Here's Patrick, in the truck, pretending that he's very busy loading
up the bikes. Our room opened onto the balcony on the right.
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The Tomahawk B&B from the front. They have a spring which feeds the lawn. |
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So here I am, at the Klondike trailhead (notice sign),
stretching my pathetic lil' legs in the vague hope they'll be kind to me
and not give out when we're up on some vertical cliff somewhere...
As it turned out, my knee stayed cheerful the whole time, except for getting a good rash underneath my knee support (there's a thing - Lucy goes on holiday and comes up all rashy... sigh... it's not like it hasn't happened 8 or 9 times before...). |
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Once we'd trundled along a gravel road for a while, and struggled through a nice deep sand wash (the sand is bright orange and very, very fine and makes you want to take your shoes and socks off and scrumble your toes in it), we came to this narrow rocky area with a little creek running down through the middle of it. |
Looking back the way we've come.... |
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Strange rock formations by the side of the trail. |
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Following narrow part, the trail opened out onto some slickrock and we started to look for those elusive dinosaur tracks. After a few false starts "HERE'S ONE! Oh, no, it's only a dip in the rock...", we actually did manage to find them.. only you can't really tell from these pictures what you're looking at. Suffice to say, they are very cool and you need to go and look at them yourself for the full effect. For more information on what sort of trails they are, flick ahead to Dinosaur National Monument. |
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They warned you about this hole in the rock. Only I wasn't paying attention, but did see the white lines someone had handily painted on the rock to warn you... | |
I was busy arranging rocks around a dinosaur track I'd found, so didn't
really notice Patrick disappearing off over the slickrock. Off he went,
and in my mind's eye, I remembered him pedalling away in the direction
of the trail. Not.
A little later, I began to cycle up the trail and saw him way off on the horizon going in the opposite direction to me. I figured that he must be on the trail, way further along than I, and that the trail must switchback. So I carried on cycling as fast as my puny legs could manage... over the bumpy white slickrock, wobbling around the lumps and pedalling frantically. I pedalled and pedalled and wondered when the trail would make it's turn. Patrick must be way, way ahead of me to have been so far along the top. And then I heard wailing behind me, and strangely, there was Patrick coming along up the hill. He was looking very sad and a bit damp. It turned out that he'd gone off trail and got completely lost, couldn't find the trail back, and had been frantically trying to get to where I was (even though he wasn't actually sure which fin I was on). No real harm done, but it did show us how easy it was to get lost on
the slickrock. It's miles and miles wide, and it all looks exactly alike.
It also made us think up a plan about what to if we got separated again.
We decided that we would meet back where we'd last seen each other (which
in my case would have been fine, because I could have played by the dinosaur
tracks).
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As punishment for going off trail, Patrick promptly got a puncture (caused by some badly placed rim tape - apparently a common problem with K2 Beasts. He'd been warned about it and had replaced the front wheel tape, but never got around to doing the back... a job for later that evening). Of course, sitting up there on the rocks, with a stupendous view of the north Moab valley in front of us was a distressing experience to have to undergo.... Yes. | |
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So we cycled and cycled, and arrived at the edge of Arches National Park. We dumped our bikes, and carried on the last quarter mile on foot up to the view point, which was pretty good. | |
In the book, it said there was an arch in these sticky-up rocks (above),
but I never saw it
(it was a swizzle) and instead got scared by going close to the edge
and getting vertigo
looking down into the canyon miles below.
(Below) Looking back towards where Patrick's knee decided it
was time to stop, and east towards
the rest of Arches National Park.
(Below) Patrick's view of where I'm standing in the above pic:
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Me swigging down "Sorbet Clif Shot". Yum. |
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And then we turned around and went down again - an hour and half's
of cycling to get up, and hour and ten minutes to get down... plus lots
of standing around gawping at stuff.
This is looking back up to the top where we are in the above panorama shots. |
On to the Prostitute Behind the
Rocks...