Category Archives: national park

bikes, GPS, MTB, national park, roadtrip, travel, USA

Grand Canyon North Rim & Rainbow Rim Trail

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It was with great pleasure that I awoke to a lack of sound from the wind chimes – things were a lot calmer than yesterday.  We left town by 8.30 & headed west back into Utah briefly before dropping south back into Arizona & towards Grand Canyon North Rim.  Once we hit the small town of Fredonia I was back on roads I’d traveled before – the first time since Bragg Creek almost four weeks ago.  After a brief stop at Jacob Lake for me to get a forest road map & Valerie to buy more souvenirs, we were driving through the Kaibab Meadows.  It must have been cold there last night – there was still some fresh snow that hadn’t melted just yet, seems I can’t get away from the stuff.  With the long winter, all the spring growth was not completed & the meadows weren’t quite as pretty as last time I drove through – but they are a still a magnificent sight.

We didn’t stop too long at the rim, maybe an hour, to get a good view of various parts of the canyon.  The sky was wonderfully clear all the way down to the horizon & this enabled us to see some of the mountains a hundred-odd kilometres away – I don’t think I saw these last time.

We drove out of the park & soon after turned onto Forest Development Road 22, continuing on for about 22 miles & 40 minutes to the Parissawampitts (I don’t know how to pronounce it either – I prefer Paris-saw-armpits) trailhead so I could get a ride in.

I was most excited to be riding along the rim of the Grand Canyon on good singletrack.  The trail in its entirety is almost 29 km to the Timp trailhead.  It forms a sawtooth route (roughly) to keep on a reasonably similar level by following all the little side canyons in & out.

This was a great fun trail – I would grade the trail itself as beginner-intermediate level, but at the higher end of that due to the length & elevation (all between 2260 & 2270 m).  The start of it is rocky, but later on it’s mostly dirt.  You do spend a lot of time in the trees, but every so often you get a glimpse of the canyon & then all of a sudden there is a magnificent view that you can be sure not many other people ever see.  I had heard that there’s not much climbing, but there is a bit (apparently I did almost 600 metres all up) – but it’s all pretty easy (middle ring the whole time, & mostly in a small cog).  Despite having been up in the mountains for over a year, I was a just little shorter of breath than normal.  The last eight or so kilometres is great fun as it only has one decent climb in it & you can let it rip on the flatter sections.  I saw quite a few deer, some beautiful birds & flutterbys (the bright yellow ones were the best) & something that may have been a marmot. Only hitch of the ride was losing the seal on my tubeless rear tire – a bit of rest while I had to go back to a tube.  Unfortunately the smog rolled in from California & obscured the view a little in haze.

bikes, GPS, history, MTB, national park, roadtrip, travel, USA

Mesa Verde & Phil’s World

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Mesa Verde came recommended by Alex as a completely different national park experience. She wasn’t wrong. Only about ten minutes’ drive east of Cortez, we started a beautiful drive up to the top of Mesa Verde. The Visitor Centre was a good half an hour in to the park, we stopped here to purchase tickets for two ranger guided tours around some of the cliff dwellings. For Mesa Verde was home to a large number of dwellings (some 4700 separate sites have been found so far) since the sixth century. On the top of mesa (which is not actually a proper mesa due to its sloping sides) we were up around 7000ft/2500m – what possessed ancients to come & live up here is beyond me. Still, it must have been sustainable, as they stayed until about 1300 & then packed up & left leaving a lot of houses.

Our first tour was of the Cliff Palaces – not really a palace as they had no king or queen, but about 450 little dwellings perched in an alcove near the top of the cliff. We had to climb down some pretty steep steps (some metal, some set in to the cliff side) & gradually got to walk across the front of the area while listening to the ranger explain it all. I’ve absorbed a lot of history today, so don’t feel like repeating much of it here. There was a lot of grain storage areas, little houses for families, & sunken circular family meeting areas. It was pretty neat seeing the progression of their building skills from the bottom (early) layers to the top (later) layers – there were a lot of square edges & some of the towers went right up to the alcove ceiling.

After lunch was the more difficult drop down to Balcony House on another ranger-guided tour. I have no idea how the original residents got in – maybe they had a massive ladder too.

This area was smaller than the Cliff Palaces, but no less intruiging. There were a lot of balconies (in various states of disrepair) & some of the tiny rooms were still intact.

To get out, we had to crawl twelve feet or so through a skinny little tunnel on our hands & knees & then up another ladder & scramble up a steep rockface – good fun. Above the tunnel on the internal side, there were various staggered platforms for defending the area by throwing things at invaders (cows, ducks & so on I expect – prompting cries of “crawl away, crawl away!”).

We spent another hour or so driving around other sites before heading back to Cortez rather historied-out.

But that didn’t matter as I had another ride planned. A rather nice mountain-bike guide I was chatting to during the walk down from Delicate Arch on Sunday insisted that I ride Phil’s World if I was going to Cortez. I duly obliged – the trail is only four miles east of town. It was fantastic. I did all of the loop options, save one last five mile one at the end as sunset was fast approaching. It’s all purpose built singletrack (unlike most of what I’ve ridden recently) & it’s a super smooth surface, with the odd rock feature thrown in. I managed 24 km in an hour & forty & it was all at a beginner-intermediate level. There was nothing technically challenging in it for an intermediate rider like me – it was just plain fun, flowing trail. It was all easily done in the middle ring – as they didn’t have a lot of altitude gain to play with. I was surprised when I checked that I was over 2000m – but my lungs weren’t screaming, so that was good. Dusk was a great time to ride – I didn’t see another rider on my trail – the light was good & I was joined by a lot of singing birds, lizards & some big jack-rabbits (they have ridiculously large ears – to help cope with the heat). A very pleasant evening ride – if I had this on my doorstep, I’d feel like Postman Pat (a really happy man). I got my trip up to 32 km with a nice big-ring ride into town towards a blustery wind & the setting sun.

Rib Cage was the best section of the loop – many, many steep downs followed by short ups & then little jumps with nice landings at the top. The trail was in fact so smooth & well made that I didn’t notice my rear shock was locked out fully until the end of the ride – oops.

bikes, GPS, MTB, national park, roadtrip, travel, USA

Porcupine Rim & Needles

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Up much too early to fit yesterday’s rained off ride in before leaving Moab & heading down towards the Four Corners area. Porcupine Rim is another one of those classic Moab rides that one must do – apparently. I was awake a lot of the night with nervous excitement – I probably shouldn’t read too many reviews of trails that are beside the top of big cliffs & really technical. I managed to get Valerie out of bed to shuttle me up past the Slickrock Trail & further to LPS – an extra bit of singletrack that cuts out a three mile climb. The drive up in the dawn was absolutely beautiful & the road was quite interesting. As I’d only heard about LPS the day before & there wasn’t anything to be readily found on the interwebs as to the trailhead (well not all that accurate) it was a bit of a mission. We gave up eventually, but then met a F-150 loaded with six bikes coming the other way – these guys showed me where to go. (For the record, the LPS trail head is directly to the left [NE-ish] of the cattle-guard that is the boundary of the state park & is signposted about five metres back from the road.)

It was a perfect morning for a ride, crisp & clear. Hitting the singletrack it was level & through trees for a while & eventually came out near the canyon edge. There was a few steep tight switchbacks that I walked for a little while, & then it was back to quite manageable trail near the top of the canyon. This wasn’t nearly as bad as I had been led to believe – mostly the trail went towards the edge & then turned back, you were never riding along the side of the big precipice.  The views out to the east were good, but I’ve been a little spoilt the last few days so I wasn’t overawed.

Heck, what am I saying?  Look at that

When LPS joined back with Porcupine Rim proper, it was on to rocky doubletrack that descended gradually.  Most of this was rideable for someone of my intermediate skill level – was glad to have a soft-tail, that’s for sure.  I managed to bash my rear derailleur on a rock & lost most of my rear gear options – but nothing looked damaged, so I just pulled the cable through a bit more & that seemed to solve the problem.  At least I got ten minutes of strength building in pushing too-high gears while I worked that out.

Like that shirt, Chip?

Most of the rest of the trail was more of the same rocky doubletrack that was quite manageable.  Only when the final descent to the Colorado River began did some singletrack appear.  This was for the most part rideable by me, with the odd bit of walking – I’m still conscious of not wrecking myself with only three weeks of a three month riding vacation over.   The final plunge to the Colorado looked like it would be steep & gnarly, but it wasn’t really.  I got through the 21 km distance & 1000m descent in about ninety minutes of riding time with no real risk & not really pushing it.  All that was left was a pleasant big-ring push back to the motel at the other end of town.  I wasn’t overwhelmed – I’m still rating the Magnificent 7 ride I did two days ago as my Moab riding highlight, for scenery & singletrack.

Packed up, we headed south to check out another part of Canyonlands NP – the Needles area. The drive between the highway & the park was through a neat canyon with some good sights.

In the Needles area, there wasn’t a lot you could see of the needles without a big hike or 4WD. Not quite as spectacular as some of the other grand vistas we have seen, the area nonetheless had its own charms. The variety & breadth of the mushroom formations was bewildering & we enjoyed a few short hikes around looking at these.

The La Sal mountains were also mostly visible (they looked stunning this morning when I was out riding) & Island in the Sky (where we had been yesterday in a thunderstorm) was also clear on the horizon.

Occasionally we could catch a glimpse of some needles off in the distance.

We spent the rest of our time looking at old cowboy camps & then grain storage that people eons ago had built. With only a couple hours’ drive to Cortez (back in Colorado), it’s been a relaxing evening planning tomorrow’s trip to Mesa Verde NP & a bit of riding – I hear good things about the riding here in Cortez & nearby Dolores.

national park, roadtrip, travel, USA

Canyonlands – Island in the Sky

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Awoken by quite a bit of rain at five o’clock, I was kept awake as it fell for a couple of hours.  Morning riding plans of Porcupine Rim were consequently forgone & we eventually headed north out of Moab to the northern part of Canyonlands NP.  The park is separated in to three distinct areas by the confluence of the Colorado & Green Rivers.  Island in the Sky is the north section – a large mesa that lets you look down on canyons below.  We drove around the twenty-odd miles of road stopping at various view points & doing some small (best part of an hour).

The first area we spent any time was overlooking Upheavel Dome – set in a crater about two miles across, there is still speculation where this came from.  Was it from salt rising up from under the ground or a meteor crashing to earth?  Either way, the green colour was neat to look at.

We then waited around at the viewpoint over the Green River as the mist was taking a while to clear.

I amused myself by looking over the edge of the cliff & the interesting patterns on the floor.

Eventually, the clouds moved enough to shed some light on most of the canyon below. It wasn’t too hard waiting, even in the mist it was one of the best views we’ve had yet (as evidenced by the compulsion to keep taking photos before sitting back & just admiring it all).

A little further down the road, things still looked insanely big.

At the east end of the road, we had good views down to the Colorado & the White Rim Canyon surrounding it (there is a 100 mile 4WD/MTB trail that follows the canyon around – that would be an epic ride).

We took a walk to the end of the point & watched as storm clouds rolled in – on the way back we got decidedley hailed on before getting caught up in another (albeit much closer) impressive thunder & lightning show.