the current proposed boundaries, less than 25 miles would be preserved.
Leaving Green River, I’m thinking less about land protections and more about keeping
up. Signing up for a cycling adventure with these two feels like shooting a game of HORSE
with Lebron James and Michael Jordan. Kurt is an old friend and racing nemesis who edged
me out at the 2014 edition of the Arizona Trail Race 300. He’s racked up victories or fastest
known times at the full 800-mile AZT, the Colorado Trail Race, the Kokopelli Trail, and the
Tour Divide, among others. Meanwhile, Kaitlyn capped off 2018 with victory at the 24-Hour
World Championships in Scotland in October. Then on Christmas Eve, she lost control of
her truck on icy roads and was T-boned by an oncoming vehicle. The crash left her with a
broken fibula and sacrum, quadruple fractures in her pelvis, and a torn bladder. She’s still
clawing her way back to fitness almost a year later. Slated to ride her first 12-hour race less
than two weeks after our Bears Ears trip, she’s obviously on the upswing.
Bikepacking, however, is the great equalizer: that rare time in cycling where everyone hap-
pily pedals out for the collective experience. The pace is swift but relaxed as the three of us
plow eastward. Truth be told, there was no good reason to start in Green River other than its
easy access, especially since I assumed the riding would match the town’s unappealing I-70
setting. But rolling toward Moab on the broken ribbon of the old highway, now crumbling at
the edges, I’m overwhelmed as the pastels of the Mancos Badlands open before us. Interstate
70 is a just few miles to the south and yet few will ever witness this timeless landscape. “A
man on foot, on horseback, or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile
than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles,” wrote Edward Abbey in Desert Solitaire.
After four hours of spinning through open desert and badlands, riding into Moab is jar-
ring. Cars queue at the entrance to Arches National Park, and scrums of mountain bikers
jostle in the bike lanes. In town, we fill bottles and stuff supplies into our packs, then pedal
out Kane Creek Boulevard, where Ledge Campgrounds A through E teem with weekenders.
Fifteen miles from downtown Moab, we cross Hurrah Pass, just past which lies the original,
Obama-era northern boundary of Bears Ears—under the cur-
rent modifications, the boundary is still some two hours away.
A vein of paprika-dust backroad that threads through sandstone
blobs, Hurrah is neither tall nor remote, but the two-track on
the other side deteriorates into a puzzle of broken sandstone
plates. Three miles down the pass, where camping is allowed,
the sites are empty. We lay out our sleeping pads and bags, and
cook dinner under a spray of stars.
When Kaitlyn unfurls her Tyvek ground cloth, I notice a
hand-scribbled diagram of the time periods and rock strata of
Arizona from when she used it as an impromptu white board
for the Grand Canyon to Mount Humphries (“Hole to Hump”)
wilderness exploration class she taught with Kurt. “It feels like
the accident changed everything for me, though I’m still coming
to terms with what that means,” Kaitlyn says. “I guess it means
that I’m grateful for every moment I get in places like this.” In
this silent wilderness I’m grateful, too, for the still evening with
friends, the absence of the chaos of modernity, and the light breeze
that drifts red sandstone dust against my sleeping pad overnight.M
obs of visitors line up each year for Arches and Canyon-
lands (in 2018, 1.7 million and 740,000, respectively),
yet the views we wake to and ride through on day two
are equal to anything in those national parks. We see
maybe a dozen people all day. We pick our way along
a road that alternates between red moon dust mined with
helmet-size boulders and platforms of brick-hued sandstone as
f lat as runways. Rust-colored mesas tower like skyscrapers to
the open blue sky. The big vistas make sense: We’re paralleling
Canyonlands, less than a mile as the crow f lies across the Colo-
rado River. All morning, we can see trucks and bikes across the
river on the renowned White Rim Road. (The ride gets its name
from the eponymous sandstone layer it follows, Kurt tells me.)
I’ve pedaled the White Rim numerous times, and the ride we’re
doing is at least as scenic—and more interesting as we climb
through the strata instead of just sitting on a single layer.
As we drop into Lockhart Basin, a sandstone-capped, bowl-
like amphitheater 1,700 football fields across, blooms of pea-
green sediment appear in the strata. This is the Chinle layer,
according to Kurt, and on the Colorado Plateau it can indicate
the presence of uranium. It’s been widely reported that, prior
to the decision to shrink Bears Ears, the Trump Administra-
tion was lobbied by numerous mining interests, including the
Canadian-owned uranium producer Energy Fuels. Overlaying
the original Bears Ears boundaries with a map of a bloom of
likely uranium deposits makes it clear that Trump’s proposed
reductions of the park align closely with mining interests.
Critics of the original Bears Ears designation cite federal
overreach and poor oversight of lands in Utah as rationale for
trimming the monument. It’s true that the U.S. government
manages nearly two thirds of the state’s lands, the second-
largest percentage of federal holdings in a state in the U.S.
(after Nevada). It’s also true that the expanses that President
Obama designated for the monument were already federal lands,Camping along Lockhart Basin Road (right) a few miles north of
Hamburger Rock Campground. | Forest ranger Ben Chicken (left).70 BICYCLING.COM • ISSUE 1 | 2020