Going the Distance
We went April 16-20th and the weather was perfect, 40's at night, 70's during the day. Apparently we just missed a week of occasional showers, though.
Since vacation time from work is finite, this is an important consideration. Frankly, i was surprised at how well the drive worked out. We left sacramento after work on thursday and arrived just in time to eat breakfast and ride on friday morning (we were riding by around 10:30). Sharing a car with 3 people works very well because no one has to drive all that much so everyone can get a little sleep. If you're lucky enough to get a little nap just before sunrise (as i was), all the better. We were certainly very tired friday night, but we were able to do a full-length ride.
It also worked out well to ride a couple hours on monday before driving back. We left moab around 1 or so, and i got home right at 3 AM. Since I napped a bit in the car I had no problems with work the next day. net result, 2 days of vacation time equals 4 days of riding in moab.
Maybe it's my highly-paid (in comparison to mcdonald's) software industry job, or maybe I'm just old and wussified, but I'm definitely down for the hotel thing. We slept 3 in our room at the super-8 for $65/night (including rollaway bed). We found that having a comfy bed and shower and especially a hot tub made a big difference in how much we got to ride. For $22/person per night we were able to ride, eat and sleep with no worries about putting up tents or making breakfast, or securing our gear while we ride or anything. Plus we had tons more room in the car. I think camping is fine for people who are going to ride reasonable amounts, but if you're going to do 190 miles in 3 1/2 days, a hotel is a huge help.
We were very pleased with the Super 8 as far as cleanliness, friendly staff, toasty hot tub, etc... The only downer is they're way on the north edge of town, which was slightly too far for thrashed mtb-ers to walk into the town center for food and stuff. I'll probably consider the Ramada or somewhere else closer in next time.
I don't care what anyone says, we were pretty stoked by the slugger grand slam at denny's. you have to search the menu a bit to find it, but for $5.50 you get 2 each eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, plus toast or hashbrowns, plus juice and coffee. After that breakfast i was good for 3+ hrs of riding without refueling. My friend Simon highly recommends the Jailhouse cafe for breakfast, so i'll try it next time. The golden stake, way on the south side of town, is denny's like in their food and prices. We'd be just as happy eating there, but denny's was right next to our hotel.
We had Pizza hut for dinner one night, it was ok. Moab needs to trade in one of their circle k's for a round table pizza. We also ate at some semi-mexican place that was fine and reasonably priced. it's on the east side of the hwy right in the middle of town, on a corner. We tried to eat at La Hacienda (coming into town on the left), but the service was so bad we had to leave. They had crappy service a couple years ago too, so we won't be going back there again. The bagel shop had good bagels and coffee, but they seemed crabby when we were there. Oh well, at least they weren't overtly hostile.
Other food picks.... Taco Bell's Gorditas. They're about the best thing I've ever had at taco bell, big fat almost pita-looking tortillas, filled with actual food. Cheap and easy. We also liked the icees at circle K, less than a buck for the giant size.
Ok, this was our first trip, so we only saw a portion of what moab has to offer, but.... Porcupine rim is pretty much a must-do. One of the bitchenest trails I've ever ridden. Slickrock was pretty lame. If you haven't ridden it, you probably should do it once, just for the cultural experience, but don't worry about missing anything if you find better things to do instead.
If you're not scared of heights, the gold-bar-rim/portal trail loop was pretty killer. Just be smart enough to walk the couple of sketchy parts of the portal. I enjoy big slabby, ledgy rocks and stuff. If you don't, try poison spider to the portal instead. The parts of poison spider we rode were definitely less technical than gold bar rim. Then again, we only rode a little of it.
If you do the Moab Rim trail, I would recommend skipping the portage. Just do an out and back from kane creek road. If you're not a strong climber, you might have to portage that way too, in which case it doesn't really matter.
Next time i'm planning to do some kind of amasa back/hurrah pass epic. This has been recommended to me by lots of people i respect. We just ran out of time to do it. If you have a favorite ride that's long, fun and at least semi-technical, e-mail me, and maybe i'll try it next time i go.
Bring everything. Especially useful are versatile items like windvests, and arm and legwarmers, which take up very little space when the day warms up and you take them off. I also brought real raingear, but fortunately didn't need it. Most days i wore a polypro turtleneck under a regular jersey, then applied vests, armwarmers, legwarmers as needed.
Moab is rocky. Suspension is good. Surprisingly, i didn't miss my softtail much except for the 11 hr white rim epic. Still, if you have a choice of full-suspension or hardtail, the squishy bike is probably the way to go. I rode a Fisher Supercaliber (genesis geometry) with a SID and a USE suspension seatpost. I think the genesis frame really helped on steep rocky descents, just by keeping my weight behind the front wheel so as not to endo. Plus the short chainstays really hooked up on the steep stuff.
Fat tires are good. I used a wildgripper 2.1 in the rear and a psycho in the front. I ran them both between 25-28 psi most of the time (according to dan's pump, it might be more like 30-ish with mine). You have to be pretty careful with the tires that soft, but they really float over the rocks. Next time i'm taking my 2.35 ritchey for the front.
Moab is dusty and generally dry. I tried pedro's icewax for the first time and it seemed to work really well in terms of staying clean and lubing effectively for all day adventures. If you use white lightning, bring it with you on your rides, cuz you'll need it. If you use something wet, be prepared to clean more at night, or just suffer a goopy fast-wearing drivetrain.
The only equipment problem we had was dan's atom bomb spewing fork oil all over. marzocchi apparently has jacked-up seals for '98, so they're putting '97 seals back in the forks now. The folks at Marzocchi didn't really want to admit that they had a problem, but we've seen it on too many forks, so they finally fessed up.
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