Summer Camping in Moab

We have too many Utah locations we want to visit this summer and not enough time! Dustan has really been wanting to visit Moab again (we went about a year and a half ago in February, blogged about here) to try out the mountain biking! So we went for a weekend in June :) We went with two other couples, PJ and Katie, and John and Jessica. Half of us (John, Dustan, and I) went up early on Friday to snag a good camping spot and the rest joined us later in the afternoon.

Before the other half of the group arrived, we set up camp at the King's Bottom Campground and grabbed some lunch at the famous Moab Quesadilla Mobilla--a quesadilla food truck. It was delicious. We lounged around the remainder of the afternoon in the extremely hot, hot, nearly 100 degree weather. We did make a short stop at a fossil and rock store in Moab, which was actually really awesome (and funny, see picture a few below).

Funny mirror in the fossil store bathroom...

Once the rest of the group arrived, the boys did a quick mountain biking ride at the Navajo Rocks. Us girls did a short hike through a canyon to a pond that was just across the street from our campground. The weather felt so much nicer in this little canyon, and even better once the sun started to set.

Yay Chacos!

We arrived back at camp around the same time the boys did. Finally, we cooked up our foil dinners and brats and sat around the fire chatting until it was time to head to bed. The boys had an early morning ahead!

I woke up way too early with the boys so that I could shuttle them to the top of a mountain. This mountain biking trail is called The Whole Enchilada, one of the most famous and tricky mountain biking trails in Utah. It was a long and eventless drive, even after dropping them off. Afterward, I met up with the girls! First, I will write about what we did that morning and afternoon, then I'll have Dustan write about his adventures biking with the boys.

After eating a quick breakfast, us girls headed over to what we though was called Negro Bill Canyon. Apparently it had been recently renamed to Grandstaff Canyon. Either way, it was such a great little hike! It was about four miles roundtrip. Each of us wore our Chacos as we trekked over and through a small creek multiple times as the path crossed over. So refreshing! At the end of the hike, we came to a tall, natural rock bridge called Morning Glory Natural Bridge where people were repelling. Apparently, it is the sixth largest natural rock bridge in the US at 243 feet.

Chubby preggo belly

After this hike, we headed into town to buy a few necessities and received a text from the boys that they were running a few hours behind schedule. We were a little bummed, but ultimately decided that we didn't have enough time for a different outing, and just hung around the campsite.

Our campsite right beside the brown Colorado River

The time when the boys were supposed to arrive back at camp came and went. We gave them another couple hours before letting ourselves actually get a bit concerned, mainly because it was only about an hour until sunset at this point, and we knew that they boys had not brought enough food, water, or light to get through that. Since we didn't have any phone service at our campsite, we decided to drive into town to see if we could reach them. Literally as soon as we got into town, a phone call came in from John. He told us that one of the bikes was broken, they were out of water, and still five miles away from the trailhead/car. Obviously, that's a ways to go in the hot Moab heat and trying to make it before sunset! We immediately went back to camp, packed up backpacks full of water, snacks, and headlamps before heading to the trailhead.

We began to hike up the trail. Within minutes, Dustan came riding fast down the trail on his mountain bike. He hadn't had any crashes during the day and was physically less exhausted than the other boys, so they sent him ahead to look for us. He immediately chugged a bottle of water before stashing his bike on the trail and joining us on the hike to the other boys.

Luckily, they had made a lot of progress since we last heard from them! After just two or three miles of hiking and before it was even dark, we found the other boys, PJ and John. They also immediately chugged some water and took a short break. Then, we continued the hike back down together. We did end up needing to pull out the headlamps--thank goodness we had them. It got dark quick and it wasn't an easy trail, especially when dragging a couple bikes along.

Eventually, we made it back to the cars. We immediately drove to the Moab Diner and stuffed ourselves full of delicious food. It was a crazy day!

Now, for Dustan's side of the story (in italics):

On Friday evening, we went and biked a short 3 mile trail called the Ramblin' Trail at the Navajo Rocks Trail System Area to get warmed up and make sure the bikes were running okay since we were doing The Whole Enchilada the next morning. Everything was running well and we tried to go to bed fairly early so we could start The Whole Enchilada the next morning really early. None of us got much sleep though since it was about 85 degrees all night (except me, I can sleep well in pretty much any conditions). We got up at 6:30, and headed to the trail by 7. Ellen was nice enough to shuttle us to the top (over an hour of driving on a bumpy dirt road). After some last minute bathroom breaks, we were off!

The start of the trail was beautiful! We climbed through the trees and meadows, and even got to ride through a stream or two on our way up to the top of Burrows Pass (at 11,200 ft elevation). It was an exhausting climb, and by the end we were riding for 30 seconds and walking for 2 or 3 minutes. We had high hopes though, because after reaching Burrows Pass, the trail was all downhill for the next 26 or 27 miles. 

Our hopes were met with disappointment at the top though. As soon as we crossed over the ridge, rather than being met with a fun singletrack downhill trail, we were confronted with 2 miles of deep snow (the sun apparently doesn’t melt the snow on the back of the mountain this early). We pushed our bikes the two miles only staying on the trail by the grace of my phone GPS showing us when we were off track (since we couldn’t see the trail for most of the walk). 

After getting through the snowy part, the ride got really fun. We blasted down flowy alpine singletrack through the aspens with breathtaking views. The next section Hazard County was more technical, and had large rocks in the trail, but we finished it uneventfully. After Hazard County, we went through a really fun section called Kokopelli. It was like a four wheeler road, with some fun little roller jumps. This was a fun section to go really fast on. 

The end of this trail is when our real troubles began. We stopped here to eat lunch and when we started to get going again, John’s tire had gone flat. He tried to patch it, but the valve was really old and wasn’t holding air, so we put one of his three spare tubes in it and went on our way. Well 20 minutes later, his tire was flat again. This was only PJ’s 3rd time mountain biking, so he decided to go on ahead, and we’d catch up to him after we finished patching the tire. After about 20 minutes, we were finally able to get the tire patched, and we went flying down the trail to catch PJ. He said he would stop and wait if he got to a trail junction, but we arrived at the next trail, and no PJ. We sat there for about 15 minutes trying to decide if he really could have gotten that far ahead and we should keep trying to catch him or if he had somehow gotten lost and we should wait. We decided to pray about it, and right as we were about to start our prayer, PJ comes rolling around the corner. He had gotten off the path, and before he was able to get back to it, John and I had passed him trying to catch up to him. We said a quick thank you prayer that we were able to be reunited and went on our way again. We made it down the next sections--Lower Porcupine Singletrack and Upper Porcupine Singletrack--without many problems (except that John’s cleat on his clip in shoe broke, so he wore one of my vans and I wore his broken clip in shoe so that he could have a bit of traction on his pedal). 

But as soon as we started Porcupine Rim, the real problems began. John’s tire went flat again, and this time we couldn’t get a patch to stick (it was filled with that nasty goo stuff), so we went to put another tube on, but discovered all of his other tubes had broken valves (always pay for the good tubes, it’s worth it). We tried to get a patch to stick to the one tube remaining with a good valve, but to no avail. We were now out of patches, and 9 miles from the bottom of Porcupine Rim. So we started walking. At this point, we had been out way longer than we had planned on and were running out of water. Also, our phones only had 4-5% battery life, and no service to call the girls. We did get passed by one biker (the only other person we saw on the trail the whole day) who filled one of our water bottles up for us, but we were very low on water. After walking 2 miles (and counting exactly how many steps made up a half mile haha), we came up with a system. Two people would bike half a mile (my bike had an odometer) and then wait while the third person would push the broken bike the half mile, and then we would switch. We made sure to only take a small swallow of water every half mile so we would have enough. We did this for about 4.5 miles (and found a full water bottle on the side of the trail that had fallen out of someone’s bicycle that helped a ton), when PJ and John started getting pretty dehydrated. Both of them were running out of energy fast, and were getting pretty dizzy when walking (the 95 degree weather didn’t help). PJ was even holding his pee in case he had to pee in a bottle and drink it haha. It was starting to get dark, and I was still feeling pretty good, so we decided that I would bike the last 4.5 miles to the bottom as fast as I could to find the girls and go back up to where ever they made it to with water and food. At this point John turned his phone on to see if he had service and he did! He called the girls who answered (a small miracle since there was only service in the city of Moab, and we thought they were back at camp with no service) and told them to meet me at the bottom of the trail with water. I gave PJ and John the last of my water, and rode as fast as I could to the bottom. By the time I got there I was so tired that I teared up a little bit when I saw the girls coming up the trail with water. I drank a bunch, then hiked with the girls back 2.5-3 miles and found PJ and John. By the time we got out of there it was pitch dark, but the girls brought head lamps, so we all made it out fine. We were quite dehydrated, but it was an adventure we’ll never forget, and I’m glad we did it!

And back to me! On Sunday morning, we woke up early to break camp and go on a hike before church! We drove into Arches National Park to hike Delicate Arch, one of Utah's most famous landmarks. This hike is only about three miles roundtrip. The views along the path just show a lot of red rock, but then you hike out across a ledge, and suddenly, Delicate Arch appears! It was just as stunning as when we saw it last year. Though the hike was a little easier without the ice on some of the path.

Afterward, we stopped by the Lazy Lizard Hostel for some cheap showers (we will totally stay here next time in Moab--private rooms, AC, and so cheap) before heading to church! As before, the Moab ward was super welcoming. Afterward, we headed back home to Provo. It was such a fun weekend!!