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ilanaramaWe barely got home from our eclipse roadtrip when it was time for our van to hit the road again. The White Rim trip we do most years was scheduled for just a few days after our return to Durango, so it was a whirlwind of shopping, food prep, laundry, refilling the water tanks, and adjusting the bikes before heading to Moab.
We've done the White Rim so many times now (and posted photos here, not every time but many) so here are just a few highlights:
As we had a relatively short and mostly downhill first day, some of us took the side trip up Taylor Canyon to see the Moses and Zeus formations. This was something Britt and I hadn't done since one of our White Rim trips from Boulder in the 1990s!
On our second day we hiked out to the Fort Bottom ruin, which we do pretty much every White Rim trip. I got this nice shot of the narrow section on the way back to the White Rim road:
The clouds you see there were the harbinger of some wind and rain that afternoon, but after we got to our camp at the Murphy Hogback the clouds began to clear and it was a beautiful, though chilly, evening:
On the last day, I made Britt take a picture in the same place he took the photo I made into my biking icon (*points up*) - though we went in the opposite direction this trip! Also the bike is newer! And the rider is older :-)
Later that day we got lucky, and saw wildlife!
Overall it was (as usual) a great trip, though it's getting harder as I'm getting older. I drove more than I usually do, and even just rode in the van during the worst of the wind and rain. Out of the 100 miles of this route, I only biked about half of it. (By contrast, in 2019 I rode a little more than 85 miles.)
Then it was time to head for the second part of this Moab trip, more biking and hiking (and photos). After lunch at the top of the Shafer Trail, we drove to the Mineral Bottom parking lot to unload our friends' gear and bikes at their truck. Then, while everyone else drove back to Durango, we drove down the Mineral Bottom road a short distance and turned off into the dispersed camping area to find a private place to shower off four days of sweat. Then we drove our clean selves to the Horsethief Campground - we'd never actually stayed in one of the outlying National Forest campgrounds! - to meet our friends Frank and June, who had parked their camper in the spot we could share but were out on their own bike ride.
The next morning we drove out to the Klonzo trail system, a new set of trails for us. We had specifically picked them because they tended to the easy and intermediate, and after the White Rim we wanted something mellow - and they were super fun! The Dunestone trail especially was a biking playground. Alas this photo doesn't really capture how cool it was, but trust me, highly recommended.
Our friends went back in to Moab and then drove up the Colorado River to the Dewey Bridge campground, where a group of people from the Durango UU had a group campsite for the weekend; we're not in the UU but have a lot of friends who are, so they kindly let us join them. First, though, we drove further out the Klonzo access road to find a good place to shower. We noticed a sign for dinosaur tracks, so on the way back out to join our friends to camp for the night, we stopped to check it out. Here are some of the tracks, Britt's flip-flop for scale:
The next morning, the group split up to do different things. Britt and I decided to bike a section of the Kokopelli Trail, starting just on the other side of the Dewey Bridge. This section is about 10 miles of 4WD road, making a big loop in the cliffs and then coming back to the highway, so we could ride the 4WD road and then return to the campsite on the road going mostly downhill.
As soon as we turned off the paved road, things started getting challenging; the 4WD road was very steep and rocky. Worse, we quickly caught up with a huge line of 4WD vehicles (I want to say, a couple dozen?) mostly stopped in the road as they waited for the leaders to negotiate a particularly difficult spot. Several men stood on the rocks giving directions; it turned out it was a group of rental Broncos on a guided tour. We should have taken a picture of the craziness but we wanted to get past them as quickly as we could, so we rode what we could and carried our bikes around them where we couldn't. This really doesn't show it well, but here we are looking back and you can see the lead cars in the middle of the photo:
Once we got past the Bronco congo line, the road got mostly more reasonable (with occasional sections of yikes), and the scenery was much nicer without the vehicles in it.
Here's one of the trickier bits - I actually made it up to the shelf at the top but there was no way I would be able to jump that ledge even if I wasn't exhausted from climbing this section:
It was a long and tough day, but a great one. The Broncos didn't catch up with us (although they may have turned off on another road as there is a whole network of 4WD roads across these rocks) but we did see a couple other groups of off-roaders, and a few other bicyclists as well.
The next morning we headed home via Castleton Tower, a rather impressive pillar which has many climbing routes on it, including one that's in the book Fifty Classic Climbs of North America. The trail starts up a gully...
...with a rather physical exit...
...and then after dropping into a wash and climbing out again, zigzags up to the rocks.
Some of the sandstone has calcite layered on top:
Finally we got to the ridge between the two monuments, and took pictures of each other against the background of the spire on one side, and the cliffy monument on the other:
(There are rock climbers on both!)
Then we hiked back down, had lunch in the van, and then continued along the back way across the west of the La Sal mountains, a scenic route to start us on the way home. But we had to look back to take one more photo:
We've done the White Rim so many times now (and posted photos here, not every time but many) so here are just a few highlights:
As we had a relatively short and mostly downhill first day, some of us took the side trip up Taylor Canyon to see the Moses and Zeus formations. This was something Britt and I hadn't done since one of our White Rim trips from Boulder in the 1990s!
On our second day we hiked out to the Fort Bottom ruin, which we do pretty much every White Rim trip. I got this nice shot of the narrow section on the way back to the White Rim road:
The clouds you see there were the harbinger of some wind and rain that afternoon, but after we got to our camp at the Murphy Hogback the clouds began to clear and it was a beautiful, though chilly, evening:
On the last day, I made Britt take a picture in the same place he took the photo I made into my biking icon (*points up*) - though we went in the opposite direction this trip! Also the bike is newer! And the rider is older :-)
Later that day we got lucky, and saw wildlife!
Overall it was (as usual) a great trip, though it's getting harder as I'm getting older. I drove more than I usually do, and even just rode in the van during the worst of the wind and rain. Out of the 100 miles of this route, I only biked about half of it. (By contrast, in 2019 I rode a little more than 85 miles.)
Then it was time to head for the second part of this Moab trip, more biking and hiking (and photos). After lunch at the top of the Shafer Trail, we drove to the Mineral Bottom parking lot to unload our friends' gear and bikes at their truck. Then, while everyone else drove back to Durango, we drove down the Mineral Bottom road a short distance and turned off into the dispersed camping area to find a private place to shower off four days of sweat. Then we drove our clean selves to the Horsethief Campground - we'd never actually stayed in one of the outlying National Forest campgrounds! - to meet our friends Frank and June, who had parked their camper in the spot we could share but were out on their own bike ride.
The next morning we drove out to the Klonzo trail system, a new set of trails for us. We had specifically picked them because they tended to the easy and intermediate, and after the White Rim we wanted something mellow - and they were super fun! The Dunestone trail especially was a biking playground. Alas this photo doesn't really capture how cool it was, but trust me, highly recommended.
Our friends went back in to Moab and then drove up the Colorado River to the Dewey Bridge campground, where a group of people from the Durango UU had a group campsite for the weekend; we're not in the UU but have a lot of friends who are, so they kindly let us join them. First, though, we drove further out the Klonzo access road to find a good place to shower. We noticed a sign for dinosaur tracks, so on the way back out to join our friends to camp for the night, we stopped to check it out. Here are some of the tracks, Britt's flip-flop for scale:
The next morning, the group split up to do different things. Britt and I decided to bike a section of the Kokopelli Trail, starting just on the other side of the Dewey Bridge. This section is about 10 miles of 4WD road, making a big loop in the cliffs and then coming back to the highway, so we could ride the 4WD road and then return to the campsite on the road going mostly downhill.
As soon as we turned off the paved road, things started getting challenging; the 4WD road was very steep and rocky. Worse, we quickly caught up with a huge line of 4WD vehicles (I want to say, a couple dozen?) mostly stopped in the road as they waited for the leaders to negotiate a particularly difficult spot. Several men stood on the rocks giving directions; it turned out it was a group of rental Broncos on a guided tour. We should have taken a picture of the craziness but we wanted to get past them as quickly as we could, so we rode what we could and carried our bikes around them where we couldn't. This really doesn't show it well, but here we are looking back and you can see the lead cars in the middle of the photo:
Once we got past the Bronco congo line, the road got mostly more reasonable (with occasional sections of yikes), and the scenery was much nicer without the vehicles in it.
Here's one of the trickier bits - I actually made it up to the shelf at the top but there was no way I would be able to jump that ledge even if I wasn't exhausted from climbing this section:
It was a long and tough day, but a great one. The Broncos didn't catch up with us (although they may have turned off on another road as there is a whole network of 4WD roads across these rocks) but we did see a couple other groups of off-roaders, and a few other bicyclists as well.
The next morning we headed home via Castleton Tower, a rather impressive pillar which has many climbing routes on it, including one that's in the book Fifty Classic Climbs of North America. The trail starts up a gully...
...with a rather physical exit...
...and then after dropping into a wash and climbing out again, zigzags up to the rocks.
Some of the sandstone has calcite layered on top:
Finally we got to the ridge between the two monuments, and took pictures of each other against the background of the spire on one side, and the cliffy monument on the other:
(There are rock climbers on both!)
Then we hiked back down, had lunch in the van, and then continued along the back way across the west of the La Sal mountains, a scenic route to start us on the way home. But we had to look back to take one more photo: