Mountain Biking the White Rim Road, Canyonlands

This is an announcement for an October 2016 White Rim trail Mountain bike ride, October 17 through October 22.  This is an approximately 100 mile mountain bike ride, ridden in 4.5 days with four nights camping, and will be supported by three 4WD vehicles.  The route is very beautiful through southern Utah canyon country.  While good mountain biking skills are required, the route is not particularly technical.  However, the ride from the mesa top down to the White Rim (first day) and the ride up to the mesa top (last day) requires some skill and endurance and/or hike-a-bike. There will be opportunities to trade turns driving so everybody gets a chance to ride a lot.

Here are the dates we reserved for the four campsites and approximate biking milage. I’ve attached the White Rim route map as a pdf (Island In The Sky). The ride goes CCW.  

Monday night, Oct. 17: stay at hotel in Moab (recommended, and you must reserve)
Tuesday night, Oct. 18: Potato Bottom campsite, about a 25 mile ride
Wednesday night, Oct 19: Murphy’s Hogback campsite, ~19 miles
Thursday night, Oct. 20: Gooseberry campsite, ~22 miles
Friday night, Oct. 21: Shafer campsite, ~22 miles
Saturday, Oct. 22: ride or crawl up Shafer trail ~13 miles to the cars parked at intersection Hwy.313 with road to Mineral Bottom. Drive home.

There is a $30 deposit to hold your space. HOWEVER, because of the limited number of spots on the permit, first please send to me (donathon@cybermesa.com) an email indicating that you are interested in the trip. This is ONLY so I don’t have to return a bunch of $30 checks to people if the 15-person permit is exceeded!  I will let you know if you’ve secured a spot after August 2nd.  We will maintain a wait-list, if that becomes necessary, so include your contact information in your email.

I will bring our 4Runner, which has a rack for four bikes.  Two additional 4WD vehicles will be needed to carry bikes, tents, tables, stoves, food, water, first aid, tools, etc.  Please consider bringing yours!

We know the dates are very close to the end of Bill Priedhorsky’s Escalante trip.  If this affects you, come anyway because you’ll need this long vacation break before the November elections.

Don Krier
505-412-9081  :  donathon@cybermesa.com

Kathleen Gruetzmacher  :  gkathleen1048@msn.com
505-231-2327