Utah, part 1 - St. George, Gooseberry Mesa and more!

This post comes to you courtesy of John Brownlow, one of our riders who just completed the maiden voyage of our new 'Southwest Slickrock' trip in Utah:

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Sunday: Arrive Las Vegas and check into the South Point Casino. Vegas is the saddest town in the world but this is National Indian Rodeo Finals weekend so I pay $25 and pass the afternoon watching Navajo teenagers riding bulls and wrestling steers in the huge equestrian ampitheatre. They even play the Canadian national anthem at the beginning (there are many riders here from Alberta). I'm touched. I thought mountain biking was tough until now, but these guys are something else. Nobody seems to leave uninjured.

Monday: Meet up with the other riders and our guide Eddie who's driven down from Fernie. We build bikes in the parking lot to the bemusement of passing gamblers. The group is almost entirely composed of former Sacred Rides clients and I know several of them, so we have a good
esprit de corps from the get-go. We also meet our local bike buddy Mark, a gentle drawling Mormon who will shuttle the van for the next week while telling some of the tallest stories I have ever heard.

After a two-hour drive to St George, Utah we change into riding clothes and manage a single shuttle run at Bear Claw Poppy, an instant hit of a downhill trail replete with berms, drops, hucks and little wallrides that sends us hurtling out onto the desert floor as the setting sun paints the huge mesas surrounding us a deep shade of crimson. At this point we realize this trip is probably going to be something special.

Tuesday: Mark introduces us to Morgan Harris, a barrel-chested local legend who built the trail we about to ride. Morgan leads us through Gooseberry Mesa, a twisting pretzel of a trail that loops around the top of one of the local mountains through pine, cactus and juniper. The trail requires total concentration with several sections featuring several thousand feet of exposure, and others taking us through our first taste of the steep slickrock bowls whose infinite traction turns apparently unrideable steeps into red-lining anaerobic workouts that require you to believe that you can do the physically impossible.

In the afternoon we shuttle to the top of J.E.M., another hurtling, smooth, twisty downhill trail whose twelve miles are gone in a matter of thirty minutes or so, the last section of singletrack snaking alongside the edge of a canyon, a couple of feet or so from what feels like certain death.

Wednesday: Mark shuttles us to the 'top' of Brian Head Mountain. The elevation here is about 12,000 feet and the real top of the mountain is still above us, the simple climb made grindingly hard by lack of oxygen and several inches of snow that has just fallen. We're the first riders through the snow and Mark is worried, but we assure him we've seen snow before, and set off. The first few miles are a slip-fest, then the snow transitions to mud and we splatter our way
down to the tree line, where the trail turns into a humdinger of a downhill sidewinder following Bunker Creek through yellowing aspens, where it seems a shame to even think about touching the brakes as thousands of feet of elevation shoot us out into a dirt road where I finally pinch flat on one of the hundreds of little rock drops it's impossible not to hit. Afterwards, Scott pronounces it one of the best trails he's ever ridden, and it's hard not to agree.

As if this wasn't enough, the afternoon takes us to Thunder Mountain, a trail he discovered and now voted Utah's best. A long series of alternating downhills, bermed hairpins, and grinding climbs finally emerges into an utterly spectacular hidden canyon, the trail winding up between eerie redstone hoodoos then along a three-foot wide ridge with exposure on both sides, before ricocheting down a series of tight, technical, exposed switchbacks, culiminating in a balls-out
rocket ride to the trail head along smooth, bermed singletrack. Afterwards, Scott pronounces it even better than the first trail and many of us feel that we've just experienced one of our best days riding ever.

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next post: Moab, Porcupine Rim, Brian Head