Friday, one of my hard charging biking buddies and I tore out of D-town in the AM with hopes of doing an Epic in Fruita and be camping in Moab by nightfall. We arrived at the Kokapelli trail head around 12ish, suited up and rode off in a hurry. We went out Mary's loop, did Horsetheif, took Mary's out to Steve's to a portion of Handcuff's to Moore Fun back to the car. All in all a beater of a ride, but epic in everyway. Wound up being in the neighboorhood of 14 miles or more, lots of fun techy sections, especially Moore Fun. Evidently a lot of people do Moore fun in the opposite direction that we did, but I think it would be more punishing to do in the other direction. So we got to end on a nice downhill, then over the hump back to the car to the cooler full of PBR. :cool:
We wound up getting so involved in the ride, the scenery and the terrain that we took very few pics. from Moore Fun
http://home.comcast.net/~brianpollock/moorefun.jpg
Off to Moab in time to catch a sweet sunset from out campsite at Slickrock.
http://home.comcast.net/~brianpollock/DSC03147.JPG
Up early the next morning with the anticipation of doing Porcupine rim. Our one huge catch was, we only had one vehicle. We knew that it would be close to 30 miles to loop it from the campsite and it was a undertaking we were willing to commit to. For a warm-up we rode the 4 miles from our campsite to the Porcupine trailhead, then another 4 miles up, then the big payoff of 8 miles of schweet downhill. Lots of nice pops and lips to launch off of. I definietly took some bigger drops than I am use to. I would LOVE to go back there with some more suspension and really go nutz. We took our time doing some sessions on some of the little playgrounds on the way down. I even recognized some spots from other maggot Moab threads.
Here is Aron getting down, my auto camera skills weren't good enough to get him launching off this rock.
http://home.comcast.net/~brianpollock/prarron.jpg
Once again a ton of riding and not much picture taking, those of you that have done this ride can relate I am sure. Luckily when we hit the parking lot we were able to score a ride back to the campsite with our bikes from some real nice guys from Provo, who's poor buddy had the luck of our flatrider, getting 6 flats on the Porcupine Rim. Obviously he didn't believe in high tire pressure either, which is bad when you weight around 190#'s riding a POS.
Back to camp we crashed out in the shade for the afternoon, beat from the 20 miles that we logged in the morning. In the early evening we had a little pick-me-up which got us motivated enough to go down to Slickrock to do some playing. As we were cut short by the amount of daylight available, we were able to go play around on the slickrock for about an hour and a half before we heeded to the call of the cooler.
http://home.comcast.net/~brianpollock/aronsr.jpg
Slickrock is a beautiful place, made even more mystic by the great colors brought out by the setting sun on the sandstone rocks.
http://home.comcast.net/~brianpollock/srbrian.jpg
Like they say, you can't do it all in a day and our bodies sure felt like we tried.
We spent the better part of Saturday evening debating on what ride to finish our trip off with. Maps, headlamps, guidebooks and a few too many beers led to no decision being made, but a decent understanding of what our options would be.
Sunday morning on our way out of Slickrock we decided to go hit a trail Aron had yet to do, since it was my first trip to Moab, it didn't matter it was all new to me. We finalized on Moab Rim trail. Arriving at the trailhead pretty early as to beat the heat, we didn't realize what were about to do. Man oh man 900 vertical feet in 9 tenths of a mile. We were able to clear and ride the first 3/4 of the trail, but after that it was just too much for our legs to bear. Off on the trail we stopped and played on a few techy sections and some of the slickrock. Just the sheer size and expanse of the area had me in awe. Some more pics of slickrock fun:
My man can pick some wicked lines with only a SC Blur underneath him
http://home.comcast.net/~brianpolloc...echdescent.jpg
Man this place is vast:http://home.comcast.net/~brianpollock/brianmoabrim.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~brianpollock/slickrock.jpg
For those of you that have been there, but maybe not recently, they are building/have built a bunch of freeride stuff up top. I know that they have the downhill events here. There were stunts, drops, transitions, teeters, and then some BIG drops (15+). All of this is built to parallel the Moab trail that comes up from parking lot off Kane Creek. If this kind of thing is your bag, I highly suggest getting to it the next you get there. There were signs saying "Moab Adventure Park: Private Property" But we didn't understand what that meant. :rolleyes: We did a bunch of messing around, we both had some really close calls and minor crashes that looked more spectacular than they really were. Finally we took off after pushing our luck on our XC bikes.
Nice rock tranny
http://home.comcast.net/~brianpollock/arontranstion.jpg
Bridges:
http://home.comcast.net/~brianpollock/aronstunt.jpg
Moving Bridges:
http://home.comcast.net/~brianpollock/teeter.jpg
Moab is a wonderful place, I understand why so many people sing its praises and why many journey far to get there. I have truley drempt of a similar place, now I just have a name for it: MOAB.
