Moab: Day 2- Martian Roller Coaster

Before I left for my trip, my friend David had recommended that I read “Desert Solitaire” by Edward Abbey.  I’m about halfway through it and can strongly suggest it to my literate friends.  Edward Abbey was one of the founding fathers of environmentalism.  In the book, he recounts his time spent as a Park Ranger in Arches National Park in Moab.  He spent 3 seasons there taking in the varied and natural beauty of this ridiculous place.
  

  
Event though its right in the Desert,  I’ve seen what Abbey is talking about.  The terrain and life is rugged and dramatic.  It’s a stark contrast from the manufactured, manicured, and frenzied beauty of NYC.

On day 1 we were met with beautiful desert singletrack and some stunning geological formations.  Today was completely different.  Even though we were maybe 10 miles away from where we rode yesterday, we might as well have been on a different planet.
  


More specifically, Mars.
Today we rode the slickrock trail,   which is known for its, well, slickrock.   I was pumped as hell to give it a try.  The slickrock landscape looks like something the Mars rover must have set eyes upon while on its death march.   Swooping, rolling dunes of solid rock litter the landscape.  The only giveaway that you’re on earth is the beautiful desert life that’s peppered across the land.  



Our guide today was Heidi.   Heidi’s an avid athlete who’s keeps busy by kickin’ ass at trail running when she’s not taking fat, spoiled New York cyclists out for pity rides.   Needless to say, Heidi put us through our paces for the next 4 hours of Mars rovin’.




So how does it ride??   Like a Martian rollercoaster.


 

Riding slickrock is quite a departure from the singletrack that you’re probably used to.   The biggest difference is grip.  It’s Grippy.  Super grippy.  Grippier than my hands are around a Bacon cheeseburger.   While the name “slickrock” may  seem to imply differently,  it earned its name because it is quite slippery when we’re talking about horses and cows.  Horseshoes and slickrock= bovines sliding around like your mother in a Jell-O wrestling match.




So what does that mean?  It means you can ride slick rock at ridiculous angles- up, down, sideways, off-camber, and probably upside-down.  You can ride straight across a 50-degree off-camber that would make a cx-racer weep.  




The Best part of slickrock is the swoopy stuff.  You come to the crest of a slope,   fly down 50 feet and slam right up the incline of the next.    You’ve gotta have the granny gear on hand to get up these inclines.   each of those climbs is a 20-30 second V02MAX effort that forces you to sit so far forward that  you’re practically straddling the steerer tube like a stripper pole and spinning your legs around in your 32X22 (the 32 is in the rear, roadies).  I may have earned a new nickname due to my overzealous spinning while going up these things…
 


Each of these aggressive efforts is like a little interval that you end up repeating about 30-50 times.   We have essentially signed up for a week a daily 4-hour long anaerobic interval workouts.  Coach roger would be so proud…



Understandably,  some of those rises were too steep for us and we ended up dumping out a few times and walking.  This leads me to a very important tip for all of you northeasterners coming to ride slick rock up here:  TAKE OUT YOUR TOE SPIKES BEFORE YOU EVEN THINK OF RIDING SLICKROCK.  Sure,  toe spikes are great when you’re knee-deep in mud at Granogue or tap-dancing on a street corner, but on a steep slickrock incline they are about as useful as a Bacon AT-AT in a synagogue.


 

Around the midpoint of the ride we came across a bit of a playground-  it was akin to the empty pools skateboarders do tricks in,  but naturally formed.  it was a blast to swoop in and out and take some banked turns.   Naturally this was the perfect time for a far superior rider named Kyle to show up and demonstrate how terrible we actually are…




The whole slickrock trail is situated high above Moab.  Depending on where you were you could overlook the whole town  or the mighty Colorado River.   What better place to sit down and enjoy the view then on the edge of a sheer 1000 ft cliff face.





I can say without hesitation that romping around on this Martian terrain was one of the best bike experiences I’ve had in my life.  Who knows what planet we’ll end up on tomorrow?

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.