike Race in Idaho.

I raced my mountain bike for the first time since the Fall Ultra in 2019. That's a long time to not race my favorite discipline! I don't have a race bike; it's a 29-pound, all-mountain, 27.5+ bike with 150 mm of travel. It's a hoot to ride, and it lets me have so much fun on descents. I have been so focused on gravel racing since moving to Idaho in 2019 that I have neglected my mountain bike (insert sad face here).

I signed up for this race back in May, but I originally signed up for the 100k, which had about 11,000 feet of climbing with some technical singletrack sections. A few weeks ago, I decided to drop to the 60k with 5,700 feet of climbing. It was still a big ride, but not quite as daunting as the thought of riding my mountain bike for 10 hours. So, armed with a pretty good block of training under my belt and some positive reinforcement from Coach Shannon, I found myself with butterflies on the night before the race and on race morning. I haven't had them for a while now, so I was excited! I arrived early, got some warmup in, drank some coffee, and was ready to roll when we went off.

The race starts with a 5.5-mile, 1600-foot climb on smooth singletrack (oddly enough, the climb crosses Cusick Creek a couple of times). I knew it was going to hurt, but I just dug in and tried to stay with a group. We crested the climb and were greeted with sweeping views of the singletrack, bench-cut trail called Sterling Justice. I stopped for a couple of minutes to chug calories from my bottle, eat a gel, and stuff down a couple of fig bars since I hadn't been able to drink or eat on the singletrack climb. Sterling Justice is a pretty technical trail in spots, with shale sections, rocky switchbacks, and a couple of chunky rock gardens. I managed to have fun on that section while riding it mostly cleanly. A short descent with bermed turns had us at aid station 1. 11.5 miles down, a bunch more to go. I finished my bottle of fluid, sucked down a couple more gels, refilled my bottles, and set off on the second climb.

Slate Mountain is only 2.5 miles with 950 feet of climbing, but it was more technical than the first climb. I managed to stay on the gas, but I was completely alone for this climb. There was a 2.5-mile, 1000-foot descent in there. Here's where my lack of mountain biking started to rear its head. My hands got fatigued from too much braking, and I started to make small mistakes. A 2-mile, paved road climbed us to aid 2 at 19 miles. Woohoo! Halfway there! Five miles of climbing and 1200 feet of elevation gain on moderately sloped, smooth doubletrack allowed me to settle into some solid Tempo pacing and give my arms and hands a break. I started with a group of four other riders, but I slowly dropped them, probably because I was talking too much and they just tired of listening to me. :-)

The next descent, Gibson Jack, is notorious for being an overgrown tunnel that's hard to ride fast. The race organizers had a trail-clearing party in the weeks leading up to the race, and this trail was a blast! I've ridden it a lot over the last few years, but this was the best I've ever seen it! And just as I was thinking maybe I could hold off the 100k racers, the two pros yelled, "Riders back." I made way for them when I got the chance and made it back down to aid 3, which was the same as aid 1 and where we picked up the outbound trail to head back to the finish. 11.5 miles to go! 800 feet of technical climbing was all that separated me from the downhill run to the finish. Very tired legs and an ambition to ride all the technical bits without dabbing would wind up biting me.

Almost to the top of the climb, I wound up with a short, punchy climb with a rock obstacle at the top. I made the move to get over it and got my rear wheel over but came to a complete stop at the top. I've been riding flat pedals for about seven years now, but I switched back to my Crank Brothers for the race. That got me into trouble. When I came to a stop, instead of pulling for a bunny hop or cranking a pedal stroke to keep my balance, I looked for a spot to bail, down the hill. Needless to say, getting out of my pedal didn't happen until I was in mid-air and falling towards a rock. I managed to roll myself clear of the rock and landed on my side with a thud. As I tumbled to a rest, I saw my bike cartwheeling down the hill beside me. I had time to wonder how it would fare and how far down it would go. It was a steep hillside. I collected my wits and paused long enough to take stock of my physical wellbeing. Nothing seemed broken or badly damaged. My knee and my shoulder had taken knocks, but they felt structurally sound. I looked down the hill to see my bike resting, upside down, about 3 feet up in a tree. I wish I would have had my wits about me to take a picture, because it would have been a great one! :-) It took me a couple of minutes to collect my things, get my bike out of the tree, and drag us all back up the ten feet to the trail. Pedaling didn't seem uncomfortable, but my confidence had definitely taken a hit. So I finished the techy stuff and made my way down to the finish on the 7-mile stretch that I normally bomb. Oddly enough, I still set a PR on the downhill segment.

So the recap: first mountain bike race in a long time, great training block leading up to race, much excitement, lots of suffering, a pretty epic, low-speed crash, and a race that I was very happy with. I went really hard on the climbs and was able to recover on the flats and downhills while still motoring along. My MTB skills are currently suspect, so I'll have to work on them. And my favorite BaseCamp jersey is no longer suitable for wear. :-( But man, it was a lot of fun! Thanks, Shannon, for always seeming to know what to say when I wanted to quit cycling or when I wasn't motivated to race. And thanks to the BaseCamp community for so much support when I was ready to quit earlier this summer!

Woohoo!!!