Four-days of the ultimate desert dance: To do a trail of this magnitude (142-miles in four days) self-supported, you must be more than ready and a little crazy, or in my case, naive. The day before Fred and I began the trail, we drove to each campsite and dropped a cooler with food, water and supplies including fresh bike tubes, beer, fresh clothes for the next day’s ride, and baby wipes (for the “nightly shower”). It helps to have a different sleeping bag and pad for each drop point — we ended up carrying bivvy sacks and sleeping pads on our backs the whole way. They were bulky and heavy, but worth it, separating us from the cold desert floor every night. Another thing that is helpful is to gather wood at the campsites, though there’s no guarantee it will be there when you come back (I’ll explain that bitter story in the Day 3 section). Your guide book will lead you through this entire planning process. Also, make sure have a good map as the trail is not always marked.
This is where the epic trail begins:
Day 1 and the Sundance Kid: The Kokopelli Trailhead begins in Loma, Colorado, at the beginning of Mary’s Loop. I felt good that morning; confident climbing the slickrock and loose-gravel rollers of Mary’s Loop. Once we reached the canyon lip along the Colorado River where you travel along the edge of the steep crater-like holes, I giggled like a Redford-groupie. I couldn’t help but look back envisioning Butch Cassidy’s gang and hoping to hear the sounds of law enforcers with wagons and rifles trailing. This part of the trail is one of the most memorable, however, the day is long and tedious as you reach a couple of huge hike-a-bikes to get back to the road.
The day went on like this – me pretending to be The Sundance Kid, Fred yelling at me to hurry up while snapping photos of my shadow on the canyon walls; me feeling proud of my ass-endurance by mile 15, Fred telling me that we weren’t even halfway there; me cursing at our camp when realizing it was still three miles away, Fred hiking back down the steep rode to carry my bike the last mile.
Mud facial.
Day 2 Moab mudbath: Forgettable by the foreshadowing of the day to come, but entrancing by the desert dance you do for 42 miles. This section is a straight away along train tracks with grey, vegetation-less mountains and black lava-rock beneath. We traveled through a section that was soaked with red Moab mud, which is supposed to have deep healing powers. Then into a rolling slickrock section that mocks the land before time. You fall into a deep trance-like state, taking in the vast nothingness around, annoyed by the sound of your own thoughts. At this point, if you’ve properly acclimated to your environment, then you might even see dinosaurs selling Coors Light on the side of the trail.
This day passes so quickly, despite the impressive mileage. You begin near the haunted Cisco desert, which is silent and sleeping (or maybe not). You end near the historic Dewey Bridge outside of Moab. You ride up the road to a campsite among the red slick rock and sleep under the Utah stars.
Dead bear carcass at final campsite.
Day 3 is a bitch: Only 27 miles, it’s the 8,000-foot elevation gain that’s the kicker. About mid-way, you come to Rose Garden Hill, Kokopelli’s little devil surprise, imbedded in the high cliff-lined canyon you spent the morning climbing. It is a 90-degree, 30-foot drop (I may be exaggerating a little) taking you back deep into a valley, which you can now look forward to climbing back out. It’s hard to believe that at this point you aren’t even half way and you still have a cool 4,000 feet left to scale.
Day 3 is by far the most challenging part of the ride, our guide book rated it 10 out of 10 for endurance, 10 out of 10 for difficulty, and a 5 out of 10 for technical. This is because you are on roads depressingly steeper than your childhood driveway, there’s no glorious single-track to look forward to, and there is no relief. You climb out of your campsite in the morning and up to your campsite that night. Day 3 would have been the discouraging factor for me doing this trip, had I only known. But I learned more about what I am physically capable of by this day and in hindsight, it’s what made the trip worth it for me.
There is a section, right before you reach camp, that you can look out and see the accomplishments of your day’s journey. Over that canyon, down into that valley, then out of the valley and up the side of the mountain, across the side to the top, to where you now stand, empowered, in awe, and exhausted beyond a need for rest.
Not finishing was never an option, so when I sat, hysterically crying at the bottom of Rose Garden Hill, cursing Fred, cursing the desert, cursing myself for agreeing to this madness, something in me switched. My brain kicked in and gave the only logical answer – it wasn’t a question of if, but when. So I got back on my bike and kept riding. There was no other choice and that’s when I realized that my legs were just muscles and my emotions had nothing to do with it.
We rode into our campsite in the La Sals just as the sun dipped below the earth and I cried again in disbelief that I actually completed the day; that I actually made it. It hurt so bad.
At our campsite, we discovered a very nice hippie couple had decided to camp right where we hid our third and final drop (two feet from a dead bear carcass). They asked us ever so politely if we could move campsites. This site was luxuriously stocked with a deep fire pit and tons of wood, all of which they had commandeered. I’m a nice girl, but when this went down at the end of what remains to be the hardest day of my life, I wasn’t so nice. I said absolutely not, no way in hell. And then Fred and I made a makeshift fire-pit in the dark and I marched deep into the woods to pull out firewood. This was the coldest site and a fire was imperative. I found a couple of dead trees and we chopped them up using our hands and slept in the freezing alpine dirt next to a crackling twig fire, next to an angry couple that for sure did not get it on that night. They did offer us hot chocolate, however.
Day 4: Summit Fever. It’s hard to realize the gravity of what you’ve done once you reach the look-out point at the top of the La Sal’s. Your anguish from the entire trip seems to be glazed over by the finish line. You forget that your ass hurts more than a root-canal, that you smell like a foot, and that just the day before, you were going to dump your boyfriend, call in heli-rescue and quit.
This last day you have a short climb (only a 2,000 foot gain) from desert to aspen glens. Then, when you reach the summit, you get to wail down LPS Trail that gracefully preludes Porcupine Rim, and take the road (or the Rim if you’re good) and fly at 30-miles-an-hour on a 17-mile, whirling downhill straight into Eddie McStiff’s Bar and Grill. It was the best buffalo burger and pitcher of 3.2 beer I’ve ever had.
*All photos by Fred Bohm.
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