Day -2 through Day 0: Trail Prep

After leaving Teri Ann’s, we moved to the Lazy Lizard Hostel in Moab to spend a few days indoors in preparation for the Great Outdoors we were about to experience. We spent the 2 days staying there in our own private room in what was more or less a normal, quiet home; relaxing when we could, but making several trips to bike shops and grocery stores to prepare for the 5 days away from services we’d planned for.

The White Rim Trail is a 100-mile loop of “road” that runs along the bottom of the canyons in Canyonlands National Park that lend it its name. It is treacherous enough that even four wheel drive vehicles are recommended to take at least 2 days to drive it – the road is a mixture of rock, sand, rocky sand, and dirt, with steep technical climbs and descents reaching a high of 37% grade. For reference, the paved 12% grade into Cripple Creek, CO brought me to over 40 miles per hour.

Alyssa – I’m adding in my two-cents here and there. Read anything in italics as my commentary on Kevin’s excellent writing. I first became aware of this trail last August, when my sister took me to Canyonlands for the first time. I had never been anywhere like it and immediately fell in love with the landscape on an – admittedly- slightly bizarre level. I felt so at home there, and talked it up so much that it’s now a running joke between Kevin, me and Ashley that anytime anyone says something positive about anything, we can follow it with “…but it’s no Canyonlands…” Riding White Rim became a goal of mine and I did a lot of research and planning to make sure it became part of our cross-country trip. Kevin, as always, was amazingly game to do this crazy thing with me.

Our plan was to leave Moab on Monday morning, riding the 40-ish miles to a Bureau of Land Management campground near the back entrance to the National Park and trail itself. Our backcountry camping permits from the National Park Service were for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and then we’d climb out on Friday morning and ride back to Moab.

We’d decided to camp by the back entrance because our plan was to run the trail “backwards” from the default suggested route. This meant that instead of ending about 10 miles north of the Visitor’s Center after a drawn out climb back to the road on gravel roads, we’d rip the bandaid off and end AT the Visitor’s Center after climbing a switchbacky 1000-foot canyon wall in about 1.5 miles. The benefit being that after 5 days away from resources, the Visitor’s Center has running potable water.

This is important, because we were intending to do something relatively uncommon, although not unheard of – riding the White Rim Trail completely unsupported. The majority of folks who ride this route by bicycle are followed by someone (someone they know, or a supported tour company) in a vehicle that can carry all of their gear, water, and food. What this meant for us, is that we had to carry all of our food and drinking water for 5 days in the desert as well as the camping gear we needed to sleep comfortably outside.

This amounted to carrying about 5 and change gallons of water, apiece, and as much calorie-dense but lightweight food as we could muster.

So, we repacked all of our bags and shed as much non-essential weight as possible. On Monday morning, we took all of our extra belongings and left them in the safe hands of the folks at Rim Cyclery, in Moab. Our bags streamlined to carry literally just one change of clothes, water, food, and sleeping stuff, we headed off towards the BLM campground.

The ride into Canyonlands is stunningly beautiful. There’s a protected bike path from Moab until the road into the park, then a generous shoulder and amazing views all the way in. The feeling of climbing into the park under my own power, almost exactly a year from my first visit, and sharing that experience with Kevin – suffice to say I was definitely vibing.

We arrived relatively uneventfully and managed to snag an extremely nice and secluded campsite on the edge of a rock bluff overlooking the desert scrub and the road we’d take down into the canyon the next day. Kevin is underselling how amazing this site is. You’re completely separated from the rest of the campground, are up on a bluff that allows you 360 degree views of the surrounding area and even have a few shade trees. Choice af. Very scenic and very hot and sunny. Monday night, I rode the 7 miles into the Visitor’s Center to fill up our gallons of water in order to start on Tuesday morning with the maximum amount of water possible. And, just like that, off we went!

Day 1: This might be a cold take, but the desert is in fact very hot

We woke in the morning with the sun, and packed up and were on the road by about 7. We left our campsite and descended towards Mineral Bottom Road, the access road that leads into the canyon and into Canyonlands National Park. Mineral Bottom Road was relatively easy riding, with reasonable dirt and gravel surfacing carrying us over the rolling descent through the scrubland towards the canyon’s edge.

Speaking for myself, I arrived at the canyon’s edge feeling like I knew intellectually what we were in for, even if I hadn’t ever ridden anything like it (especially on what was technically a refurbished 80s road bike). Once I saw the insane majesty of the canyon from the overlook, and the switchbacked descent bringing us down to the floor, I realized that I didn’t actually understand what we were in for until just then.

We descended in incredulity into the breathtaking beauty of the canyon. Incredulous not just for the beauty, but also at the insane road surface – loose sand, and large loose rock were the prescription for what to us was kind of a nail biter of a descent. In the pictures I took of Alyssa descending, you can see the intensely focused, white-knuckle energy in her face.

This was truly insane, and also delightful. Imagine the feeling you get from a rollercoaster; that feeling where your whole body goes cold from terror but also you’re laughing for some reason? Imagine that but in the most beautiful, awe-inspiring landscape you’ve ever seen.

We got to the canyon floor only to be stuck behind a piece of heavy equipment regrading the road in front of us. We were extremely dismayed at this fact, because the freshly graded road only looked nice – it turned the road into 5 or 6 inch deep churned sand, impossible for our skinny road tires to do anything but cut straight through and immediately get bogged down. After some very, very frustrating riding (read: pushing), the operator of the machine realized how hard he was making our lives on accident and stopped to let us pass in front of him.

Set free from our sand prison, we proceeded on to the main event. The road pre-churn was actually relatively nicely rideable dirt, following the shores of the large, silty Green River. As we crossed into National Park land, the scenery was unlike anything we’d seen so far on this trip, and really ever before.

Our permit for Day 1 had us camping at one of the few designated campgrounds along the Trail, at one named Hardscrabble. We worked hard as the day heated up, and after intermittently pushing our bikes through white sand washout on slopes near the river bank, we arrived at our destination in the blazing heat of the early afternoon. Day 1 done, after about 27 miles of extremely mixed terrain.

The sun was very much boring a hole into my brain at this point, and I’d been VERY stingy with my water out of a desire to conserve as much as possible. Go figure, I arrived at the campsite basically speechless from the heat and immediately retired to the luxury of the only available shade I could find – the shade of the pit toilet at the campsite. Alyssa, meanwhile, found our real sanctuary from the sun in a small pile of stacked boulders formed into a small cave. We whiled away the entire afternoon hiding from the mid-90s heat in this little cave, intermittently taking naps on the rocks, reading, and snacking.

I’ll never forget the magic afternoon we had in our cave. Just existing out in that space, in complete silence, in the deliciously cool shade. I think Kevin’s burst gallon is painting the day negatively because in my memory the riding was fairly chill and we arrived to camp in pretty good spirits.

As I got my bags in order in the late afternoon, I realized a piece of unfortunate news: one of the gallons of water in my bag had ruptured somehow, and about a quarter gallon had leaked out into my bag. This ruined some of my food, as well, but not much. After drying out the still-packaged food, the total damage was about a quarter gallons of precious water, 2 packages of Wild Berry Pop-Tarts, and the small cache of art supplies I brought. Oh well. Not a dealbreaker, just unfortunate.

We waited until the sun ducked behind the canyon wall to really come out of hiding to prepare dinner – a pair of boxes of Annie’s box macaroni and cheese, fortified with a shitload of extra Parmesan cheese which only barely held up long enough to be added after one day in the sun. This was a salve after hours in the blazing heat, and bolstered our spirits in advance of Day 2.

We took advantage of camping in the desert and left the fly off our tent, making the mesh ceiling a panoramic window to the beautiful canyon sunset, and then, the beautiful desert starscape. Sleep came easy after the day’s hard work, our bellies full of luxury brand macaroni.

Day 2: Uhh… can we actually even do this?

After the intensity of Tuesday’s midday heat, we resolved to wake up well before dawn and get as many miles in before the heat of the day really took hold. The plan for our 2nd day in the canyon was the most ambitious – 41 miles to Gooseberry campground. The reality of the mad scramble to reserve camping permits meant that way back in May, when Alyssa booked these sites, she had to absolutely dash to grab basically any site that we could. As a result, our 2nd day was due to be what we in the biz call a “toughie”.

We received a rude awakening as soon as we got on the road. Still in the predawn darkness, we immediately needed to hurdle a rocky, uneven, and very steep climb up to the top of a mesa. By the time we’d finished pushing (literally, walking and pushing) our bikes to the top, it felt like I’d already burned quite a bit of my gas in my tank, and it had me immediately concerned for our ability to surmount the remaining 39 miles or whatever left in our itinerary.

At the top of this climb, we reached the trailhead for a hiking trail that Alyssa had read about in her pre-ride preparations. We waffled back and forth on whether we had the time OR energy to do this 3 mile hike, and eventually went with the “fuck it” strategy. Alyssa wanted to do it, and I wasn’t about to let her do a backcountry hike (on a cliff’s edge, no less) by herself – plus, when would we ever be in this place again? We left our bikes at the trailhead and hiked around the cliffs overlooking an oxbow in the Green River, and climbed up onto the top of the mesa capping them. At the top, there stands a ruin of a Native American stone lookout fort. Pretty cool, and unfathomably beautiful panoramic views to accompany it too.

I’ll be forever grateful that Kevin urged me to do this hike. The ascent up to it was extremely physically challenging – the kind of challenging that causes one to intermittently scream incoherently at nothing in particular – and I was feeling very afraid for the riding ahead. One of the biggest lessons we’ve learned so far on this trip though is that doing the “hard” thing is almost always the right call and often ends up being some of our most treasured experiences. Despite how hard the day ended up being, I’m so happy we decided to do the Fort Bottom hike..

We hiked back to our bikes and tried to get on with our ride, but the road had other plans. Our steep climb up was matched by an even steeper, rougher descent, which was at times so steep and loose that we had to walk our bikes again. Robbed of the reward for our hard climb up!

We crossed paths with a supported tour company during our descent, and after the group of bikers left (not before reacting with complete disbelief that we were doing this unsupported on the bikes we were riding – one of them called out to another, “Oh my god, look at their tires!!!”) This was a hilarious moment, a woman turned to her partner with a look of pure horror and exclaimed “Oh my god Jason, look at how thin their tires are!” the support vehicle that followed them arrived, and the extremely nice tour guy allowed us to refill our most recently emptied water bottles. Really nice after the roughly one water bottle I lost to the leaky gallon.

We finished our descent and bottomed out onto the sand, once again down by the Green River. This marked a turn in the quality of the road – the mostly rideable dirt and rocks of Day 1 were replaced with completely unrideable 4-5” deep white sand. We were immediately stymied, and spent perhaps more time off the bike than riding, struggling hard to push our heavy bikes through the sand. Slowly, we climbed up onto a flat wash and away from the Green River – but the sand remained.

I stand firm by my memory that this day was maybe 70% rideable, 30% not.

After perhaps 10 miles of pushing our bikes on foot through deep sand, unprotected from the increasingly hot sun, we ran into another group of people doing a supported ride & drive. These folks were doing their own tour, with an extremely nicely appointed van with plenty of water, beer, food, a fridge, and freezer. We asked if it was alright if we sat in the shade of their shade tent, and they welcomed us in with open arms. Everyone we passed on the Trail reacted to our self-supported effort on road bikes with at least surprise, and often literal cheering and applause, and these folks were somewhere between those two. They handed me a cold Pacifico that I’m pretty sure restored my soul to my body, and Alyssa received an ice cold coconut water of her own. We relaxed in the shade for a few minutes, talking about our trip so far and theirs as well – one of our new friends apparently owns a few bars we were familiar with back in Chicago, which was quite a weird small-world experience to have out in the desert backcountry. Our cold drinks finished, they also let us refill a few water bottles, and then let us use the hose sprayer attachment on their van to spray our shirts and bandanas for some evaporative cooling. At this point, I’m not 100% sure they weren’t just a mirage, because it truly bolstered our spirits in the middle of extremely physically difficult “riding”.

We resumed our slog through the sand, and it continued being just that. There would be small stretches where the road would improve for 50 or 100 feet and we’d mount our bikes and ride until the road returned to unrideable sand. We took another break after another few hours of this Sisyphean nightmare, scrambling up the dry earth on foot away from the road to the nearest rocky outcropping to steal what little shade there was to be found. Our going was so slow (a pitiful 2-or-less miles per hour) that we knew there was no way we were making it to our permitted campsite for the night, and our tactic shifted to “go as far as we can”.

This day was marked by extreme highs and extreme lows. The joy of being able to ride after pushing your bike through sand for 30 minutes is indescribable.

We continued on, literally trudging through the sandy desert like some apocryphal Biblical story. After spending all day on the flat, sandy rim of the canyon above the Green River, we reached a steep, rocky climb in the mid afternoon that took us up and over a ridge into a new valley. In the middle of this climb, we were overtaken by the only other person we met going the same “backwards” route as us during our whole trip. It was a Park Ranger, who upon hearing our original goal of making it to the Gooseberry campground reacted with, “Hell, I’m not even going to make it to Gooseberry tonight and I’m in a truck”. This did manage to mend my bruised ego a bit. He also advised us on how best to camp out here to not damage the local environs, since it is technically explicitly forbidden to camp outside the campgrounds.

He also, importantly, gave us each an ice cold bottle of water from his cooler. We were strictly instructed not to drink them too quickly, or we could risk going into shock apparently. I vividly remember wanting to kiss this man.

With this information in hand, we really pushed our limits to make it as far as possible in order to lighten the load of the days to come. I was concerned that if day 3 was as hard as day 2, we might not make it out of the canyon on time… so we might as well burn the energy we’ve got now and make it as far as we possibly can. Alyssa seemed to be reaching bonk levels of bicycle delirium, and after riding along the lip of the canyon’s edge in this new valley for a few miles, we found a smooth rock and washy spot, tucked behind a berm of dirt casting much-needed early evening shade.

There was definitely a period at the end of the day where I was just unsteadily trudging through the sand, pathetically whispering “please” over and over at the road. I guess this counts as meditation?

Alyssa laid out on the ground and I set up the tent. We had a no-effort dinner of peanut butter and jelly tortilla wraps for Alyssa and cookie butter and trail mix tortilla wraps for me. We’d biked from about 6 AM until about 6 PM more or less continuously, with our only longer break used to hike 3 miles. It was a tremendous effort, and we unfortunately had much less than we’d hoped to show for it – we’d ridden/walked only 21 miles in 12 hours.

We relaxed mostly out of exhaustion as the sun set, taking a few moments to enjoy the pure majesty of the sun setting over the canyon. We once again left the fly off our tent to enjoy our scenery to its fullest, and our off-book campsite’s beauty carried us off to deep sleep.

Day 3: Okay no way we definitely got this

We woke before dawn again, our tactic the same as the day prior – make it as far as we possibly can. Since we finished 20 miles shy of our intended campsite on day 2, our permit for day 3 near the exit of the Trail seemed all but impossible.

We intentionally quit on day 2 just before an infamously steep and difficult climb & descent known as Hogback. We figured it best to try and tackle that as fresh as possible as early as possible. We got on the road a few minutes after 6 and almost immediately ran into a car parked on the side of the road. A man stepped out and flagged us down in the darkness. A couple from northern Illinois, of all places, had climbed over Hogback in their Jeep the previous afternoon, and rolled it into a boulder, crushing the door and wheel well inwards to the point that their car was more or less immobilized. They hobbled down the descent and stopped along the road, hoping someone would come by with a winch that could pull the wheel well out enough to drive back, but alas, we could not help. It did, however, set the tone for the climb ahead, for sure.

As we rode on, we realized that we evidently stopped at exactly the perfect spot the previous night. The road went from maybe 50% rideable in a generous assessment to 95% rideable as soon as we left our campsite. This allowed us to haul ass in the dark up to the base of Hogback – a shorter, steeper climb than the one out of our campsite the day before. As the sun rose over the canyon, we huffed and puffed (and grunted and swore and screamed and definitely woke up the entire campground at the top…) and managed to surmount the climb before 8. The climb was truly nuts though, and it was no wonder that we’d met someone stranded by its difficulty. We’d hear from other people later on in the trail that guides and trail companies were explicitly advising anyone in a van or anything less than a high-clearance 4WD truck to not even attempt Hogback in its current state. Having done it on a 1988 Miyata 1000 – I get it.

We had a short chat about what to expect out of the miles ahead with the kind folks I almost certainly woke up at the top of the climb. They told us to expect a mile or two of sandy bullshit and then what they described as “a bunch of fast, easy miles”. They were on mountain bikes with fat tires so despite my concern that their definition of that might be different from mine, I looked forward to it nevertheless.

The other side of Hogback was an equally extreme descent onto a rolling hilly scrubland, and after a very small amount of sandy riding it was revealed to us that our friends at the top of Hogback were right. The road became dirt once again, and although it was sometimes seriously rocky, it was infinitely, infinitely superior riding to the day prior. We made breakneck time, and our spirits flew high as the miles raced by.

We flew through another valley to a short climb up and over another ridge, where we found the support vehicle for another supported tour group. The guide was hanging with the van and chatted with us for a while to make sure we had everything we needed, allowing us very generously to drink and then refill and then drink and refill our current water bottles. These kindnesses went a long, long way in easing the math around conserving water out here and it was a weight off my mind, even if I had to keep carrying the literal weight of our extra water.

She mentioned during this exchange that we had a nice downhill section coming up and BOY was she right. We went up-and-over the ridge and the road was dry, hard pack dirt 2-track and downhill for MILES. It was thrilling riding, dodging large rocks at speed and whipping the tails of our bikes around tall curves like we were in the X-Games. We were going fast even by road standards for this section, and it was an absolute miracle after the difficulty of the day prior. We made great time, and by the early afternoon we’d outdone our performance on the 2nd day and then some.

As a non-religious person, the intensity of emotions I feel towards both everything and nothing on days like these is wild. All day I was filled with such gratitude, for the quality of the road, for the existence of this place, and for the conditions that led me to be able to ride it.

When we reached Gooseberry, our supposed campsite for the previous night, we took a short snack break before continuing on in the warming sunshine. We made a goal to reach the next campground down the road and then check in to see how we were feeling, riding high on the momentum we’d built in the past few miles.

We kept flying down the road, making great time on only marginally sandy surfacing, and reached the next campground not too long after. We stopped in the shade of the pit toilet (once again, luxury) and sipped on water for a minute, musing on whether we wanted to stop here and bogart someone’s campsite or keep going as far as we were capable of to make up for lost time. While we thought about it, we were approached by a pair of folks from a nearby campsite who were doing some van & bike combo sightseeing of the near side of the canyon. They chatted with us for a while and invited us over to hang out with their other two companions for a moment. We chatted in the shade of their van, enjoying the conversation and their generosity (an ice cold lemon La Croix I still remember with the utmost fondness after ripping through the hot sun all day). After a nice break, we set back off on the road.

While most people doing this ride are supported, and thus have the luxury of bringing structures to provide shade – we of course did not. We experienced the rim what I started referring to as “lizard-style,” constantly looking out for some sliver of shade or a rock we could slither under.

We climbed up and over a short, steep ridge into the next valley and the road changed once again, this time tending increasingly toward the white sandstone that gives the White Rim Trail its name. While beautiful and interesting riding, it was definitely more difficult (and definitely more bumpy) than the dirt we’d been cruising on all day. Our bikes vibrated loudly down the road as we climbed around curve after curve of the dramatic cliffs approaching the end of the trail. We thought briefly on whether we had it in us to make it all the rest of the way to our permitted campsite for the night, another 5-7 miles or so, before deciding against it.

We rode until we found a shady spot on washed out smooth rock just off the road. We relaxed briefly then decided to cook dinner before setting up our tent, lest anyone come by and say “hey you can’t stop here”. The meal for the night consisted of angel hair pasta and a jar of basil pesto. Not fancy, but definitely delicious, and we ate almost an entire box of pasta between the two of us. I especially was craving salt after sweating for the last 72 hours straight, and I wolfed down as much pasta as my stomach could take.

Side note, when I went to get something out of my front pannier, I realized that once again, a gallon of water had burst in my bag. This time, it was my food pannier, which was of course basically empty at this point, but nevertheless the inside of my bag was reduced to a slurry of pop tart water that was very disgusting. The water lost was relatively small but it was a bit of a wet blanket on my mood for a moment.

As the sun ducked behind the canyon’s edge, we set up our tent on the wash. Once again camping under the stars, in almost incomprehensibly beautiful environs, after about 12 straight hours of biking. We relaxed in the tent as the light from the full moon lit our surroundings brightly, showcasing the silhouetted canyon around us in dramatic fashion.

Day 4: Slam dunk

For as much of a shortfall as we had on Day 2, we just about made up for it with the great time we made on Day 3. We started our final day just a few miles short of our final permitted campsite, which itself was at the base of the final climb out of the canyon to the Visitor’s Center.

I woke up in a bit of a mixed mood; excited and triumphant at the prospect of completing the ride, but also sad to leave. There’s a specific kind of contentment I get when doing challenging things like this. Everything is reduced to the simplest, most basic human needs – water, food, shelter, the outdoors. The suffering is finite and comprehensible; you’re in pain? stop (or if you can’t, you know that you’ll get relief in x amount of miles) you’re crabby? eat something. The pleasure is pure and wholesome; mmm, this warm rock feels nice to lay on. mmm, food tastes great after this much exercise. wow, look at this beautiful thing I get to experience because I dragged my imperfect body out here to see it. None of the more complicated aspects of life that can trip us up exist out there.

We got up before dawn once again, although a few minutes later than the norm, and got on the road just before the sun began peeking over the horizon. The last 5 miles to the final climb were among the most scenic, especially at dawn, and the tilted canyon walls wore the colors of daybreak well. We clambered over more smooth white sandstone road, feeling a bit like mountain goats shuffling from ledge to ledge.

We rode the rolling road around the ledges of massive stone upheavals that looked like someone dropped a slice of earthen layer cake from a great height onto the canyon floor. Eventually, we crested a hill and began a descent around a corner and our final climb out presented itself – 1000 or so vertical feet in about a mile and a half. We stopped at the pit toilet at the base of the climb to take a quick bathroom break and slam as much leftover water as we could in order to not need to carry it up the climb. Our affairs in order, we took a deep breath and began our climb.

Honestly, it wasn’t quite as bad as either of us thought. We crossed paths with some folks heading down the switchbacks into the park, who more or less unanimously cheered us on with some level of disbelief, which was definitely an ego boost. By and large though, the grade was relatively rideable so long as you took breaks (in my case, at literally every turn in the switchbacks and then some), with only a few sections so steep or tiring that we resorted to pushing. Much faster than we expected, we reached the top and received some very dramatic views of the canyon below as our reward.

Once we reached the top, we both were flying high. We coasted on the euphoria of having done a hard thing and the 3 or 4 miles back to the Visitor’s Center flew by. Once we turned onto the paved road toward the parking lot, we knew we’d “done it” and we traded high fives and a very prideful kiss.

We floated on our good vibes into the Visitor’s Center and grabbed some vinyl Canyonlands stickers to adorn our bikes as proof that they’d made it in one piece. Can you believe they were out of White Rim stickers?! We refilled our water at the potable water spigot and rested under the awning for a while, gathering ourselves and reliving the highlights of the last 5 days.

At this point, Alyssa realized that she ALSO had a gallon container of water explode in her bag, which got her clothes all wet. Not super problematic, especially now that we were back at the Visitor’s Center, but definitely annoying. The best we can figure, the vibrations of riding such a difficult road on a bike without suspension literally wore holes through the plastic of the cheaper gallon containers that we brought. Really though, they were somehow the only casualty of the entire trip, mechanical or otherwise, which is pretty impressive.

The feeling of arriving at the Visitor’s Center was slightly anti-climactic. After four days of interacting with only other people who were out there on the Rim, we had become used to the immediate understanding of what we had achieved. Rolling up to the Visitor’s Center, we were no longer “crazy people doing an insane thing”, but just “confusingly dirty people who are standing in front of the postcard kiosk.”

At this point, Alyssa’s sister Ashley was just about to leave Salt Lake City to come down and meet us in Moab, so we coordinated and decided to head back to the Lazy Lizard Hostel – mostly so we could take showers before she arrived. High on our success, we accepted the challenge of riding the 40 miles back to Moab after waking up in the canyon that morning.

The riding back to town flew by, half because of our elation and half because it was actually stiffly downhill pretty much the entire way. This ride was the “running through the finish line” experience I wanted. Bike is Drugs, people! We rolled into town just after noon and despite our tired delirium and the fact that bystanders could probably smell us before they could see us, we pit stopped at a restaurant so we could each order our own individual large pizza (and split an order of sweet potato fries). It was the victory lap I needed, as well as calories I’m sure I also needed.

We gathered our belongings from the bike shop, and headed back up the hill on the far side of town to the hostel. This ride was kind of a momentum killer, trudging the couple hundred feet in elevation gain with all of our belongings in a difficult to carry tote bag on our bikes, but we made it back in one piece. We took the most healing showers of our lives and relaxed for an hour or two until Ashley arrived.

In what was not only an extremely sweet gesture but also one I didn’t know I desperately wanted, Ashley arrived with a homemade birthday cake she’d driven all the way from Salt Lake for me to celebrate the birthday I’d just had about a week prior. It was a lovely cap on a week of intense physical labor, and I didn’t want to leave it unmentioned – for me, it was a celebration not just of my birthday but also of having done such a wild and difficult thing!

In summary, the White Rim Trail was intense, but absolutely worth it. It would definitely be less intense had we done it supported, or used bikes designed for that type of terrain, but it’s definitely very ‘us’ to just do it anyway – and frankly, it wouldn’t have been the wild experience that it was had we done it some other way. It wasn’t ever really as dangerous as the National Park Service (understandably, rightfully) makes you think it will be, since our water supply was bolstered by the kindness of strangers almost every day of the trip. But it was just risky feeling enough to be fun, and the drama of the scenery felt extraordinarily well earned for all our efforts. I’d do it again in a heartbeat… although maybe on a bike with wider tires! I’d do it again with Vivian any day. Going supported with a group of friends would be a lot of fun though, and I hope to be able to do it one day!