mtbing is hard (part 1)

We were lucky enough to get away to Moab for all of last week, although it felt like we were never going to get there Friday night when it took us an hour to get from the entrance to Arches National Park to the bridge over the Colorado River due to backed-up vacation/construction traffic.  But we made it and we were outside each and every day.

Saturday morning we drove up to Dead Horse Point State Park to kick things off with some MTBing.  It was cool in the morning (low 60s), with lots of blown-in wildfire smoke obscuring the LaSal mountains and even the canyons below.  There were a fair number of vehicles in the main parking lot when we started but the trails really weren't busy until we were finishing up.  We did the loop we like (Big Chief to Crossroads to Whiptail to Twisted Tree back to Whiptail to Crossroads to Ravens Roll).  H took a corner on Ravens Roll too fast, hitting a juniper root and going down hard; his wrist and ribs were sore but he didn't get scraped up or break anything.

Ride stats: 16.53 miles; 1:58 riding time; 8.4 m.p.h. average speed / 18.4 max. speed

At the Whiptail/Twisted Tree intersection

Our next MTB session was Monday, when we went to Moab Brand Trails.  Once again, there were lots of vehicles in the parking lot when we got there at 9:30 a.m. but we managed to pick sparsely-trafficked trails.  We did Lazy-EZ - where I managed to fall over at the start, on a rocky downhill turn to the right that always gives me trouble, acquiring bruises and small scrapes, no big deal; and H managed to ride an uphill rocky turn to the left that he's never ridden before - then three-quarters of the larger North 40 loop (which we've never done as it's a bit more technical than I'm comfortable with), then Bar M to Circle O and back to the truck.  My legs were a little fatigued but I felt like I rode Circle O better than I have recently.

On the rocks of Circle O

Ride stats: 12.38 miles; 1:43 riding time; 7.2 avg. speed / 19.3 max. speed