E20 EZ EE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22 , 2020
is a grinding, four-mile ascent cul-
minating in a steep heartbreaker
— pedal too fast and you spin out,
too slow and you stall — that only
Terri and Adam clean.
Our reward is camp, a garden of
boulders, juniper, rabbit brush
and shadscale across from a mez-
zanine overlooking a colossal ba-
sin of canyons and plateaus, rip-
ples and folds, castles and king-
doms. Over beers and bourbon, we
read poems — Lucy Lerner, a film
festival manager from Telluride,
Colo., had asked us each to bring a
favorite — as sunbeams and shad-
ows cede to the dazzle of Jupiter,
Saturn, Mars and the Milky Way in
a moonless sky.
The next night, after a rollick-
ing, 27-mile day of trending down-
hill through primeval stadiums of
hoodoos, arches and knee-buck-
ling cliffs, the wigs come out. Terri
had packed them, and we ramp up
our final-night party in shiny
manes of white, hot pink, psyche-
delic rainbow and even a green
Marge Simpson.
I’m still smiling about it the
following morning when we glide
past four juvenile bighorn sheep
that have pinned themselves be-
tween the road and a cliff. Before
the final push up Shafer Canyon, I
ride ahead, into a silence broken
only by the whoosh of a raven
overhead. She is flying uphill,
toward the belly of the serpent,
making it look easy.
[email protected]Briley is a w riter in Takoma Park, Md.
His website is johnbriley.com.for this trip. “When you pass me,
shout some encouragement,” she
tells me. “It actually helps.”
We ride out as a pack at 9:30
a.m. but soon disperse, becoming a
kind of mobile cocktail party, with
riders advancing or falling back to
catch up with old friends and
pause for photo ops. The relaxed
pace is among the features of a trip
like this, which Western Spirit
classifies as “introductory/inter-
mediate”; the company also offers
full-bore sufferfests, including one
in which much of the riding occurs
on single-track trail above 10,000
feet. After a couple of hours of
gradual ascending, the guides stop
us for lunch next to a massive plate
of buckling slick rock.
“Come on,” Adam says as he
leads us on foot to a long fissure
three to four feet wide and 65 feet
deep, probably started in dinosaur
times by freeze-thaw cycles and
pried further open by the inter-
vening millennia. A few hundred
feet later, the shelf ends at a soar-
ing overlook of the river as it
curves, moatlike, around a citadel
of 250-million-year-old rock
capped by a prominent chunk of
white rim.
It would be the ideal place to kill
a couple of hours, but we’ve got
hills to climb. I punch over the first
— with a victorious howl that I’m
now certain obliterated the
soundscape — and into a swoop-
ing downhill beneath chestnut-
hued chimneys and ramparts. The
second features a double-ledge
move that forces everyone but
Adam off their bikes. And the thirdfor peace and quiet, plus we have
already drawn a reprimand from
the guides for firing up a small
Bluetooth speaker (Grateful Dead,
of course) in violation of a Park
Service rule intended to preserve
the soundscape of remote areas.
Don’t tell my Deadhead friends,
but I favor that rule and the whole
off-gridness of this trip. We had
lost cell reception on the drive in,
and I have not missed it for a
second. As Western Spirit co-own-
er Ashley Korenblat tells me later,
fully untethering “frees your brain
up to think instead of lurching
from crisis to crisis.”
We are about as far from crisis
as one can get, washed in a golden
sunset and the first pulse of a front
that will deliver a series of crystal-
line days, with highs around 70.
Over a dinner of ratatouille and
pork tenderloin, I ask Adam about
Western Spirit’s typical clientele.
“Pretty much this,” he says.
“People my age don’t have the
disposable income for a guided
trip, and people much older than
you-all usually won’t take it on,”
although the company has guided
kids as young as 9 and adults in
their late 70s on the White Rim.
The next morning, after coffee
and breakfast, we pack up camp
and gather for our daily map meet-
ing.
“Today,” Adam informs us, “is
trending uphill,” with 23 miles and
three stout climbs, a revelation
that draws an apprehensive look
from Barbara Colombo, a photog-
rapher and garden designer from
Boulder, Colo., who barely trainedroadside cafe — a long folding
table with a buffet line of plates,
cutlery and food, along with a
cooler of drinks, low-riding wood-
and-canvas chairs and a hand-
washing station.
As the guides make lunch, the
rest of us follow a path to a com-
manding view of the river as it
meanders beneath the hulking
sculpture of the high desert.
House-size boulders balance pre-
cariously atop bony spires, sur-
rounded by prehistoric rubble.
The vibe of canyon country is dis-
tinct from anything in nature, a
feeling at once humbling, bog-
gling, meditative and affirming.
After lunch (sandwiches, salad,
chips), we blast two miles down to
our first camp, Potato Bottom, and
pitch tents amid the tamarisk,
black brush, cliff rose and a lone
cottonwood, the only lick of shade
we’ll have in the three camps.
There’s an outhouse nearby, but
no running water or other modern
trappings.
With a couple of hours until
dinner, we follow a sand path to
the Green River. It’s running wide
and gentle — the Green, like the
Colorado, is taxed heavily up-
stream for irrigation, plus it hasn’t
rained here since July — and we
wade into the bracing water to
scrub away the trail dust.
We must be having a good time
because when a silver canoe drifts
into view, its occupants, a 60ish
couple, have only one question: If
we camp near here, will you keep
us up all night?
Fair enough. People come hereuphill, but no surprise there: The
White Rim secret has been out for
decades.
The road, built in the 1950s for
uranium exploration, was already
gaining notice among Jeep drivers
when, in May 1983, Moab local
Buzz Burrell pedaled the loop (in
under 12 hours) on a steel-frame
Ritchey mountain bike, and a
bucket-list ride was born.
Behind guide Tina Liss, a 26-
year-old shredder from Mar-
quette, Mich., we follow the river
as it glides — silent, glassy, tanta-
lizing — through the furnace of
rock. The temperature has hit the
mid-80s, and the desert is squeez-
ing hydration from our bodies.
Twelve miles into our 16-mile
day, we come to Hardscrabble, a
two-tiered sustained ascent fea-
turing sand bogs in the middle
and at the end.
“Unless you’re superhuman,
you aren’t making this hill,” Tina
tells us. “So walk where you need
to, and we’ll meet you at the top.”
She’s hanging back to help her
co-guide, a 29-year-old Brit
named Adam Rosenfeld, navigate
the truck through the sand traps.
Turns out none of us is superhu-
man, although Terri and Robert
Abbe, a San Francisco investment
banker, fake it pretty well. We’re
loitering up top when we see, ris-
ing from behind a knuckle of rock,
the telltale dust cloud of our truck
spinning its wheels.
We are discussing riding back
down to help when the truck
lurches into view. Minutes later,
Adam and Tina assemble theThe coronavirus pandemic has disrupted travel domestically and around the world. You will find the latest developments on The Post’s live blog at w ww.washingtonpost.com/coronavirus/For most of us, this trip ranks as
a moderate challenge: The White
Rim is a Jeep road, with only a few
sections that a mountain biker
would consider technical and per-
haps a half-dozen lung-busting
climbs. We are also tailed by a
one-ton cherry-red Ford F-350
carrying our camping gear,
clothes, food, adult beverages and,
of course, wigs (more on that lat-
er). And we’re taking our time.
Many people ride this circuit —
without truck support — in three
days, some in two and a select few
in a blink. A week before our arriv-
al, Tour de France veteran Peter
Stetina set the White Rim record
of 5:28:23.
Still, we’re out here, with no
option to bail between start and
finish. The three riders who were
most concerned about keeping up
rented e-bikes, which have small,
battery-powered motors to pro-
vide an assist on hills. Most re-
markably, we are pulling off a
group trip in the middle of a pan-
demic, and as we gather for out-
door beers after arriving in the
bustling adventure-cum-tourist
town of Moab, the collective relief
that this is actually happening is
as palpable as the excitement of
heading into the desert.
With bags and bikes atop the
truck and a shuttle van, we roll out
of Moab under a cloudless sky,
arriving an hour later at the top of
Mineral Bottom Road — 4,900 feet
above sea level on the sagebrush-
dotted roof of Canyonlands’ Island
in the Sky district, a 132,438-acre
mesa hemmed by the Colorado
and Green rivers.
After a quick briefing, we are on
our steeds, rocketing down
through the geologic stack — from
golden-hued Navajo sandstone
and burnt-red Wingate formation,
faint-green Chinle rock and, final-
ly, 1^1 / 2 miles and 900 vertical feet
below our start, onto the auburn
ledge of the 245-million-year-old
Moenkopi layer. We skid to a stop
within sight of the Green River
and the incongruously bright hues
of the cottonwood leaves and
brush along its shores.
The mood in Hour 1 is ebullient.
Terri Sofarelli, a physician assis-
tant from Salt Lake City, and Peter
Isaacson, a tech marketing execu-
tive from San Francisco, are so
fired up they ride a quarter-mile
back up Mineral Bottom for an-
other taste of the downhill. We
also encounter another guided
group, steeling themselves for the
UTAH FROM E17
In Utah,
a scenic
college
reunion
PHOTOS BY JOHN BRILEY FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
TOP: Stacey Geis, Ned Field, Terri Sofarelli and Peter Isaacson pause at the Green River during their ride along White Rim Road.
ABOVE: Sofarelli looks out at a formation called Turks Head, one of many spectacular views in Utah’s Canyonlands National Park.If you go
WHERE TO STAY
Best Western Plus
Canyonlands Inn
16 S. Main St., Moab
435-259-2300
canyonlandsinn.com
A centrally located hotel in Moab
with an outdoor pool and hot tubs
and walking distance to
restaurants and shops. Rooms
from $89 in winter to more than
$300 in peak season per night.WHAT TO DO
Western Spirit
Cycling Adventures
478 Mill Creek Dr., Moab
435-259-8 732
westernspirit.com
Guided trips on the White Rim
Road run March to May and
September to October, with a
1 3-person maximum per trip. The
company guides dozens of other
road and mountain bike trips
across the West for intermediate
and advanced riders. From $975
per person.INFORMATION
visitutah.com— J.B.