Porcupine Trail, Moab 2004
Bud, Janet, Doug and Derrick setout on the Porcupine Rim trail. This is a 21 mile point to point trail (can be ridden as a 30 mile loop), one of the classic Moab rides. Rider Mel describes it as 'More fun than sex!' in his guidebook.
We avoided the first mile of climbing from the stock tanks by driving further up Sand Flats road. We still had a couple of hard miles of climbing on the trail.
Bud and Janet (left to right) grinding up the slope.
Some sections were too steep and technical for us to ride, so we pushed our bikes up those.
Except Doug - he seemed to be able to ride just about everything!
The view at the high point of the trail.
After the crest of the trail, there were technical downhill sections - here is one of the more challenging sections.
Janet, Bud and Doug (left to right), catching a breath at the overlook.
The view from the overlook is amazing! It has to be 2000' down to the valley floor from our lofty perch.
Janet, Doug, Bud and Derrick (left to right). One more step back! :-)
Bud clowning around.
Janet getting ready to start a steep, technical decent.
The trail smoothed out for a bit and we could cruise.
Smoother yet.
As we got lower, we started seeing the Colorado River Canyon ahead.
More amazing scenery.
We all managed to ride this section, although some needed a couple of tries - ok, me!
This section of the trail was a blast to fly down - and the scenery was amazing!
Just when we were having a blast flying down the trail, it got technical again - in a big way!
Janet and Bud (left to right) picking their way down the technical steeps.
A little further along.
As the trail dropped into Jackass Canyon (no, I'm not kidding!) we saw glimpses of the Colorado River ahead.
As we got further into the canyon, things got more interesting: narrow trail, big rocks and big drops on the right.
Looking back the way we came it is hard to pick out the trail. It is hard to believe we have come thru there.
That's Janet riding a wider section of the trail. You can see the Colorado River Canyon in the background.
Once we reached the end of Jackass Canyon we were in the Colorado River Canyon itself looking down on the river.
You can see a lot of the trail here as it decends the canyon wall.
We watched a few people try to ride this section, but no one made it thru.
As the trail gets lower it gets easier and we rolled into the parking lot. At the end we tallied up the score: one cut heal, a bruised hip, bruised knee and bent derailleur hanger. This is a serious trail and we collected our share of scrapes and bruises, but we had a great time. We're all ready to come back next year!