Woke up in Fruita Thursday morning. The rain had let off during the night, so I packed up and headed over to the Kokopelli trailhead and was riding by 9am. My legs were horribly sore from hiking yesterday, so I knocked out an almost 20-mile loop of easy stuff: Rustler's Loop to Mary's Loop to Horsethief Bench to Steve & Handcuff's Loop.
Good stuff; finished up and drove on Moab, and it was early afternoon when I arrived.
Our plan was to camp at a super-secret spot on the Porcupine Rim overlooking Castle Valley. Leaving Moab and heading up Sand Flats Road, the weather looked nasty up there. We almost punted to something else, but I am so happy we went up because we were rewarded with this:
So that was our back porch for the next 4 days.
On Friday morning, we got up early and set-up our return shuttle back to camp. Then we grabbed Coyote Shuttle which took us up as high as they allowed and we started the ride on the Upper Porcupine Singletrack. We semi-leisurely took the various Lower Enchilada routes all the way down to the Colorado River 4000 feet below. So got in almost 19 miles of very technical terrain that day.
Saturday was time to get acquainted with the brand new Captain Ahab trail. It was hot and we seemed to be dragging from the previous nights festivities. During the climb up Amasa Back, one of us who was not me found time to huck this:
Captain Ahab was a real treat. There is still plenty of technical climbing once you reach Ahab, so don't be expecting a long descent until you've really earned it. But once the trail went down in earnest, it was ON! Lots of the normal Moab techy-drops, but nearly every one had a sweet line built through it. Still, with the 6 of us, it turned into a long day @ 7.5 miles in 2 hours...., yes, hours.
Some of the bikes were getting thrashed and leaking oily shit where it shouldn't, so our team was cut in half for Sunday. We decided on some "intermediate" & "flowy" singletrack called the Moab Brand Trails. Good times, nice to knock out a few singletrack miles without having to concentrate on not dying all the time. We did almost 16 miles in about 2 hours and 45 minutes.
Monday was the last day, so we settled on a semi-repeat route that we could ride from camp. And right as we were preparing to ride off, we were greeted with a very curious, spectacular, and spiritual sight:
Yeah, Moab Macaws.
You figure it out. We took it as a blessing and went on to finish the trip with an UPS > LPS > Sand Flats Road > Upper LPS route that came in at exactly 15 miles.
Nice trip. I did ride every day. Drank and partied more than enough too, but so be it. Way too much fun with my friends and that will always be more important than training and racing.
No comments:
Post a Comment