Moab Day 3: Sovereign

  

After a day of swooping around on Mars, I was curious to see what else the guides would throw our way.   Turns  out we were to visit Venus on the third day of our journey through the myriad worlds of Moab.
  


Like slick rock,  the Sovereign trail is but a few miles from town,  but that’s where the similarities end.   The trail winds up, down, and across a huge mesa.   Unlike its red-faced sandstone cousins,  this gargantuan land peninsula is tinted with an oxidized green, like a giant molten blob of patina'd bronze.   I didn't know what to make of the green soil- I had never seen anything like it.   This oddly colored rock is just another example of how varied and diverse the life and land of this place is.   Every ride is a geology lesson and a ultra-high def episode of a discovery channel documentary all rolled into one.  Then again,  falling on a Juniper tree after wiping out on some crazy rocks is as close-up as you can get.




Our guide today was a hard man known as Steve.  Steve had ridden these trails for quite a while,  and while he was slow to warm up, could rip through downhill singletrack with far more finesse than I could.  As we drove to the trailhead he told us about life around Moab and how he came to call it home;   not many people here were born and raised in Moab-   each person we’ve met here has their own story-  with Moab being the current stop of their journeys.  I guess we all have that in common at the moment.

I’ll be honest:   riding up that mesa was a bit of a chore.   Three days into our trip, we were still getting acclimated to the altitude and terrain.   The sovereign trail was a world apart from slick rock:  generally tight singletrack littered with loose rocks and technical uphill sections.   It definitely left its mark on yours truly…


   
After toiling uphill across loose rocks left by dirt bikes (the lazy' man’s mountain bike…),   we would be rewarded by tight, steep singletrack that switched back across the mesa.  The surface was much looser than slick rock, and I may have been guilty of riding the breaks down it, as I was really not in the mood to fly off the side of a cliff.  



After an hour and a half of ups and downs we reached the top of the mesa:  a cliff face with the gorgeous La Sal mountains in the background.   The are the ultimate compliment to the varied Moab Terrain.  You’re in the middle of an arid desert canyon land, and off in the distance are snowcapped mountains,  gracefully kissing a sky so blue that it would give Bob Ross a wet dream.
 


As we made our way down the Mesa, Steve corralled us through a dried up, rocky half-pipe of a riverbed (I believe if was called Terry’s Tunnel).  This riverbed was full of ledges and rocky outcrops that you had to traverse.  The techie bits were fun to try and figure out: correct gearing, a good line, and some fast twitch muscle fibers got you over the rocks and ledges,  but any misstep and you had the chance of a one night stand with the ground…



As we stepped off of the green mesa we were met with sandy red singletrack and a few flat wash sections.  For the record,  deep, loose sand is a royal pain on a mountain bike-  I reassured myself that riding in sand would come in handy at the next cx race.
 


One of the last sections we traversed was a giant, wide open stretch of sandstone.  i was told it used to be a seabed, and it’s pretty apparent.  it stretched far out-  a vast, dehydrated sea bed,  littered with junipers and small desert flora.



we finished up our ride on some non-technical jeep roads, riding back to the van and cooling down.  We had another great day of unforgettable riding under our belts.  As I sat there devouring a sandwich in the shade, the La Sal Mountains sat on the horizon.  This trip was the mountain bike equivalent of a seven-course tasting menu at Le Bernardin-  I had no idea what the next course would be- couldn’t wait to find out.

To Moab

    

I’m sitting in a cheap motel in the middle of Utah.  I couldn’t be happier.   I’m not sure that the words "Utah,” “Motel,” and “Happy” are used in conjunction that often,  but  it absolutely rings true here.  

Two weeks ago I ended my career in the world of Finance.   No longer happy with taking part in the rat race for mediocrity,  I enthusiastically gave up the life of a middle office trade support excel monkey.   I won’t get into any details but suffice to say reconciling other people’s cash and confirming other people’s trades is something that is definitively not for me.  Instead, I’ll be jumping into the world of social media and digital marketing.

Leaving my job and switching careers gave me a reason to come out here.  I believe that whenever one has a big life change, he/she should get away for a few days and take it all in.  A sort of intermission between acts of a play.  Maybe it’s more like a half-time show? 

I needed to get out of the city for a few days.  We’re so over-stimulated in our daily lives that we become numb.  What we see and experience can stop affecting us.  All day we sit at computers and process information in all its forms.   It gets a bit old after a while. 



What better place for a reset than Moab.   Fresh off of the hilariously brutal pain train known as Battenkill, my teammate Steve and I hopped a plane to Denver, jumped on a comically bouncy turboprop that dropped us into Grand Junction, and from there we drove 2 hours to Moab.  Here we’ll spend 7 days mountain biking over and around some of the most beautiful, dramatic and awe-inspiring landscape around.

Yesterday was day 1.  After a fantastic breakfast we were met by our guide for the day- Joe.   Joe was a pretty awesome dude who had 3 seasons of MTB touring under his belt, and was a rock climber in the off season.  He drove us over to the trailhead where our ride would begin.



Our Steeds would be Kona Dawg Deluxes.  These dual suspension monsters have 6 inches of travel and will run over just about anything without much of a fuss.  I can tell you that I love riding dual-ies much much more than hardtails.  It’s just more fun to barrel over the mountain and not have to worry about your junk getting pounded into a pulp.
 


Today Joe introduced us to a couple of trails that are all linked together.   First we hit up Klondike Bluffs, and rode up half of Baby Steps.  These trails featured quite a wide  range of terrain.  There was a good deal of slick rock to ride over, which is quickly becoming a favorite of mine.  It’s grippy, easy to climb up, and fun as hell to bomb down.

 

The other facet of these trails included more technical single track on loose dirt.   The singletrack would weave and snake around the land,  sometimes incorporating rock formations.  it did get pretty technical at times, and I was at my best when i decided to dump out and  take a quick dirt nap right on top of a juniper bush.



You’re sort of conflicted when riding parts of this trail.  Some of the views are so spectacular that its easy to not pay as much attention to where you’re riding.  We made sure to stop a view times and take it all in so that we wouldn’t be distracted when we were actually riding.
 


By lunch time we had ridden right up to the edge of Arches National Park.  That’s home to all of the picturesque geological formations that Moab is known for.  As it’s a national park, we had to leave our bikes at the border.  We hiked on to the edge of a cliff and stopped for lunch.  For the record,  Mountain bike shoes with toe spikes may in fact be the worst shoes around when it comes to scrambling around on rocks.  not recommended… 



After shoving a delicious wad of roast beef down my gullet we plodded back to the bikes and kept going.   We hit some more technical singletrack which resulted in me dumping out a few times.  The weather was partly cloudy,  which in the desert means that the temps drop 20 degrees whenever cloudy block the sun from doing its job.   At one point Steve got a flat and i briefly saw snow flurries.



After bombing down some more singletrack and slick rock,   we rolled through a fire road imprinted with 4X4 tracks.  As we road by Joe found a baby cow on the side of the road takin’ a nap.   Probably tired from a day of running around the desert, the little dude was calm and didn't freak out when we approached him.  “You’ll make a fine osso bucco someday,” I said to him.  



Not a bad experience for day one.   The trails that Joe took us on were a great way to get acclimated to the Moab experience,  which would prove to be a huge departure from the wooded trails of the northeast.




After the ride we sat in a little Mexican restaurant  and pounded fish tacos and cervezas.   And to think,  at this very moment I could be sitting at a desk staring at 32 excel spreadsheets.   This round to me.