“So, where ya going this weekend?”
“Not sure. It’s kinda complicated. Kokopelli is a no go and there are six people going.”
“Six? That’s a lot for a bikepacking trip.”
“Yup. Six is usually my hard rule for a max, but this is a solid crew so we’ll see what happens.”
Our plan was to ride the Kokopelli trail from Moab to Loma. This was the second time that has been our plan so naturally, we ended up doing the Hey Joe Safari loop. This was a loop that, as far as I know, none of us had heard of before. Once it was obvious that tromping through the mud and snow for three days was not going to work, I jumped on bikepacking.com and looked for alternatives. We hadn’t set any kind of a Plan B for the weekend and now needed one, like right now.
A few other options were floated, and while I had my reservations and was feeling a bit defeated in having another Kokopelli weekend not happen (I think it’s cursed), I was surprised at how easy we all came to embrace Plan B. There were no outliers on being against the plan but going along because everyone else was willing. There were no complainers that the trail wasn’t as good as what we had planned. There were smiles. There were high fives at the end of each day and a celebratory clinking of beer cans each night.
It was what you would hope for from a group headed into the backcountry.
Day 2, sometime after noon but probably before 1, we hit the top of the hike-a-bike. I use the because this was the hike-a-bike. We had already done some pushing, there was plenty of mud and sand up to this point to make sure our legs were tired, our pits were stinky and our bikes felt heavy, but none of that was going to compare to dropping into Hey Joe Canyon.
The route description called this a Class II-III scramble and seeing that we would be doing it with loaded bikes weighing somewhere around 50 pounds each, we considered it a Class III Hike-a-bike. For those of you unfamiliar with the classifications of scrambling, Class II involves simple scrambling with the possibility of occasionally using your hands. Falls can be serious due to exposure or possibly fatal.
We stopped for lunch on the rim of the canyon. From 30 feet back from the edge, it was hard to imagine that we were going to be able to get down to the canyon floor. Perched at the top of a giant pour over, we had some spectacular views and after our morning of pedaling, lunch was a perfect companion to our vistas.
The drop was precarious enough that when I walked over with my bike to see how this was going to happen, Mama Bear had a bit of a come apart as I dropped my bike over the edge. From her perspective a bit behind me, the edge still seemed to drop to nowhere, but there was another, smaller ledge under us that we were able to lower the bikes on to and begin our descent. Without bikes, this would have been a simple scramble, if you were scared of heights, it would have been epic. With bikes, it became the crux of our entire trip. There were multiple ledges that had to be downclimbed. One was about 20 feet and we ended up perching four of us along that face to slowly lower the six overloaded bikes down to the shelf below. I didn’t snag any photos but imagine a 50-pound bike that is squirrely from the extra weight of camping gear for three days. Then take that bike and descend into a canyon with it. Walking along edges just wide enough for one person that you have to share with your bike. Lowering it, then lowering yourself, lower it, walking the front and bike tires down sandstone that is slippery with moisture and moss.
To say we were all relieved when we finally hit the old mining road in the bottom, would be accurate.
My legs have been knocking on the door of Crampville more or less since we started to pedal. And while our route is relatively flat, I am currently struggling up the one long, steep climb. I’ve already stopped once or twice. Shelby is pedaling right alongside me. He looks over and says he’s thinking of walking and he couldn’t have read my mind better. We dismount.
Kenny and Kathleen (apparently K is for Klimbing) are racing to the top. Kenny aboard his singlespeed and Mama Bear rocking out in whatever gear she has chosen for this uphill like she wasn’t loaded and we hadn’t already been riding for two days. Every time they go around a korner and come back into view, I expect Kenny to have caught and passed her, but every korner she is still in the lead cranking on the pedals and moving upward toward the layer of ledge we had hiked-a-bike down a few hours earlier. They keep klimbing.
Heather and Harrison (not sure what H is for) are behind but both still pedaling. Seeing that I can see them and I am walking so it’s easy to pull out my phone, I snap a few photos. The photos show what looks like a steep climb and the struggle to get to the top. In fact, almost all the photos I snag are of some obstacle or another. These ones just happen to be of the climb, but we’ve had mud. We’ve had pipeline roads going up steep sand that doesn’t seem to vary left or right. We’ve had pushing because it isn’t bikepacking till you’re pushing. And now we have this climb.
These are the photos that get posted. The ones that everyone sees after the fact. They are the bumps in the roads we want to remember because of their difficulty. And if we were to be honest with ourselves, it’s these challenges that keep us coming back. We might dread that next climb, but once we are home and back to the grind, that grind up the hill whether walking or smashing on the pedals just to keep forward momentum, is all we want to go back to. And the photos we post, while in my mother’s words, look “horrific,” they are the moments that we enjoyed, loved, cherished and had to snap a photo so when we aren’t struggling physically, but instead stuck in front of a desk, we can manage to get through another day because the weekend is coming and we have photos to remind us of how bitchin’ it was.
P. L. and R.
The Photo Evidence