Porcupine Rim ranks second, behind the Tahoe Rim Trail, as my favorite ride anywhere. No matter how often I do it, I want to go right back the next day and try all those places I didn’t ride quite the way I wanted. If I lived in Moab, I’d be riding up on the danged thing every day. I mean, I love Tiger Mountain and all the Cascades rides we have in summer here. But for grandeur, technical challenge, endurance, speed and just plain fun, Porc Rim is in a class all its own.

I like doing it as a loop, admittedly not the preferred method. Most people are going to shuttle up Sand Flats Road to the trailhead, then ride down to the river, where another shuttle vehicle awaits. I like doing the ride as a loop from town. Yes the road climb up is a chore. And boring. Often there’s a headwind. But we’re talking process here, earning your verts, paying your dues. Heck, folks, it’s even paved now. The first times I rode it back in the ‘90s it was dirt and gravel most of the way. As for the river side at the end, yeah you’re whacked by then. But it’s a fairly gradual grade back up toward town. By the end of the day you’ve chalked up epic numbers, more than 5 hours on the bike and 4,000 feet of climbing. You feel like you’ve accomplished something.

I’d tried to talk Jason into doing the loop, but he was having none of it. He wasn’t big on doing Porc Rim anyway, so we waited till he left town for his grandmother’s funeral. Jean-Pierre was back with his family, so it was just Chance Richie, Jim Lyon and myself. No problem: We had lots of company on the trail.

It can get dastardly hot and dry up on the Rim, but the weather continued to bless us. One year I went through a 130-ounce bladder and was still dehydrated. I used only about half of my regular 100-oz. bladder this time. After the road ride up the trail bullets down a bit, deceiving you into thinking you’ve crested and can cruise the rest of the way. Uh-uh. There’s a lot of climbing left, much of it up risers and ledges and rockeries and whatnot. It’s all rideable, at least certain lines are, but even so you need some kick in your quads to get up and over the tough bits.

When you do top out at the Rim, you have one of the unutterably magnificent promontories the sport of mountain biking provides. Usually lots of other folks are gathered as well, doing lunch breaks and talking mtb. We ran into a group of big boingers, no one under 6 inches, about to head down the first bombing run. One guy was riding a Banshee, the Canadian outfit that makes among the toughest and heaviest and best-named bikes out there. My favorite is the Banshee Scream. Or maybe the Morphine. Anyway, he was on the “cross-country” model, the less spiky-named Chapparal, on which he proudly proclaimed he’d gotten the weight down under 40 pounds. It was brand new and he said he’d gotten a deal because he worked in a bike shop in town. His other job was in a restaurant. “I wait tables so I can afford to work in a bike shop” was the way he put it.

He was no Tinkerbell either. I wouldn’t want to get in his way on the downslope.

As gnarly as the Porc Rim climb is, the really rough part is the long descent back to the river. You can plain rip along numerous sections, but you can also get going too fast for your own good. And your equipment really takes a beating. Still, there’s nothing else quite like Porc Rim’s descent. Amasa Back offers a taste, but it’s much shorter and lacks the extended straightaways.

There are lots of drops on the descent which you can do or ride around, but the killer is a 5-footer at the end of a long bombing run. “Now that – that’s a commitment,” as Jim put it. I’ve seen guys ride off it, but you know what? That was several years ago, and they were on hardtails and a couple of what would today be considered “soft tails” – 2 to 3 inches of rear travel. Even with today’s big-drop bikes I see fewer riders doing that one — why is that?

One problem is that it’s usually wickedly windy at the big drop. The other is that it comes up on you fast and your instinct is to bear to the right and slope down it, not go off the front. By the time you reconsider at the foot of the drop, your momentum is gone and you’re starting to think a little too much. What I always think is, “Do I wanna try this, or do I wanna be 100 percent sure I’ll ride tomorrow?”

This time out the wind was whipping things around pretty hard and we bagged on it. I thought for sure the long-travel gang ahead of us would’ve gone off it, but there were no tracks below. Even with 8 or 9 inches, that thing is a commitment. And this may get at the point Craig McKinnon and others have made on the BBTC list: Big-hit bikes do little to enhance actual riding skills.

Following one long rip Jim stopped with that look on his face again. This time he’d lost a retainer from his brake lever, rendering it inoperable. So we did the funny penguin-walkaround thing, tiny little steps with our heads cocked. Miraculously, Jim found the barrel which, inserted, gave him back lever action. But the bolt was nowhere to be found.

We weren’t going to flag down any jeepers up on this section like we did on Poison Spider. And Jim runs Magura Marta brakes, so it was unlikely we’d find anyone with spare parts. Jim could continue with one brake, but on the hairball sections of the lower trail you really want both brakes. The solution: Duct tape. I always carry a few inches of the stuff in my bladder pack. Jim borrowed a slice, taped in the barrel, and we were good to go.

The ride along the river is almost as harrowing in spots as Portal. I rode more than I usually do, but not all of it. It’s a joy just to stop and take in the view every so often. You want to be able to call that slide back up in the camera of your mind.

Porc Rim always seems to serve up an unusually high percentage of bike Bettys, and toward the lower section we caught up with a number of them. Repeatedly Chance drew more than just passing interest, leading me to nickname him Chance Romance. He’s a happily married guy, but out on the trail they don’t know that. Jim’s married too, but on our first day out, up on Slickrock Trail, he mentioned to a group of riders that he was a Slickrock virgin. “We L-O-V-E our virgins in Utah!” one of the women riders responded — quite enthusiastically.

In any case, with Chance you’re always making new friends. I’d never ridden with him and was worried that Jim’s, Jason’s and my radical politics would put off a Texan Navy officer, but we never missed a beat. If you ever run into him on a ride, be sure to say hello. He’s on the shiny new Santa Cruz Heckler in candy apple red.

Back in town I hung out at Poison Spider bikes while Jim tracked down replacement hardware for his brake. There was a gnarly old guy with a bike-bus, a long trailer packed high with his life’s belongings, and two pretty tired dogs. I’d seen pictures of him around, and he’s in one of the guidebooks as well. “We used to cover 100 miles a day,” he said, nodding toward the pooches, which by the way were equipped with their own saddle packs. “Now we do 100 a week.” Hey, the journey is the reward. That’s what I always feel like after the Porcupine Rim loop.

Moab Rim

What happens in Moab, in case it’s not blindingly clear by now, does not stay in Moab. My Turner XCE still has traces of red dust, which I hope will remain there through the summer. The frame also sports my mascot kokopelli and Poison Spider stickers, but the dust makes it truly organic. I’ve also got a kokopelli ring, two t-shirts, a baseball cap and various other remembrances, including these musings. Fortunately, what happens in Moab does not need to stay in Moab either…most of the time.

For some reason this trip I packed my digital camcorder. I’ve had the thing for several years now, but it’s a brick (nearly 2 lbs.) and doing video on a ride is even more logistically obnoxious than snapping photos. I remember after getting the camcorder being all hot to shoot MTB rides. After a couple attempts the camcorder went back to the shelf, and I haven’t really done much with video since.

The problem with video is that it slows you way down. You have to mentally compose the sequence, think through subject, framing, panning, length and other considerations, and do it all before the actual set-up so you have enough time to get it right. In the meantime, you’re hardly focused on riding. So the quality of the ride experience suffers. And anyone who knows me knows I like to say how it’s all about the ride.

I’d been to Moab enough, and knew that because it was Jim Lyon’s first time we’d have to do the usual routes, that I figured what the heck. Let’s focus on getting some video this time around, and if the riding suffers, at least it’ll be just a one-off disappointment.

I didn’t have a helmet cam, and in some ways am glad. We’ve all seen endless sequences of riders’ backsides along miles of singletrack. Two things are going on here. The helmet cam makes for monotonous composition. And the rider wants to enjoy the ride rather than concentrate on movie-making.

But with a helmet cam you never quite know what you’re getting, and even if it’s spot on you’re getting minute after minute of pretty much the same thing. With video you just can’t do that. The viewer’s attention span isn’t that elastic. Besides, a helmet cam severely limits framing and content. You can’t pan, you can’t do overall shots. You pretty much only see riders’ butts on the trail ahead.

Without a helmet cam, though, you have to pack your camcorder in your bladder pack and dismount, get it out, turn it on, etc. etc., every time you shoot. And all this slows you way down. It also tries your co-riders’ patience. When Jim suggested at one juncture on the 26-mile Race Loop that I was holding things up, I offered that perhaps he wouldn’t want to see the video. That’s pretty much the tradeoff in a nutshell. I was forever holding up the ride. But if you want the footage you have to pay the piper.

Day Three was slated for Moab Rim. I had wanted the day before to try for a jumbo combo of Poison Spider/Portal and Moab Rim in a day. It’s certainly doable, although Jim’s mechanical problem on Poison Spider had killed our chances. Jim, by the way, was made whole on a visit to Moab bike shops after Portal. First we hit Poison Spider, who suggested Dreamride. In the little incestuous world of MTB and Moab, Dreamride is Lee Bridgers’ local tour company. Bridgers, the Edward Abbey of mountain biking (actually, Bridgers is a cult unto himself, but that’s another story) and a great raconteur and writer, is the guy you’ll find on the Web denouncing the ruination of Moab by crust-busting tourists. Mountain bikers included, unfortunately.

In any case, it turns out Dreamride, a big Ellsworth supporter over the years, has switched to Ventana and doesn’t carry Ellsworth stuff any more. The reasons for the switch also would take another story, but it meant Jim was coming up dry in his quest for a new pivot bolt. Not to worry. We cruised by Moab Cyclery and noted a fleet of Truths and Ids out front. One used gold medium Id, fully tricked, was going for the drop-dead asking price of $2,750. It’d been ridden once. We all offered each other various rationalizations for an impulse buy, but better sense prevailed. Jim picked himself up a new bolt and was soon good to go.

Moab Rim, after the initial killer climb, is a fairly straightforward out and back to Hidden Valley (for some reason I always want to call it Heavenly Valley, but I think that’s because of the petroglyphs above it). A lot of slickrock, some sand (more sand if you take the gulley way back), and heavenly singletrack through the valley. But it’s all too short. The view from the Rim is soulful, as long as you ignore the chairlift, but Portal’s is better and neither can touch Porcupine Rim. The other thing going for Moab Rim is the petroglyphs. It gives you pause to think about how well they’ve stood up against the forces of time, and how much they communicate despite their first-glance crudeness.

We hit Hidden Valley a little early for the wildflowers, which are truly splendid. But the singletrack was its wonderful flowing, sashaying self. If it were only about 12 to 15 miles longer it’d be a world-class destination. As it is, it’s a testament to Moab’s lamentable dearth of singletrack, and a reminder of why we all love Washington State.

I’ll never ride Moab Rim without revisiting an incident Lenny and I witnessed a few years back. We were resting at the spot where the double-track curls around before hitting the final trail ascent when we heard something that sounded like screams, but not the panicked kind. Atop a pedestal rock toward the glyph walls we could see their source. Two women, assisted by apparatus we could only guess at, were intimately involved, to the point they didn’t really care who might be within shouting distance. I’ve run into occasional in flagrante delicto on the trails, but this had to be the most public I’d ever encountered. Later Lenny and I saw them trail-running through Hidden Valley, apparently heading home down over the cliff side. They had big smiles on their face. We thought about saying, “Hi again!”

Nothing quite that audacious happened this time out. (The aforementioned Lee Bridgers has a whole chapter on outdoor encounters in his Falcon guide to Moab rides, one of the best tour books ever written imho.) We ran into some Canadians – they were all over Moab, as they always are – and assorted other riders, especially on the climb from the trailhead. The locals are putting in a lot of singletrack between the lift and the climb/downhill. Well, a lot for Moab anyway. Jason took a tumble on the screaming descent, which I captured on video. Note the accompanying Midnight Oil soundtrack lyric, a line that had reverberated the day before when we read the Portal sign about three riders plunging to their deaths: “It’s better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.” (Adapted from the Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata.)

We did derive one great nugget from a conversation up on the Rim. A rider we encountered told us about a new trail north of town, almost all of it desert singletrack. Jim’s ears really perked up at that one. After three days of mostly bare rock and jeep road, we were ready for some trail-thrashing.