Last night after a couple of beers Will decided to join me to ride Poison Spider and the Portal trail. Now that was brave given that the tales Ken and Dennis had told me. They said they had to cling to the rock wall on a narrow ledge to stop from falling off a 400ft cliff and that Marne and Marion had made them turn back and ride back down Poison Spider instead.
We rose early after an extremely quiet night and great sleep- heavenly. I was breakfasting on my bench overlooking the La Sal mountains at 06:30, its pretty cloudy today and we could be in for a storm. By 7:30 we were worrying if we had made the right decision as we headed off to the trailhead and climbed on our bikes riding up the trail at 08:20 in a light rain- yeuch!
The climb up Poison Spider was gentler gradient than I expected but the rock ledges to climb up and the sand traps to plough through were energy sapping and I was soon gasping for breath and trying to clear lactic acid from my quads! This went on for 8 miles taking about 2 hours to climb up.
We stopped and climbed down to see Little Arch (a natural rock formation in the sandstone) and realised how far we had climbed as we could see the river below us- from the river to here was around 1000m!
We had a roller coater of slickrock and then we finally reached the rim with great views as the rain had stopped and the sun was back out and baking the rock dry. This was fortunate as the trail description for the next section was full of death and fear- so many times I was told to only ride it if I dare. We soon found the sign telling us 3 mountain bikers have died falling from this narrow ledge down a 400foot cliff drop. Walk do not ride. Don't worry mate we walked that bit.
Then the trail guide said now starts the hard stuff. Well the narrow ledge had gone but now we had 1000m of descent to complete in just 1.5 miles (9 miles up 2 down!). Yes it was steep, yes it was rocky and yes it was loose. Most was rideable, but error would be nasty. So we rode all the steep slickrock but occasionally got off our bikes for the loose rock steps that were relentless one after another and as I say falling was not an option.
Nevertheless my grin factor was right back up there at an 8.5 (not as great as yesterday's stupendous ride) mainly because I was chock full of adrenalin from the trail guide description putting fear up me and now here I was managing to ride most of the descent and having not fallen 400feet of a cliff! Phew!
I feel a great sense of achievement that I have ridden the legendary Poison spider and Portal Trail.
Will headed back to Denver and I went and rode the slickrock at Bartlett Wash- a long dirt road drive with my 4WD on to get to this slickrock playground with only one other biker on it – wow! You don't have to follow the dashed lines here you can pick and ride your own line and just play and play and play, dropping ledges, riding round bowls etc etc. I even found a kinda half pipe to play in. The Sun was truly out now and the formations of the slickrock were so amazingly pictureesque- I just kept snapping! I got back just as the Thunderstorm started and got out of that dirt road double quick since the map said “impassable when wet”!
Camping in the wild again tonight- they really know how to do it well here!
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