| Mountain Biking in Utah | |
July 2001: I decided to book myself on an organized Mountain Biking trip in Utah. I probably could have scoped out all the trails we did with a bit of research on my own, but it was a lot more fun doing this with a group of people with a couple of excellent leaders who knew the territory. The group I went with was called Escape Adventures who operate out of Las Vegas.
And so it was, that I found myself driving from LA to St. George, Utah on a Saturday morning. It's about 400 miles and took about 6 hours by the time I'd stopped at the outlet stores at Primm, Nevada. The drive gets interesting in the last 40 miles or so, as you pass up through the Virgin River Gorge, one of the most spectacular (and expensive!) sections of Interstate ever constructed. St George was to be the rendezvous spot. When I got into town it was unbelievably hot, like 98°F and it stayed that hot way after the sun had gone down. What was I thinking attempting to ride in this heat?? In fact we were mostly at much higher elevations - between 6-10,000ft, and the temperature was warm, but not unbearable.
Sunday morning came, and I was to be picked up at 11am. I didn't see anyone else with a bike, which started to make me worry and keep checking the instructions just in case I'd got the wrong time/day/month. Shortly after 11, the Escape Adventures truck rolled in, with 5 guests who'd travelled up from Vegas already on board. It hadn't occured to me that I might be the only person to drive there. All the other guests lived further afield and had flown to Vegas. I met Woody and Pete, our guides, and the other guests: Miriam (from Toronto), Wendy (from Alpine, NJ), Ray (from Rochester NY), Jorge (from Miami, FL) and Dennis (from St. Louis, MO). They scooped up my bag and my bike, stuck it on top of the truck, and we then drove up, up, up to a place called Brianhead at about 10,000ft. From here, the views were spectacular, and the air thin. I coasted down a few hundred feet and rode back up, and found myself gasping for air. It would get better, I was assured. We had our first sampling of excellent food.
With everyone kitted out with rental bikes, and after a quick briefing about safety, how to ride a bike etc, we headed off down the Bunker Creek Single Track. We were told that historically most disasters happen during the first couple of hours on the first day, and the last day. We didn't have any real disasters at all, but Wendy "hardcore" as she came to be known, tried her hardest on that first day, knocking out a few teeth on a chainring with some over-zealous shifting, the only flat tire all week and a few spectacular falls. The riding was fast and furious, downhill, technical stuff, with roots everywhere to throw you off. All the other guests had elected to rent bikes. I'd brought my own. They mostly had rear suspension, I didn't. But, my bike (Gary Fisher Mt. Tam) was much lighter than those with rear suspension, and speedier up the hills. We rode into camp that evening at a campsite near Panguitch Lake. The non-wussies among us swam in the lake. It was pretty cold. We witnessed a great display of good-old-boys doing their thing, as a semi trailer (what was it doing there?) had gotten itself deeply stuck in our campsite.
Woody and Pete cooked Salmon the first night which was excellent. After the first night, two things became abundantly clear: Ray snores and it gets bloody cold at night. All future nights, we waited to see where Ray pitched his tent, then headed the opposite direction. Jorge, being a pharmacist, was well prepared, and dispensed earplugs all round.
Bike expressions we learnt:
Breakfasts were all huge and good. In England we used to have a TV commercial that said something like "bet you can't eat 3" referring to Shredded Wheat breakfast cereal. Escape Adventures, so the story goes, will offer a free trip if you can eat 3 of their pancakes. I don't think anyone on our trip came close to eating more than one.
Day 2 started with a drive up to the top of Butch Cassidy Draw, which started off with some gentle fire road and then dove down Casto Canyon on a single track, where we crossed a stream over and over again. We were now in Red Canyon, and indeed, there were red rocks all around. The truck met us for lunch, then we headed up the Losee trail. We hardly saw any other mountain bikers around on these trails. Apparently they're all at Moab. We did come across many horses, and partway up this trail, I stopped and talked to some "city slickers" from Paris doing the horsey thing.
That night we were driven to a new campsite down a long long dirt road, with a manmade reservoir called Tropic Reservoir nearby, in which I swam. We stayed two nights here. The next day we drove into Bryce Canyon, where there's no biking, so we hiked for a bit in the morning instead around Sunrise Point. Tourists everywhere here, but few straying more than a few hundred feet from their vehicles - same old story. Many "hoodoos" - pillars of rock formed by erosion. In the afternoon, we were dropped off at the base of the Thunder Mountain/Red Canyon trail. This was one of my favorite rides all this week. Much uphill, which I'm a kind of sucker for. We also passed a train of about 40 horses - just like waiting for a real train to go by that never ends. At the bottom of this trail we were met and taken back to the campsite down the really long dirt road.
We stopped at the only gas station for miles around with two really grumpy girls working there. Ray and Jorge phone home, Pete buys popcorn and then submerges it in liquid butter. Pete tells us of his survival exercises in Alaska that night, which made me (and I'm sure the rest of us) realize how comfy we were really having it, even though we were camping. We're learning that Pete has done just about everything there is to do, and he's only 21.
The next morning we have to pack all the stuff and we're taken up to the Dixie National Forest and do a short hike to Cascade Falls which is water coming from Navajo Lake - a lake we'll ride to later in the day. The weather starts to get a bit overcast and eventually it just rains. We then bike a section of the Rim Trail (I think it was called) mostly in the rain. This was another great trail with lots of climbing, and a great blast of downhill at the end. I arrive at our new campsite first and we set up camp. That evening the weather clears up and I bike around Navajo Lake. This was a delightful 14 mile loop and really worth doing.
Next morning we woke up to rain and misery. The girls crept into the truck. Woody and Pete were as chipper as ever (how do they do it?) and produced another great breakfast which made all the difference. We packed up soggy tents for the last time and hit the road. It brightened up as we drove and we were now headed for Zion National Park. To my mind this was a little too easy: we got dropped at the top of a hill, for a great coast down into the park. There's a tunnel in Zion which we couldn't ride through, so we had to pile the bikes on the truck just for the tunnel. We coasted all the way through Zion and ended up at a place called Flanigans Inn. We got to stay in a real bed our last night. A real shower and a real bed felt pretty nice after camping all week. In the afternoon, we headed up the bike path back into Zion and Woody and Pete insisted on riding the trusty Kona Stinky into the Virgin River. Bikes do float, by the way, tires up.
On the last morning we woke up in our real beds, had a camping breakfast (dodging the sprinklers!) and took the shuttle up Zion Canyon to hike some way up the Virgin River Gorge. The fact that they only have propane powered shuttles up the beautiful Zion Canyon makes it 100 times more pleasant to my mind. The lack of cars is just great. At the end of the line, we get out, and proceed on footpath for about 1/2 mile, before it stops, and then you just walk in the river. You can keep going like this for miles and miles. We just went for 90 minutes each way or so. Hordes of noisy school kids from upstate New York.
Pete and Woody provided us our last meal for lunch and presented each of us with an award for whatever they decided we excelled in during the week. I got the Mountain Goat award (here) as I get excited about going up big hills. I remember Miriam got the Ripe Banana award for the bruises on her legs. I regret I didn't write down the others. After this, and a free T-shirt handout, it was time to leave the town of Springfield and head back to St. George. They dropped me off here, they all headed on to Vegas. I passed them on the freeway some minutes later. Miriam tells me you guys all decided, as I was passing you, that I drive my GTI like I ride my bike!
Special thanks to Pete and Woody and all at Escape Adventures for a great week. I'll be back for sure.
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Frankenbike - a bike raided for parts so no longer complete.
To Taco a wheel - fold it
To biopace a chainring - make it non-circular (from a fad called Biopace chainrings, which were deliberately elliptical.
