Alasdair's Site

North Rim of the Grand Canyon MTB Tour

June 11-15 1996

A trip report by Alasdair Arthur

In the summer of 1996 my friend Tracey and I spent a few weeks in the States sightseeing and mountain biking as part of an extended round-the-world trip. As part of that, we joined an organised MTB tour to the Grand Canyon. This is the story of that trip.

The sight of several thousand dollars worth of full suspension mountain bikes doing circuits of the motel car park reassured us that we were in the right place. It was 8am in the morning, and the dry air was already getting hot in Kanab, Utah as the cast and crew for Kaibab Mountain Bikes' Grand Canyon tour assembled.

It certainly seemed as if we were going to be well looked after since there were as many Kaibab crew as there were customers. One of the things which can make or break a group tour is the other people on it, and we soon realised that we'd struck lucky. Jimmy was our tour leader, a man who clearly possessed love for and knowledge of the country in equal measure; Chris, a keen biker and a skilled mechanic; Jerry, a soft-spoken man who'd given up corporate life for ski instructing and bike guiding, and Nick, a young student soon to return to Salt Lake City to study. The man behind the wheel of the main support truck was Hawk, a taciturn and weathered character who seemed very much content following his own path, slightly apart from the rest.

On the customer side there was John, Andre and Cherry; two anaesthetists (anaesthesiologists in American), and a dermatologist. Any unexpected skin complaint or urge to become unconscious was clearly not going to be a problem on this trip!

We set off for the drive to the Kaibab National Forest, an hour or so down the road in Arizona. The different laws in the various states in America often dictate the character of the border towns. Crossing into Nevada you are immediately confronted with casinos as you pass the state line, whereas you know you've left Utah when you find a group of liquor stores apparently in the middle of nowhere. Sure enough, our arrival in Arizona was heralded by the signs advertising full-strength beer and spirits.

Because of the very dry conditions and the resultant fire danger the forest was closed to the public, but Kaibab's good standing with the Forest Service was enough to get us access, subject to restrictions on campsites and a ban on camp fires. The upside was that we virtually had the forest to ourselves.

The trip proper started when we were dropped off at a forest clearing. After a few snacks and a pause to fill our water bottles we were off.

The forest was predominantly fir and aspen, and quite light and open inside. It's a game and bird preservation area, and is amongst other things the only habitat of the Kaibab Squirrel.We followed the path of the Arizona Trail which is a hiking path and therefore quite narrow singletrack. The surface was loose and dusty, with a carpet of pine needles and a scattering of fallen cones for good measure; a combination which added excitement to the faster downhill sections.

The day's ride was not especially long (only about 12 miles) and so it was a good chance to acclimatise to the conditions. Much was made of the supposedly great altitude (9,000 feet) but Tracey and I seemed unaffected, though it made a handy excuse to cover up being unfit.

We finished for the day at a forest fire road where we met up with Hawk for the transfer drive back to the campsite. The Kaibab guys set to work straight away, pulling freezer chests and cooking gear from all sorts of cleverly-constructed compartments on the truck, and very soon delivering an excellent meal. This was the first of many, and in fact the food turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip. It was also our first chance to experience Jimmy's home-made hot sauce, also known as Devil's Spit, and reason enough on its own to go on one of their tours. Just make sure you don't fill one of your water bottles with it by mistake, or you'll be on an emergency evacuation after your first swig!

We ended the evening in a circle of camp chairs sharing a few beers as the night drew in. Tracey and I tried to enlist the help of the rest of the group to drink the 5 litre box of injudiciously-chosen Zinfandel which we'd bought in California and then matured by leaving it in our minivan for the drive across Nevada. It was the only challenge which Jimmy wasn't willing to face, leaving Jerry as the only one brave enough to help us out. In the end we managed to "accidentally" leave it under the seat of the Kaibab truck at the end of the trip, where it may still lie, slowly turning into something hitherto unknown to viticulture.

Next morning, fuelled by an excellent breakfast, we resumed our ride from where we'd left off the night before.

We carried on across the undulating forest floor. The singletrack meandered through the pines, sometimes offering up exhilarating descents which had us weaving and dodging past overhanging branches and fallen trees and just as often making us earn our thrills with a climb. The terrain wasn't too extreme, and practically everything was rideable. On one steep and fast downhill section made slippery by pine needles and cones Cherry became the trip's only casualty, falling and giving herself some nasty grazes. In spite of the painful-looking abrasions, she wasn't deterred and was soon patched up and back in the saddle.

As we rode, we found that the forest was relieved by a series of green oasis; sunlit open meadows which we emerged into from beneath the pine canopy every few miles. Resting near a pond in one of these meadows, we watched silently as three wild deer emerged cautiously from the trees opposite and went down to drink.

After a rendezvous with Hawk for lunch we plunged back into the trees for the last few miles of singletrack before the night's camp. From there we got our first view of one of the Grand Canyon's side canyons. Yards from our tents was a magnificent view across the huge eroded valley to the Navajo Nation reservation on the far side, and in the distance the shadowy and brooding outline of Navajo Mountain. We gazed across the canyon for hours that evening, entranced by the magical play of light on the landscape as the night slowly drew in.

Day three was the longest in mileage terms at just under 25 miles. It consisted mainly of forestry roads, rather than the singletrack we'd been on so far. As the day went on we started to take advantage of the chance to put on some speed on the empty dirt roads. A few of us formed a breakaway group, racing ahead and swapping the lead back and forth between us as we flew over the gravel, powered by the sheer pleasure and exhilaration of being there.

All too soon we reached some trees and Chris told us to park the bikes and follow him. A few yards further on we were stopped in our tracks by the sight of the vast chasm of the Grand Canyon laid out in front of us, its gigantic fissures branching off in all directions. It was an enormous panorama, and it took a long time to take it in. It's one thing to accept intellectually the process of river erosion, but to be confronted with the mile-deep results of over a million years of the Colorado River's gnawing at the earth was quite another.

Our vantage point was completely isolated, with no other people or signs of habitation anywhere to be seen. It felt good to have arrived there under our own steam, and to have our own private vantage point, rather than to have simply driven up in a car to some gaudy visitors' centre surrounded by tacky souvenir shops and burger joints.

We sat and admired the spectacle for a long time. It was the only time on the trip that I was reluctant to answer the summons to lunch. After eating, we returned to the scene again before finally loading the bikes onto the truck for the drive back to camp at the end of a memorable day.

The next day was hiking day. We were going to walk down into the Grand Canyon. The sheer size of it was brought home to us by the fact that we'd be walking all day to get to and from a point where we could just glimpse the Colorado River at the canyon's floor; we wouldn't actually be anywhere near it.

We started the walk at about 9:30, and it was already getting hot as we dropped below the rim of the canyon after the first mile. The going soon became steep, with difficult footing on the way down, and the promise of a scramble to come on the way back up.

The first part of the trail traversed the high rock cliffs beneath the rim and was the steepest section. After a couple of miles the terrain flattened and we found ourselves walking across a desert shelf with a lot of sand and scrubby trees. Around us the eroded rock formations stood like ancient sentinals above the shelf of the plain, often patterned with vivid striations. We paused several times beneath shading rock overhangs for respite from the sun, or on rocky outcrops to admire the awe-inspiring views of the canyon surrounding us.

The last stretch took us beyond the edge of the plain and out onto a lower shelf of slickrock which finally led us to a glimpse of the Colorado River far below and still miles away.

We all rested there for some time, taking in the view and the experience and resting in preparation for the climb out to come.

We were entering the hottest part of the day as we set off to retrace our steps. The heat was relentless as we plodded slowly upward. It soon became clear that the three large water bottles each which Tracey and I had brought weren't going to be enough, and this became a growing preoccupation as we walked on, endlessly upwards. Luckily for us, the Kaibab crew had stashed a supply of water on the way down which we reached just as our own bottles ran dry. The refill was a relief, and the experience emphasised how easy it would be to get into serious difficulties through underestimating the amount of water needed in this climate. Somebody had died nearby from dehydration only a few days before.

Our slow ascent continued for a couple of hours. By the end it was a slow slog on mental autopilot. The sight of the Kaibab truck with its cooler full of cold drinks was very welcome when we finally made it back.

There was nobody up late in our camp that night.

Day five was the last day of the trip and retraced the route of day three in reverse. That wasn't too bad since we got to ride down what had been a steep uphill push on the way out and to see the countryside again from a different angle.

It seemed far too soon for the journey to be over, but now all that remained to do was to enjoy our last gourmet lunch in the forest and load up the bikes for the transfer drive back to Kanab. Still, Tracey and I still had a lot to look forward to - the next day we were heading for Moab.

The whole trip was a great experience. The forest was beautiful, the Grand Canyon stunning, the people friendly and the food excellent. We already have plans to return.

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since September 18th 1996