Agh.
It turned out to be 22 miles, all through sand, all uphill. Honest.
By the end of it, I was cursing Patrick for not using the alternative
(2.3 mile closer
in) trailhead - his reasoning being "that would be cheating". And he
was right, it would
have been, and if we had used it, we wouldn't have been able to brag
about having
ridden 22 miles. There's logic there somewhere.
The La Sal mountains in the background, after we'd slogged up a very
long hill, in five inch deep sand.
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More of the same stuff, several miles later. Still uphill, still in sand.
Only by this point, we'd got slightly lost and had to ride around for a
while to figure out where the trail went.
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Lunch break. More Clif Shot. Yum. I am, however, concluding that you
can't actually *live* on Clif Shot.
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After lunch, wondering if we'll ever make it back. | |
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Going, going, gone...
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The trail behind the rocks parallels the deep, deep canyon for a while,
and at one point, we crossed
across the top of the head of a side canyon. Very pretty.
Prostitute Butte. They have a lot of imagination, those Moab-people.
The trail leading up to the butte is, of course, uphill. Very uphill, so
by the time we got to it, we were starting to fret about ever getting home
in the daylight, and hardly admired the arches the butte had to offer.
In fact, we didn't even see one of them...
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This pic was taken shortly after we concluded that we *were* on the right trail, and *not* totally lost, as we'd first thought. But the sun is still setting, and we still weren't convinced we'd get back to the trailhead without having to bumble around in the pitch black dark for a while. |
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| As it turned out, it was fine. We zoomed along, along the
center of a very rutted road which I was convinced I was going to majorly
face plant on, but didn't (the sun was setting, so we had to ride as fast
as we could). The last slog was just that, a slog, wiv' lil' legs whirring
in a tired manner.
But we did it. 22 miles of trail. All sand. All uphill. Horses are better <grin>.
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Vance (Tomahawk innkeeper) putting Rainbow through his paces. You need a Tootsie Roll as a prop for this. | |
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Sable, the Tomahawk dog, going through her paces. | |
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Lucy dubiously suspecting she's about to lose an arm, or possibly a few fingers. Rainbow doesn't appear to have any eyes, which is a worrying fact when your fingers are close to his sharp teeth. |
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On to Slickrock Trail (this
time we did it for real)...
