But first, it's time to find a bike that fits. After three hours of phone calls, test riding, and waiting for tune-ups, I finally find a bike that fits (well, close enough). This time, it's a Specialized Stumpjumper FSR (in FloRed).
While waiting for the new rental bike to be readied, I drop off the other guys at the Slickrock trailhead so they can start their ride. The plan is for me to secure a new bike and start riding the trail in the opposite direction. So, that's exactly what I did. They had a 90 minute head start on me by the time I got the bike and drove back to the trailhead. I caught them about 90 minutes into my ride (counter-clockwise) at Shrimp Rock.This bike feels a lot better than the first. It's still not a perfect fit and I don't feel confident biking up the really steep climbs, which most of the climbs are really steep. But I'm having fun again, and the ankle is slowly starting to feel better. Oh, and I bought elbow/arm pads while waiting around for the rental bike, so I feel more secure as well. I did a lot of hike-a-bike while watching the other guys ride off into the distance, but I know it's better to be safe than injured.
We finished Slickrock - hi-5's all around - and head for lunch. As we sat there eating our lunch, I realized that I wasn't very satisfied with the Slickrock trail. I had envisioned the Moab biking to be longer climbs with longer descents. Slickrock was the exact opposite. There were steep, 10-20 ft. climbs; 20-50 ft. of flat/gentle rollers; and then steep, 10-20 ft. drops. Rarely was there a significant downhill where one could let go of the brakes and get some good speed.
Oh well, I shook it off and started looking forward to the next ride - the one that'll meet my expectations (I hoped). We chose Baby Steps.
Baby Steps is a 7.5 mile out-and-back ride. It's listed as almost all uphill on the way out, so the way back should be the sweet downhill I was waiting for. As it turned out, I really didn't like this trail. It was 70% single-track, 10% slickrock and 20% dirt road.
A lot of the dirt road was covered in sand making it exhausting to bike through. Going out, the slickrock was all uphill (as promised) but was a very rough surface and proved to be hard to follow the trail (marked by 12 inch tall cairns). That meant when going at speed on the way back, it was easy to miss the trail markers; thus forcing you to ride slower than you would otherwise prefer.
The single-track I found to be unforgiving. There was a 10 inch wide "sweet spot" that, if you kept your tires there, would prove to be compacted and easy to ride. Just two inches off that sweet spot in either direction and you find yourself in very soft "soil." Well, soil isn't quite the right word. It's a bed of sand that has been baked over many years to have a hard-ish crust layer on top. The bike tires easily penetrate the crust layer to find the sand below. This depletes all momentum you had while trying to climb a hill and makes it easy to lose control when trying to descend on the way back.
For the record, Drew and Andrew loved this trail (Pete sat this one out to rest his legs). As you can tell from my description above, I was not fond of it.
With the first full day of riding behind us, we have safely and successfully navigated two Moab trails. I'm still in search of the long, fun, exhilarating downhill rides that I had imagined would await me at Moab. Maybe we'll find it tomorrow.
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