February 16th – Utah, Day 2

Posted on February 26, 2015

Arrived in Salt Lake City around 1:30AM and found a Cabela’s parking lot to camp in (which was weird). Slept for about 5 hours, woke up at around 7am, and packed everything immediately back up and headed out for destination 1 of the trip, Moab.

 

 

Unbelievable views on the way out of Salt Lake City/Lehi. 

Out of the mountain passes, down towards Southern Utah. At this point, the weather forecast shows beautiful, clear skies in Moab, and we’re set to camp at Slickrock campground and ride Slickrock for most of the day, which is billed on multiple mountain biking websites as “the best mountain bike trail in the world.” Spirits are high.   

 

Except it must be reinforced that in the desert, the weather can change very, very quickly. We weren’t loving the look of these clouds that started rolling in about 30 miles outside of Moab.

Made it in to Moab, got the tent and some of the various camping gear unpacked, and within 5 minutes of parking and unloading, it starts snowing on us. Snowing. To be fair, this should have been expected and planned for in Utah in February. I planned for this weather by bringing a 40*F sleeping bag and a light jacket. And mostly shorts. And flip-flops. Please attempt to contain your surprise.

 

There is plenty of GoPro footage to back all of this up and will be posted eventually, but our first mountain bike experience in Utah was more or less in a blizzard with zero sunlight and freezing temperatures. We hit the practice loop on Slickrock, decided it wasn’t worth it in the snow, and then headed back to the car to wait it out. Once that subsided and the storm blew over, we were able to hit it properly.

Verdict: Slickrock is a pain in the ass (although with beautiful views) and we were both completely gassed less than 3 miles into the 11 mile trail, and a second snowstorm started rolling in so we went back to the tent, made dinner, and played cards until it was dark enough to not feel terrible about ourselves for going to bed.