Night Riding, Little Creek & Grand Canyon

Ride 6: J.E.M. Trail (again but at 10:30pm at night)

We drove over to Mark’s place and spent time fixing his very expensive lights to our helmets and bikes. We had two lights each; one on the handlebars with a very wide beam and then a helmet mounted HID on our helmets. These lights were amazing and we felt privileged to be using them. They were basically brand new.

Mark drove us out to J.E.M but tonight we started down the bottom so warmed up with a half hour climb. The downhill section was fantastic, fast and flowing like this morning but darkness added a different dimension. Riding along side the canyon in the second half was rather freaky… all you could see was blackness beside the trail. It was still pretty warm, even at 10:30 at night we had 37° but as the ride went on and we got nearer to the river we could feel things cool down. However I went through another 2 litres of water during this, bringing the days total to probably near 6 litres!! We didn’t get to bed until 1:30am.

Wednesday 7^th

Today we checked out of our hotel in St. George, packed up the car and headed out to meet up with Mark some 40 minutes drive away. We met in a service station rest area and left our car there. Mark then drove us through numerous dust tracks to the start of our first ride…

These next two rides couldn’t have been more contrasting. The first had sections of like riding on the moon. Smooth rolling rock and tricky technical climbs and descents on the slickrock. The second was through pine forest and very easy coasting singletrack which every now and again gave you the vista of one of the natural wonders on the world, the Grand Canyon. Simply breathtaking.

Ride 7: Little Creek Mountain

Ride 8: Rainbow Rim Grand Canyon

Finishing up at the Grand Canyon Mark drove us back to our car at Frodonia and we went on to spent the night at Panguitch. The pasta meal I had a Grandma Tina’s restaurant across the road from our hotel never tasted so good.

Thursday 8^th

A late start this morning with us driving over to meet Mark near Bryce Canyon. We jumped in with him and drove up into Bryce Canyon to play the tourist and look at the view up there. Simply spectacular with all the red columns of rock called “hoodoos”. With little minarets and columns it resembled an crumbling temple.

Ride 9: Thunder Mountain

Back up the road a little we drive off to the trailhead. The start of this trail is undulating singletrack of gravel before riding through more hoodoo columns and cliffs. This is a multi-use trail and we run into a horse trek 2/3’s of the way along. The horses really dig up the trail and the combination of that and the loose gravel make for some very sketchy riding in places.

The final part consists of a long flowing downhill which ensures that we all arrive in the carpark where Mark is waiting with big smiles. Here we pull the bikes apart and stack them in the car and bid our farewells to Mark, Ken and Tracey. Someone has the bright idea of leaving the bikebags with Mark considering that we have to come by his place to get back to Las Vegas next week and this gives us a little more room in the car.

Leaving the Bryce Canyon area we follow HW12 through Escalante and up to Bolder. Along the way we encounter some serious lightening and thunder storms with the hugest raindrops we’ve ever seen. Also this is a very scenic drive with massive areas of slickrock, canyons, cliffs, and columns. Everything about this place is big!