I just go back from a trip to Moab, UT with my friend Brendan and thought I would give you the low-down from a New Englander’s perspective. I got a little wordy so I broke it up into three sections such that you can just skip to whatever interests you: the dirt (general info on Moab), the bikes, the trails, and the verdict.

Location: Moab, Utah

Closest Semi-major Airport: Grand Junction, CO (GJT), 4 gate airport, ~2 hrs away

Flying Route: There are no direct flights. I ended up with three legs. Hartford to Chicago to Denver to Grand Junction. You can also try to fly into Salt Lake City, then to Grand Junction. Basically, count on a full day of travel.

Ticket Price: $225 on United Airlines, purchased through the UTC Travel Network. The prices were consistently $400-$500 for months, but dipped down for about a 3 week period. Just keep checking or use the fare-watcher feature on expedia.com or travelocity.com.

Where We Stayed: The Big Horn Lodge, $55/night. How can you not stay there with a name like that?

Weather: 10/24-10/28. It was sunny and dry with highs in the upper 60’s and lows in the 30’s. No rain.

Bike Shops: There are six bike shops in town, five rent. We rented from the three below, which are all on Main St.

What the locals will refer to you as: Sprocket heads

Awesome Trail Guide Book: Mountain Biking Moab a Falcon Guide, ISBN 1-56044-530-0, $11. It has 42 trails that rang from 6 miles to 140 miles in distance. This book has directions, map, distance, estimated time, elevation profile, aerobic rating, technical rating, terrain description, and a mile by mile description. This is the best mountain bike book I’ve seen for any location.

The Sites: Arches National Park-15 minutes, Canyon Lands National Park ~80 miles, and Dead Horse Point. We only had time to hit Arches National Park. It was definitely worth seeing the various rock formations, including Delicate Arch, Landscape Arch, and Balance Rock. If want to hike, then this is not the place to go. The park is set up with walking trails that are a few miles long and very flat. We had a friend familiar with the area take us on a night hike. There was enough moonlight that we only used our lights for about 15 minutes.

Each of the bike shops offer a different brand of bikes for their standard fleet of hardtails and full suspensions. As well, they all offer a few high-end demo bikes for rental.

We had three days to bike and did one trail each day: the Slickrock trail, the Porcupine Rim trail, and the Poison Spider Mesa trail.

Slickrock: Since my flight was cursed from the beginning, it took me from 7:00am on Wed until 12:00 noon on Thursday just to make it to Moab. I’ll always have found memories of United Airlines. We picked up the bikes at the shop and went straight to the trailhead. There is some dispute over the distance of this trail, it may have been rerouted at some point, but it is somewhere between 11-13 miles. There are also several detours and a 1.5 mile “practice” loop. The practice loop actually has some great features to ride, but is there to give the average Joe a flavor for what they are in store for on the Slickrock trail.

You almost immediately start riding on Navajo sandstone (there is such a thing as “slickrock”, but this ain’t it) with the only thing defining the trail being a series of blue dots. The terrain is akin to petrified sand dunes. You ride up, down, and around these solid hills almost entirely staying on the smooth rolling hills of sandstone. Your tires have phenomenal traction on this stuff allowing you to bike steep ascents with almost no worries about losing traction. The steepest section is called “cogs to spare”. I know it was steep because my friend fell near the top and slide for about 5 feet before he stopped. Nice battle wound. There are occasional choppy rock sections, a few small sandpits, steep descents, and 1’-3’ drop-offs here and there which are well marked so you can either avoid them or enjoy them. There are also a few chutes and bowls-type features that remind me of a skateboard park. The view is spectacular: red rock mesas, Colorado River, rolling hills of sandstone.

The bottom line is that these are not the steepest ascents or descents we’ve seen, there is no gnarly single track, and the total elevation change won’t kill you, however the trail is unique. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was definitely worth riding. You could blow through it in 1.5-2 hrs. We took a more leisurely approach, hit a few scenic detours, and did the additional practice loop to finish up around 4 hrs. Between cranking the 30-34 lb bikes up the hills and the 4900’ elevation compared to the ~500’-1000’ of CT, we were more than content. Actually, we were beat. This trail is perfect for a FS/XC bike or a hardtail. The FS/DH set-up was definitely overkill and detracted from the ride.

Porcupine Rim: This is supposed to be the second most popular trail in Moab and starts only a few miles up the road from Slickrock. It is a 15-mile one-way ride that starts at 5800’, climbs to 6800’, then descends to 4000’ over 11 miles. You can make a out-and-back or a loop out of it, but I wouldn’t recommend it. The additional mileage in the loop is paved and dirt roads. An out-and-back trip would be a great cardiovascular workout, but 99% of the riders go the other way. You would constantly be dodging people blazing down the trail. For $10 a van will pick you up at pretty much any of the local bike shops a few times a day.

This trail starts a 4 miles climb on “4x4 trails”. We quickly learned that Moab 4x4 trails were not the same as those in New England. There was a Jeep Jamboree going on in the area and these guys were driving up stuff steeper than we could bike. Absolutely amazing. They all had modified suspensions, winches, and the tire pressure so low you thought the rims were going to hit the ground. The climb was up a 4’-5’ wide trail with choppy rock sections, some solid, some loose, with small ledges and a few hard packed dirt areas. Between the tanks we were riding and an even higher elevation, we were huffing and puffing all the way. We kept a slow, but solid, pace and eventually made it to the lookout point. Once you get to the edge of the lookout you realize that you are at the top of the mesa looking down into an expansive valley with several other mesas only a few miles away. Watch your step: it’s a long way down. This was a great place to catch your breath and enjoy the view.

You get a short stretch of extremely rocky downhill littered with short drops-offs. This was our reward for lugging the full suspension monsters up hill for 4 miles. Brendan was on the Titus and I was on the Turner this day. Beware of the two footer near the end that leads right into another drop-off within half of a bike length. Ouch!

After another small stretch of uphill, it was a long gradual descent for the next 11 miles, most of which was on a the 4x4 trails, except the last 3 were tight single track. The terrain alternated between extremely rocky sections and stretches of hard packed dirt. This is a very fast trail with lots of technical stuff to keep you entertained. About half way down there is a side trail blocked by small rocks that leads to a 3’-4’ drop-off. I’ve attached a picture of Brendan doing this. I actually landed it as well, but the cameraman was slacking off. The last three miles runs parallel with the Colorado River. This terrain was smooth, hardpacked, tight singletrack with interspersed rocky sections. You ride close to the edge of a cliff so lean left. There are a couple tricky sections to maneuver through and one insane descent. I passed, but Brendan gave it shot and had a graceful flying dismount.

Once you reach the end of the trail, it is a 3-4 mile flat road ride back to town or if you have two cars you can leave one at that parking lot. Overall, this was our favorite trail. We almost came back to do it a second day, but decided to go for variety. I know most of you like the hairy, rocky terrain: if you are short on time, then skip Slickrock and do this trail.

Poison Spider Mesa Trail with the Portal Extension: This was our last day of biking. We took back the fancy rides and went for something more conventional: a Sugar 3 and Santa Cruz Superlight. Since we had already done the two prime rides in Moab, we had to choose one from the forty in the trail book. We selected this trail based on the high aerobic and technical rating from the book and the enticing description of the last few miles of the ride.

The trailhead starts about a 15 minutes drive from the center of town in a small parking lot set just above the Colorado River. You immediately start climbing up a 4x4 road that consists of loose rock, dirt, and some ledge rock. Nothing that interesting. Eventually you come to a great section of trail that is on a solid choppy rock mass with lots of ledges to get up and some short, steep climbs. This was also a playground for the Jeeps and since we were visiting in the middle of the Jeep Jamboree: there were a lot of them. They were moving extremely slow over the choppy sections and we decided to dodge in and out of some 20 vehicles until we got to the front of the pack. We never saw them after that.

For the next couple of miles we rode on an extremely flat, hard packed dirt trail. Boring as heck, but the view of the La Sal Mountains and the red rock mesas/formations in the distance was beautiful. Finally, we were rewarded with hills of sandstone, similar to those of Slickrock, for almost as far as we could see. The trail is well marked, but you can’t help but to take detours to catch a few extra chutes and steep climbs. There is one arch formation visible from this trail. The only drawback to this section is that it is interspersed with around a dozen sandpits that suck the life out of your legs.

The sandstone ended and the hardpacked began, again. You’ll reach the edge of the mesa and there is a nice place to stop and take in the view just before the singletrack descent begins. This spot overlooks the Colorado River and the town of Moab. Now, the singletrack descent begins. The trail follows the side of the mesa and drops 1000’ over approximately 2 miles. Most of the trail runs within a moderate distance from the edge of the mesa, but there are a few sections that brush within a few feet of a 500’ drop. A little unnerving at first, but not too bad. There are two sections with signs that tell you to dismount and walk: “Dismount here. Three people have died”. That was good enough for us: we walked. The sections are not terribly difficult, but if you screwed up you would tend to fall towards the cliff.

Beyond the thrill of being on the edge, literally, the trail is great. It is hard-packed, tight singletrack towards the top and leads into some challenging rocky sections that seem unending. We had to try a few sections numerous times before cleaning them. This last leg of the trail was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. The trail levels out and hits a paved road a few miles from the parking lot. Overall, the balance of distance, climbing, variety of terrain-sandstone and ledge rock, and a kick-ass descent made for a great ride. If it were not for the large number of sandpits, it would be at the top of my list.

The three trails were very different, but if I had to rank them in terms of pure exhileration, I would put Porcupine Rim at the top, then Poison Spider mesa, and lastly Slickrock. I still think that you have to ride Slickrock simply based on its unique feature of being almost entirely on rock. This is a fairly inexpensive trip: I spent $850 all together including some gifts. If I ever get a chance to make another trip, I would probably plan on taking a week off: 2 days of travel, 4 days of riding, and 1 day to see Canyon Lands National Park.