Dirty Snowballs

Short Version:
Weird dreams, an incredible ride. Dolly.

Long Version:
Perched on a hill, upslope from Don and Christie and Brodie the miniature Amerikan Eskimo, we both dreamed some seriously weird dreams. Anti-gravitational furniture was demonstrated, Special Ops police forces were marshalled, toilets on the ski slopes refused to flush, and the desert was riddled with caves. Turns out that last one wasn't a dream; we were parked right next to one, in which a desert-rat soil-scientist had apparently been living up until relatively recently.

In the absence of the semi-mythical Larry, Don was in charge of the day's ride, which took us on unmarked trails up through a canyon and across a plateau of slickrock*. We paused at the edge of a sloping cliff, which meandered away into the distance, glowing red and orange in the light of the late-morning sun. "We're riding along that," Don said. Initial mirth gave way to mild and then not-so mild consternation as it became apparent that kidding he was not. "You'll be amazed at what you can stick to," he said, and sent the Weatherman off to ride laterally across something too steep to be called a sidehill, but not quite sheer enough to be named true vertical, in search of a spot from which to film. It looked insane, and awesome, and soon enough we were all at it, winding upslope and down as confidence increased.

We dropped onto a limb of rock, which led to a series of ever-lower, building-sized steps that dropped us eventually to the canyon floor, where thick sand and spiky plants awaited us. A short hike for those of us with an insufficient power-to-weight ratio to drive ourselves through the wheel-clutching red menace, and then we were back on grippy rock, heading up into a huge bowl where we settled for lunch before commencing a physical exploration of the tyre-holding capabilities of near-vertical faces. The bowl and the halfpipe above its rim were grand, and had that been the end of it we'd have ridden out to the trailhead a happy bunch.

But there was much, much more.

The exploratory riding we'd done on the cliff-face and in the bowl was but a taste of things to come as we reached the high plateau of Bartlett's Wash. It's huge, and is essentially a playground for riders, catering to all abilities in that however steep you want to ride there's a slope for you; however wide the carving turns you wish to indulge in, there's a place for you to do exactly that. There were small mounds and knobs of rock from which to launch oneself should one wish to do so, and there was immense joy to be had from diving down into sinkholes, circling the rim, and shooting back out, like a spaceworthy vessel using the gravity-well of a coelestial body to accelerate, kind of like a comet but without the dirty snowball epithets.

And then there was Dolly.

Those of you reading this in any part of NZ (except maybe Gore) are probably thinking about cloned sheep. Stop it. Start thinking about Jolene, 9 to 5, and Islands in the Stream.

Especially Islands in the Stream.

We reached Dolly Parton's Cleavage during one of the rare confluences in ride-line that had several of us in single-file, and were into the cleft and careening down the steepest of walls between the enormous, bulbous hillocks before we knew what we were getting ourselves into. Out the bottom end, and stopping just short of a precipitous precipice, we watched several of the others follow us in and then hiked back up for another run, which was little different save for a less-occluded sightline: slightly scary, great fun, and over way too quick**.

Plenty more slickrock playground to explore though, including another sloping wall traverse down to canyon bottom, with even better pot-holes and weather-rounded gullies to swoop through on the way, and then Don gave us an option: out-and-back on yet another canyon wall, or call time on the ride and haul out to the trailhead. No-one departed, despite the call of the ale.

The ride along that last canyon wall was the perfect finale for what had turned out to be my highlight ride of the week we spent in and around Moab. The absence of clearly-defined trail meant that people were riding the wall high and low, seeking valid pathways to onwardsness. There were times when we were able to look up the wall and see riders above, then turn and stare down towards the eventual steep drop-off and see others wall-crawling on the lower plane. Chopping from one line to another happened regularly, and opportunistically; every so often a ramp to a higher plane would manifest itself and be ridden; other times someone would ride a more-or-less vertical segment of wall to a lower line that had looked particularly tasty from above. Eventually we all coalesced at a sketchy foothole-pocked traverse around the end of a sheer-sided cleft, and the first few through were debating the relative merits of carrying on around the end of the looming point versus trying to find a way up the cap-rock bluffs to the summit when a flurry of activity burst forth, midway along the skinniest section of the traverse, where Lori was departing rapidly downslope. Thinking initially that it was the Weatherman, we stopped to take photographs, but once the true identity of the slider became known the rescue party formed quickly, efficiently, and, as it turned out, needlessly, as she extricated herself from her predicament with no more than a minor assist credit for Bob.

That signalled beer o'clock, but we had a long wall to ride to get back to fermented deliciousness. Having said that, the ride back along the face seemed to take far less time than the outbound journey, and only the overshoot-and-backtrack made it take as long as it did. And then dirt road, with sections of deep sand that Nene blitzed with style and grace and irritating ease. Then she and the Launderer forged ahead of the group, missed a turnoff, and did some bonus miles. Nene tried to claim bonus beer for having done the extra mileage, but the demand was disallowed on the dual grounds that: she's only little; and that lack of navigational ability should be punished, not rewarded. Mildly Grumpy Lovely Wife!







* = Petrified sandstone, we discovered somehow.

** = Insert sexually-oriented joke about the person of your choice here.