Slickrock Rocks!

After our National Park days we were eager for some more Slickrock action, we'd planned to head up to Moonlight Meadows a track that sounded fun for a bit of biking. Only we'd forgotten to look at the elevation on the diagram in the book - it started at 9,000 feet rising to 10,500ft over 4 miles uphill. We enjoyed the drive up into the La Sal mountains and when we got to the trail head we jumped out the car only to feel pretty much instantly freezing and lightheaded! lol! Opps. Maybe this was a mistake. Still, we carried on getting ready and I headed off to sign the book to say we were going off on the track only to find (luckily I thought!) a note from a couple that had done the track yesterday, apparently it was a quagmire of mud, ice and snow. Well, I guess that would make sense seeing as I was standing in snow reading the book! Needless to say, not wanting to damage the tracks, or die of altitude sickness we bottled-it, jumped back in the car and headed for more sunny low-altitude climes of Moab again. Wimps eh?



So, beaten by that track we headed for Flat Iron Mesa as that looked like a pretty easy track with some interesting spurs to investigate. Well, we were right about the easy. It was basically a 13 mile gravel road with lots of sand patches, now, we maybe novice but after about 2 miles of this it was so dull we decided to head back. We used the time wisely though - for wheely practise :-)

So, 2 disasters and feeling a bit downhearted we refused to give up. By this time it was heading to late afternoon so we looked for a short trail in the book and came across Bartlets Wash. Cool - about 6 miles by the look of it with some Slickrock playground time. We found it easily enough and it started well with us riding up the stream bed - it even still had puddles - wahoo! We soon came to the right turn which lead onto the slickrock and we scrambled the bikes up the first (vertical) section, I'm grateful we now have lighter bikes lol! Then, well, it was playtime. Basically we'd discovered a HUGE slickrock playground area - freeform all the way (just avoiding the cryptobiotic soil). We had a great time and it was amazing how much your tyres grip on this stuff, sideslopes and easily controlable downhills were very cool:




We eventually decided to head off for the night and as we had big plans for the next day we stopped at the Canyonlands Campsite in town... for easy access to...

THE SLICKROCK BIKE TRAIL.

HAhahahahahaha! :-) Now. This is a serious trail, only for experts and with a physical 'strenuous' rating. But, it's the trail Moab is known for, so we couldn't leave without giving at least the practise loop (actually the first 2 and a bit miles of the trail) a try. We waited until Monday morning so the crowds weren't there and we wouldn't be holding anyone up as there was no way we were going to be the annoying tourists trying something to difficult for them and ending up in big emergency services call out - so we wanted to be able to walk whatever we weren't happy riding.

We arrived to a packed carpark. Well, that didn't go to plan then! But the atmosphere was great. There was obviously the good bikers, but also the 'tourists' like us and even a young kid (about 10ish) who's birthday it was and had obviously bullied his parents to letting him bring lots of friends along! Still, we played it safe, packed the usual first aid kit, repair tools, twice as much water as we should need and some nutty bars/chocolate bars. After procastinating for as long as possible there was nothing left to do but to get on the bikes - the trail snaked out ahead lots of white dashes across a sea of slickrock, disapprearing down gullys and reappearing up impossibly steep hills. Awesome.




If you're scared of heights even the practise trail is, er, interesting - but well worth it. We rode the downhills hanging off the back of the bikes and peddled the uphills until our legs were on fire and loved everyminute of it! Ok, so we ended up walking a few times, but I only walked one downhill (big ledge dropping into a sandpit) which I was quite proud of. Along the way we met Randy (hehe) who was on his own on an older stumpjumper and clearly terrified! He was walking most the downhills so we teamed up with him so he wasn't alone and took frequent brakes to watch the ongoing madness on the rest of the trail. It was quite weird riding with someone more terrified than me, lol!

I only had one tricky moment as I was about 1 foot from the top of a very steep hill (read: hard to stand up on!), I couldn't quite get there and failed putting my feet down about a foot from the top... only it was so steep I couldn't get off the bike... or put the bike down - so I was stuck! Luckily, I had the camera in *my* camelbak so Dan couldn't take any pics!! With Dan's help and ending up on all fours I managed to scramble the final foot to the top dragging my bike behind me. lol! Before we knew it we got to the turn around point - loop back to the trailhead or go on to 10more miles of slickrock fun. We were both buzzing from the ride, but managed to let our brains control our actions. As much as we would have loved to continue, it was an expert trail and most the obsticles described as 'dangerous sections' were on the remaining track, so we were good (probably to the relief of the emergency services) and headed back to the car park. However, we only did so with a vow to return when we were more confident (and after a few spinning classes at the gym) to complete the rest of the trail. We returned to the car park in style riding off the small but steep downhill into the sand - I was very happy to still be in the saddle after that little obsticle. It was certainly the most biking fun we'd had in Moab so far.

We knew we'd saved the best 'till last an all that remained was to get a few pictures of Charlie on 'proper' slickrock. Doing 'Hell's Revenge' at night had meant we didn't really have any good photo's, so we headed for the nearby trail 'Fins and Things'. This trail rated ok as a difficult but not impossible so we enjoyed about an hour of playing on some really steep stuff, some long climbs and seemingly impossible ledges but as the trail cut back to the road we thought we were probably pushing it a bit for off-roading alone so did the sensible thing and headed back into town. Always best to finish on a high :-)






I know at least one person is sitting a home thinking: You're going to leave Moab and you havn't mentioned the Lionsback! Well, it is on private land and the private land is closed at the moment, but I did get a picture:



And we did do the next best thing:




lol! :-)

Whilst we were there we met Esther and Peter in a white Defender TD5 - excellent piece of equipment decked out in the back with everyting you could possibly need and a groovy pop-up tent. It was great to talk to some more Landy people and they seem to be doing some excellent trips (www.yakontour.ch), heading down into South America for the winter. Cool :-) The funny thing was, we'd seen them twice before around the Lava Beds National Park - but both times had been going too fast in the wrong direction! So we were very pleased to catch them this time.



With dinner at the Brewery and all the laundry done, thus ended a pretty perfect day in Moab and as we wanted to end with fond memories we've decided to head off tomorrow... well, that and we've got about 29 days and 1/2 of America still to travel around. Argh! ;-)

Moab's National Parks - Arches and Canyonlands

Well, we thought it only right that whilst in Moab we should visit the national parks, this also gave our legs (and my bruises) and Charlie Camel a rest from the rigours of slickrock and sand.

We headed to Arches first as it's a full 5miles north of Moab central. We did our usual and called in at the visitors centre to collect our map and paper and then headed out along the main road with the plan to do some hikes when available (mm, great rest then ;-) ). The park is pretty similar to the terrain we had been experiencing in Moab, only with lots of arches. Suprise. Still, having watched the orientation video (aren't we good tourists) we knew roughly the bits and peices we wanted to see. Amongst them were Balancing Rock:



The Windows:



Landscape Arch (only 6ft thick at the narrowist point):



and of course, Delicate Arch - the unoffical symbol of Utah and what you'll see on all the numberplates around here:



Unfortuantly, it was 4pm by the time we got up to Delicate Arch so we didn't really have time for the 3hour hike up there, but it wasn't a bad thing as it was very busy. So we just took the 1mile hike to the view point (still bloomin' hard work uphill though!) and took some piccies from there.

As we were all arched out we made our way to Canyonlands via a cool trail called the Long Canyon:



Now, this is a bit of a weird national park. It centers on the convergence of the Green and Colorado Rivers, only to get there it's a 200mile drive and a 5 hour hike, you can see where we're going here! The park is divided into 3 areas, the Island in the Sky (the easiest to get to from Moab), the Needles and the Maze. The needles are pretty self explanitory and the Maze is full of stories like 'if you go there you'll get lost and die' - you can tell when you're back in a National Park! That was the area that Butch Cassidy and his gang hid in and it worked as all the lawmen were too scared to go in to get him out.

So, we headed to the Island in the Sky after a beautiful night of rough camping just up the road. Not a bad view eh?



We arrived the same time as the BMW Mini club, but they weren't overly chatty, grumpy lot. So we settled down to watch the Ranger talk about relationships in the dessert - did you know the tarantulas can get to 6" long?! Eh?! No-one told me?! Still, we have yet to see one, I'm just going to make sure I don't have to get up in the middle of the night now. We then drove the few roads within the park to the viewpoints, we could of cycled the White Rim trail, but it's 103miles long and you're not allowed to do it without a vehicle as well as it's impossible to carry enough water! We could of driven it, but the fees were quite expensive and as it was basically a gravel road we thought we'd have more fun on the Moab trails. So, after admiring the views we headed back out and towards Moab.



On our way back we pulled in to have a look at the petroglyphs on the Potash Road created a long time ago... er.. about 400 - 600 BC if I remember correctly?! Most of Moab uses designs from these images in the marketing and sculptures around town, so it was cool to see them 'in the flesh' as it were:

We’re on top of the world…

Or at least that’s how it felt. We trucked on up the “moderate” trail with the above title expecting it to be a tad on the easy side. For the majority of the trip it was too, but towards the end we were greeted by large axle twisting rock steps. Nothing that Charlie Camel couldn’t handle tho, he walked up the rocks without a so much as a slip of a wheel.


Its at this point that I feel I should let you into a bit of a secret… We keep praising Charlie Camel for making it along these AWWWWESOME trails, but in actual fact there is a lot of driver skill too! No, seriously, I know you all think I’m a throttle happy V8 lover, but in actual fact, I can drive a diseasel too ya know ;-)
Anyway, we made it over the last mile of the trail which turned out to be more on par with a difficult trail and finally reached “The Top of the World”. It was well worth it! We were at about 6500ft, with an 800ft drop right in front of us. Jen, being a little shy of anything exceeding 10ft, decided that she was going to enjoy the view from a safe distance while I did the Can-Can right on the edge. Oh, and then we parked Charlie on an overhanging ledge :-) Again Jen squeaked!

But the view was amazing. The ledge that we ended up on was right behind Fisher Towers where we camped the previous night.

On the way back down, despite being battered and bruised from yesterday’s rock-eating hilarity, Jen decided to bike the trail back down to the bottom. Gotta give her credit, she didn’t smash all her teeth out this time and was actually a lot quicker than the lardy camel back down to the bottom.

We finished the day off by checking into the Canyonlands Campground again, on Main St so that we could abuse the showers again, and so that I could finally shave off the forest that has appeared around my chops. Several blunt razors later we went for a bite to eat and a few glasses of wine at Eddie McStiffs (great name…. restaurant is for sale if anyone wants to move out here!!)
Having spent the last few days having so much fun, we have decided that we need to visit a National Park again so that we can be told we can’t ride our bikes and that any walking we may want to do will involve several months back country hiking with a very high chance of premature death! So we are going to head out to Arches National Park and if we make it out without dehydration or hyperthermia, we intend to visit Canyonlands too. Don’t worry folks, we’ll be taking a few “High Energy” nutty bars with us and at least 2 litres of water each :-)

'Keeping up with the Chadwicks' :-)

Whilst sitting around a campfire a couple of nights ago Dan and I were reminising about old Landy shows and mountain biking at home when we came to a conclusion. Keeping up with the Chadwicks costs a fortune! Andy and Jane Chadwick, our great Yorkshire friends were present and played a big hand in persuading us a Camel would be the ideal expedition vehicle, not the shiney, reliable 110CSW we had at the time. They were also responsible for our first 'proper' off road mountian biking experience in the Lakes (on the way to our Scotland holiday to test the new Camel expedition vehicle we'd just brought and started kitting out....). Mm. So that's a count of 1 Camel 110 and 2 new mountain bikes. lol! :-)

Needless to say, getting the Camel was one of the best things we've done and we're LOVIN' THE BIKING IN MOAB! :-) So, thanks Chadwicks, the bank balance hates you but we love you :-) Hehe.

We'd picked Klondike Bluffs as our first ride as it's one of the only Moderate/Difficult rides in the book (which means easy in Moab) and had been recommended to me as a good first run by Rim Cyclery. When we arrived at the car park there was already a few vehicles unloading, even though it was a Tuesday in late October. We unloaded, filled the Camelbaks with water, first aid kits and PB&J sandwiches and headed out on the trail.

The trail was 5 1/2 miles uphill, but then you got to run round and come back down again... cool. We started out on tracks and sand but soon hit the slickrock and discovered the dinosour trails - Coooooooooooool! The best thing was, they were quite nicely spaced so left ample time to get your breath back as you pretended to examine them - we did notice, we certainly weren't the only ones!



I found it quite weird as I was so used to a heavy bike when I powered up the hills my new light bike just tend to lift off the ground! lol! It took a bit of adjusting the technique but I was getting it towards the top of the slickrock, which was lucky as in some places it was pretty steep, certainly granny-gear territory. Nearing the top of the first slickrock section we came across a v-gully, innocent looking enough I thought I'd give it a go, esepcially since I'd spent most the ride up lifting the front wheel of my bike - Dan was ever supportive and said 'no-way, don't be stupid, I'll end up picking you up of the ground' ... Nah, I thought, well probably, but you don't learn unless you try!

Note to self: Practise riding at home. Slickrock is hard. And hurts. Alot.



But hey! It was fun trying! Anyone who had a bet on 6 brusies, 1 cut and 2 grazes has won. I was quite close to throwing up, seeing as I'd just ridden 2 1/2 miles up slickrock then winded myself, but luckily (for Dan) it didn't come to that. Dan has kindly re-inacted the moment itself so you can laugh at me. It doesn't look alot, but it was bigger in real life, honest. Dan refused to try it and you know how mad he is on a bike:



The rest of the ride up passed quickly as the views were stunning and the slickrock riding very cool. You do have alot of grip, but there's also *alot* of bumps and technical bits and pieces to keep you alert. We got up to the top to find a bike rack at the trailhead into Arches National Park, so we parked up and walked the short way in to enjoy lunch with a view.



After resting a recouperating we jumped back on the bikes to enjoy the downhill we'd earnt on the way up - it took us half the time but had to be double the fun!





We climbed back into Charlie and headed back to Moab to jetwash all the red mud off. Cool as it was (you're right JU, he did look cool!) it was doing a pretty efficent job of blocking the radiator. Once completed we headed out to Fisher Towers, a small track leading to a campsite with, again, a pretty cool view:



A night of stargazing ensued and a plan concieved to tackle the 'Top of the World' Trail in the morning.

< insert imaginative title here >

Second post in 24hours, aren't you lucky...

The first evening when we were left to fend for ourselves in Moab we decided to drown our sorrows and headed for the Moab Brewery. This is the only micro-brewery in Moab and very cool it was too. It’s amazing how instantly you feel at home when there’s several nice bikes hanging from the ceiling/on the room dividers, including a nice Santa Cruz. Other decoration included a tent, a figurine climbing the wall, a raft, a gilder and half a Jeep Rubicon. The beer cost $3 at the bar and they served Jacket Potatoes, it was like my spiritual home, lol! We tried most the local beers – my personal favourites are Scorpion and Dead Horse encase you’re ever in the area, they had a good range and even sold pint glasses to help me avoid my felonious hobby of collecting brewery’s pint glasses (we brought two in the hopes that one gets home ok). We stopped at the campsite in town ‘Canyonlands Campground’, which was ok if a little noisy, but importantly enabled us to have a shower and was within easy walking distance of the brewery.

The next day we decided to have a day off. Go on, I know you want to laugh. To be honest at times this trip has felt like an epic struggle to avoid the worst of the weather/get to places ‘on time’ to enjoy them properly and, if I’m honest, the inclination to avoid wasting a minute has lead to us being pretty ‘busy’ most the time. So, we got up late, packed up, parked on the street in Moab and after sending quick ‘thank you’ notes to Rob and Jez we spent the morning and early afternoon wandering around Moab.

It’s a nice little town, especially nice as it seems to be retaining some charm (i.e. doesn’t have a Walmart yet). I’m sure it’s not what it used to be as a little mining town as every other shop front is a gift shop/bike shop/café but still feels friendly. We dropped Dan’s bike into Poison Spider, simply as we’d heard of these back in the UK, we finally found someone who could change his brakes over and give his bike a once-over as he was having problems selecting a few gears and after that we trundled off for a late lunch/dinner at the Slickrock Café – now, if you’re in Moab and fancy a smoothy, this is the place to be  We ordered a sandwich and didn’t have to eat for the rest of the day, the food was good. By 3pm we were bored with our day-off (mm, we lasted 4 hours) and decided to head on out on a trail and find a place to camp in the middle of nowhere for the night. We took Kane Springs Creek Road out to Hurrah Pass and did a bit of Chicken Corners Trail, I say a bit as Dan started doing most of it in highbox (at speed) and I wasn’t handling it well after the big lunch! Still, it was getting dark, so after taking some fantastic photo’s and admiring the scenery we headed back down to camp in one of the many marked areas we’d spotted on Kane Springs Trail.


My favourite picture of the holiday so far:


This is the life :-) We weren’t allowed to collect wood and had forgotten to pick some up in town but thankfully, messy campers abounded and we managed to collect enough from used fire rings to have a fire that lasted ‘till 10:30pm. The moon was bright and the stars were out, after all the noisy campsites it’s fantastic to sit somewhere completely quiet. We had a cold night, temp’s down to 25F – I was freezing, but that probably had something to do with not having dinner as I was still full from lunch.



We woke late and had to pick Dan’s bike up, but couldn’t resist trying the proper Kanes Creek Trail which crosses the creek lots of times. It was marked as a difficult, but the Hell’s Revenge hadn’t been too bad, so with promises to turn back if it looked dodgy we headed off. We’d noticed several vehicles in town the day before with lots of red mud – and true to form, even in the dessert we can find mud:



Hehe! Ok, so it was splashy mud, but by the looks of the tyre tracks going in and out it was quite popular. We enjoyed the trail, lots of wash-outs, narrow rocks and tippy sections made for interesting driving, but again, Charlie Camel walked it all with confidence. We got to a section that looked a bit dodgy and both got out to have a look, half the trail had been washed away and built up again with stacked up rocks, with a fall of about 30ft if it collapsed I thought I’d better test it so jumped on the rocks only to almost disappear down the canyon! I won’t be driving the Camel over that then! We found another route over the top, but in involved a steep decent and assent on sand – Mm. Remembering the last time we drove on sand we didn’t think it was a good idea to attempt it encase Charlie got stuck in a v-gully with nothing to winch from. So, reluctantly we made the decision to turn back. Just as we did an older couple in a Rubicon trundled up the trail, the chap was spotting for the lady but not really looking what she was doing and she was pretty much ignoring every instruction… it seemed oddly familiar, lol! They got to the wash out and had a look, they also didn’t really fancy either option but were determined to keep going. Bizarrely they chose the washout route as they didn’t want to risk damaging the skid plate on a rock on the safer trail… err…ok… personally I’d prefer that option to rolling sideways down a gully, but their choice! They did however pick a good route and although the lady pretty much ignored the bloke again and almost run him off the edge of the track whilst shouting ‘coming through!’ they made it unscathed. There’s something to be said for short, light vehicles. Even then, they had put ½ a tyre on the loose rocks, so even though we were tempted, it was pretty obvious Charlie would probably put a *whole* tyre on the loose rocks and without anyone else to help us out should we get into trouble neither of us really fancied the risk. We stayed around to ensure they cleared the obstacle safely as they didn’t have a rollcage and after they disappeared into the distance we made our way back.

Err...




I got to drive this time and was quite proud of myself considering there was some *very* big side slopes, my own personal enemy. It’s all about the confidence.

After we got off the trail it was coming up to 2pm so we decided we really should head into town and pick Dan’s bike up. We got to Poison Spider and the bike was ready and waiting, they brakes had been swapped, but the gears hadn’t been looked at – despite us paying for the work. I left Dan to have a word with the chaps whilst I went off on my Stumpy to look for a shop who may be able to get me some angled handle bars. Mine are great, but without any upsweep they put me quite off balance when negotiating downhill sections. I hadn’t been too impressed with Poison Spider (talking on the phone whilst serving you, you having to wait until they’d finished their conversation about the weekend before asking if they could help etc) so wanted to find somewhere else, ideally someone who’d have some Specalized bars to match my bike (yeah, posy I know). I found my way to Rim Cyclery and wandered in off the street with a filthy bike (it’d been on the back of Charlie) and I couldn’t have found any more helpful guys. I spoke to Johnny who had a ’07 Stumpjumper Hardtail so was impressed with my good taste in bikes, lol! He wasted no time in grabbing my bike, telling me off for it being dirty and using the wrong lube for Moab (in a nice way though!). He got straight too it and tried adjusting the bars as much as possible to try and get me into a better riding position, he put them up as high as possible and adjusted the angle explaining to me all the while what he was doing so I could adjust it myself afterwards. It didn’t quite work though, but not to worry they had several handlebars I could try – from $20 cheapy’s upwards. We tried a set of Specialzed ones that they use on the full suspension Stumpjumper and they worked perfectly  Not only that, they looked like they belonged on the bike. Whilst talking Johnny mentioned enviously the white saddle on my ’08 Stumpjumper, I laughed and said I’d much prefer a black one! It took him about 10 seconds to pull a new body geometry black one from under a counter, the same as mine, only new and black – the deal was on. He also cleaned and lubed up my bike, adjusted my gears and brakes and checked all the vital components before letting me out the workshop. He refused to charge me for labour and threw in some stickers and a water bottle – he must have really liked the white saddle! Needless to say, my bike is transformed, even with the small amount of riding I did this afternoon it feels so much better to be a good riding position and I think it looks ‘awesome’ with the black saddle. As Johnny said – ‘You’ve got to Represent’ … I’ll work it out soon. If in Moab, go to Rim Cyclery – don’t bother with Poison Spider (in my opinion of course).

Now *that* is a cool bike:



Only problem was, I’d told Dan I was just going to go for a quick ride. Opps. Almost an hour later he was getting worried! Still, he laid on the emotional blackmail and didn’t give in until I’d brought him dinner and several pints of beer (from the joint account! - Dan).

After a busy afternoon we settled for finding a campsite to do washing/update the blog and plan some trails for the next day. Now Dan’s bike is sorted and I feel 100% more confident we’re going to hit the first of the trails on the bikes to give Charlie a day off and see if we can last without a trip to hospital. I can’t wait :-)

Heaven and Hell('s Revenege)

Today I ikll be mostly writingf the blog with my glovfes on. It’as cold. Ansd dan wil.l. moanm if I SIT too near te fire with te laptop..;. Ok. So that’s not going to work… I’ve taken them off so we’re going to have to make this quick! Lol! :-)

Utah. Amazing. Definitely in the running for my favourite state of the trip so far. Admittedly, it did have a huge advantage. At the joint leaving party and Mikes birthday party before we left, Jez had given us a whole host of contact details for useful people in the US should we run into trouble, he’d also rang his long-suffering friend Rob Hardy, of Portal Tek fame ( Portal Tek, Domination Through Innovation - trust me, this is proper engineering and looks shiney too. Although he laughed at my idea of Purple Portals, lol!) at 3am in the morning to ask if he’d show us around the off-roading in Utah. We met up with Rob at Great Basin Rovers ( Great Basin Rovers run by ‘Uncle Bill’ and his daughter Shaun, lovely people with copious amounts of cool Land Rover stuff and british engineering – including a 1960’s Mini Cooper S, a very wood-rotted Morris Traveler, and a phone box… cool) on Friday afternoon along with a couple of his friends, Jim and Family, Jerrod and one very funny bloke who’s name has escaped me at the moment, how embarrassing. We were closely followed by a 1980 something Rangie that Rob had picked up for $500, lots of new bits, but lots of normal Rangie complaints like rotting sills, no footwells etc. Still, this was to be Rob’s run around for the next few months and off-road toy for the next day’s trip to Moab. Cool.

Jim and family kindly offered us a room for the night, as did Shaun, but we thought it only right we should be going to the workshop with Rob and the others to prepare the Rangie for the next day’s challenge and sort a few jobs on the other vehicles. Rob is currently living in his workshop whilst Portal Tek takes off and I’ll tell you now – it’s a dream come true! None of this working outside in the rain.



So, we spent the night helping Rob out with a few little jobs and got to bed about 2am whilst Rob stayed up to finish off some Portal Tek work so he could play at the weekend, that’s dedication for you.


We had a few jobs to do in the morning, including getting some pipe to replace the blocked sections of the Rangies exhaust and a nut to assist with the putting back on of one of the rear trailing arms as when taking the nut off it stripped the existing thread, it’s always the simple jobs that take the time. Still, those jobs completed and after an excellent breakfast at Dee’s Jim’s car trailer was loaded up (not the kind of trailer you get in the UK!) and we started the journey to Moab.



Jerred had previously told us how you could get all kinds of weather in Moab, all within a day and the journey down confirmed that for us. We went from rain in Salt Lake to snow in the mountains and dust storms as we crossed closer to Moab – wow. That was all in about 2hours!



We arrived in Moab and you could tell what sort of town you were in straight away, the main street was filled with restaurants, bike shops, café’s, juice bars, bike shops, pizza parlors and some more bike shops, all interspersed with Jeeps and a few D90’s. Cool. It’s a similar atmosphere to Whistler but in southern Utah! Jim parked the transporters and we headed in for some good pizza and to meet Rob’s friend Jeremy before hitting the trails. It took us slightly longer than normal to unload the cars as Jarrod had managed to lock the keys in.. and being 17, only had $50 for the whole trip - so no locksmith for us, opps! Jeremy managed to blag a coat hanger from a motel and after using that and several other implements they managed to spring the lock on the boot. I bet he'll never live it down!

It was already dark before we headed out at about 8pm and we were conscious Jim and family were heading back that night, but Rob stuck to the plan and we headed for Hells Revenge. Now, this is our first time on slick rock, it’s dark/cold and Charlie’s fully loaded, let me read you an extract from our trail book about Hell’s Revenge:

Numerous steep climbs and descents over sandstone domes and ledges, excellent traction enables vehicles to surmount inclines of incredible steepness, but plenty of power is necessary. Make sure your vehicle is geared properly. Several tippy spots will test the leaning ability of most vehicles, it’s important to have excellent front and rear approach angles on your vehicle and good articulation. Not recommended for stock vehicles.

Lol! It was EXCELLENT! The trail started immediately with a large fin (think Lions Back) and all we could see was darkness to either side, it was interesting! Climbing up the large domes was initially intimidating, but Charlie Camel excelled himself and chugged up them all in 1st low, awesome. I’ve always loved off-roading the Camel, there’s something reassuring about all that weight he even surprised me that night though taking everything with reassuring ease. When we got to the split in the trail we decided to head out to the Overlook. It was very dark. Here’s the view:

From left to right: Jerrad, Jim, Kerry (mm, maybe Carry, sorry :( ), Rob, Dan, Jeremy
(appologies for miss-spellings or getting names wrong, I'm rubbish with names, you would never think I used to be a teacher)

Lol! On the way back Jeremy was driving the Rangie and attempted to climb a 3ft ledge, it might have worked but after a few attempts it became apparent there was no drive to the rear axle. This may have had something to do with the odd wheels on the back or attempting to climb the ledge, but who knows?! Still, with no drive to the rear axle the Rangie started struggling, so it was hitched up to Jim’s Toyota 4runner and after Jerrods attempt at finding the trail himself failed we lead the way out. I think 6 spot lights, two headlights and a torch were ideal for this situation, don’t let anyone ever tell you roof lights are unnecessary! Even with those it was hard to follow the trail back in the dark, the tell tale black marks on the rock fade as you get close to them and the small white markers aren’t glow in the dark – and oversight I reckon.. mmm, maybe I should move into ‘traffic management’ in Moab?! So, I did my quality co-driver work and jogged/walked about 3,000 miles in the cold and dark, it was actually excellent fun as I got to watch the trucks working as they negotiated some pretty cool obstacles and made me feel less guilty about the amount of pizza I’d eaten :-) It was interesting though, I was using both legs and both arms to climb some of the inclines at several stages, Dan confirmed the steepness by telling me everything fell out of the dashboard.

We arrived safely back from the trail and had a brief inspection of the Rangies back axle– they’d done a good job! Rob had to have a look so a pair of pliers opened the hole and part of several planet gears fell onto the high street.

A quick decision was made and the Rangie was loaded up to go back to Salt Lake with Jim whilst Rob jumped in Jeremy’s Jeep Grand Cherokee to find a campsite for the night. We headed down to Hunter Canyon south of Moab to camp in possibly one of the most beautiful spots I’ve ever camped and, more importantly, all had a lie-in in the morning.

Sunday morning started late as we wandered into Moab for breakfast at the Jailhouse (thanks Jeremy!) before convincing him he really wanted to take his nice shiney vehicle out on the trails. He finally agreed, but only if it was a reasonably easy one so Rob picked out Gemini bridges as a more scenic route (although still rated ‘moderate’ in the book, hehe). With the snow on the distant mountains and the red rock this was truly stunning. Although an easy trail we had some fun at the end heading down to the bridges and we spent most of it just enjoying the view.




There was a rather worrying plaque at the top though:



Jerrod assured us he was drunk and drove of the edge – don’t try this at home kids! We had a wander around waved to some Jeep owners at the bottom of the canyon and enjoyed the view.

Spot the Jeep:


Dan and Rob decided to try and stand on the thinnest bits of rock possible ‘just for fun’, completely mad both of them :-) it snowed a bit and we headed back down, Rob suggested with both rode the bikes back down but I had my jeans on and I’ve already got a 4 inch rip in them from doing exactly that, so we unloaded Dan’s bike and I handed the keys to Rob to drive the Camel back to the bottom – it was worth it to see him try to use the gearstick left handed, lol! I think he did much better than I would have done in the same situation.

At the bottom of the trail we waved goodbye as everybody headed back home, I was sad to see them go but there was already mutterings about coming back next weekend. Finger’s crossed :-)

N.B. My hands are so cold now they’re turning purple, so I can’t cross my fingers, but the intention is there…

(P.S. we're a couple of days behind on the blog due to avoiding formal campsites, but will try to upload some more about the last couple of day's tomorrow morning or later tonight.)