Last Thursday the guys from the priest's and teacher's quorums in my ward started a mountain bike trip on the White Rim trail in Canyonlands National Park. It's a three-day, 100 mile off-road hard ride. Joe Heywood, Bryan Hays and I planned this trip for spring break in March, but it ended up being rescheduled to May 20-22, 'cuz I guess they missed me too much while I was in the hospital. Ironically, neither of them where able to go after it was rescheduled! Lame.
The crew at the at the beginning of Mineral Bottom road: Joseph, Kory, leader Merrill, Jake, me, Aaron, Zak, Tyler, and Wiley. Not pictured: leader Ken.
On the trail with the Green River behind me. Because I'm still so out of shape, I drove the support truck most of the trail. I was able to get in 10-15 miles a day on my bike though!
Because we changed the campsite permits late, we had a short ride Thursday, a long ride Friday, and an average ride Saturday. The first day we weren't in a hurry to get to camp, so along the trail we hiked to Fort Bottom Ruin, an old Anasazi Indian ruin.
Relaxing at camp Potato Bottom.
After 21 miles on Friday and another 30 to look forward to, we didn't feel like struggling up Murphy Hogback, a grueling 5-mile hill. So we loaded up seven guys in the truck, four bikes on the rack, and six bikes on top of our gear with three guys to hold it all on.
Our second night it was so windy that to cook dinner we had to use the table and a tarp to keep the propane stove on. Good times. We were able to get a camp at the Airport site instead of the Shafer campsite, which took 12 miles off the ~65 mile day.
Some of us in a small slot canyon along the way.
