To all outward appearances, I had settled down. I'd spent the last five years growing soft in front of the same computer in the same office of the same finance company. It was a good job, at least if you consider comfort and security good. I don't. I made a clean break and set off into the Mojave Desert and Colorado Plateau in search of something; I wasn't sure what, but it didn't really matter.
I had very few definite plans. I'd been looking at maps a lot the last few years; there were several inexcusable blank spots on the map in the southwest. At least it was inexcusable that I'd never visited any of them. I researched a couple enough to figure out what my chances were of reaching them by bike. I deliberately avoided planning as much as possible. The key advantage to cycling over hiking is freedom; I wanted to encourage that freedom as much as possible.
I made my standard mistake of not training properly. However this time as I set off along the same road into the San Gabriels that I took seven years earlier, I had a little better idea what I was in for. My homemade panniers were made out of bombproof vinyl-coated cordura, triple stitched and reinforced. The rack was equally bombproof solid half inch steel flat bars -- the subject of much derision among my friends. My gear was minimal and streamlined. It was March, so I expected sub-freezing nights and lots of wind in the high deserts where I was headed, but even so, I probably took less than 25 pounds. I did have a few "toys": a GPS a friend gave me, and a pair of binoculars. And my proudest possession was a pair of styrofoam "thingies" carefully crafted to fit over the pedals to allow me to pedal barefoot! They even worked.
As usual the hardest days were the first. This time I took a more ambitious route across the San Gabriels: up almost 6000 feet to Horse Flats the first day, then down a rocky fire road into the desert the next morning. What I didn't count on was that the fire road was closed to protect a species of desert toad. I'm not good at bowing to authority; it took me about five seconds to convince myself that I was going to cause less damage than the naturalist who, judging by his tire tracks, traveled the road within the last week. Besides, my alternatives involved riding over a dozen or so miles of road that were still buried under winter snow, or to circle back around to Palmdale, maybe a day out of my way.
There was a tricky moment hefting the bike with all the gear in one hand over the precipice as I swung around a barbed wire fence. Several miles down the road I encountered the first of many tire problems when a jagged rock punctured the side wall of the tire causing a blowout. The grade on the last five miles was so steep that I was forced to walk the bike most of the way, but I had enough patience and to spare.
This little stretch of rocky road was actually important, because those enticing blank spots on the map are only approachable via unimproved roads -- quite possibly just as bad or worse than what I had just gone over. I wanted to see first hand how my bike performed; I did not want to find myself in the middle of a desert wilderness having no idea what to watch for or what to expect.
The day ended with another 3000 foot climb past a ski resort. I considered myself properly warmed up by this time, and celebrated with a bowlful of homemade guacamole. The other key advantage cyclists have over hikers is a much broader menu, especially in the fresh fruits and vegetables department. Incidentally, dicing tomatoes with a pocket knife requires a special knack that I never quite acquired. From this perch high in the eastern San Gabriels it was a glorious, if frigid, downgrade the next morning into Cajon Pass and on to the desert north of the San Bernardino Mountains.
The Mojave desert stretches over a vast area of southern California. It is
characterized by relatively high elevation, and the bizarre but picturesque
joshua tree. March is supposedly the rainy season, but in such a desert you
can still go for weeks without seeing rain. The high elevations make nights
bitterly cold, but the strong sun can raise temperatures 70 or more degrees by
afternoon. Because of its geographical location, the Mojave does not receive
the terrific thunderstorms of the lower Sonoran Desert during the summer.
Because of these and more factors, the flora and physical appearance of the
Mojave is unlike any other desert.
Wind turned out to be a constant source of irritation in the desert: it's always blowing, and rarely in a beneficial direction, despite that I was headed predominantly east, supposedly with the trade winds. Naively you'd expect to have a 50/50 chance of having a good wind, but you'd be wrong: any wind short of an exact tailwind seems a hindrance. Cross winds cause eddies in the spokes that creates almost as much drag as a pure headwind. Throw a gusting crosswind at a cyclist on a highway busy with tractor trailers... well, it can get downright dangerous.
Flats of every variety plagued me on my trip through the Mojave. There are the obvious stickers and bits of pointy metal on the side of any highway that always manage to find a way around and sometimes even directly through my Toughie liners. There are pinch flats, despite inflating my tires as hard as I could (and I have a good pump that could get upwards of 120 psi easily). There are flats caused by the darned Toughies themselves -- they slice through the tube where the ends overlap. (It wasn't until the last days of this trip that someone pointed out the obvious solution: trim the damned liner so that there is no overlap. Duh.) And there were plenty more rocks puncturing the sidewalls.
My biggest slap in the face occurred on a remote sandy road in the desert north of Joshua Tree and Twenty-nine Palms -- a road, in fact, that didn't really even so much exist outside the imagination of my outdated Delorme atlas. The GPS confirmed what I came eventually to suspect: the road I was on was headed off into a blank section of the map nowhere near where the road on the map was supposed to go. But before I turned back I had yet another blow out. I knew it was only a matter of time on a road like that, so I was very patient. A flat on the rear tire involves taking everything off the bike, flipping it over, and getting covered with grease from the chain and gears. This time the blowout ejected a sizable portion of the tube and tire. Not fixable. Okay, time to break out the spare. But there is a small problem. I'd never replaced the tires on this bike (I'd bought it very recently), so it wasn't until that moment that I discovered that this bike was a racing bike, not a touring bike like I was used to. That means the tires were 700c, not 27". Not even MacGyver can get a 27" tire to fit on a 700c wheel! That definitely phased me for a minute. Okay, MacGyver can at least get the old tire to hold air again. But there's another problem: the spare tube was a Shraeder valve, not Presta, which means the valve stem is too large to fit through the hole in the rim. I was getting a bit peeved by now. I found some rocks and tried to enlarge the hole. No dice. I tried patching the old tube; too much rubber was missing. Idly fingering through my tools I noticed that the needle-nosed pliers had a sort of teeth. It turns out that they make a passable file. Fifteen minutes later I'd hacked the valve stem hole out large enough to fit the spare tube. Everything reassembled, the tire held air. I kissed the asphalt of the first road I found, although every rock poking through the tarmac looked like it would put an end to this charade. It turns out that the only bike shop this side of Palm Springs only has 26" tires.
This is how it came to be that someone who considered himself fairly experienced when it comes to bike repair and cycle touring set off into the heart of the Mojave without a spare tire or tube, riding on two ancient tires (as I mentioned, I bought the bike used and never replaced the tires), one with a bulge where the tube was attempting to push through a few layers of duct tape and a plastic blowout patch. I felt very chagrined and not a little worried about my odds.
My route was north from 29 Palms to Amboy, on to Kelso and Cima, then over
to Searchlight and route 95, which heads quickly north to Las Vegas. For those
who have not been off I-15, I-40, and I-10, the true heart of the Mojave is
about as vast and desolate and unpopulated a place as you can find on earth.
It is Basin and Range country, where rank upon rank of arid north-south running
mountain ranges split the desert into huge broad valleys. In one of these
valleys, say in Kelso, you can look as far in any direction as the eye can see
-- pretty far: sometimes 50 or more miles -- there is nothing but greasewood
and sand. It is a humbling, austere landscape, punctuated by the spare forms
of rock and ravine. The overwhelming silence and depth of this country cannot
be conveyed by mere words; it is something you feel rather than see. It is not
a friendly country; there is no better place to learn that life is an accident
in the grand scheme of the universe, that plants and animals are precious
miracles.
I made good progress over the first pass near Iron Mountain, but within 100 feet of turning down into the next basin, the road turned bad. I mean evil. The asphalt around here gets so hot during the blazing summers that the tar literally melts away leaving the crushed gravel exposed like jagged teeth. There is no type of road surface more ideally suited for causing damage to brittle old narrow bicycle tires. I had a flat before I even had time to stop the bike. I spent the next hours crawling down the road at 2 or 3 mph trying to avoid every rock: you can't understand the frustration of a cyclist humping up a thousand feet or so to a pass only to discover that he can't enjoy the effortless descent down the other side! I coined my first mantra, one of several that I relied on to get me through the trip: "This, too, shall pass". And so it did. Patches appeared here and there that were ride-able. (There was no traffic here in the middle of nowhere, so I was free to ride as long as I wanted right down the middle of the highway or on the wrong side of the road.) And, yes, eventually there were newly paved surfaces, and capped surfaces, and so on. I became intimately acquainted with the entire variety of road surfaces available to the pavement connoisseur in the Mojave.
I counted the miles off to reach Las Vegas, pleading with the tire to hold on to dear life. It started at 250, when I felt I had no chance of making it, but soon 200 rolled along, then 150, and spirits lifted. By time I was 100 miles from Vegas I discovered I'd miscounted and it was more like 75, and when I finally reached route 95 and it no longer really mattered, I found out that I really had counted right after all. (Signs aren't particularly accurate in the Mojave!) The last morning the gods of the wind decided to favor me, and I sailed along serenely virtually all the way to the pass overlooking Vegas. What a vision: sprawling out before you in the middle of the bleakest desert between distant mountains is the lowest, gaudiest haven for sinners and wannabes there ever was. But to me it meant civilization at last; a place to correct my errors and re-supply properly for what was likely to be much more serious trips ahead in Utah and Arizona.
I left Vegas considerably poorer, but invested with two kevlar-reinforced 28c tires -- tires so wide, in fact, that they cleared the brake calipers by no more than a scant millimeter. But I was charged and ready to try out my new invincible tires.
I skirted the north shore of Lake Mead, then, left no alternative, raced up I-15 into Utah, and detoured from Beaver Dam over a little-used pass into St. George. Over the pass I was opposed by such a heinous headwind that I thought I'd never make it. I decided that in order to claim victory it is not sufficient merely to make it to the top of the pass. Although I'm not sure what the real measure should be, in this case the wind indisputably defeated me; I spent the rest of the day sacked out at a motel in St. George.
I spent the time in St. George preparing for the coming trip. I was about
to take my first real test. I'd called the BLM about road conditions and water
sources, but received only this much: the recent snows had made roads
impassible, and I would need to carry all my water and supplies with me as
there was nothing out there at all. I tried in vain to make the lady on the
other end of the line understand that I was bicycling out there, that I was
unable to carry a dozen gallons of water, and that I didn't care if the roads
were impassible to street cars -- I wanted to know where springs were, and how
much sand, rocks, mud and such were on the roads. Sigh. Rangers seem rarely
to know the answers to any of these questions. Instead she said, "Oh, you're
on a bike?! You'll never make it. Don't even try." So I checked the weather
carefully and went over every detail of the map until I knew it like the back
of my hand. It could go, and it would go, dammit.
The road turns to gravel immediately after crossing into Arizona, soon turns
to dirt, and slowly degenerates, becoming rocky, then muddy / dusty, and ends
as a nasty jeep trail that would stop a tank in some places. It climbs up to
the top of the Shivwits Plateau early on, then stays mercifully level. About
50 miles in, the road forks: I took the road less traveled. I stopped for the
night beside Poverty Butte, but failed to find the spring labeled on my USGS
map. At around 80 miles I took a side trip to the top of Mt. Dellenbaugh,
passing a gorgeous set of fresh mountain lion tracks on the way. This is the
typical extent of street cars. I unloaded my bike of everything but
necessities to allow me to navigate the rapidly deteriorating road better. At
around 90 or so miles I abandoned even the bike and walked the remaining 15
miles.
The end of this road is Kelly Point: probably the most remote lump of rock
in the contiguous 48 states. The western half of Grand Canyon sprawls out
before you in every direction. There is not a sign of human habitation
anywhere. The closest settlement is the Hualpai Indian Reservation maybe 20
miles to the south as the crow flies. But to get there involves scaling the
cliffs down to the river out of sight 5000 vertical feet below, crossing that
river, then proceeding up Peach Springs Road another 10 or 15 miles.
I was passed by at least a dozen cars the first day, surprising me a great deal, but I learned from one man who stopped to talk to me, that Monday mornings are always really "busy" as ranchers and BLM people head in to work for the week. The next six days I met only one small group of mountain bikers.
I worried a great deal over water; after all I could bring a couple weeks of
food, but there is no way to carry that much water. The springs on the plateau
were all dried up from the drought of the last few years. The only water
sources I found were a few cattle ponds (although most of those even were bone
dry that year), some lingering snow banks, and a few seeps in the deep,
all-but-impenetrable, trail-less side canyons of Grand Canyon. But I was not
too proud to drink water from a cattle pond.
While there, a series of snow storms and rain turned the road to mud. The problem I ran into immediately is that the mud would gum up the tiny space between the tire and the brakes and freeze up the whole thing as if set in concrete. It was all I could do to haul the bike thus disabled, kicking and screaming four miles back to my base camp one evening; there was no way in hell I was going to do 80 miles like that with all my gear! The solution came to me one bitter night while watching the ridiculous antics of a couple turkeys trying to fly into a yellow pine to roost: ride early in the morning while the road is still frozen solid and I'd fly right over all the mud. So it was that I jettisoned my leftover rice and lentils one dark morning and tore off down the frozen muddy road as fast as I could go. That evening I was sleeping in a warm bed in St. George again.
Zion is the obvious next stop on any tour of Utah: there are four main
entrances to Zion -- you can hardly miss it. I struggled up the least-used
back road to Hop Valley and Kolob Terrace. It is a gorgeous steep road with
generous multicolored cliffs on all sides. There are side trips up a couple
wild technical slot canyons, one of which includes The Subway -- it is
non-technical up to that famous feature and well worth the wet slog. I chose
to do a gentle overnight down the beautiful if hardly pristine Hop Valley
(overgrazing by cattle has pulverized the broad canyon bottom) to see Kolob
Arch -- supposedly the world's largest natural arch. Enormous monolithic red
cliffs surround you as you descend into Verkin Creek; it is extremely
impressive.
Never pass up the opportunity to do the scenic tour up the Virgin River in
the main canyon of Zion. It is unbelievably impressive; easily comparable with
Yosemite. Cliffs of satin, angular, red and white sandstone tower on all
sides, rising up to 3000 feet in a single sheer leap from the canyon floor. I
passed on the opportunity to freeze my legs off in the Narrows, but did the
quick hop up to Angel's Landing -- this will test your fear of heights if
nothing else will! The PWA must have had a field day in this canyon, blasting
trails and roads left and right. I was quite content to take advantage of
their handy work even if I did grumble about the scars on the living rock of
this grand temple of nature.
Instead of the standard route that would have taken me northeast from Zion
through Bryce, I decided to take a lesser-known back road through Cottonwood
Creek Canyon. I was worried about snow on the Bryce route, but more to the
point, I was intrigued by another inviting blank spot on the map in the western
end of Escalante Monument. I was rewarded with a stunning, sometimes steep,
gravelly, and sandy road up the striking fault canyon that formed Cottonwood
Creek and Cad's Crotch. Running due north-south like someone scratched a line
on the earth with a giant glass cutter, you cannot fail to guess the tectonic
origins if this canyon. It is a fold very similar to Capitol Reef, forming
series of jagged teeth and combs of slickrock.
Cutting through the ridges are several dramatic canyons. I detoured briefly
up the beautiful Hackberry Canyon, but chickened out as my feet started to
freeze because I was forced to wade the stream -- past snow and ice banks this
time of year! -- the whole way. Farther up I discovered the gushing,
pleasantly tepid spring at the source of Cottonwood Creek and explored the
area for a few days. I think a dozen cars passed me that week. I followed fox
and coyote tracks up washes, bouldered up a few cliffs, discovered an Indian
granary, watched two snow storms drift in from the horizon, trailing icy veils
behind them.
From Cottonwood Creek I labored over the pine-covered mountains past
dramatic gray bluffs and Powell Point, and back down to the sleepy little town
of Escalante. The Hole-in-the-Rock road is perhaps the nastiest road I was
able to ride on: washboarded and sandy, it killed my back and sapped every
ounce of energy from me. But landed safely upon my feet at the end, I
recovered ample energy to spend a few days exploring a dozen side canyons
around Egypt, and then spent an afternoon seeing the three slot canyons
whimsically but aptly named Peek-a-Boo, Spooky, and Brimstone Gulch.
The Escalante River basin is wonderful: towering red sandstone cliffs line every side canyon, venerable old cottonwoods (I measured one over 6 feet in diameter!) keep watch over thickets of rust-colored tamarisk and willow, through all of which runs the beautiful Escalante River itself. There are endless side canyons to explore and the occasional petroglyphs and moqui steps to remind you of the former occupants. Beaver, ringtails, foxes, coyotes, deer, rabbits, and rodents of every variety abound -- or at least their tracks do; I'm never observant enough to notice the actual creatures themselves. Canyon wrens, cliff swallows, dippers and probably dozens of other birds I don't recognize fill the air with song and acrobatics. While I was there, the first blush of spring was just beginning to tinge the cottonwoods green, and only the woolly locoweed was in flower. I can only imagine the lush paradise this place is a month later in the full bloom of spring.
The slot canyons are an incredible sight. There are dozens of them hidden
in side canyons all over the place. Some, like Choprock, are a yard wide and a
few dozen feet deep; others, like Brimstone, are so narrow I could barely
squeeze through but are a hundred or more feet deep. They can be so deep and
narrow that you literally cannot see the floor in the everlasting twilight at
the bottom. They twist and contort themselves into the most fantastic sinuous
forms, while the sunlight caroming in from far above picks up rich reds and
yellows as it filters down. When I first reached Spooky Gulch, I laughed
uncontrollably from the sheer improbability of it.
I ran out of food or I would've stayed behind in Escalante forever like Everett Ruess. Sadly, I turned back to town and headed on toward Capitol Reef. The "million dollar highway" from Escalante to Boulder had picked up a mythical quality from vague childhood memories. A more spectacular highway through slickrock wilderness cannot be imagined. At its climax it tops out on a knife-edged ridge called the Hogsback with cliffs falling away to either side.
At the suggestion of a friend I took the Burr Trail to Capitol Reef.
Fortunately for me it had been recently paved, at least as far as the park. It
is a wonderful road that follows an old cattle trail from Escalante to summer
range high in the Henry Mountains east of Capitol Reef. It crosses several
gorgeous canyons before emerging at the top of an incredible drop-off at the
top of the Reef: one of the greatest views in a land that abounds with great
views. Just before the Burr Trail intersects the Notom Road it descends a
dozen amazing switchbacks winding virtually straight down the last rank of
teeth of the Reef -- a sight in and of itself.
Geographically, Capitol Reef is very long and narrow, running north to south
along with the folds of the reef (also called "Waterpocket Fold"). The main
highway crosses at the Fremont River far to the north of the Burr Trail. The
only access to the northern and southern parts is by long little-traveled dirt
roads. This means most of Capitol Reef is by far the most deserted of any of
the national parks in Utah. It is not from lack of interesting terrain; dozens
of slot canyons cut deep into the Navajo and Wingate sandstone here and there;
Halls Creek cuts a tortuous winding trench lengthwise at the southern end.
One of the tributaries of Halls Creek, called "Muley Twists", makes a wonderful long day hike. I read about it in Kelsey's book, and not realizing he uses the metric system, I was incredulous at his casual report that he'd hiked the 34 "mile" round trip in a day. I immediately resolved to do it myself. I packed super-light and set off at a jog at the break of dawn. A few hours later I discovered I was already at the half-way point much to my surprise. It was then that I realized that it was 34 km, not 34 miles. Oops.
I looped back when I reached the main highway, and visited Grand Wash,
Capitol Gorge, and the orchards at the ex-town of Fruita. (Watch out for the
deer!) There is a beautiful display of petroglyphs by the main highway near
the visitor center. Deep in the reef you can find some historical
"cowboyglyphs", too: I saw some signatures from the 1800's in a cave in Muley
Twists, and at a place called "Pioneer's Wall" in Capitol Gorge.
My next destination was The Maze, made famous by Edward Abbey in Desert
Solitaire. I detoured out to Loa and Bicknell to re-supply, then headed
into the San Rafael Desert. A man stopped while I was fixing a flat and, upon
discovering my destination, launched into an impassioned speech trying to
convince me not to go. He warned me of foot-deep dust; the rangers reportedly
said the road was the worst they'd ever seen; there was no chance of water
until the very end; dragons would swallow me up at night. Well, not the last
bit, but I was a little confused about why he should care so much about me
riding off into the desert. Of course, his speech served only to strengthen my
resolve.
For whatever reason the National Park Service chooses to leave the turn-off from the Hanksville - Green River highway unmarked. There comes a dramatic moment on that ride when, with nothing but desert and rock visible for probably 50 miles in every direction, you turn off the asphalt onto an indistinguishable dirt road; you swallow hard, take a last look around, and come what may, plunge deeper yet into the trackless sandy desert. It is a never-ending source of surprise and delight to me that places like that still exist today.
As is usually the case when you prepare yourself for the worst possible
case, it wasn't nearly so bad as I expected. The road turned out to be little
worse than pavement. About 25 miles in I reached a fork on a sage-covered mesa
with an unbeatable 360 degree view, with just enough time to cook dinner and
roll into bed. The next day, twice as cocky and half as patient, the road
started its gradual ascent to the mesas overlooking the Maze. The hard-packed
mud plates I was so thankful for the previous day were ground into dust and my
tires sunk deeper and deeper.
As I rested in the middle of one particularly sandy stretch, imagine my surprise as a pickup came rumbling by dragging an enormous bar of pig iron, as if he were towing a monster truck at some point whose fender had become detached leaving the truck behind in a cloud of dust. He stopped and chatted a while before lumbering off again. It was an ingenious method of flattening out the washboards as it turns out. I didn't have the heart to sound ungrateful for his selfless service and point out that the washboarded sections were often the only places I could ride, because my tires would sink all the way through to the hard substrate giving me something to get traction on. And that's not to mention the destruction he was visiting upon the surviving hard-crusted mud flats -- my only reprieves from this dusty hell!
Natural and man-made distractions notwithstanding, I arrived half a day
later at the top of the hill. Hiding my bike off the road at French's Spring,
I loaded up my backpack with food and set off for Terra Incognita. I was so
surprised by the weight of a week's worth of food (I was eating 3000-4000
calories a day by this time) that I unloaded nearly every bit of gear I had,
including rain gear and bivy sack. It's probably the lightest I've ever
traveled for an equivalent length backpacking trip: I decided in the end that
I couldn't have been carrying more than 4 lbs of gear and 20 lbs of food.
The next 7 days were probably the finest hiking I've ever done. It's not necessarily as remote as Abbey found it back in the 1960's, but it is every bit as rugged as he describes. The colorful cliffs of Cedar Mesa Sandstone dominate. A labyrinth of narrow canyons present a paradise for rock-scrambling enthusiasts like myself. Sensuously carved undercuts and hollows surround you, ledges stacked one on top of another reach into the deep blue sky, while the tender bright green leaves of cottonwoods lining the slender intermittent water courses at the bottom flutter peacefully in the breeze.
Determined to force myself to slow down a bit, I resolved to draw every new
species of flower I saw. Each day a dozen more budded; I filled several pages
by the end. There were frilly yellow puccoons, vibrant red paintbrush, powder
blue phlox, fuzzy purple vetch and locoweed, fragrant white disheveled
blossoms on trees that looked like fruit trees, and many more besides I
couldn't identify after the week was over.
There are few trails in this area by the usual definition. In the sandy
canyon bottoms trails don't survive periodic flooding, so you just follow the
washes. Climbing in and out of the canyons at very carefully chosen spots are
half a dozen "trails" -- literally just series of cairns marking weaknesses in
the cliffs and ledges. Use of your hands and even ropes for lowering your pack
are required in many places. Climbing down one of these trails is always an
exciting experience. The cairns repeatedly lead you straight to the edge of
cliffs. No matter how preposterous it looks as you approach the brink, each
time there turns out to be a crack, a makeshift "ladder" (usually just a gnarly
old weathered juniper log leaning against the rock), a staircase of fallen
boulders, etc. It is a constant voyage of discovery. Looking back from the
bottom you chuckle to yourself: "What moron decided that you could a build a
trail up that!"
But the real fun is wandering. Every turn and side canyon presents
something new. For example, the main canyon of the Maze proper contains
several pictograph and petroglyph panels. (One, called the "Harvest Scene" is
easily the most exquisite piece of pre-historical artwork I've ever seen,
aesthetically speaking.) Back in side canyons you can find innumerable dark
grottoes, some with seeping springs and potholes full of flowers and animal
tracks. If you grow claustrophobic, stand back and examine the far canyon
walls for a while: climb the wall in your mind first, then commit it to memory
and go for it. Climb a rock slide, traverse a few hundred feet on a ledge,
scramble up a chimney, traverse back, climb up a short pour-off, and so on --
maybe you'll swing yourself over the lip one time finally to find nothing but
sky. Keep an eye out for unnatural lines of pock-marks in blank rock faces
high up the cliffs -- chances are if you're having trouble finding feasible
routes to the top, so did the Indians. The artificial steps they pecked into
the rock survive throughout the canyons. I had a weakness for these so-called
"Moqui steps" -- I couldn't see one without climbing it. Either weathering has
softened these "stairs", or the Moqui were crazy bastards!
On the way out, I found that the nasty dirt road climbing to the mesa top
was much easier to ride downhill, partially because of a few days of
rain that settled and packed down the dust. Full of new confidence I decided
to finish the full loop of the San Rafael road, instead of retreating back to
the highway the way I came in. I cursed my lousy decision for the next 10
miles, but after the road left the sandy plain and started north toward the San
Rafael River, I made it into top gear and sailed recklessly through most of the
rest of the trip into Green River. The same principle that applies to cars
traveling on bumpy roads also applies to my poor abused road bike: go fast
enough and you'll sail right over most of the washboards and rocks.
The gods of the wind frowned on me as I left Green River en route to Moab.
Having cycled a fair amount, I figured I'd seen wind. I hadn't. I found out
later that afternoon, safely watching the weather channel in a Moab motel, that
the wind was sustained at 30-40 mph with gusts over 60 mph. Of course it was
not a tail wind. Tumbleweed and random road debris went air-born and shot past
like projectiles. Dust and sand kicked up by dusts rose in great sheets,
sometimes completely obscuring both mountain and sky. Occasional mack trucks
would pass, briefly cutting off the wind, sucking you into their wheels with
double strength (both your over-compensation for the wind that was no longer
there, and the Bernoulli effect of a truck flying past a few feet away at some
60 mph). On the final descent into Moab the fairly steady headwind went
totally wild and buffeted me side to side, front to back. One second I'd be
straining at full exertion in lowest gear to go downhill, only to
be suddenly kicked in the ass by a 50 mph tail wind, then knocked clear off my
bike by an equally sudden cross wind. Wow. It was easily the worst riding
conditions I'd ever seen. And they kept at it for several more days. Other
cyclists I met would still be talking about it months later.
I took a day trip into Arches during this time. It is a fairly enjoyable, slightly strenuous ride, and for some reason was pretty well protected from the wind. A day isn't really enough time, but I did manage to book a tour of the Fiery Furnace, in addition to wandering about the main group of arches at the end of the road.
The Fiery Furnace is an incredible jumble of towering red rock fins, with a
bewildering network of funky passages. The NPS monitors its use very closely
because it's very easy to get lost and equally easy to damage the fragile
landscape. Nevertheless, I was rather pissed that the ranger at the visitor
center refused to even listen to my qualifications when I asked for a day-pass
to visit the place by myself. So I ended up tagging along at the end of a
line of 30 weekend warriors who were afraid to step over a foot-wide crevice.
Sigh. It was still an extremely enjoyable experience.
There is a lot to Arches National Park besides silly holes in sandstone. The main arch exhibits are buried in a vast labyrinth of huge parallel sandstone fins; I could wander around there for days, scrambling up and down the fins, exploring all the slots and alcoves. Courthouse wash is a gorgeous verdant stream flanked by endless lines of towering red cliffs. I never even made it close to Klondike Bluffs, the Windows, or Delicate Arch. Seen from across the Salt River valley, the Fiery Furnace is the merest tip of a huge slickrock mesa -- you can only guess at what hidden wonders lurk back off the beaten trail in places like that.
Since I'd only brought enough food for the day, I had to return to Moab, and unfortunately I detest retracing my steps, so that was it for Arches... this time, at least.
I passed up visiting the Island in the Sky and Needles sections of
Canyonlands -- you gotta leave something for when you come back, right? Hell,
I missed 90% of the places I did go, for that matter. You could spend a
lifetime exploring southeast Utah and never see the same place twice. (I
wouldn't mind a chance to try, though.)
At any rate, I left the slickrock country of Moab behind and headed south around the Abajo Mountains, over the Comb, and up to Cedar Mesa. This is a little-visited area of Utah. It is north of the more popular Navajo lands (Monument Valley, Shiprock, etc.), east of The River, south of Canyonlands and Moab, and to the east is a gently sloping desert plain: land of ranchers and vast irrigation farms, not canyon country. Yet, as unpopulated as it is today, the Anasazi thrived throughout for centuries. Canyons slice through the soft sandstone making up the mesa; inside are countless twisted narrow ribbons of paradise.
I only saw a couple places here, but enough to fall in love with the area. I saw some ruins in Butler wash, toured Natural Bridges National Monument, and did a two day loop hike in Grand Gulch.
The ruins in this area are some of the most pristine and ironically least
protected in the west. In Grand Gulch, you can climb right up to them and poke
through the rubble; you can almost pretend you were the first to see them
sometimes. (Reading early accounts of exploration, such as Everett Ruess's, I
realize that every portable item of any worth has almost certainly been removed
by now, but the illusion of discovery is still strong.) For example, there is
a ruin in Bullet Canyon (a tributary of Grand Gulch) called "Perfect Kiva",
which contains precisely that: 800 years old, the roof timbers are all still
completely intact, and climbing down inside you find that even the plaster on
the walls inside has survived the long ages. Corn cobs and potsherds fairly
litter the ground (everything of more worth, such as sandals, dolls, etc.
disappeared long ago).
Many of the ruins I saw were easily approachable, but there were some challenging ones as well. Only a few completely defeated me -- presumably the natives made use of ladders in some cases. But it's a ton of fun trying figure out how to climb up anyway. Some have elaborate battlements that make you think of children's play forts more than they do places you'd actually live.
I think my favorite ruin was called "Turkey Pen". It was a fairly large site combining all the different types of buildings, neat fortifications requiring some exciting bouldering, some great pictographs, lots of debris, and a nice location.
One of the last stops I made was Mesa Verde. I foolishly figured I could
get in a good tour in one day. I didn't factor in the long strenuous ride both
into and out of the park. But it turns out that you can't really see 99% of
the park's astronomical number of ruins anyway. You can see Spruce Tree House
-- from behind a fence. You can see Balcony House and Cliff Palace -- on a
tour that you need to book in advance. You can see a dozen other cliff
dwellings -- through binoculars from the opposite side of the canyon. It would
be very disappointing, except that even just this glimpse is enough to knock
your socks off: the ruins are far more complex and larger than anything on
Cedar Mesa. There is a neat museum (I generally hate museums), and a
reasonably interesting self-guided tour of a bunch of mesa-top ruins. The
"hiking trails" are impressively silly.
Wetherill Mesa might be more interesting... but it was closed when I was there. Sigh.
The San Juan Mountains lie very solidly between Mesa Verde and just
about anywhere else in Colorado. I took the gorgeous but busy highway from
Durango to Silverton and on to Ouray. It was about as big a change as possible
from the hot dry deserts and canyons I'd lived in for the past two months. You
quickly ascend from cottonwoods and arid pinion-juniper forests into dark fir
and spruce. Rushing mountain streams swollen with spring snow melt plunge down
the mountain sides -- quite a sight at the time: a pothole a few feet across
used to seem like an oasis. The next thing I know it's snowing! Damn, where
did I put my goretex, anyway?
If the ride up to Silverton is gorgeous, what words are left to describe the incredible descent into the rugged canyon of Ouray? The San Juan's most endearing quality in my opinion is their color: the mountain sides are a rich tapestry of vivid red, orange, yellow, blue and purple-gray, with broad swaths of deep dark evergreens and bright yellow-green aspen. Above looms pearly white jagged snow-capped peaks and a limitless blue sky, frequently with towering rolling clouds. Wispy waterfalls cascade down cliffs, joining together in thundering rivers in the valley floors. It really is the Rocky Mountains at their best.
Riding the gust front of a massive thunderstorm behind me, I rode the 35+ miles from Ouray to Montrose in less than two hours. Times like that where all the obstacles to riding align to let you sail along at top speed effortlessly make up for all the hardships that precede them: gravity, wind, temperature, road surface -- all conspired to give me the most pleasant two hours of riding I can remember.
As I pulled into a grocery in Montrose it was just beginning to rain and I just as suddenly developed a flat -- talk about fortuitous timing! While I was smiling and fixing the flat in the shelter of the store, a guy asked me the standard question: "Where'd ya ride from?" "LA." "Where ya headed?" That caught me off guard for the first time. "Well, uh, here, actually." It hadn't really occurred to me yet, but I was done.
Well, not quite -- I had a few days before flying out. I filled those days
conveniently with a trip to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. It's the newest
national park. I'd seen pictures years ago and thought it sounded kinda neat.
What the hell?! It's ginormous! Hugondous! Up to 3000 feet of sheer granite
cliffs gouged out by a terrific torrent of white water and boulders, it easily
deserves a place up there among other greats like Zion, Yosemite, Grand Canyon.
However, unlike those parks, this one has no maintained trails into the canyon,
and sees relatively very few visitors.
I say it has no trails, when actually it has 5 or 6. But they're called "routes", not trails, and for good reason: these routes plunge straight down the side of the canyon, rarely bothering even to switch back. Now, I was in pretty darned good shape by this time, as you can imagine. After doing the Gunnison and Warner routes my thighs were so sore I could barely ride! Very cool.
The views from on top are impressive enough, but you really need to descend
one of these routes to get a real idea what the canyon is like. At the bottom
you can wander up and down river a short distance. The river is extremely cold
and strong -- I tried to ford it, but failed miserably. Talking to a ranger at
the visitor center, I was told that only one group of three people has ever
walked the entire 30-40 mile length of river inside the park. Very
cool.
I stayed the night at the bottom of the Warner route, and reluctantly returned to Montrose the next day. At first it took almost a month before I no longer wished for hot showers and a comfortable bed, but there in the bowels of the Gunnison, after two months in the wilderness, I could no longer imagine life in the "real world". It's never easy to go back.
Telluride