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.