On September the 24th I hosted the first brevet in the Moab area, called the Moab Double Whammy. It is also a 200K Permanent route that was featured in a 2011 issue of The American Randonneur magazine. The day started at 8:00 a.m. with six riders. Two of them had commitments later in the day, so they had planned on not finishing the entire route. The balance of us though were in for the long haul.
I rode with the group and we all entered Arches at the same time. As it turned out, the Park Service was having a free day, so an entrance was unnecessary. The morning temperature was a pleasant 52F — a high of about 87 degrees was reached later in the afternoon. The ride out to the end of Arches was pleasant, after a quick climb just past the entrance. Despite the narrow road, there were no reports of wacky drivers cutting us too close. There were many visitors at Devil’s Garden Trailhead where we stopped to rehyrdrate. From there we turned around and headed back to the entrance of the park.
At that point we caught a new 6-mile bike trail that takes us up to the junction to Canyonlands. We then jumped on a highway again as we slowly climbed towards the Island in the Sky portion of Canyonlands National Park. Fortunately there was a slight cloud cover that made the climb more bearable, compared to when I did it last October. At the last water stop, which was at Arches, I filled up my third water bottle, but as it turned out, I didn’t use it. Conor reported that his three bottles were not enough for him, as he had exhausted his fluids by the time he rolled into the “I-Sky” visitor’s center. Roy and Russ had turned around before this point. The four of us cooled down at the visitor’s center, which although it had no food, had a nice refrigerated water fountain and a vending machine with PowerAide in it.
After a longish break there we proceeded 12 miles to the end of Canyonlands. We took a break from the hot sun in the shade of an RV and then rode back to the I-Sky visitor’s center where we topped off our bottles for the last time before making the final leg back to Moab. All of us arrived back at dusk, but most had lights for short trafficked portion in Moab.
All in all, the weather was as foretasted and what is typically found during the month of September. There were minimal winds and traffic was busiest in Arches, despite riding there in the morning hours when theoretically there are less drivers on the road.
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