Moab, White Rim Trail...Part 5

That's Bruce on the left. I've not said much about Bruce. He's a great guy, and has turned out to be a damned good rider. He has a fire breathing 426cc Yamaha that he plays with at the ORV parks in Ohio.

He hates being on the NX when in the company of other riders on their motocross bikes. He prolly could out ride all of them, but image is everything out there. It's not what you can do, it's what you look like you can do. LOL

But anyway we all learned that if you don't think you can get up the hill, just have Bruce take it up for you. A rider like that is good to have along. The trouble with the 'have Bruce take it up for you' idea is that you didn't know you couldn't do it till it was too late.


So we got up extra early to do the White Rim Trail today. I've been hearing about this ride for 10 years. It's about 100 miles of trail around the west side of Canyon Land Natl Park. It's done from the high ground above the Colorado and Green rivers, so you always have a view, and the trail usually has a cliff nearby, sometimes too nearby.

It's a 100 miles of trail and 50 miles to and from. The NX's get 140 miles to a tank, and I don't know how far I can go. We needed to pack extra gas. Bruce bungied on a gallon and I toted 2 gallons. That would be plenty. The KLR had 6 gallons which was twice what he needed. He was getting about 50 mpg.

It was kinda nippy when we hit the pavement. "Don't hate me because of my electrics", I would tell the guys. :) But by 9am the temp was tolerable, and we had slowed for the dirt trail, and, really, it was just right. Actually, we were blessed with good weather the whole week.


We started the 100 mile trail at 9am. If we averaged 20 mph, it would be 5hrs. Local info said 6 to 8 hrs by MC.....hummmmm. Seems that we should keep an eye on the time we were taking. It was pretty easy to ride at 20mph, but averaging in the sight seeing and camera time was the problem. after 20 miles it seemed that we were making a 10 mph average. That would put us in after dark. Not a good thing.


That was Mussleman Arch...looked more like a bridge to me, anyway it was way cool with hundreds of feet below. Out there in the middle, it was a bit spooky.

Bruce was leading at this time. Somewhere along here Bruce's gas can had slide off it's rack and was dangling by a Bungy. A lesson is to get the spare gas in a gas tank as soon as there is room for it. Too many bad things can happen to extra gas.

Bruce and Tom were able to use the whole gallon between them. I envied there 75mpg mileage. Over the years I have learned that tying/bungying liquids onto a dirt bike may be one of the most underestimated tasks in existence.

Secretly I was pretty tickled that the eight bungies I had on my two gallon can was holding. Apparently, I have learned something from my years in Baja.

On we went, site after site, it was all spectacular.




So we are rolling along trying to pick up the pace when Bruce begins to smell something peculiar. Turns out he has lost his radiator cap. I hoped that it got caught in his fairing somewhere, but that wasn't the case. He decided to hop on Tom NX and see if he could find it.

We waited.....and a view in the other direction produced............

Soon he was back with the cap. Life was good and we were rolling again. Somewhere along here in the forty mile range, I had stopped for a picture. I was last in line, so I was trying to catch up. I crested a 6 or 8 foot rise. The trail made a left turn and I was lined up on the right track/rut. I was on the wrong slope of that rut if I had to turn left.

I won't say what happened next couldn't have been avoided.....but attempting the left turn just then did have an adverse effect. The front tire didn't bite. It slide out, and in a Madden voice "Bam" I was on the ground in a classic face plant.

I hit so hard,I remember wondering, "why am I still conscious?.....But I was. The bike was leaking a bit of gas, so I hurriedly lifted the bike. Oh, that hurt some. My left wrist was demanding some consideration, in fact, 'OUCH, dammit'. Remember me talking about over confidence. Well, that was all gone now.

I seemed to be able to ride ok. The wrist was pretty good in a straight push or pull, but any side pressure was bad. So a little sprain could be lived with...I guess. I caught up with the boys as they took a brake at the top of one of the hills.

Everybody that come along here must stop on top here. The hill was several hundred feet tall, and quite steep. A piece of equipment had been out there doing some work on the trail. It wouldn't have been passable by most of the vehicle (or me) if they didn't take care of about 4 hills on the trail at different places.

This was truly BFE, but these two crows had learned that they could bum a few scraps off of the tourist.

As we sat there taking a break a bicycle rider came along. There were three more bikes and a Toyota pickup in his group. These guys are nuts.....but who am I to talk. Bicycles usually take three days to make the loop. He was coming at us, so we asked him what was ahead. We were a little antsy about how much farther we had to go. It was already past 1pm.

He said we had about 35 more miles of trail. I figured that he probably was very accurate with mileage. If I was pedaling, I would know exactly how far I had come, and as it turned out he was exactly right.

We Picked up the Green River in another 10 miles, and stopped for pictures.




The bicycle rider had told us that there was a hell of a climb at the end of our ride. We came to a couple pretty big climb but at the wrong distances. They were again groomed, and I couldn't imagine how bad it would be without the road work. We didn't get pictures of those hills because we had our hands full riding.

Eventually we came to the 'BIG' hill. The road had turned to two lane by then, and was well graded, but it provided quite a few awesome pictures. Here are a few.





Once on top of that hill, we were home free. We had 25 miles of good gravel and paved roads to do before we could get gas. As we traveled those miles, I did a bit of philosophizing. I've never figured out if there is sound in a forest if no one is there to hear it.

Well, by the same token, I wondered if my face plant had possibly not really happened if my co-riders weren't there to see it. My wrist had stiffened up and was hurting like hell, but I hadn't actually cried in front of anyone. Maybe they didn't have to know about it at all.

We were getting gas, and I hadn't decided just exactly how to handle this phylosophical question, when bright eyed Tom says, "say, Pete, what happened to that tail light lense. Did you get off out there?"

Well, I knew I'd been had, but I was certainly not going to be able to keep that get off a secret now. I had just been wondering, that's all.

I'll tell you what, though, With my injured wrist, I had a whole lot more understanding about what Tom had been going through with his bad ribs and back and all.

Once we got back to camp we all enjoyed a beverage .....a couple of tall boys was just what the doctor ordered.


Of note is the fact that Tom borrowed one of Bruce's 2 good mirrors and still had it at the end of the day.