Rick promised us a day of amazing riding on the Slickrock Trail in Moab. And he sure wasn't exaggerating. It's incredible the way tires stick to the rock surface - you can go up, down, and sideways and never slide off. To get our feet wet, we started with "Little Lion's Back", which is just a small distance from the Slickrock Trail staging area. It took a while to screw up our courage and give it a try. Rick went up and down, up and down, in the meantime, proving to us over and over that it was okay...finally, we gingerly picked our way up the rock. I expected to fall right off, sliding backwards to my doom and embarassment. But lo and behold, the bike putted up the side of the rock like a ticking roller coaster car...all I could see was the sky and the top of the rock. I had no idea what lay on the other side of the summit. I kept my grip on the bars and my weight forward on the bike, ready for anything. And at the top...it was just a genly undualting surface, with tire tracks leading me onwards. Whew!
Lin coming down...
...and down...
the view off the edge
follow the tire tracks over the side...yikes!
Soon, though, we were zooming up and down, up and down, and even stopping mid-way to look around and practice balancing over the handlebars. Rick sensed we had gotten our confidence up so he led us to the Slickrock Practice Trail. We were a bit braver striking out on this trail, which is a good warmup for the real trail. Several tight turns, a few steep, short ups and downs, and a couple of near-misses. We were ready for the real thing!
t
After playing on the Practice Trail for a while, we decided to tackle a trail down the road a bit called "Hell's Revenge", which was popular with the Hummer set. The climbs were longer and more intimidating, but also more fun. It was great, but started to get hot in the late afternoon so we bailed from Hell's Revenge onto the actual Slickrock Trail and made our way back to the staging area. At a particularly tricky spot called the Half Pipe, a photograher sat waiting for us. He took pictures of us as we made our way through it, and told us where we could purchase the photos later on if we wanted. We came back on Thursday after Tom arrived and rode the Practice Trail again and almost all of Hell's Revenge. It was great!/p>
just follow the white dots
t
