Gettin’ Loopy
We gathered last night with our American Flyers Motorcycle Club members at the Sunset Grill here in Moab. The Sunset Grill is the old home of the Uranium King or Utah, Charlie Steen, who discovered the Mi Vida uranium ore load just south of Moab in 1952. At the time the United States was anxious to get domestic production of uranium ore and it was the Mi Vida strike that both put Moab on the map as the Uranium Capital of America and gave the United States all the uranium it needed to build out its nuclear programs for military and commercial purposes. It seems that Steen’s first thought on making a windfall worth millions, was to get his family out of its tar-paper shack and into a nice hilltop home overlooking the verdant valley of the upper Colorado River, where Moab now sits. He put in a big swimming pool and gardens and was able to look down on all his neighbors in what was a previously dirt-poor prospector town. The sunsets from that spot are quite spectacular as we learned last night, and later watched the full moon rise over the bluff to the east.
This morning, the group headed out in three directions. We are a very libertarian-oriented group where anyone can do whatever they want on any given day. Today it was all about some people going on a Colorado River rafting trip (Kim’s choice) while Kevin and Eric Schmid went off to run the 120-mile, off-road, White Rim Trail down in the canyons along the Colorado. The rest of us chose to ride up along the Colorado River canyon to the Sorrel Valley, where we turned up into the La Sal mountain range for some alpine riding through the high desert. The road that goes up into those mountains is called the La Sal Loop and it has spectacular views of alpine valleys, snow-covered peaks and the little red rock canyon where Moab hides in between the mountains and the desert.
The Colorado is a river that is a shadow of its former glory as the most significant Rocky Mountain snowpack runoff vehicle in the western half of the country. It runs from the aspen-covered, highland, marshy meadows of central Colorado through the Grand Junction gap and tumbles down through the Castle Valley which is where the landscape stops looking like the Rocky Mountains and starts to take on the red sandstone monument look of southern Utah. That section of the Colorado River makes for wonderful and accessible recreational opportunities in a place where many of the great old western movies were filmed, since the area captures all the elements of the western landscape saga with alpine areas adjacent to red rock canyons and, as Norman McLean might say, a river runs through it. All three of the AFMC members spent some time enjoying that very stretch of river on our first day riding the area. The rafting crew went all the way up almost to the Colorado border and put in their rafts for a leisurely float down past the Sorrel Valley, almost to the Red Cliffs Lodge in the Castle Valley. This is not a terribly steep section of river so the few rapids that exist are probably no more than a 2-rating in terms of the whitewater content. Nonetheless, a lazy ride floating down a beautiful river is a pretty good way to spend a day.
Meanwhile, the main riding group rode from Moab up the river on Rt. 128, which tracks that same stretch of the Colorado, nestled between the red stone walls and that lazy river, which gives us riders a nice view of the passing float trips and wends its way around the Big Bend, one of the many switchbacks that the Colorado makes as it follows the path of gravity over the millennia and carves itself into the landscape based on where the rock is softest and the most pliable to its erosive strength. The La Sal Loop is a short 60-mile ride up above the buttes surrounding Moab and above the Steen Sunset Grill home. The AFMC has ridden that loop several times over the years and we have seen it go from an up-country gravel road into a proper macadam surface, but where the river is the strength down in the valley bottom, up on the mountain, the natural power is owned by the wintery frost and snow. Up on that alpine hillside of Mount Waas and Mount Peele, the mountain doesn’t care about motorcycles and macadam. It goes about its business of freezing and thawing as it pleases and the results are worn clearly on the face of the road surface. This macadam, probably laid not so long ago is covered by tar repair marks that the Utah DOT must get after quite regularly, since these roads are a big part of the tourist attraction that supports Moab now that the government needs no more uranium from the likes of Charlie Steen. The high country recreational business is the economic engine of the area and keeping the roads passable is a priority, but the operative word is passable. A big local business is about renting jeeps and off-road buggies, which we see zooming here and there on and off the road surface on the hillside. Four-wheelers are far less troubled by the tar road-snakes than are our nemesis on a sunny day when those snakes give our tires a 2-3 inch slip and slide element.
Navigating multiple length-wise tar snakes is made that much more challenging for motorcyclists on the La Sal Loop by residual sand and gravel on the road surface that come from some combination of intentional road grit (spread for winter traction) and residual from the roadside that those buggies that traverse the road throw up on the surface. Oh, and let’s not forget the occasional winter-dug potholes that come up not so regularly, but at just the wrong place when one is dodging the tar snakes and the gravel. This may make the ride seem overly hazardous, but the truth is that all that road challenge is more than overwhelmed by the beauty of the ride on a sunshiny day like we had at our disposal.
After the Loop, we headed up after a Moab lunch to Dead Horse Point for the traditional and perfect view of the wide expanse of Canyonlands and the blue-green Colorado River that weaves its way down through these remote and relatively wild parts of the canyons. From the overlook with its convenient sun shades, we can see below the various mountain bike and off-road motorcycle trails like the White Rim Trail that Kevin and Eric S. Are off riding. We admire these brave and robust guys that want the added adventure and bodily testing that a trail like that provides, but we are happy to be on the smooth road surface on the high plateau where the combination of curves and scenery make for one of the oldest and most popular AFMC side-trips that the crew takes.
By the time we head back to the ranch in Moab we are all gettin’ loopy about our good fortune to have the time and resources to get to ride these beautiful canyons of the greatest part of the western U.S. We take our respite to steel our resolve for another greasy pub meal, which is the predominant fare available to the hearty outdoorsmen that frequent this red off-road ex-mining town along the great river.