In anticipation of the wet and muddy conditions in the canyon, I'm wearing a
pair of beat-up running shoes and thick wool-blend socks. Thus insulated, my
feet sweat as they pump on my bike pedals. My legs sweat, too, compressed by the
Lycra biking shorts I'm wearing beneath my beige nylon shorts. Even through
double-thick padding, my bike seat pummels my rear end. Up top, I have on a
favorite Phish T-shirt and a blue baseball cap. I left my waterproof jacket back
at my truck; the day is going to be warm and dry, just like it was yesterday
when I biked the twelve-mile loop of the Slick Rock Trail over east of Moab. If
it were going to be rainy, a slot canyon would be the last place I'd be headed,
jacket or no.
Lightweight travel is a pleasure to me, and I've figured how to do more with
less so I can go farther in a given amount of time. Yesterday I had just my
small CamelBak with a few bike-repair items and my cameras, a measly ten-pound
load for the four-hour loop ride. In the evening, paring out the bike gear, I
hiked five miles on an out-and-back visit to a natural arch out toward Castle
Valley, carrying only six pounds total of water and camera equipment. The day
before, Thursday, with my friend Brad Yule from Aspen, I had climbed and skied
Mount Sopris, the 12,995-foot monarch of western Colorado, and had carried a few
extra clothes and backcountry avalanche rescue gear, but I still kept my load
under fifteen pounds.
My five-day road trip will culminate on Sunday night with an unsupported solo
attempt to mountain bike the 108-mile White Rim Trail in Canyonlands National
Park. If I carried the supplies I'd used over the three days it took me the
first time I rode that trail in 2000, I'd have a sixty-pound pack and a sore
back before I went ten miles. In my planning estimates this time around, I am
hoping to carry fifteen pounds and complete the loop in under twenty-four hours.
It will mean following a precision-charted water-management plan to capitalize
on the scarce refilling opportunities, no sleeping, and only the bare minimum of
stopping. My biggest worry isn't that my legs will get tired -- I know they
will, and I know how to handle it -- but rather that my, uh, undercarriage will
become too sensitive to allow me to ride. "Crotch coma," as I've heard
it called, comes from the desensitizing overstimulation of the perineum. As I
haven't ridden my bike any extended distance since last summer, my bike-saddle
tolerance is disconcertingly low. Had I anticipated this trip prior to two
nights ago I would have gone out for at least one long ride in the Aspen area
beforehand. As it happened, some friends and I called off a mountaineering trip
at the last moment on Wednesday; the cancellation freed me for a hajj to the
desert, a pilgrimage for warmth to reacquaint myself with a landscape other than
wintry mountains. Usually, I would leave a detailed schedule of my plans with my
roommates, but since I left my home in Aspen without knowing what I was going to
do, the only word of my destination I gave was "Utah." I briefly
researched my trip options by consulting my guidebooks as I drove from Mount
Sopris to Utah Thursday night. The result has been a capriciously impromptu
vacation, one that will even incorporate dropping in on a big campout party near
Goblin Valley State Park tonight.
It's nearing ten-thirty a.m. as I pedal into the shade of a very lonesome
juniper and survey my sunbaked surroundings. The rolling scrub desert gradually
drops away into a region of painted rock domes, hidden cliffs, weathered and
warped bluffs, tilted and tortured canyons, and broken monoliths. This is hoodoo
country; this is voodoo country. This is Abbey's country, the red wasteland
beyond the end of the roads. Since I arrived after dark last night, I wasn't
able to see much of the landscape on my drive in to the trailhead. As I scan the
middle ground to the east for any sign of my destination canyon, I take out my
chocolate muffin from the Moab grocery's bakery and have to practically choke it
down; both the muffin and my mouth have dried out from exposure to the arid
wind. There are copious signs of meandering cattle from a rancher's ongoing
attempt to make his living against the odds of the desert. The herds trample
sinuous tracks through the indigenous life that spreads out in the ample space:
a lace of grasses, foot-tall hedgehog cacti, and black microbiotic crust cloak
the red earth. I wash down the rest of the muffin, except for a few crumbs in
the wrapper, with several pulls from the CamelBak's hydration tube fastened to
my shoulder strap.
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