People who rise before the sun like to rave to those who don’t about the joys of witnessing the pastel genesis of another day, but for me the experience of dawn almost always pales next to the treasure of extended shuteye. A rare exception is a sunrise on the eastern edge of the White Rim Trail in Canyonlands National Park, in that otherworldly maze of desert and rock known as southern Utah, where even an unremarkable and cloudless sky gives way to one of the most sublime displays of light and topography you could ever hope to see.

Riding compadre Shidan Towfiq and I welcomed the sun’s warming rays. We’d just hitched up B.O.B mountain bike trailers filled with food, water, and camping gear and were barely beginning our hundred-mile self-supported circumnavigation of the White Rim with a descent off the high shelf of the Colorado Plateau 1,400 feet down to the rim proper, where the old dirt road would meander and loop until climbing back off the rim 70 miles or so to the west.

A narrow swath of Martian red scratched into the vertical walls of a massive amphitheater, the hardpacked grade offered vertiginous views wherever we looked. Everyone raves about these early miles, known as the Shafer Trail switchbacks, and rightfully so. Just off the edge of the trail was a drop of more than a thousand feet. Looking straight down from a bulge of rust-colored rock, we saw a skinny line drawn in the sand—the continuation of the trail after it zigged every zag of the switchbacks. Visible farther still were the convoluted folds of sandstone between us and Moab, the open trench of the Colorado River at a bight called the Goose Neck, and, in the distance, the La Sal Mountains, whose alpine summits stood in sharp relief to the red rock below.

Most people take from four to seven days to ride these hundred miles, typically supported by a vehicle loaded with supplies. Initially built by the Atomic Energy Commission as a road to enable a search for uranium, the route had been discovered by cyclists back when mountain biking and Moab’s bike boom were in their infancy. Thanks to amazing scenery, proximity to blossoming Moab, and the lack of technically difficult sections, it quickly became a classic, a legendary “must-ride”.

Even at four days, though, the pace seemed too sedate for us—most everyone I knew had hammered out the White Rim in a single day—and Towfiq and I had initially sniffed at the rim as an overrated tourist trail, nothing but a boring dirt road. We’d come to Utah looking for excitement in Moab and in Torrey, just a couple of hours away and rumored to be the next big thing in radical steeps, but once in the area felt that dismissing a hallowed ride like the White Rim without investigation seemed unconscionable, snobbery of the worst kind. We’d launched our ride both curious and skeptical, and as if to spite our doubts, the early miles of the White Rim were proving spectacular—some of the most stunning I’d ever ridden–a not-so-gentle reminder that where your bike takes you can be as fulfilling as how it gets you there.

Our White Rim plans hadn’t even become final until the day before, when we’d coasted the truck up to the Island in the Sky visitor’s center. To preserve the rim’s untamed nature, the National Park Service limits traffic to day-trippers and a handful of campers, who are restricted to 20 primitive sites. Demand for these sites is intense and reservations are sometimes snatched up a year in advance. Shidan and I, true to our natures, didn’t make reservations or even commit to the road trip until a week before leaving. And since the Park Service won’t accept reservations within two weeks of the intended visit, all we could do was hope for an opening.

We scored: A cancellation had freed one lonely site. We snatched our camping permit from the ranger with the glee of Superlotto winners. Outside on the curb, conducting a further review, we located the “Hardscrabble B” site on the far western side of the map, 70 miles clockwise from the visitor’s center, 30 miles counterclockwise. The vast majority of multiday tours get vehicle support from someone who ferries in food and supplies, but the plan we now concocted was to ride the loop in two days with no support at all. Instead, we’d haul our rubble in the lightweight but sturdy trailers. With uncharacteristic ambition, we’d tackle the big day first and finish with what we figured would be a mellow cruise back to a cooler of frosties.

And so we found ourselves descending the Shafer switchbacks, butterflies of anticipation in our stomachs. In a short 10 minutes, testing our brakes against the extra push of the trailers, and staying well back from the edge of the trail, we’d ridden from the upper plateau to the White Rim, where we shed layers in anticipation of the long and hot miles ahead of us. Once the pitch flattened, I tried to settle into the rhythm of an all-day pace, but climbed off the bike twice in the first hundred feet to see if my brakes were rubbing. Alas, it was only the angry tug of my 50-pound caboose.

Just 63 more miles to camp!

Across this vast landscape of juniper, sage, and sky we spun. After the initial descent, the White Rim road rolls across the plateau with no major climbs until a grunt called Murphy’s Hogback. Shidan settled into a slightly slower, steadier, and frankly more admirable pace, while I surged ahead and behind like a sled dog unaccustomed to the trace. On the slight downhills, our speeds veered toward 20 mph, with trailers bouncing in our wake, but on the flats and uphills, dragged by the load, the speedometer read a measly six.

We lingered and lagged and ooed and aahhed at the scenery. Shidan marched across the soaring sandstone spit of Musselman Arch while I snapped pics and contemplated erosion and natural-arch failure rates. On the right, always on the right as we rode the loop clockwise, was the upper plateau and its sculpted rock formations. Our minds, well, my mind anyway, drifted so readily on the slow currents of the day, it was easy to find evidence of God in the soaring buttes one minute and in the next find yourself agreeing with Captain John Macomb, who in 1860 wrote, “I cannot conceive of a more worthless and impracticable region than the one we now find ourselves in.”

Long periods of trancelike pedaling were broken by the passing of an occasional four-wheel-drive and by significantly more frequent photo opportunities at arches, canyons, and outcrops. An especially long stretch of rolling terrain brought us to the turn for the White Crack camp, our halfway point to Hardscrabble. I congratulated Shidan on having the foresight to pack quarts of rice and beans from a restaurant in Moab, and between bites of the best burritos we’ve ever had, we agreed that the White Rim was a worthy place indeed, that pulling trailers all day was the hardest thing we’d ever done on bikes, that riding the entire trail in a single day without trailers would be far easier, and that we were mountain bike studs of the highest order.

Unfortunately, none of this self-aggrandizement made me stronger when I got back in the saddle, and, while there was plenty of air in my tires, my ego was appropriately deflated by the task at hand. Shidan seemed unfazed by the monotony of the rolling miles—was he some Zen guru or just didn’t know how to complain?—but I welcomed the variety of the short, brutally steep climb up Murphy’s Hogback and the thrilling descent down the other side.

The day shortened and the shadows lengthened and still we rode across country that would do John Wayne proud. Our gleam eventually faded, though, and we stopped ogling rock formations and only checked the map to verify mileage. Too soon, the sun disappeared behind the Henry Mountains, the last-named range in the Lower 48, and we launched a slow-motion race to reach Hardscrabble before total darkness. One last cruel hill stood before us, and then, with wooden legs and glazed eyes, we coasted onto a flat spot beside the dark speeding water of the Green River, just as the stars began their true burn in the sky. Dinner, bivvy sacks, and a stumble into sleep were all that was left of the day.

Blissfully, we slept through sunrise.

There was no hurry. The miles would be the same miles at 9 a.m. as they would as 8 a.m. I lingered lovingly over a frosted strawberry Pop-Tart, while Shidan slithered down the steep bank and jumped into the river. I heard a shout and ran to peer through the greenery in time to see him swept by the current. He paddled and stroked and kicked his way to the side.

“Faster than I thought.”

“You think?”

“Colder, too.”

After the previous day’s scenery and long ride, day two was, well, anticlimactic. Oh, there was a monster hill climb back from the rim onto the Colorado Plateau, and the day’s burrito stop was just as spiritual, but the John Huston scenery and thrill of pulling a trailer through it were soon behind us, replaced by 20 or so washboarded miles out the sandy wash of Mineral Bottom Road. We simply grimaced through the creakiness and finished the job at hand.

At the visitor’s center, we shared a hard-earned high five, a cold drink, and a deeper sense of satisfaction than I’d ever gained from a bike ride. We’d both done longer rides, but not pulling heavy trailers, and I felt the accomplishment of the task in every bone and muscle of my body. What I felt more acutely, though, was the satisfaction of experiencing the White Rim, experiencing it in good form, and experiencing it from the saddle up, without help from others or a support rig. It had turned out to be far more than Shidan or I had expected—bigger, tougher, and way more beautiful. In the end, the riding had become less about the riding and more about the ride. That may sound like a fine distinction, but in the desert miles of southern Utah it was a distinction learned well.

DOING THE WHITE RIM YOURSELF
For more information on riding the White Rim Trail, check out the Canyonlands National Park information page. It’s much more typical to support your ride with a fully loaded 4WD party rig and spent a few days out there, but you really will have to make campsite reservations. The park starts reserving slots for 2011 on July 12. Permits are required for overnight stays, but not for day use. There’s no drinkable water on the route, so plan accordingly. Finally, nothing compares to sleeping under the stars on the Colorado Plateau, but if you can’t lock down a campsite, considering doing the whole enchilada in a day. A couple years after this trip with Shidan, some friends and I did it in an extremely leisurely 13 hours riding counterclockwise. It wasn’t easy, but it was a heck of a lot easier than two days with trailers.–S.C.

Tagged as: mountain biking, national parks