TandemHearts

The only major biking stop on our Work is Over Rated Tour 2007 was Moab, UT. Moab is famous for its mountain biking opportunities. We have been to the area twice before, but never had the chance to ride the trails in and around Moab. Generally, the riding is on jeep trails, rocky single track or slickrock. Unfortunately, we found that Moab doesn’t really fit our style of riding. Jeep trails are fine, but many trails are best done as point-to-point rides, using a shuttle to get there. We didn’t want to do this, so that ruled out a bunch of trails. We don’t ride many rocky areas, and we ride hard tail mountain bikes, so the rocky single track was at the limit of our abilities and very uncomfortable to ride. Slickrock is anything but slick – it is like riding on 120 grit sandpaper. This is plenty of traction so you can go pretty fast. It also gives the rider the chance to do jumps off of ledges. We don’t do that very much either. (more…)

We joined up wtih some friends and took an organized tour of the Maze. This part of Canyonlands National Park, in Utah, is very remote. The National Park Service issues a limited number of commerical permits, so there are not too many people in the park. You are free to go in on your own, but the roads vary from “not bad dirt” to “I don’t think that Jeep is going to make it”. It’s a few hour drive from Green River, UT and there is nothing out there but natural beauty.

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We took a 6 day mountain biking tour of Utah with Escape Adventures. This tour included Brian Head Peak, at 11,307 feet above sea level, and trails near Bryce and Zion National parks. There is no off road mountain biking in National Parks, so in the parks we hiked or cruised down the pavement. This wasn’t a point-to-point trip. Instead, we rode for a short way in the van on a couple of days to link the areas. This allowed us to cherry pick great riding and skip some dull time on ATV or jeep trails. (more…)

For Christmas 2004 we went to Utah to visit the National Parks. We visited Arches NP, Canyonlands NP and Zion NP.

Photos of Arches and Canyonlands are behind this photo:

Photos of Zion are behind this photo: