Switching from Saddles to Full Suspension

Many of our trails in the La Sals are used primarliy as downhill mountain bike trails. Bikers get a ride to the top of the mountain and then bomb downhill all the way to town. The sport is becoming more and more like lift served skiing. Some of the bikes that people are using now days are almost too heavy to pedal uphill.

Max and myself rode the Moonlight Meadows trail on Thursday to cut logs out of the trail and see what kind of trail work was needed. The trailhead is high in the alpine near Geyser Pass above 10,000 feet. It is beautiful up there right now, fields of flowers and all the streams are running over their banks with snow melt.

I found out how unskilled I am as a downhill mountain biker by going over the handlebars twice. Once was a full out superman dive down hill. As I was hurdling head first down the mountain I was thinking to myself all of the different broken bone possibilities that could occur when gravity finally pulled me back to terra firma. Somehow I landed in soft dirt and flowers and ended up with nothing more that grass stains and a jammed finger.

Moonlight Meadows and Mount Mellenthin

Creek Crossing

South Elk Ridge/Dark Canyon

We have a new District Ranger (my boss), so I took him out the last couple of days to show him the Dark Canyon Wilderness that we manage. We spent a night at the Gooseberry Guard Station on Elk Ridge and took the ponies down into Horse Pasture Canyon and looped back up Dark Canyon. Our retired Range Manager came on the trip as well. His name is Jimmie Forrest, which I think is the greatest name ever if you are going to work for the Forest Service. He worked on the District for almost 40 years so it was great to have him along to point out features that I have walked past several times already like hidden springs, arches and ruins. I also got down in the head of Hammond Canyon. I was hoping to get to some of the larger ruins, but had to turn back when it started getting dark.

Me, Rags and Zipper, faithful government employees

Gooseberry Guard Station

Horse Pasture Trail, if you're smart you walk this section

The head of Hammond Canyon

Down in the canyon

San Rafael River

The San Rafael River finally got high enough to float last weekend so I drove up and met Dad, Tyler, and the Nielsons at the bridge across the river. We dropped off a truck and drove up to Fullers Bottom and launched the boats for a 18 mile relaxing float beneath the high walls of the "Little Grand Canyon". Last time I floated this section of river I think it was the year that Alina and I were married 14 years ago.

The convoluted landscape of the San Rafael holds so many memories for me almost every butte, mesa, and canyon reminds me of some past adventure. Climbing and sleeping on top of Mexican Mountain with my Dad, chasing wildhorses with friends and family every Thanksgiving (before I knew it was illegal), climbing Window Blind Butte in a snowstorm in February with Creed and Todd, swimming horses through the frozen river on a winter ride that turned out to be a little longer than planned, getting a first descent on Segers Hole Canyon, rappelling kayaks into the lower Black Box, and meeting Alina for the first time at Copper Globe. The San Rafael is where I fell in love with the Slickrock and my wife, it will always be home to me.

Floating beneath the Navajo Sandstone

Barrier Canyon Petroglyphs in Virgin Springs Canyon

River flowing from the Sunrise

We just got back floating the San Juan with the whole family. It rained and snowed on the drive down but the sun broke through the clouds as we put our boats in and we had great weather the whole trip, it actually never got very hot which is unheard of on the San Juan. The kids love living on the river, playing in the sand, collecting driftwood swords, and catching toads.

The San Juan is a mellow float with just a few minor rapids, but I have always loved this river. It flows through some of the wildest portions of the Colorado Plateau and is littered with signs of the ancients. I have found Navajo scarecrows in it's sidecanyons. It has intrigued me and represents one of the things I love about rivers; thier role as boundary. Humans have always used rivers as boundaries and used the imagery associated with boundary to represent death, crossing over, the other side. The San Juan is a very literal boundary between the Navajo World and the Anglo World. Even before we Anglos drew the reservation bounday along the river, the Navajo used the river as a boundary. Traditional Navajos perform specific rituals before crossing over to the north and any deer or elk killed to the north of the river have to be cleansed before they are brought back south over the river to be eaten.

On another note, after linking my last post to the Radio West website, Doug Fabrizio read my post on the show. Fortunately I had erased everything that may have offended somebody. But it just goes to show that what you put on your blog is not private and may actually end up getting read on the radio. Heres the link to the show where he quoted me. For the record I do not refer to myself as "wildbri"

Moab, the "New" West

Doug Fabrizio is in town this week broadcasting his show "Radio West" this week. Today they were discussing the town of Moab, how it has changed and if the shift from extractive industry to a tourist base economy has worked. Pretty interesting program. You can find it here.

Ed Abbey had this to say about Moab in his book Desert Solitaire "For myself I'll take Moab, Utah. I don't mean the town itself of course but the country which surrounds it-the canyonlands. The slickrock desert. The red dust and the burnt cliffs and the lonely sky-all that which lies beyond the edge of the roads."

I have to say that "all that which lies beyond the edge of the roads" is the reason I always wanted to end up here. But now that we live here, the community and the people that live here are also some of the reasons I want to stay.