Moab. A playground synonymous with Jeeps, drive shaft shattering trails, and endless rocky mesa’s. A bucket list destination for the dedicated off-road adventurer. Not really the place you would expect to find a group of college kids who have a collective experience of a few dual sport rides on trails and a motocross track day. Not to mention, we all had zero experience off-road in a 4×4.
Regardless, our plan was a week of off-road and outdoor shenanigans. Our toys would be a recently purchased Nissan Xterra, a Yamaha YZ250f (purchased just two days before we left), and a Suzuki DR650 all 100% unmodified. The Xterra is not an off-road model, which means no locking diffs or lifted suspension. The tires were a set of laughably Chinese BFGoodrich knockoffs, but they were round and held air. We loaded the bikes on a trailer, hitched it to the Xterra, and headed for the land of red rocks and dirt roads. It took about 26 hours to make the drive between Columbus and Moab (with a much needed stop in Grand Junction for Colorado craft beers), luckily the drive was completely uneventful.
We stayed at the familiar Big Bend campsite, which I highly recommend. It offers stunning canyon and tower views and gets you close to a lot of the nearby trails for two and four wheels alike. Perfect given our schedule which included a mix of passes, single track, jeep trails, and rocky access roads.
La Sal Mountains:
Our first day we decided to tackle the nearby La Sal pass on the bikes. A 70-mile loop from our campground, the La Sal pass looked like a fairly easy way to start our trip. The trail started out fairly easy, with wide sandy fire roads, shallow water crossings, and a few technical and rocky sections. We did the first half of the pass with ease. Even for a brand new rider the trail showed few challenges, and rewarded you with snow capped mountain views. The trail eventually led to some rocky climbs and a couple of steep ascents that made the going a little slower, but overall a good start to our off-roading sampler. Although we expected some snow to be at the summit we quickly realized that there was a lot more than most of us had in mind.
The snow eventually lead to all of us burying our bikes to their axles in the white stuff. Seeing no way of getting through the pass we tucked our tails between our legs and reluctantly headed back the way we came with plans to tackle the pass in the summer.
Gemini Bridges:
Feeling slightly defeated and thoroughly sick of pushing bikes rather than riding them, we decided our next ride would consist of more technical trails. We decided to make the quick ride up to the Gemini Bridges area and see what we could get ourselves into. After looking at the trail map at the top of the mesa and playing around drifting bikes on the soft sandy roads, we saw a turn off titled MM. “Metal Masher” sounded like a good place to start, and with how little we had trekked from the last trail marker, we decided it might be a good test for the way back. The sun was setting and the allure of Milt’s milkshakes (a necessary Moab experience) was becoming unbearable, so obviously we chose to go for it.
Now if this wasn’t made explicitly clear earlier, we were all novices, with one of us having just ONE DAY of riding under his belt. And we were about to tackle one of the harder jeep trails in the area, completely oblivious to its upper end rating of 9 on trail damage. Immediately the going was slow.
However, the trails were much closer to what we were looking for. Although a nightmare I’m sure for unmodified rigs, the trails were perfectly suited for our high clearance bikes. Rocky ledges were quickly handled with popped clutches or good line choice, and the technical sections were separated by wide sections with whoops and small jumps. The only obstacle that was able to stop us was what I could only describe as a cliff wall. It was smeared with rock crawler rubber, and we stumbled upon it after missing a trail marker. When we got ourselves turned back around, we noticed a new marker “WM” or Widowmaker… “Huh, fitting name.” We kept trucking on towards our liquid ice cream goals only to discover our first and only n00b mistake of the trip so far. Bring a trail map, or at the very least have a general sense of your surroundings. Although we weren’t far from the beginning of the trail, we could only speculate how long the trail was, and it turned out to be much longer than we expected. And when the trail would change to 100% slick rock, with the dimming sunlight, trail markers became increasingly harder to find. After a few backtracking sessions we started to get a little worried as the sun began to set (one bike didn’t have lights and none of us had cold weather gear). Despite the fading sunlight we managed to finish the trail and get back to the parking lot. While we were relieved that we had finished the trail, we were also deeply saddened. Milt’s closed at 8 PM and there would be no dairy desserts for us today.
Canyonlands:
The rest of the week consisted of some tame rides to hiking trails or climbing areas. What we had not done up to the point was to pop the cherry on Xterra. Although dirty from some unpaved roads the truck hadn’t seen anything more difficult than the speed humps in town and I was itching to change that. With a backpacking trip in Canyonlands planned, we decided to take the Xterra out for its first real dirt test. Being 10 years old, 137k miles on the clock, and having the important task of getting us back to Columbus the following day, I wasn’t looking to do anything too extreme. But getting a feel for the truck and letting it stretch it’s legs a bit was something I was interested in exploring. After getting our back country access permit I scanned the area for trails we could hit on our way back. What I didn’t realize was the access road to the back country was more than I could ever have hoped for. Right off the main road, the access road was divided by a deep river crossing. Trundling through brought water to the door sills and splashed water on the hood. The road got increasingly more difficult as we wound our way up graded, but steep climbs to the top of the mesa towering above the canyons. Most obstacles were tackled by slow and careful consideration. Although nothing I did amounted to rock crawling, it was fun to flex out the suspension of the Xterra a bit. Trails that branched off from the access road offered even more difficult routes for the more hardcore rigs, but in the interest of starting our trip before lunch, we didn’t explore too much.
After the backpacking trip it was unfortunately time to head back to our less exciting student lives. What we took away from our experience is that Moab offers everything for everyone. Don’t be intimidated by the $100K+ rigs that you see being hauled into town. The $7k Xterra was plenty capable in the rough stuff and given more time we would have tested its limits. Our greatest realization was that the two wheel machines were the best investment we could have made. For just $2k, you get a bike with an incredibly high level of capability that allows even the most novice riders to tackle trails that would leave many rigs mangled. Most importantly, if you have been pondering going to Moab, get out there, no matter what you have you will have no problem finding something to explore in this special place. And don’t worry, you aren’t the only n00b out there.
Photos By: Abby Wilkymacky, Sam Bednarski, David Bednarski
Sounds Rude 🙂