national park, roadtrip, travel, USA

Arches

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Our wonderful, albeit wet, week in Grand Junction concluding, it was time to hit the road again for Moab.  The easy two hour drive was beautiful as we made our way through some rather barren land beside I-70, although it has a bit of green tinge to it at the moment.  Glad to have waited a few more days to miss the weekend, I continued to watch the stream of traffic heading out of town.  It’s so good to be back in Utah, with only three days in the state two years ago, it was definitely one of my favourites.  But we are clearly on the tourist trail now as this afternoon we heard & saw many different nationalities, not to mention a fair percentage of the rental car fleets from California & Nevada.  We haven’t really had too many crowds to deal with in our first five states, but as summer vacation & California approaches I don’t imagine it’s going to get much better.

All afternoon was spent at Arches National Park, which is just north of Moab. We saw many arches, mesas, spires & fans. It was incredible & you’ll quickly get sick of my superlatives – so I’ll just post a few photos (one day I’ll get a better camera, I promise).

The Three Gossips

Balanced Rock – it looks small with no perspective, about 39 metres high

Double Arch

North Window

We took a small hike over a lot of rock to Delicate Arch

Delicate Arch – that’s me at the bottom

Fins, from which arches form

bikes, friends, GPS, MTB, roadtrip, travel, USA

No headless chicken & Fruita riding redeems itself

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After a nice leisurely start to Saturday we headed off down the freeway to Fruita to check out the Mike the Headless Chicken Festival – but mainly because it was on the way to more riding & the sun was out.  There was a big car show on part of the main street – a lot of very shiny American classics & hot rods.  Many, many beautiful cars; in amongst all the American muscle there some nice examples of Austin Healeys & Volkswagens.  Some in the family may appreciate this picture, it had two big recliners in the back instead of a bench & also a suped-up 8 Track player.

Most of the festivities were at the other end of main street, so we checked them out briefly. I was hugely disappointed that I didn’t see someone wandering around aimlessly in a large headless-chicken suit. There were, however, some show chickens – very odd seeing chickens dressed up in little costumes! Of course, it wouldn’t be a small town around these parts without a statue welded up out of miscellaneous items.

Feeling a bit peckish, we found a park on a map & headed out there to eat our grain. We stumbled across a couple of games of little league baseball so amused ourselves briefly trying to work out what was happening – but being baseball, not much was happening.

North out of Fruita are some riding trails at the end of 18 Road & the base of the Bookcliffs (the longest range running east to west apparently in the USA). A sidenote on the road names around here. The north-south roads out in the country (mostly, you get some in town) are numbered for the number of miles from the Utah border. Hence, 18 Road – things get more interesting with the roads in between the whole miles; you end up with things like 33 1/2 Rd or 15 3/10 Rd – as if you could have a part road. Then the east-west roads are letttered from A up from some base line. So we had to take N 3/10 Rd to get to the trails. I was following a Cayenne with bikes on the top, if I had have been a bit closer I would have seen the Oregon plates & not followed. After a wrong turn & back track we were all bumping up the most corrugated road I’ve been on – it went for miles & was just awful.

On the upside, the guy in the Cayenne was actually from Boulder, CO & I had a riding buddy to show me around & take photos. I had originally planned to ride up the road from the trail head & come down on progressively harder trails (Kessel Run, Chutes & Ladders, Zippity Do Da). Miles had limited time as he & his girlfriend were off to Moab, so we did Zippity first. After cruising up the road there was a bit of climbig to get west & on to another ridge. It’s a great name for this trail as there are plenty of whoop-de-dos to swoop down & then get up the other side. It was a bit of a change riding with someone much fitter than me, but I coped & the trail wasn’t too technical. It flowed really well, there were great views & some nasty pinch climbs to keep me on my toes.

There was some gorgeous ridge riding (copped a gale on this edge) & at places one had to be pretty careful to make a turn & not go flying off.

We got back to the car to find Valerie had gone off on her own little ride & Diyora (Miles’s girlfriend) wasn’t back from her ride. So we headed up Kessel Run & found Valerie, but not Diyora. At the top we split & Miles went back to the car & I continued on Chutes & Ladders on the east side of the area. This riding was quite different, a little techy at the start & then it opened up in to big meadows. With the views & all the different shades of green, grey & purple it was beautiful.

Back at the car, exchanging details & intentions to meet again in Moab (where we’re going today!!!) & later in Bend, Oregon we said goodbyes & I headed back up the road to get a few extra miles in. The beginner level Kessel Run is great fun – not much pedalling involved, it swoops & ducks & dives & has a real flow to it. A most excellent way to end the day somewhat tired. For only just over two hours of riding I managed to get some good climbing in & some fantastic trails.

national park, roadtrip, travel, USA

Black Canyon of the Gunnison

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Another one of those National Parks that I didn’t know existed until a few days ago was our objective for the day.  That was, after I finished the wonderful Agatha Christie novel The Secret of Chimneys (Kindles are great for traveling).  The Black Canyon was about ninety minutes’ drive SE of Grand Junction & we were pleased to leave behind the rain & see it dry out a bit.  From the town of Montrose, you drive up to about 2400m & after entering the park on top of what is not a particularly wide hill, there is all of a sudden a very deep but skinny canyon off the side of the road.

The canyon has the best combination of deepness, steepness & narrowness in the continent & it really is quite impressive. Carved out of hard rock by the fast-flowing Gunnison River (which flows on to the Colorado at Grand Junction), the canyon floor loses more elevation in forty-eight miles than the Mississippi does in its entire length (1550 miles). I thought we’d skip the Visitor Center to start with to make the most of the break in the weather. I was wrong, within ten minutes we were being snowed on heavily.

Consequently, we went back to the Visitor Center & had a quick look around & waited for the weather to clear. For the next hour or so, we drove around the South Rim dodging the snow, & then rain, taking in various vantage points. Besides the spectacular canyon, the highlight was seeing my first bobcat skulking off in to the bushes a few metres away from the trail. We got a better view of it a few minutes later as we were driving down the road – they are smaller than I, for some reason, thought. Unfortunately, no photo. Here are few more pictures of different parts of the canyon for those interested. While the clouds & rain can get a bit annoying at times, they do add a bit of a different atmosphere to the scenery.

These stripes in the rock were neat – formed by molten lava infiltrating cracks in the rock that was already there many moons ago.

Now I’m going back to a Poirot – the first in a while.

bikes, MTB, roadtrip, travel, USA

A Proper Fruita Ride

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Woken well too early & really struggling to get back to sleep, there was a bit of a sleep-in until eight. Poking my head out of the window eventually, there were less dark clouds hanging around than yesterday morning. With quick organisation, I was off out the door by myself (nice to have a bit of independence back & go off for a ride solo) & back at the Kokopelli trail head & riding by 9.15. With a bit of prior research, it looked like Mary’s Loop, Horsethief Bench & Moore Fun trails were the ones to string together for a good introduction to the trails proper. More showers & then thunderstorms were forecast so I was keeping one eye on the trails & scenery & the other on the large black clouds gathering ominously over the river.

Mary’s Loop started off with a nice climb up on to the bluffs above the river. It wasn’t a particularly difficult climb – in fact this was quite good, as this was to be my longest ride of the season so far. In spite of the gloom the views aren’t for scoffing at.

After riding the bluff for a while, Horsethief Bench loop cuts off down to the left – that’s it down there.

The route down (dropping 25m in a hurry) was rideable to start with & then the rocks just got too big for me.

Yes, there’s a trail down there; no, I couldn’t ride it all.

This side loop was OK & there were enough rocks to make things interesting & technically challenging in a few places. In some of the shadier parts, the sand was still a little wet from yesterday’s rain. I was pleased with some of the trickier step-ups & -downs I was able to clear.

While I remember, I’m going to digress to comment on my switch to tubeless. I went for a standard Stan’s setup a month or two ago. I had a few problems getting the rear standard Maxxis Crossmark to seal, but mainly because I was trying to do it with a floor pump (it’s a lot easier to get the bead to seat with a compressor). The front UST Kenda Nevegal went on easily with just a floor pump. Now that the tires are reliably inflated, I’m loving them. On all these rocks I’ve been running a much lower pressure that tubes would allow. In the last few days there have been five or six incidences where I’ve hit rocks that I’m sure would have given a tube a snakebite puncture. Actually, after my first rocky ride at Tabeguache I went to inflate my tires a bit & found they were running at 18 psi!

After the Horsebench, unfortunately I had to go back up all those rocks – nothing like a bit of hike-a-bike – to get back on to Mary’s Loop to ride around the bluffs once more on more double-track. All the while, the clouds were getting closer but I still wasn’t wet.

Eventually the trail turned away from the river & climbed up for a while to the start of Moore Fun. This was the option to get back to the car with the most singletrack & least road, so it was a no-brainer to take it. It turned out it was a double black, the first part was where a fair chunk of my six hundred metres of climbing for the day came from. Finally there was a decent amount of singletrack (as opposed to wide double-track), & it was rocky – there were plenty of bits where I had to walk. The rain had started by now (I’d got off remarkably well so far) & any dirt/sand quickly turned to awful mud that just stuck to everything. The views of the big black cloud were pretty good from the top.

The trail marking on the way down left a bit to be desired & I had a map & a GPS to follow (marking at intersections was great, but on the rocks in the wet it was sometimes hard to find the trail)! But I made it down off the ridge & in to more of that nasty sticky stuff. I made it back to the car (2.40 & about 23km) & was disappointed to see that there was no hose at the trailhead – it seems a bit odd (Have you got a hose? I need to get wet asep), considering how poorly the trails stand up to just a little bit of rain.

Great to get out for a decent ride & I didn’t get too wet. Perhaps it because was I missed out on the views in the sun, but I can’t quite see what all the fuss is about at Fruita – I’ve ridden much better trails with better views all around the place. None of the trails seemed to flow particularly well & quite a bit of the ride was spent on relatively tame double-track. Maybe I’ll find something more interesting on Saturday (when we also mean to check out the Mike the Headless Chicken festival as the story behind it is interesting).

We had a great Nepalese meal downtown Grand Junction this evening – I even managed to remember my huge Nepalese vocabulary of four words & it brought back many great memories, I must get back to Nepal one day. Best statues of the day are Chrome on the Range II:

and a single-speeding dinosaur.

Biking to go places, going places to bike.