Trip Report: White Rim Trail @ Canyonlands NP

Lonnie Utah

My wife and I got a last minute invite to go on a multi day 80+ mile MTB ride on the White Rim Trail trough Canyonlands National park. This was a vehicle supported ride with about 15 folks. We met bright and early on Saturday May 20th at the Canyonlands visitor center. If you're ever in Utah, this is a great ride. You can purchase a spot with a comercial company for about $500. Since we put this together on our own, our cost was much lower ($100-150?)

View of Shafer Canyon from Visitors Center


Laure and Scott


After packing the gear, we shuttled a couple of cars to the top of the Horsethief trail on the western edge of the park (about a 50 mile round trip). After a quick safety briefing, we headed down through the steep switchbacks of the Shafer Trail. Sorry we have no photos of this, we were all to stoked to be riding to take any pics. The thing I noticed as we descended was a marked increase in temps. I think it was 90-95 Deg that day. There virtually no shade once you get below the level of the rim. Brutal.



Our first stop of the trip (minus a quick break to fix a flat) was lunch at Mussleman Arch. It's about a 6' sandstone arch 300 or so feet off the ground. I'm sure there have been countless photos taken on it. We talked one of the member of our party out of doing the handstand photo.



We rolled on towards Gooseberry, our first campsite, about 30 miles from the start of the trail. Me, Laure and Himie (Jamie), a former Alta instructor we're riding together late in the after noon, when he said, "Ya see that point up there, that's where we ran out of water last year". Not 2 mins after that, My camelbak went dry. I still had a bottle on my bike, so I wasn't too worried. Almost at the same time, Jamie went dry, then Laure. We decided we should better hold up and wait on the SAG vehicle. I wanted to see what was around the corner, so I rolled another 50' and there were 3 more of our party stopped on the side of the trail. No or low agua. We decided that point of the trail was the limit of a 3 liter camelbak.



After a 10-15 min wait for our support vehicle, we got moving again. 30 mins later we rolled into our campsite. There was a group across the way from us. We were surprised that they had no support vehicles. A few of us talked to the and found out they had run out of water too, except they were completely out. They were riding counter clockwise and it was their last night camping. Their two SAG vehicles had driven into Moab to get water. 30 miles to the trail head over unimproved dirt and 4WD roads, 40 miles into town on pavement and back. About 9:30 they made it back to camp. Everything worked out, but the desert is a dangerous place to miscalculate things.

Since we were basically car camping, we knew that things weren't going to be THAT rough. At the start of the trip, Laure and I basically only knew 2 folks. To our pleasant surprise, we found out that we had not 1 but 2 professional chef's along on the trip. Dinner that night was fresh salmon buritos with a dill and cilantro yogurt sauce, black beans and rice. Yummy.





After dinner we watched the sun set. I was in charge of the entertainment and one of the highlights of the evening was "name that tune" over beers with my MP3 player. Even though I had gotten up at 5:30 (to excited to sleep) I was one of the last ones to bed. I listened to the end of the nascar race on XM satellite radio. My guy finised 2nd so I was pretty happy. As I crawled into my tent, I peered up into the sky. The moon was not up yet and I don't ever think I seen so many stars. I've spent a fair amount of time outdoors, but there was almost zero light pollution where we were. I woke Laure up and we laid there for awhile just looking up at the sky. The end of a long satisfying day and part one of the story. More to come over the next few days....

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Lonnie Utah

Day 2. Gooseberry to Candlestick. I think day 2 was my favorite day. I'm an early riser so I got up early to take a few sunrise pictures.

Sunrise over the San Juans




The ride was a relatively easy 25 miles, mostly downhill, with the short but steep climb "Murphy's Hogback" thrown in about 1/2 way for good measure. Most of the road surface along the trail is what I'd call "unimproved dirt road" with a few sections of slickrock, silt, sand, gravel, etc thrown in along the way to keep things interesting. Only a few spots are what I'd call really technical. The trail got really close to the canyon rim in a few places on day 2 and as a result, there were some great views along the way. I thought the best was "Monument Basin" with it's long views. I had gotten a bit behind on hydration the day before so we skipped the ride out to whitecrack. We'll save that one for another trip.

Views along the way

Looking towards Momument Basin and the Needles District


Riding the top of Momument basin


Taking a break to refilling the Camelbak


Grinding up Murphys.



Wheelin' up Murphys


After grinding up Murphys Hogback, we stopped at the top for lunch. Refueled by pasta salad and chips we were just about ready to roll when somebody said "Don't forget desert!" They dove in to the cooler, and pulled out a bunch of popsickles. Ahhh, the miracle of dry ice. SWEET! We all had 1 or 2. Unfortunately, given the heat (which Laure has told me after reading part one was the upper 90's as opposed to the lower 90's) all of our dry ice had evaporated. We were forced with a choice. Finish the 10-12 remaining popsickles we had left, or let them melt. I'm not sure on the details, but there were a couple of folks at the top of Murphy's that some of the folks in our group knew (the had come the other way). So we walked over and "forced" them to have a couple as well. Just about that time, another group of riders made it to the top of Murphy's from the west.

I looked at one of the guys and said "Hey you guys aren't hot, are you?"
"Hell yes", said the guy with a bit of a "Are you stupid?" look.
"Would you like a popsickle?"
"NO, F'ING WAY!?!?, Are you kidding me?"
"Nope. Dig in. Just thank the lady with the redhair and pigtails when you see her."
Just about everyone in their group got one. They were stoked for a little bit of what Appalachian trail though hikers call "Trail Magic".



We jumped on our bikes after lunch and started the decent down the west side of Murphy's. I was going pretty good when hit a little rock and hear "POP! Pssssssttttttt." Flat. No biggie. I was in front of a lot of the party. I pulled over and started to change the flat. One by one, they scooted by me, with "Are you OK?" "Yeah, just a flat." After everyone but the last SAG wagon was past, I went to put the wheel back on, and I realized that it was more than just a flat. I had pulled the rear pad for the disk brake off. After about 10-15 mins of fumbling around, I managed to 1). figure out how disk brake pads are installed, and 2). How to fix them (with the help of a steak knife out of the back of the SAG wagon). Since I was so far behind, I turned on the after burners to catch back up to the group. Most likely that was a bad move, given my previous state of hydration and the heat. I was feeling pretty bad by the time I rolled into Candlestick. As a result, I missed the side trip of hiking the cool little slot canyon just up the road. Live and learn.

Diner that night was a wonderful beef stir fry. When it came off the stove we looked at it and said, "We'll never eat all of that". We were wrong. Since we lost our dry ice, the ice cream they had planed on turned to a nice milky soup. After dinner we walked out to the edge of the Green River and watched the sun go down over the Maze district of the park. Off to the SW we could see stormclouds starting to blow in. Unfortunately, those clouds cover up most of the stars on night #2. I drifted off to sleep to the sound of wind blowing across the desert.

Sunset over the green river

__________________
Cheap, Strong and Light.
Pick any Two.

triguy98

Dang man, that looks like one FUN trip. I've only had the pleasure of riding Moab once and only got to spend two hours in Canyonlands. I have been itching to go back for sure. I hope I get to have that much fun.

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Durangodave

Well Done! Great photos. Brings back memories of the same trip a few years back. About 12 people including one who had zero interest in biking. She was delighted to drive the sag vehicle the whole way. Lucky us.

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