Friday May 22
After a few days at home in New Hampshire, it was on to the next adventure.
Today I boarded a plane for Utah and the White Rim trail in Moab.
For the six years that I lived in Park City, my training partners (Erik Stange and Scott Loomis) and I always talked about riding the White Rim mountain bike trail in Canyonlands National Park near Moab. It is 103 miles, and though most people ride it over the course of a long weekend, we wanted to do it in a day. This was not unheard of – there are plenty of very fit mountain bikers who do this.
But we never got around to it during my years in Park City. This were for a number of reasons, mainly timing. The best time to do this ride is early spring, like March or April – early enough that the oppressive summer heat hasn’t set in yet. But for us as ski racers, this was our only time of the year to relax. Sure we always made a few spring bike trips to Moab, but we were there for fun – not to grind out 100 mile rides. By summer we were back in training mode, and could have done the ride, except that the temperature in Moab usually hovers around 100 degrees that time of year. No thanks. Then when the temperatures begin to cool off in the fall, usually in October, we were always packing our bags to head to Fairbanks for the first skiing of the season. So it never worked out.
This spring, as I sat here in Anchorage lamenting our horrible winter, I began longing for a trip to the sun and warmth of Utah’s red rock desert. Those trips had become one of the highlights of living in Utah, and now that I was so far away, that was what I missed most. So when I got an email last month from Scott, saying that they were finally going to ride the White RIm this year, I knew I had to be there. After talking about it for years, there was no way I was going to let them do it without me.
The only problem was that they were going to do it on Memorial Day weekend – oppressive heat or not. This was a mere four days after my adventure race in New Hampshire ended. Could I possibly do both? My adventure racing teammates didn’t think so. They thought I was crazy for even attempting it. (Note to self: when adventure racers think you are crazy, you might as well head straight to the nearest loony bin. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Adventure racers are the definition of insane, as I recently found out.) But I had to try. Riding the White Rim was the one epic Utah adventure I had not conquered before leaving. I couldn’t bear the thought of the guys doing it without me. So here I was on a flight to Salt Lake City, with my legs still sore and my feet still numb from the 60 hour adventure race.
Erik Stange picked me up at the airport and we headed south. I was not traveling with a bike, I had reserved a rental in Moab. Renting a bike for a 103 mile ride in Moab is an adventure in itself. 99.9% of the bikes they rent are of the downhill, super-moto, plush full suspension variety. I’ve seen motorcycles that weigh less than some of those behemoths. No of the bike shops had a performance front -suspension model, which is what I wanted. The White Rim trail is not very technical, so I wanted to save weight. But I had few options, so I ended up going with a Cannondale Gemini, which weighed slightly less than I do.
That night our group convened at Eddie McStiffs Restaurant for dinner, then drove out to Canyonlands to camp near the start of the ride. Our group consisted of Scott Loomis, Erik Stange, Nathan Schultz, Andrew Johnson, Lara Kendall, and me. Driving our support car would be Nathan’s wife Terry, and Alex Shaffer of the US Alpine Ski Team.
Sat May 23
Note: parts of this journal entry were written by Erik Stange
By 7:00, we had packed up, eaten, dressed and driven the 12 miles of dirt road to get to the portion of the trail we chose to start on. The entire loop features three major climbs, and we thought it best to get the biggest out of the way early. That meant we started out ride, and our watches, at the lowest point of the loop: Mineral bottom. The air was already warm as we rode up the Horsethief Trail and back towards Hwy 313 that would take us into the Park. We would be doing about 2000 feet of climbing right off the bat, so we wanted to get that over with before the sun got too high in the sky. It was supposed to be 95 degrees today.
Looking back down the first climb
As soon as we started, I knew it would be a long day. The first 25 miles would all be on dirt roads, which meant that it was easy for the pace to creep faster and faster. My bike felt like a tank. We were climbing straight up a series of steep switchbacks to get from the Green River to the Canyonlands plateau. It was clear that the guys were riding comfortably, but I was working pretty hard to keep up. Not only was my bike heavy, but I was still feeling the after-effects of the adventure race. Could I make it the whole way? Maybe, but certainly not at the pace these guys were setting. They were all feeling fresh enough to get an echelon going along the highway, establishing a trend of riding just a little faster than we had expected to. Lara and I were off the back, wondering what the rush was. We had hoped to finish the ride in about 10 hours, yet here we were averaging 14 mph on our longest uphill.
By the time we had ridden over three and a half hours, we had yet to meet up with out support car. There was a little confusion about how closely the car should follow the group of riders, and this problem was compounded by the fact that we were riding at close to a car’s top speed over this kind of terrain. We were basically out-running our support. The key to insanely long workouts, especially in heat, is to drink early and often. We needed to take in fluids and food before we felt we needed them, just like you would in a ski marathon. We knew this but we didn’t really want to stop riding and wait, and there was even less interest in turning around to ride back to the car, so we just kept going.
The car did catch up to us at about four hours, and we loaded up on water, energy drink, pre-made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, bagels, fun-size candy bars and yogurt. We lingered a little, but looking back it seemed like more of a grab and go. As we pedaled on Erik discovered that a plain bagel, held for a few minutes in a sweat-caked glove, tastes a lot like a soft pretzel. Mmmm…tasty.
The White Rim trail rolls a little, but for the most part it remains fairly flat as it meanders along the rim of white sandstone that sits above the river bottoms hundred of feet below. From time to time, we would stop briefly to check out a natural arch, or marvel at the precipitous drops straight down to the river. But for the most part, we just rode. There were a perhaps six to ten other groups out there that same day, and we might say ‘hi’ as we rode past.
About halfway through the ride, I knew that if I was going to make it the whole way, I had to let the other guys go. I had done a pretty good job of keeping up to that point, but I was getting tired. I began riding my own pace which was slightly slower than the other guys. I found that if I just backed off a little, I could keep them in sight most of the time, but not kill myself doing it. Lara, who was still going strong, was also riding her own pace a little further back.
After about seven hours of riding, we stopped to let the support vehicle catch up to us again. We were still managing to out-pace the top speeds of a 4WD car on the same terrain, and I began to feel the effects of the energy drain. We were still making great time and we figured we had only about 20 miles to go.
Once the car got to the point where we were waiting, at the top of Hogback hill, we learned that Alex and Terry had been wrestling with their own problems. Gallon jugs of water had exploded from all of the jostling and filled the ski box on top of the car. There had also been a couple of close calls over some sections of the trail which clearly put Subaru’s claim of building all-terrain vehicles to the test. Alex later said that years of studying race courses and having to make split second decisions about traction on snow had served her pretty well when it came to four-wheeling. I doubt any of us would have had the same success.
We rummaged about in the car’s stash of food, but without the same enthusiasm as before. We were all getting tired and we were motivated only because we thought we were almost home. We quickly applied some chain lube and dropped down the backside of Hogback Hill. Only one major climb remained. Nathan, Scott, Andrew and Erik rode in a fast-paced group along the flatter sections, while I hung a little further back. Lara had called it a day at Hogback Hill – still an impressive 70 mile ride for her.
As we neared the end, the long day, the heat, the lack of food and water from our lagging support vehicle began to get to all of us. I was running on fumes. I thought the finish should be around every corner, but it turns out I still had 10 more miles. Ouch. The last climb was steep and technical and I am not afraid to admit that after a long day I had to walk a lot of it. That last climb – Hardscrabble Hill – proved to be the undoing for all of us. Shortly before we hit the ascent the sun popped out from behind the clouds and really beat down on us. I fell off the pace, and we all ended up climbing Hardscrabble on our own. What energy reserves we had left were milked out as that damn climb went up and up. The descent and the last five to seven miles could best be described as a death march.
At one point I came around a corner and saw Erik sitting on the side of the trail. He was exhausted and without water. I gave him some of mine and we continued on. When I made it to the end, Nathan Andrew and Scott were just finishing up a quick dip in the river. I did the same, and even though the water was red with mud, it was very refreshing. Erik arrived a short time later, followed shortly by the support car. We had done the White Rim!
We finished the loop in somewhere between nine and nine and a half hours. We drove into town, returned the rental bike, and went over to the soft green grass in Moab’s City Park to fall asleep. Nathan, despite leading the charge for most of the ride, was ‘shattered’ (as he put it) enough to go to the hospital for an IV. The rest of us were also exhausted, but a nice cold smoothie did the trick to get us feeling better.
On the drive back into town, I did some quick calculations and determined that I had trained over 70 hours in the course of one week. Indeed, I had earned some time off. I was looking forward to returning to Alaska and not training for a few days, or weeks. But the important thing is that my spring Triple Crown was complete! I had attempted a sequence of adventures that quite possibly could have been impossible for me and lived to tell the story. It is quite amazing what the human body can do, when you throw reason out the window.
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