With two days down and two days to go on our Moab spring training camp extravaganza, The Stunt Double and I spent the evenings eating, eating again, eating dessert, and texting each other from across the hotel room.
And we probably added at least 100 hits to that honey badger YouTube video everyone’s been talking about…
The next morning we were again greeted to sunny skies and warm temps as we headed out of town, meeting up with our camping com padres to tackle the formidable Gold Bar / Golden Spike / Portal Trail ride.
Arm warmers were quickly shed as we made our way west towards the Gemini Bridges area. Another part of Moab I’d never ridden, the Jeep road would quickly steepen, cresting the mesa and opening up to sweeping westward views, while we were flanked by slot canyon after slot canyon as we dug deeper into the desert…
Following a few more miles towards Gemini, we’d turn off onto Gold Bar trail which is a mix of slickrock, sand, and juniper which climbs steeply towards the rim…
The miles tacked on as we climbed from west, to southeast, ledge after ledge, toward the rim that overlooks Moab. The higher the trail lead us the more dramatic the views became. Soon, we’d look southwest and see the Colorado River, where Amasa Back would reveal itself; the spot we’d been the morning before off, in the distance…
Taking ample time to soak in the views, we’d continue, we’d fix a flat or two, watch one of our com padres do a slow-motion endo off a three foot rock ledge, and continue our climb towards the rim…
Gold Bar Rim trail turns into Golden Spike at some point in the vastness of the Utah slickrock desert. Golden Spike is also one of the toughest Jeep trails in the area, and feels like a massive rocky plate shifted at about a 30 degree angle. The Golden Spike trail contours much of the plate, up and down, but with a general upward climb…
The wind…. it’s the wind that clues you in as to what you’re about to come upon. The realization that the horizon seems to just drop off up ahead is a clue that the rim is close by. And sure enough, after one more rocky ledge, after the trail turns around one more juniper tree, as you’re “just-riding-along”…
Wham….
More or less a coupla’ thousand feet to the valley floor…
Can you find the bikes in the picture above? …….vertigo……
We’d spend our fair share of time feeling like we were the most important things in the world, the Stunt Double did his best “I’m the king of the woooorld!” line…
and we’d move on towards what can only be described as, well, a lot scarier than this, as we headed due south towards Portal Trail…
Now anybody who knows Moab and anybody who’s a fairly proficient Google-user knows that Portal Trail has some significant dangers…
This is a screenshot of the helmet-cam video that the AV department is currently working on, by the way…
Anyhoo, Portal Trail is some serious $h!t. If you’ve ever been to Moab and look towards the northwest, and…….well…….UP, you’ll see it….
I took one single picture because it was just that scary…
There’s a trail in there somewhere.. and while the trail is rough enough that even the immortals are forced to walk a third of it, here’s the vantage point from my helmet-cam…
Yyyyyyaa. Riding down Portal isn’t exactly about the skillz you gotz, or the training you’re doing, it’s about not dying…
The trail precariously descends through the thousand-or-so-foot cliff somehow, hugging the cliff wall until the slopes finally begin to relax and the trail eases its deathgrip on the dainties…
More than a few pucker-sections later we’d find ourselves on Potash Road, on the banks of the Colorado River once more, hooting, cursing, and elated as we pedaled back towards Moab…
The final day of the trip we did what most do and headed back towards Colorado, but first turning the tires towards Fruita for one more ride. Only an hour and change from Moab, if offers a nice break in the drive home.
Fruita’s become a real mountain bike destination in the past 5 or so years, and it deserves its own trip. For this quick ride it was just the Stunt Double and I, having bid farewell to our riding partners the night before at the Moab Brewery…
The Book Cliffs was where we’d spent only an hour or so, cooling down the legs as a storm front approached from the north…
In contrast to the incessantly rocky and unforgiving terrain of the Moab desert, the Book Cliffs of Fruita offer a tamer set of terrain, and a bit less of a chance of death-from-cliff. The powdery, flowy trails soothed the system as we eased back into society on this quick cool down, which was a fitting end to the weekend…
So there you have it… spring training camp in a nutshell. In fact, the trip was such a success I’ve got another one scheduled with the Mrs. and some of her friends in another few weeks. In the meantime, I’ll be busy getting the helmet-cam video all ready to go.
And in other news, I’ve taken possession of my 2012 racing machine: the Specialized S-Works Epic carbon 29er…
This bike marks the first time my bike has more carbon fiber than metal, including the wheels… I’m counting my blessings to be able to have a dedicated trail bike as well as the F1 racing machine, and I can certifiably guarantee this beauty will never, EVER come close to hitting the rocky Moab dirt…but I’ll be heading back in a few short weeks…!
