Moab biking trip II

Brent flew in on Thursday right on time, and I swung on by to pick him up. We then got back to my place and played some Halo III. We made a trip up to the Outdoor/Rec center at the University to pick up a bike for Brent. It was painless. Walked in, showed them my ID, and within a few minutes, we were loading a nice expensive mountain bike into my car. Later, when Bryan came home, we loaded our stuff into his pickup truck and headed off towards David's place. There we crashed here and there ready for our early morning wakeup call. About 5am we got our stuff together, ate and headed out towards Moab. Trevor and Bryan left in the pickup, Brent, Dave, and I left in the Minivan, and Dave A. Matt and Mike left in Dave Alvord's SUV.
After we pulled into Moab, we went to our rented condo to change into our bike attire, and filled our water bottles. The other car still hadn't arrived since they took highway 70 all the way down instead of cutting through highway 6. THEN, we were informed that the "new" guy Matt didn't bring a bike, or helmet. So, we stopped by 3 different bike shops and they were all rented out of bikes. Apparently there was a big 24 hour race that weekend. We finally got a bike that JUST barely came in, and therefore the shop people had to go through a "checkup" on the bike to make sure it was ready to go. Well over an hour later just at that bike shop, we were FINALLY on our way to our first bike ride. We met up at the Sovereign Trailhead and headed on up. The trail was pretty nice, but we were ascending through some hairy stuff here and there. But there were nice rewards of downward "rollercoaster" like runs along the way. On one of those particular sections, David got a bit ambitious with his spiffy bike, and we all heard a noise similar to a muffled gunshot echo off the slickrock walls. Dave's back tire had blown out, and shredded the inner tube to bits. Thankfully, the tire itself was only a little stretched, and bubbled out a little bit. After a tube replacement, we were on our way again. As we were riding, things got increasingly bumpy, and Trevor and Bryan were both riding fixed frame bikes, while everyone else had at least front end suspension. Also the bike Bryan was riding had the seat stem fuse to the frame, and couldn't be adjusted. By the time wear was taking its toll, Dave's bike finally broke down. Dave and Bryan headed back to the car. The rest of us remained on the trail, and made it to the slickrock area at the end. Instead of retracing our steps on the way back with all the rest of the people on the trail, we wanted to loop back to the parking lot on another trail. We headed up higher to meet up with the pipeline trail which was a straight shot to the cars below. When we got to the top, it was a blazing 30mph run down a rocky dirt road rollercoaster run. If we didn't bother to stop for a sanity break, we could have done the whole run in under 5 minutes.




We met up, and we returned towards Moab in search for food. Dave visited the bikeshop to get his bike fixed, while we hit up the same Chinese food place we ate at last year. We tanked out on MSG saturated carbs, and we all met up at the Condo where we relaxed, and watched some "Band of Brothers." Sleep shortly followed.

Saturday morning, we left to go try Harris Pass. The trail was really just a dirt road where cars were occasionally driving past, as well as ATV's. They tossed up dust, and were kinda loud, so we were looking for something else. We took a break at one point, and saw a nice avenue up to the top of the canyon walls. There was even a jeep trail which appeared to take us about half way there. Upon our ascent, someone spotted some wood mining structures in the distance. The road we were on seemed to be guiding us there. Instead of breaking off upwards, we continued along the road. After rounding a bend, we saw large wood mining ruins. As we reached the structure we could see the chute where the tailings were ejected, and the rails seemed to still be intact. A small rock scramble got us to the mouth of the mine, and it wasn't blocked off. We determined that it must have been an old Uranium mine due to the color of rock layers above and below the mine. We stayed around to have lunch, and soak up great views of the valley bottom.

On the way back, we made great time, and met up with Bryan. At this point, our group split up. Dave, Bryan, Brent, Trevor and I all crammed into the pickup truck after a quick lunch in Moab. Bryan was kind enough to shuttle us up to the Porcupine rim trailhead. We were in a race for daylight, because we only had about three hours of daylight remaining, and we were tired. The Porcupine rim trail is about 14.4 miles long, and gains a significant amount of elevation right at the beginning. We were all tired, and we made our best attempt at making it up the rocky stairway. Since we weren't out there to show off our mountain biking status, we felt no shame in walking our bikes up the steep rocky sections to conserve our energy for the rest of the crazy stuff to come. After we finally reached our peak, we soaked up views of Castle Valley below, and Arches in the distance. In our descent, there were several "technical" sections which involved careful navigation, but there was about a 4 mile stretch that was absolute bliss. The color of the sky, the temperature, and the terrain was absolutely perfect. In one section Dave hit a bumpy section while going pretty fast, and he needed to stop from a bike malfunction. Apparently one of his disc brake pads fell out, and we were losing daylight fast. I looked at my GPS, and discovered that we still had about 10 miles to go, and 1400 feet to descend. While the sun was setting, Trevor and I made use of the remaining daylight to search up the road for Dave's brake pad. After about 500 feet of trail, both of us had two handfuls of miscellaneous bike parts from others. I was about to turn around when Brent told me to look a tad further, and I then saw the brake pad. After a few minutes, David had the bike working again, and we blazed off into the last bit of sunlight. By the time we hit the single track, the light was very limited, and we could no longer truly appreciate the surrounding views, but were focused on dodging rocks, and large dark things in the trail. As visibility got steadily worse, I broke out my headlamp, and distributed one of my flashlights to Trevor and David. Brent seemed to have natural night vision because he was about ¼ of a mile ahead of me at all times, and doing fine. There were sections of the trail that dropped off, and required careful foot placement with bike on the shoulder. Progress got slower as it got steeper, and I barely got a cell signal off to Bryan before we descended into the depths of the canyon. Slowly we got to the highway, and cruised along the blissfully FLAT asphalt. I hooked my headlamp on backwards, and put on my reflective windbreaker even though I was sweating. Traffic wasn't too bad, but there were a few idiotic rednecks that kept their high beams on which completely blinded us. Bryan was there waiting for us, and took us back to the condo where we had hot pizza, and cold sodas waiting for us. Another viewing of Band of Brothers, and a cold dip into the pool outside under the stars.

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The next morning, we packed up and went for a brief walk down a road called "Steel Bender" and into the canyon. Then we headed out of Moab towards home. On the way we stopped by some dinosaur tracks, and ate some lunch in Green River. Dave and Trevor headed back, and Bryan, Brent, and I went west on I-70 to see the cool views in contrast to the boring highway 6 route. We stopped by Damion's place to say hi and goof off for a bit on our way through Spanish Fork. Then back to our place to unpack, and clean up a bit.

Monday, I dropped Brent off at the airport, and I headed straight to school where I had to face the results of neglecting my studies for so long. Ugh. I've had better days. Back to the stress gauntlet.