Itching to get back on the trails the next day, I somehow decided on Garden Mesa in the Sovereign Trail system (just further north of town than the MOAB Brand trails) to be my more difficult ride of the day. As I remember, & it seemed a bit odd, I generally decided what I wanted to ride (especially when the weather turned less-favourable later in the stay) and then would see if anyone would ride with me. Generally, someone was keen for a ride (funnily enough) and I was satisfied overall that I was getting to ride enough of what I wanted – considering the expense of the two-week trip. When the variable spring weather rolled in, it was a little harder to get motivated – but I just kept reminding myself that I’ve ridden in a lot worse in England. A bit selfish of me perhaps (single & childless & used to travelling alone will do that), but I hadn’t travelled halfway across the world to not ride decent trail!

That rambling over, Megan joined me for the Garden Mesa loop on the top side of the Sovereign Trail System.  We climbed up what I remember being reasonable technical (there was one big obstacle that promised over-the-bars action & great peril if we forgot it was there on the way back down) towards the top of the strangely coppery green mesa we had seen north of the previous day’s ride.  The climb up was not nearly as bad as both of us were expecting, which is always nice.

Still in trousers

The striking green is not so apparent here, but in parts it looked like someone had taken to spraying the trail with that spray-on grass seed that is used on the side recent cuttings for freeways

On top of the mesa, we found it undulating until we got to the northerly most part of the loop (where we quickly found we did not want to be on the Fallen Peace Officers trail) and headed down a long, sandy in parts, gentle flowing descent in a wash.  There were two such sections on top of the mesa and they were most enjoyable.  We were still finding reasonably technical slow parts that needed careful negotiation/a bit of walking, but they were fine & there was always the vast spaces to look out over.

Before too long we were descending off the mesa

I had to pose like this just to show Chip I haven’t forgotten everything

Family ride for the day was a late afternoon ride up to Klondike Bluffs, well almost – the last little part is in Arches National Park, so we had to lock our bikes up & walk a little to get the views. The ride started off as a brief sandfest along jeep track before turning up the hills and getting more rocky. Before long we were just riding on huge slabs of rock – great for traction; it was a gentle climb that promised to be fun while descending.

It was not long until we had safely stowed our bikes – but being so late in the day, there was no one around to take them. On the climb up we saw a lot of people on ATVs coming down – the size of the people prompted much cause & effect debate. Finn with his new found freedom from the Tout clambered up & over everything up to the viewpoint.

The bluffs and extensive views were indeed impressive, as was the serenity (I think he just liked the word).  Various portraits were attempted in the light of the setting sun.  One of the four people involved managed to ruin each of them, so I’ll just post the one where I look like a tool.

Back on the bikes, it wasn’t long until I was enjoying hauling down the big smooth rocks.  Not many pictures here – suffice to say, it was fun.

With my bike picked up, we were off to find some relatively easy singletrack to test gear on – also, I was a bit rusty as far as singletrack went.  Alex & Megan had recently (a week before) received a Tout Terrain Singletrack trailer for towing Finn on singletrack.  With it being single-wheeled, cushioned by Rock Shox & quite narrow it enables towing a child on rougher terrain than a lot of/all other trailers.  Finn wasn’t too happy usually to be put in it, but once the bike was moving he was content to look around at everything and occasionally go to sleep.  Anyway, this new acquisition needed proving and our bikes needed a shake-down – so we headed to the family friendly MOAB Brand trails.

With so much riding over ten days, hopefully my ride reports won’t be as verbose usual as all the riding bliss blends into one big happy memory; rather they should be photo heavy as the scenery was spectacular and there were others carrying cameras for a change.  Credit for most photos of me will go to Megan or Alex, as will some of the better landscapes – as it’s rare for me to find good riding photos of me & their panoramas are better than mine.

Alex getting used to the Tout

We pottered around a bit on the pretty easy trails enjoying being out on bikes in Moab (!) for a few hours.

Follow the line, there’s plenty of rock to get lost on. Clearly not that warm, as I wasn’t regretting the bike trousers

After our first little ride, it was off to set up camp above town in the Sand Flats area (close to the world famous Slickrock trail). As the cold weather seemed to have scared everyone else off too, we had our pick of the campsites. We settled on the first one we looked at – it had grand views of the La Sal mountains, a big rock for Finn to climb and was set well back from the parking lot. I was greeted with resounding laughter as I carried two suitcases in across all the sand – I maintain it was the most practical option of getting so much riding paraphernalia across the world.

It didn’t look too bad at night either – not Montana, I know, but big skies all the same

I rather optimistically declared, not factoring in spring weather, my intention to ride twice each of the ten days – one family ride, one harder/more technical. With not much of the day left, Alex & I headed to the base of the ridge on the other side of town ride Pipe Dream (Megan had scoped this out for us the day before, itching to go for a run after days cooped up in the car from Alberta). Close to town, it’s a relatively short trail that packs in a lot of up & down with plenty of technical challenges – mostly involving balancing. I was pretty happy to only dab (put my foot down while trying to ride) once.

Across the south end of town to the La Sals

Alex trying not to sneeze too hard, lest it all comes down