I got up early again on Saturday to head over to the Moab Slickrock mountain biking trail. I thought that the motel's continental breakfast would be available at 6:30am, but I was wrong, and the office didn't open until 7:00am. So I dropped off my key and headed off without breakfast.
The trail is in the Sand Flats Recreation Area, and the entrance station was also not manned quite so early in the morning. Unfortunately I didn't have the appropriate change for self registration. OK, if I had to head back to town for change, at least I could also get breakfast.
OK, so trying again at 7:30am I got myself registered and drove to the head of the trail. My bike had survived the week OK in my trunk (even over the washboards), so I got it put together and set out. After about 100 yards I realized that I'd forgotten my sunscreen. OK, back to the car.
OK, headed out once again. This time I got about 400 yards before stopping for a drink... and realizing that I'd left my water in the car. Grn. Hurrying back to the car, I carried a little to much speed into a gully, trying to keep some momentum up the other side. Wham! My bike just couldn't change angle that fast without taking a beating. The mount for my mini-pump has been cracked for a while, so it doesn't hold quite as securely as it should, and the pump went flying. I was surprised that the only consequence of that heavy hit and horrible scraping noise was the pump falling out.
I retrieved the pump, returned to the car, and strapped on my hippack full of water. On the parking lot it became clear that my front wheel was now scraping the brakes once on each revolution, as if it were now out of true. It was clearly wrong, but not too bad, and I almost decided to go back on the trail that way. But I took a couple more turns around and finally realized that I'd actually unseated the tire in one place. Whew; I could fix that.
OK, one more try. It's a good thing I stopped for water. As this
sign made clear, water is highly essential. In fact, the sign had me
thinking about maybe not doing the full 12-mile loop. Well, I'd
decide how I felt as I went.
I didn't bring my camera along. I feel confident in my biking skills
that I figured I probably wouldn't crash, but I didn't want my
camera to be under me if I was wrong. So you'll just have to live
with this picture from the parking area. Almost all of the trail was
along the rock. Although the trail did not go up that rock hill in
the center background, that slope is pretty representative of what
most of the trail did look like.
Near the beginning of the main trail is a 2-mile practice loop is supposed to cover pretty similar terrain conditions. I went around the loop and found that I was doing OK. I have enough bike control that I could handle even the steepest downhills, although I now made sure to keep my speed under control. Many of the uphills were so steep that I had trouble steering with so little weight on the front tire. A few I had to give up and walk up, but I noticed that I wasn't the only one with that problem, so I didn't feel too bad.
Toward the end of the practice loop, although I was still doing OK, I decided that doing the entire 12-mile loop was going to be too hard to remain fun. I figured I'd continue down the main trail a mile or so to what looked like a decent viewpoint, then perhaps turn around and head back. That seemed like it'd give me enough distance to feel like I had fun, but not so much distance to ruin it.
So I continued on, crawling carefully off each rock fin and and slogging in low gear back up the next one. After what seemed like more than enough distance, I didn't hadn't seen any particular viewpoint, nor did it seem like one would be upcoming, so I went ahead and turned around.
Just past the bottom of the first hill my front tire suddenly started hissing loudly. It didn't take long for it to lose essentially all of its air, but fortunately there was a good shady spot just within range.
I was surprised that I had gotten a flat since I hadn't hit anything, and there hadn't been any obvious sharp things on the polished rock. Upon inspection, I realized that it wasn't a puncture at all. The problem was that the valve stem had cracked at the base. My best guess is that the tube hadn't been seated quite straight, perhaps after the hard hit earlier in the morning. Or perhaps the tube was simply old enough that it couldn't stand up to the sustained forces from the hard downhill braking.
The next guy along kindly offered assistance, but I waved him off since I had all the things needed to replace the tube. Or so I thought. Just after he rode off I realized that I'd forgotten one more thing in the car: spare tubes. [Insert swearing here.]
It's bad for the tire to roll on it with an empty tube, so I hitched the front of the bike under my arm and started hiking back to the car. That was pretty tiring, but I soon realized that I could flip the bike over and push it by the handlebars while rolling it on its rear tire. This was reasonably comfortable except that by this time rivers of gross dirty sweat were dripping into my eyes, and I didn't have a hand free to wipe my face.
Looking on the bright side, that final incident ensured that I had no
regrets about leaving Utah and heading home. I had no pangs of, "Gee,
I'd love to stay out here just one more day."
Moab Slickrock
Time: 7:30am - 9:45am
Biking distance: 2.0 miles
Biking ascent: ~400 feet
Hiking distance: 1.2 miles
Biking ascent: ~200 feet
Water: 1.5 liters
