2 snakes, 2 snakebites…

Sunday night we head out to the Arches National Park again. While we miss the sun setting we see the most spectacular moonrise. The moon is full and the pictures I manage to take in the dark with the little Canon IXUS are very impressive considering the camera.

Monday 12th
Neil and I got up early and after dropping Simon off to catch the shuttle to Salt Lake City we headed out to do the Sovereign Singletrack. This trail was out North of town a way and there was only one other vehicle in the car park at 7:30am.

Ride 12: Sovereign Singletrack
This started off with dusty doubletrack turning into gravel singletrack, slowly climbing up onto slickrock and then across fingers of tricky technical sections. It really had a bit of everything. We were doing some of this stuff when all of a sudden there was this hissing noise and Neil took off. I was falling about laughing as he’d got a snakebite puncture and actually thought it was a snake.

Later on in the ride in separate occasions we actually come across 2 snakes sunning themselves on the rock trail – Neil gets up real close to take a photo with my camera. On the way back Neil gets another snakebite flat – he’s not having much luck with the rear tire. Back at the car we decide that it was a pretty good trail with a bit of everything but the singletrack we climbed didn’t turn out to be quite as flowing as we’d hoped on the way back down.

Getting back to the hotel we checked out, got a coffee in down at our favourite café Mondo, before heading for Fruita. Café Mondo has stickers on the door proclaiming “Friends don’t let friends drink Starbucks” and “Coffee – Still legal in Utah”. Fruita is just over the state line in Colorado and is a bit of a one horse town apart from one of the best bike shops I’ve seen so far. Over The Edge Sports had all sorts of exotic frames hanging from the wall including the Salsa Juan Solo singlespeed I’ve previously admired as a perfect Woodhill bike.

Vicki isn’t thrilled to be confined to the hotel room but with her wrist there’s not much else she can do and there’s certainly not much in town to look at apart from the dinosaur museum which she gives a miss. Neil and I head out to do an afternoon ride north of Fruita in 37°. There’s quite wind blowing and it’s like standing in front of a hair dryer.

Ride 13: Chutes and Ladders.
This starts off with hard packed singletrack through grassland and stumpy juniper trees, and slowly climbs all the way until we come up next to the cliffs. After some serious short grunty climbs it winds around the fingers off the cliff with some serious technical switchbacks on very loose gravel. 2/3rds of the way it opens back out again to smooth flowing singletrack all the way back down the grasslands again to the carpark. It wasn’t very long but in this heat it’s about all we need and we head back to the hotel to grab a beer.

Monday night ends with a rack of ribs at the Fruita Rib City Grill – hey, you have to experience the culture while you’re here right?

Tuesday 13th
Ride 14: Horsethief Bench
Another early start to beat the heat we drive a couple of miles east to Loma and the start of the Kokopelli trail. Here we wind our way along the side of the Colorado river before dropping down onto a “bench” which is a plateau of grassland lower down beside the river. The trail follows the river before heading back up a dry creek bed and alongside the cliffs to loop back on itself. Again a bit of everything thrown in; Neil gets another snakebite puncture and is starting to get quite envious of my tubeless tires.

Checking out of the hotel we sit in the park behind and cook up a couple of coffees in my espresso maker – American coffee is so crap apart from the very occasional café with a machine and someone that knows how to drive it; it seems like Moab has a monopoly on them so far. Now we’re in for a four hour drive up to Salt Lake City.