Moab Pics

Here's a few pics from our trip:

Marc, Charlie and I somewhere along upper Porcupine, aka UPS trail.
















This is from the top of the Moab Rim trial, which we decided to ride up. In one mile you go from the elevation of the road seen in the pic. Probably the steepest, most relentless mile of climbing I've ever done.
You can't really see it, but Portal Trail is etched into the cliff in the picture, going from right to left downwards along the natural slope of the cliff. We would find out the next day how scary that trail is.







This is the best part of the Moab Rim trail. A sweet swoopy section of singletrack. Problem was, it only lasted for about 5 minutes.
















This is Charlie and Scott, from the top of the Gold Bar Rim trail, riding along the Blue Dot trail, which gets uncomfortably close to the edge on several occasions. The Blue Dot trail, linked up with Portal, our route on the third day, is an unbelievably technical section of trail. Very humbling, I can't remember the last time I've walked my bike over so many obstacles. Oh wait, yes I can, it was last year on the Blue Dot trail.






This is along Portal Trail. I've finished walking the deadly "Dont walk here 3 people have died" cliff section, and am looking back up at Scott working his way down. It's hard to even tell there is a trail in this pic, but if you look close you can see Scott and the trail.










Moab is good times.

Best Moab Trip Ever

Moab is good.

Charlie and I left Albuquerque around 8pm Friday night. Arrived in Moab at about 2:30am. About 4 hours later we were up and headed out to ride.
Saturday we rode Sovereign in the morning. We looped around quite a bit and did a bit of exploring on a bunch of stuff we missed during our last trip out. Then back into town for a quick lunch and we headed out to ride Amasa Back. Amasa Back was fun, particularly because of the 50mph wind gusts that would completely blow you across the trail, heading precariously close to the deadly cliffs. Up and down Amasa, and we were cooked for the day.

Saturday night was entertaining. There was a car show of some sort going on in town, and the evenings entertainment was standing on main street watching a couple hundred sweet cars cruise up and down. Watching the people watch the cruising was also very, very entertaining. This is apparently an annual event, as several people showed up with lawn chairs and were prepared to sit and watch for hours. Not being much of a car guy, I can't say much about what was there, but it was still cool.

Sunday we started with a shuttle up for Porcupine. We booked the shuttle with Uranium Cycles a cool new shop in Moab. Marshall, the owner who was also our shuttle driver for the day, suggested to ride up the road a little and start with the UPS trail. That was some good advice, it is an awesome addition to regular Porcupine, which is already an epic trail.
We got down Porcupine without any major incidence. I was happy because I rode several sections that I didn't during our last trip. Just like the day before, Scott rode a few lines that none of the rest of us had the nerve for. It was impressive.

Rode back into town for some lunch and a little relaxing, then we headed out again for our afternoon ride. Originally we talked about riding Slick Rock, but somehow we decided on checking out Moab Rim trail instead. I can say, that isn't a trail that I will be riding again. It was a lot of pain going up, then some sandy washes, then about 1 mile of sweet twisty singletrack, followed by a wicked hike a bike back down to the freeway. We still haven't decided whose idea that one was.

Monday we shuttled with Uranium again out to Gemini Bridges. We rode out from the drop off to Gold Bar Rim trial, which we rode up to the top of the cliff where the Blue Dot trail starts. We took that to Portal, and then got thoroughly puckered up and made our way down Portal trail. It was an extremely technical trail, that made all of us except for Charlie look like little girls. Charlie was the champion of the day, riding way more of the technical sections that the rest of us, including all of Portal once we were below the "don't ride here you will die sections".

Then a long drive back to town, and here I am at work today, sitting around being tired and useless. It was fun. If you haven't been to Moab, or haven't been in a while, you should go.

And if you're wondering what the best Moab bike in the world is, the answer is a Maverick ML8 with a 160mm travel fork, like the Rock Shox Lyric for example. I love my Maverick.

In other assorted shop news, we had Shaums March, two time Masters World Champion in downhill hanging out for a little while today. He was in town with a few other reps, apparently he'll be in Abq this week trying to coach some APD guys how to ride better. Looks like Tony's going to get a chance to ride with him, which should be cool.

Well, that's about my day. I've got a ton of picks on my camera, and once again my camera isn't with me. So I will attempt to post some pics from Moab in the near future.

A little place I like to call Moab.

It's been practically forever since I've put anything up on this site. I think the root cause of that is I haven't been biking.
Well, I've been kind of building up brownie points because I'm going to Moab this evening for three days, which hopefully will be most epic.
What originally was planned as a Bikeworks trip for the four of us (Danny, Tony, Charlie and I) now has transformed into just Charlie and I meeting our buddies Spangler and Marc.
It should be a great trip, with reasonable weather (barely getting up to 80 deg) and just a chance of rain one evening. It's a fast group we've assembled, and I can only assume every ride will be long and painful.

Last time I put anything up here I was getting ready for Dawn til Dusk. As most everybody has heard, that race didn't happen. It rained and snowed the night before, and 6am Saturday found us all standing around in several inches of very slippery mud, all wondering what to do. They postponed the race, then postponed it again, and then finally were forced to cancel all together. It was a bummer, but there really was nothing anybody could do about it. We can just hope next year has a little better weather.

Since then, we've just been working away at the shop. Dawn til Dusk kind of kicked off spring busy season for us, and we're definitely in full swing now. I've got a number of pics at the shop of cool bikes that have come and gone lately, but I don't have my camera with me at the moment so those will have to wait.
I have only managed to get a couple of rides in the past couple of weeks, nothing really worth writing about. Hopefully after monday I'll have a tale or two to share with everybody.
In the mean time, hope you all have a good weekend.

New Trail Report

So it's snowing- less than 10 hours after I posted the trail report below. I don't know how much snow will actually fall in the mountains, but give it a few hot days to dry out.

-Charlie

Trail Report

I just got finished riding Faulty today. It's in good shape and very ridable. We didn't do the whole thing from Ribs, but we got on at the Cienaga crossing and went North to Oso and that was in great shape. Occasional damp spots but quite good otherwise. We rode Oso all the way to Tree Spring and that was clear of snow but was still a bit muddy and had a fair bit of blown-down trees. Actually the forest is not in good shape. Between the bark beetles, the drought, and the wind, there are many trees down in the forest. Luckily most of them missed the trails. Give Oso and Tree another week, but Faulty is ready.

I also got out on a huge Cedro/Otero loop on Wed. and that area is dry and ready for all riding.

Baring any more significant amounts of rain- they are ready for you. I will try 10k a in couple of weeks and give my report. I leave you with a picture of a trip to Chama I did in Oct. last year.

-Charlie

Beer.

I was reading a very informative news site, Drunkcyclist, a few moments ago, and learned that today, April 7th, is the day in 1933 that Prohibition was repealed.

Education on Prohibition

My boy Julian was apparently aware of this before I, as he decided to bust out some of the good stuff during dinner:


Actually I had been saving this beer for the past couple of days, and then decided to drink it by coincidence on a celebratory beer day. Awesome.

It's a Rogue Imperial IPA, it's 9.5% ABV, and it is some serious beer. It was a gift from our favorite fireman Sihu. Thanks Sihu.

Well, that was my real motivation to put something up on the site. This beer is definitely worth trying for any hop head. It's almost syrupy, it's like the IPA equivalent of a barley wine. Surprisingly my almost 2 year old loves it. I gave him a little taste after he repeatedly asked for one, and then he just wanted to drink more and more. I cut him off pretty quickly though, it's an expensive beer and I just wasn't in the sharing mood.

So I'm not committed to riding tomorrow night for our regular Wednesday night ride. I'm not sure how regular of a thing these Weds night rides will be here for a while. Strangely, they seem to have lost steam with the nice weather and daylight. We need cold and darkness to motivate to get together, apparently.
Also, starting May 12th the Tuesday Night Crits will up and running once again. My current plan is to attend as many of those as possible, and that will definitely replace Weds night riding for me, as I can only get out to ride so many nights in a week (Julian hates drinking his fancy beers alone).

It seems that just about everybody who comes into the shop on a regular basis will be out at Dawn til Dusk this weekend. I'm excited, as I've mentioned. And if it rains the whole time, at least we'll have lots of friends for entertainment as we all try to keep dry.

Well, I better go. Julian is giving me the stink eye because I'm hogging the computer, and he has some emails to get finished up before he can get to bed, and it's getting late.

Sorry I didn't manage to get this trail report up when I thought I would- My ride got pushed back a day. The Cedro, Tunnel, Otero trails are riding great with no mud at all. Get out there and ride cause some of them were kind of loamy and need to be packed down. Unless we get another snow storm they should all be open now until the USFS closes them due to fire danger. Good thing mountain bikers are included in these bans- I don't know about you, but I am always stoping during my rides to create an open flame in the National Forest- I should be banned for life.

I will try to get up and do Faulty after the 12hr. race and I will report back on the conditions after that. Probably by the 16th. I leave you with a picture of Rio En Medio trail area.

-Charlie