Pete and I began our journey on the White Rim Road on Monday, March 26th at around 9am in the morning. We had intended to start earlier, but a massive amount of dew had forced us to dry our sleeping bags for a bit before packing everything up in the morning. We stayed the previous night at Dead Horse Point State Park near Canyonlands National Park, it was a nice place to stay if you're looking for electricity and running water, but quite a bit different than what I am used to. I had an equipment failure with my sleeping bag that night when I discovered a large hole near a velcro patch on the interior to the bag. I do not recommend the REI Kilo Plus sleeping bag, in my opinion the construction is cheap (I returned it for a Mountain Hardware Banshee as soon as I got back, much more durable).After a breakfast of Aunt Jemima pancakes, we were dropped off at the start of the White Rim Road near the visitor center located in the Island In The Sky district of Canyonlands National Park. I had originally packed my 10L of water at the top of the trailer so I could get to it easily, but it made my bike extremely unstable with that much weight so high up on the trailer. After a brief stop to repack it at the bottom, we began our descent down the Shafer trail towards the White Rim.
The Shafer trail is a fairly steep road, but definitely doable on a bike. As we were still getting used to carrying a load, we took a long time getting down to the bottom, but if we were to repeat the decent today it would go much faster. Other trip descriptions that I've read really made it sound much more difficult that it is.
Once down, you approach the White Rim after a few miles and follow it in a southernly direction. The fingers of the canyons that define the rim wrap in and out in such a way that every mile you go south, you probably travel five east to west! There was little shade to be found near the road, but amazing views of the LaSals and the surrounding canyon country were nonstop.
Around 20 miles into the trip, we stopped for some lunch under a Pinyon Pine. It began to become apparent that we were not making as great of time as I had originally envisioned, mostly due to the bumpiness of the road. Having suspension would probably speed things up considerably, simply because you wouldn't have to worry about shaking your bike apart as you ride along. A ranger stopped by to chat and pointed out some interesting rock formations near by. Knowing there was many miles ahead of us, we continued on our journey.
It took until 3 or 4pm to reach the southern most point of our journey, which occurs just south of Grand View Point (a view point on the actual Island In The Sky). We were both pretty tired at this point and in theory, still had 40ish miles to go if we were to reach our designated campsite! By now, we had both realized it just wasn't going to happen and I began to think of alternatives for sleeping.
Another hour or so of riding and we stopped for another meal to keep the energy stores up. It was probably about 5pm. Looking at the map, our first major climb of the trip was directly ahead, Murphy's Hogsback. There was some small rollers leading up to it, but riding the actual Hogsback was not feasible for either one of us. Coming upon a particularly steep section towards the summit, we had to hop off and push our bikes to the top. Luckily, we came across a guy from New Mexico, never got his name, and he lending a hand in the push.
Once at the summit, we talked with a group who had done the ride several times before to see what the next stretch was like. It sounded like an easier part than what we had completed so far, except for Hardscrabble Hill, another climb similar to the Hogsback. We said goodbye and descended down the other side of the Hogsback and continued on our way. This section was fast riding, but after about five miles the sun dropped below the horizon and we happened upon a nice pullout in the road that we decided to sleep at. A meal of freeze dried beef stroganoff really hit the spot, as well as a little hot cocoa and whiskey. I rolled out my tarp and sleeping bag and fell to sleep in a matter of minutes.
The night was great, with the moon shining bright. The wind picked up a little at night but nothing too annoying. In the morning, we had some oatmeal mixed with dried fruit and brown sugar and proceeded in haste to the nearest campground because that's where the nearest toilets were. There was a huge group of people that had camped out at this campground, it was sort of disgusting the amount of equipment they had brought with them! There was probably 10 tents set up and 20 camp chairs, with stuff spread out all across their site. Most people do the White Rim Road by four wheel drive vehicle, so this is how they had gotten all that junk down here. It was really drastic the different styles of enjoying the outdoors, Pete and I had our minimal setup which in my opinion, allows you to really experience the surroundings, while these people had brought every comfort of home with them which seems to me like a way of shutting yourself off from the beautiful surrounds. Each to their own...
After our restroom break, we make excellent time up to Hardscrabble Hill. This wasn't quite as challenging as the Hogsback, but we still had to walk our bikes up a couple of portions. I should say that without the equipment we were carrying with us, ascending these hills is definitely doable. We descended the other side of the hill, dropped down along the Green River, and along the river for a few miles until we reached the edge of the park (which happened to be near where our reserved campsite from the night before was located). We stopped for some lunch and rode on, finally coming to the final ascent of the journey that would lead us back to our starting place. This ascent had plenty of switchbacks, but we were both able to ride out without any walking. Then it was a 13 mile journey along a dirt road until we reached the pavement again, where we were picked up and shuttled to the Moab Brewery for some well deserved burgers and beer.It was an amazing trip, especially for my first bike tour. If I could do it again, I would bring my Brooks saddle instead of keeping the Terry that came with the Surly. I'd also try to reserve a campsite that was about half way through the journey, as we had no chance of getting to the site we were assigned for the night. The amount of water we brought was just right, we never were close to running out but didn't bring a ridiculous surplus. Riding this ride on a cyclocross bike or touring bike is very doable, although suspension would definitely speed you up.
Check out more pictures here and here
*NOTE: No, I dont like writting about myself in the third person... This is Pat's trip report, but he was too lazy to post it to the blog by himself, so I did it...
