Slickrock Rocks!

After our National Park days we were eager for some more Slickrock action, we'd planned to head up to Moonlight Meadows a track that sounded fun for a bit of biking. Only we'd forgotten to look at the elevation on the diagram in the book - it started at 9,000 feet rising to 10,500ft over 4 miles uphill. We enjoyed the drive up into the La Sal mountains and when we got to the trail head we jumped out the car only to feel pretty much instantly freezing and lightheaded! lol! Opps. Maybe this was a mistake. Still, we carried on getting ready and I headed off to sign the book to say we were going off on the track only to find (luckily I thought!) a note from a couple that had done the track yesterday, apparently it was a quagmire of mud, ice and snow. Well, I guess that would make sense seeing as I was standing in snow reading the book! Needless to say, not wanting to damage the tracks, or die of altitude sickness we bottled-it, jumped back in the car and headed for more sunny low-altitude climes of Moab again. Wimps eh?



So, beaten by that track we headed for Flat Iron Mesa as that looked like a pretty easy track with some interesting spurs to investigate. Well, we were right about the easy. It was basically a 13 mile gravel road with lots of sand patches, now, we maybe novice but after about 2 miles of this it was so dull we decided to head back. We used the time wisely though - for wheely practise :-)

So, 2 disasters and feeling a bit downhearted we refused to give up. By this time it was heading to late afternoon so we looked for a short trail in the book and came across Bartlets Wash. Cool - about 6 miles by the look of it with some Slickrock playground time. We found it easily enough and it started well with us riding up the stream bed - it even still had puddles - wahoo! We soon came to the right turn which lead onto the slickrock and we scrambled the bikes up the first (vertical) section, I'm grateful we now have lighter bikes lol! Then, well, it was playtime. Basically we'd discovered a HUGE slickrock playground area - freeform all the way (just avoiding the cryptobiotic soil). We had a great time and it was amazing how much your tyres grip on this stuff, sideslopes and easily controlable downhills were very cool:




We eventually decided to head off for the night and as we had big plans for the next day we stopped at the Canyonlands Campsite in town... for easy access to...

THE SLICKROCK BIKE TRAIL.

HAhahahahahaha! :-) Now. This is a serious trail, only for experts and with a physical 'strenuous' rating. But, it's the trail Moab is known for, so we couldn't leave without giving at least the practise loop (actually the first 2 and a bit miles of the trail) a try. We waited until Monday morning so the crowds weren't there and we wouldn't be holding anyone up as there was no way we were going to be the annoying tourists trying something to difficult for them and ending up in big emergency services call out - so we wanted to be able to walk whatever we weren't happy riding.

We arrived to a packed carpark. Well, that didn't go to plan then! But the atmosphere was great. There was obviously the good bikers, but also the 'tourists' like us and even a young kid (about 10ish) who's birthday it was and had obviously bullied his parents to letting him bring lots of friends along! Still, we played it safe, packed the usual first aid kit, repair tools, twice as much water as we should need and some nutty bars/chocolate bars. After procastinating for as long as possible there was nothing left to do but to get on the bikes - the trail snaked out ahead lots of white dashes across a sea of slickrock, disapprearing down gullys and reappearing up impossibly steep hills. Awesome.




If you're scared of heights even the practise trail is, er, interesting - but well worth it. We rode the downhills hanging off the back of the bikes and peddled the uphills until our legs were on fire and loved everyminute of it! Ok, so we ended up walking a few times, but I only walked one downhill (big ledge dropping into a sandpit) which I was quite proud of. Along the way we met Randy (hehe) who was on his own on an older stumpjumper and clearly terrified! He was walking most the downhills so we teamed up with him so he wasn't alone and took frequent brakes to watch the ongoing madness on the rest of the trail. It was quite weird riding with someone more terrified than me, lol!

I only had one tricky moment as I was about 1 foot from the top of a very steep hill (read: hard to stand up on!), I couldn't quite get there and failed putting my feet down about a foot from the top... only it was so steep I couldn't get off the bike... or put the bike down - so I was stuck! Luckily, I had the camera in *my* camelbak so Dan couldn't take any pics!! With Dan's help and ending up on all fours I managed to scramble the final foot to the top dragging my bike behind me. lol! Before we knew it we got to the turn around point - loop back to the trailhead or go on to 10more miles of slickrock fun. We were both buzzing from the ride, but managed to let our brains control our actions. As much as we would have loved to continue, it was an expert trail and most the obsticles described as 'dangerous sections' were on the remaining track, so we were good (probably to the relief of the emergency services) and headed back to the car park. However, we only did so with a vow to return when we were more confident (and after a few spinning classes at the gym) to complete the rest of the trail. We returned to the car park in style riding off the small but steep downhill into the sand - I was very happy to still be in the saddle after that little obsticle. It was certainly the most biking fun we'd had in Moab so far.

We knew we'd saved the best 'till last an all that remained was to get a few pictures of Charlie on 'proper' slickrock. Doing 'Hell's Revenge' at night had meant we didn't really have any good photo's, so we headed for the nearby trail 'Fins and Things'. This trail rated ok as a difficult but not impossible so we enjoyed about an hour of playing on some really steep stuff, some long climbs and seemingly impossible ledges but as the trail cut back to the road we thought we were probably pushing it a bit for off-roading alone so did the sensible thing and headed back into town. Always best to finish on a high :-)






I know at least one person is sitting a home thinking: You're going to leave Moab and you havn't mentioned the Lionsback! Well, it is on private land and the private land is closed at the moment, but I did get a picture:



And we did do the next best thing:




lol! :-)

Whilst we were there we met Esther and Peter in a white Defender TD5 - excellent piece of equipment decked out in the back with everyting you could possibly need and a groovy pop-up tent. It was great to talk to some more Landy people and they seem to be doing some excellent trips (www.yakontour.ch), heading down into South America for the winter. Cool :-) The funny thing was, we'd seen them twice before around the Lava Beds National Park - but both times had been going too fast in the wrong direction! So we were very pleased to catch them this time.



With dinner at the Brewery and all the laundry done, thus ended a pretty perfect day in Moab and as we wanted to end with fond memories we've decided to head off tomorrow... well, that and we've got about 29 days and 1/2 of America still to travel around. Argh! ;-)