Spring on the Columbia

Spring on the Columbia, originally uploaded by Wooly Biker.

If a guy or a gal was to take his kids backpacking, outrigger paddling, downhill or xc skiing, fly fishing, mountain biking or anything else that ended with an "ing" and involved fresh air and human power, you would think those kids would have a pretty good chance of growing up healthy and strong with a good appreciation of Gods Green Earth. At least that is my plan, and I'm sticking to it. I'm not sure if it will work or not, but it can't hurt. The alternative is to let them decide what to do with their time, and risk loosing them to the world of i-pods, cell phones, computer games and television.

I think an appreciation of nature also helps to curb materialism, because you are better able to realize that God already gave us just about everything we really need. Sure, we might need (want) to buy a different fly rod or a new bike every now and then, but we don't need a fancy SUV with 20" rims to get to the trailhead. And do we really need that 56" plasma tv to watch Myth Busters?

Maybe it's just me, but the older I get, the farther I want to be from our materialistic society. Just give me my family, a canoe, and a warm spring day, and I am a rich man.

Momento

Momento , originally uploaded by Wooly Biker.

I have a theory about how some accidents happen. Let's just call it the "Parking Lot Theory". I've seen it over and over again, and it happened to me in Moab. This theory involves only sports activities at this point, but it may expand to other more noble endeavors if I can think of any. Let me explain:

We arrived in Moab after driving 17 hours through the night, and I slept only about an hour and a half. No big deal, we eat breakfast and head off to the slickrock. Ride several hours, eat, sleep, and repeat for 5 days. We rode the toughest trails we could find and had many great crashes along the way. But these were all accidents that we knew were coming, such as trying the desperate step-ups or technical boulder field moves. You knew you were either going to make it or going to crash. These kind of crashes are somewhat expected, and you can prepare for them. These are not "PLT" crashes. These are just crashes. They happen.

A PLT, or Parking Lot Theory crash is when you get safely back to the parking lot after the most heinous trail you can imagine and THEN crash, literally 20 feet from the waiting cooler of Polygamy Porter (you can't have just one). My crash is defined as a PLT because I was figuratively back in the parking lot, if not literally. The big rides were all over, and we were all packed up and ready to head home early the next morning. But just down the street a half block was a BMX jump track that we had sessioned the previous day, with pretty good results for a bunch of old guys. I wanted one more run at it before we left, so I strapped on my helmet (thank goodness), threw on the oh-so-cool messenger style knickers and my favorite skunk t-shirt and off I went.

What happened next is evident from the photo. I wasn't focused any longer. I had let my guard down. I was just goofing off and having fun. The trip was over, the hard riding was done, this was just childs play.
Well it caught up with me huh? I sprinted my middle ring for all it was worth for that one last jump, and just didn't execute the move. Didn't focus on the one thing that I needed to focus on, which was compressing the fork into the face of the jump so the front end would lift gracefully over the jump. Instead of a graceful jump I did more of a slow front flip, landing on my face and left shoulder from probably 8 feet. I bet my head was even higher than that before I started to flip.

Anyway, the outcome was unconsciousness, a broken helmet, a dented frame, a trip to the ER on a backboard, a cat-scan of my head and of course a concussion. Besides the obvious rashes and bruises, I lost my sense of balance for 2 weeks. I hit my head so hard that my ear canals were damaged, and I would get these shocking moments of dizziness if I moved my head too far in the wrong direction. The first time this happened was not until two days after the accident. I bent over to pick something up and it felt like the ground had just been ripped out from under me. In fact I thought it must be an earthquake because everything was moving violently back and forth. At night, if I moved the wrong way when sleeping, I would get terrible spins. I could feel my eyes jerking to one side over and over and I couldn't stop it. Fortunately this has corrected itself, and I'm pretty much back to normal.

I've been witness to several PLT accidents, including friends and family. Now it caught up with me. Maybe I'll have to elevate it from just a theory to a hypothesis, or whatever it is that comes after a theory. I'll have to ask a physics professor or some smart person about that someday.

Amassa Back

Amassa Back, originally uploaded by Wooly Biker.

The view from the top of an unknown and unnamed knob that I hiked up to while my friends were lazing in the sun far below. This is about the end of the regular marked route on Amassa back. Our trail actually crossed through the middle of this picture. We went fo a couple mile or so past this point but got stuck in a maze of deadend plateaus.

Life in the desert

Life in the desert is harsh, originally uploaded by Wooly Biker.

One of the many interesting sights along the way to Amassa Back was this skeleton of some animal. We rode to the end of the regular marked route, and then proceeded to wander around for a couple of hours looking for the rest of the ride, which never materialized. What we did ride was fantastic.

Porcupine Rim

Porcupine Rim, originally uploaded by Wooly Biker.

The world famous Porcupine Rim Trail is justifiably world famous. The climb is technical in places but not a grunt, the views from the top are vast, the singletrack is awe inspiring. This ride is on the top of almost everyones Moab list. However, this is not my favorite ride in Moab for a few reasons.

The long double track descent is bone jarring, even on a nice dual suspension bike like my 5" travel Heckler. The single track section, while rideable, also has a lot of off camber rock ledges and step ups that interupt the flow of the ride. I guess that's the thing really, this ride does not flow from end to end. It feels like two or three rides all mixed into one. Maybe a downhill bike would smooth out some of
the "porcupine" like spines of rock that make up this ridgeline, but who really wants to pedal an 8" travel bike that far?

It's a really great ride, don't get me wrong, it's just not my favorite. So what is my favorite ride? The xxxx xxxx Trail, specifically the mountain bike only route, which I'm certain most people don't ever find. I call it the Blue Line, because it is faintly marked with little 2" long squirts of pale blue paint for you to find just when you start to get lost again. The trail alternates between slickrock slab, step down ledges, blind roll-overs, singletrack, and technical sections that are just tough enough to make you question whether or not you should do it. After awhile, we started to trust the Blue Line builder enough that we would go into a section without stopping to preview it first. This trail is simply magical in every way. It has the views, the tough stuff, the smooth stuff, the red dirt, the route finding, and the flow. It is a long ride (pack a real lunch), and it takes some effort to get to the trailhead. Not a ton of effort, but enough that most people won't ever do it. In fact, we never saw another bike rider on this trail.

I'm keeping the name of this trail off the blog simply out of respect for the builder, the locals, and anyone else willing to go try and find it. This ride offers solitude in a place that is teeming with bikes, jeeps and motorbikes, so why not keep it that way? Not that my blog will ever cause hords of people to go search for a trail in Moab, but there are enough clues here that if you really want to find it, you can.