Going the Distance
Needless to say, after driving all night thursday and riding for 5 1/2 hrs on friday, we were sorta tired. Keith and Brian actually fell asleep in their clothes right after our massive Pizza hut dinner. Dan and I were the only souls energetic enough to make it down to the hot tub at the Super 8 motel. Believe it or not, there were 3 guys in there that looked even worse than we felt. We crawled into bed around 8-ish, and I fell asleep in less than 10 seconds. 10 hours later, I popped out of bed, all perky fresh.
Maybe I'm just lucky, but as I read the Salt Lake City newspaper over a delicious Denny's breakfast, I noticed more than a few sexual abuse/child molestation etc... stories. My favorite was about a guy (who was acquitted) who got busted in a sting operation. He apparently made arrangements over the internet to meet 2 (virtual) kids (really law-enforcement officers) at a hotel for some naughty stuff. He was arrested when he arrived at the hotel with a bag full of (i swear i'm not making this up) rubber sex toys and lubricants. Maybe he uses White Lightning, for extra cleaning action. Anyway, as part of his defense his lawyer cited surveys showing that 20% of men fantasize about having sex with children. What the hell is up with that? That's crazy! That's sick!
I had ample opportunity to rethink my position in the hot tub friday evening, as we were joined by an exceptionally nubile lass who appeared to be around 16 or so. I guess it depends on your definition of children. Anyway, on to the important stuff, like bike riding.
After much persuading, Dan and I were able to force everyone else out of bed finally. I was up because I always get up at dawn. Dan was up because he had to locate some fork oil for his bomber, which had decided to share its oil with the surrounding desert. I don't know why all Dan's vehicles have such an aversion to petroleum products. At the end of the previous day's ride oil was literally dripping off his fork. We tried to figure out a way to run a tube from the fork seals to the chain, so as to take advantage of the gusher. Finally we figured we were better off letting it drip. That way if we got lost, rescuers could follow the oil trail and easily find us. We applied the same logic to his car; just keep putting oil in. Both car and bike seemed to be spewing controllable amounts, and anyway they're dan's stuff, so the rest of us weren't all that worried.
After oiling, we set off up the highway out of town. About 2 miles north of town we got onto the old highway, which roughly parallels the new one, and is mostly dirt. We followed the old highway out to the Gemini Bridges trailhead and then took that trail up into the hills. Three other riders started off at the same time we did. They had with them some kinda husky or shepherdy sorta dog, with adorable little running booties. With his protected feet he was loving life out in the rocks. He quickly ditched his owner to run with us as we forged ahead. I guess we were just more better cooler.
After we got about 1/4 mile ahead the guy started frantically trying to chase us down to retrieve his dog. Even when he caught up, the dog wasn't so hip on the idea of going with him. About a mile later, part way up the first real hill, we stopped to remove excess clothing and the dog caught back up. He'd managed to find himself a little trail snack in the form of some kind of small rat, which was hanging part out of his mouth as he happily munched it. Not exactly a V02Max bar, but probably tastes just as good.
Apparently the ride up to Gemini Bridges is pretty easy, because we saw about 13 bajillion people, including kids on bmx bikes, for the first few miles. Eventually we reached a fork and turned left toward Gold Bar Rim.
After the lameness of slickrock, we were ready for some real riding, and the Gold Bar Rim trail didn't disappoint us. We gradually worked our way towards the actual rim as the trail got increasingly rocky and technical. Finally it started to get downright fun. If you've ever ridden the Rubicon trail near Tahoe, the Gold Bar Rim is kinda like that. It's rocky and ledgy, with drop offs, and steep slickrock climbs and such. The trail winds back and forth across a slanted slab of the planet which ends at the rim overlooking the highway to Moab. Since much of the trail is on slickrock, it's not always easy to tell where to go, but everyone who comes after us can follow the oil trail from dan's fork.
There are some pretty awesome views from the rim. Brian and I stopped at one of them, and looking to our right, noticed that the section of the rim 30 feet away was less than 1 inch thick at the end, tapering gradually back. I dared Brian to go stand on it, but he wussed out.
We caught up to a group of 8 or so riders, resting at the top of a very difficult ledgy climb (which they all walked up). I rode all but the last ledge right in front of them, then Brian rode pretty much the whole thing, but lost his line at the top and plowed into a tree, then stacked in a heap on the ground. One of their group, apparently much esteemed by the others, was so encouraged that he went back down to try it again. He got about 1/20 of the way up before flailing. A little further on though, the same fellow gave us a lesson in riding drop-offs. He easily wheelied of ledges that none of us would even attempt. I guess if you average his uphill and downhill skill, you still end up with a respectable figure.
Their group also included a young woman, riding a crappy Specialized Rockhopper. She was riding behind Dan and Brian when they got off for a scary series of ledges. The chick blew right by them and easily cleaned the section. Doh!!! Needless to say they went back to try that part again.
We also saw 2 motorcyclists at a big v-shaped crack in the slickrock which we dismounted for. One of the guys tried to 1/2 push, 1/2 motor his bike across some rocks piled up near the bottom, but got stuck. The other guy circled around to a nearby ledge and just launched through space, like 10 feet in the air, to clear the whole thing. Then he came back to help his friend while we just stared in amazement. Downhill boy (from the other group) tried to do the same thing on his bike, without much success, but we didn't laugh at him because none of us would ever have tried it in a million years.
We motored along, enjoying the trail immensely, for a few more mile. Apparently, we somehow missed the turnoff for the Portal trail. Pretty much everyone we met, whether in jeeps or on bikes, was completely clueless. I've never seen so many lost people in my life. We met up with the same guys who thought Manitou invented genesis geometry again. They had ridden the portal trail before and still had no freakin' idea how to get to it. What the hell is up with that? How can you ride a trail one time, then get lost the next. That's just plain stupid.
We kept stopping to check out the map and be perplexed. Keith thought we were one place, I thought we were another, and none of us really had any idea. Finally we figured out that we'd gone a couple miles too far, but we could double back on a different jeep trail. After following this trail for a bit, we came to a footpath to some arch. The wording in my map guide was kinda fuzzy, but it sounded like the path to the arch and the path to the portal trail were one and the same. Keith disagreed, so I loudly berated him for his stupidity as we dropped down a very steep section of rock towards the arch. I think I was starting to get cranky because we'd ridden several miles more than planned. Today was supposed to be a fairly easy day to let us recover and prepare for 95 off-road miles the following day, but I was starting to get pretty worn out. Imagine my embarassment when we got to the arch (without keith, who had stayed up top because he was so sure) and the trail dead ended. We could see the portal trail below us, and it was obvious that we had to continue along the jeep trail another mile or so to reach it. I was just about ready to climb down the cliff to the portal trail rather than admit to keith what a dork i was.
At least in the process of putting both of my tired, sore feet into my mouth, keith and I finally figured out exactly where we were. As a bonus, on the way back up to where keith was waiting, I got to watch dan flail on a steep slickrock sidehill and slide about 20 feet down before he finally gave up on his bike and just let it go the remaining 20 feet to the bottom.
We annointed keith as the grand imperial poobah of trail-finding for the rest of the day. I believe it was the first time ever, in the 3 years I've known him, that keith and I disagreed in the presence of dan and keith ended up right.
So we knew where we were, about 2 miles from the Portal trail. About halfway there, we met up with the same group we met earlier, including downhill boy and the chick that humiliated dan and brian. We stopped to chat, and asked how far it was to the portal trail, and one of their group told us it was about 4 miles of hard climbing. Now we were pretty confused, but we can read a map better than that. The same gentleman knew of our plan to ride the whole white rim the next day, and he suggested we turn around and go out the Poison Spider trail instead, to save ourselves for the next days endeavors. We put our heads together for a minute and decided the guy was completely fucked in the head, so we continued. About 5 minutes later we came out on the rim to the beginning of the portal trail.
Every book, every map, every person we spoke to gave us the impression that the portal is some deadly fearsome trail of death, which we'd be lucky to survive. Apparently some guy fell to his death there, and they get plenty of mileage out of that one incident. We were sort of fearful and nervous, from reading these accounts, but we also had a healthy dose of skepticism, since it appeared that most mtb-ers in Moab are not all that highly skilled.
Once again, we were right. Although about a mile of the trail is fairly exposed to the cliff, you'd have to be pretty stupid to get killed there. Certainly the exposure is no worse than sections of the South Yuba Trail (near nevada city) or the Hunter's trail (to Hellhole reservoir). There are certainly parts of the trail where you could easily die if you lost control, but that's why evolution favored those with brains. When we got to a particularly sketchy part, and there were 3 or 4 of those, we simply got off and carried our bikes over it. Dan admitted that he wasn't paying all that close attention, so after seeing the other 4 of us walk one section, he rode it. Then he stopped and looked around and pretty much freaked out at realizing the consequences of a crash there.
In case you want to ride the portal, the worst exposure still leaves you 8-10 feet of sloping hillside before the 400 foot or so drop. It's actually pretty cool to stop at these sections and just look as the world appears to end a few feet away. I certainly recommend leaving your ego behind though. If you were really stupid, you probably really could die.
After a mile (approx) of cliff exposure, you get to a normal technical rocky difficult trail, where it's once again safe to sail over the bars. I really enjoyed the lower part of the portal, and at least twice I was the only one of the group to ride a section. Of course i think I was the only one to dab on a couple other sections.
It's really a pleasure riding a difficult trail with a small group of excellent bike handlers. Pretty much everyone flailed pretty badly in some spots and looked like a trials hero in others. There are many distinctive riding styles in our group. Keith is very smooth and fluid. Sometimes after falling on your ass trying something you watch in amazement as he rides it without even really trying, especially uphill stuff. Eric pretty much looks like he's about to crash all the time, but remarkably he doesn't. Brian doesn't even half to steer. He rides a Santa Cruz Heckler with a Z1 bomber, so he can cruise over VW beetles at speed and not really notice the bump. Dan and I (I think) are both somewhere in between keith and eric. Sometimes we really have finesse, and look like we know how to ride bikes, sometimes we look like rodeo clown bouncing down the trail with only 1 foot in the pedals, top tube and crotch bouncing off each other, on the way to yet another spectacular crash. Both of us have noticed a lot fewer of these crashes now that we have Genesis geometry bikes (shameless product plug, sorry).
At the bottom of the portal trail, we were left with 4-5 miles of pavement back to Moab. let me take this moment to reiterate that in general, shuttles are for pussies. Many of the rides in Moab can be easily accessed by riding from your hotel. Be a man and get a good warmup and cool down by pedaling the gentle pavement stretches. Obviously we're going to make an exception for the white rim because it's 95 freakin' miles without the 10 mile paved stretch, and you have to drive right past the finish point on your way to the start point.
Anyway, 2 days, 2 epic rides. We tried to go out for mexican food at La Hacienda, but they seemed determined to drive us away. We sat there for about 10 minutes, as did the group of 3 in front of us, and were completely ignored. There were 3-4 tables open, so they could've seated us, or at least said hello. We finally gave up and went to the other semi-mexican place (which had good beer) further down the road. We certainly won't be going back to La Hacienda, but maybe they don't need our money.
On to Day 3, White Rim (95 miles, pretty freakin' epic) in 1 day