White Rim | April 23-25 (warning, lots of pictures)

White Rim. Two nights, some biking, some 'splorin, lots of driving.

This is the first time I've been on the White Rim since I rode it on my bike in 2008. Just about every time I make it out to Moab, I make sure I find my way into Canyonlands - typically for sunrise at Mesa Arch.

This trip also marks the first proper trip I've done with my truck since I rolled it in October last year, resulting in a cab swap and complete rebuild of the truck. Including a flatbed build.

(November 3, 2014)


We ran it counter-clockwise. Starting on the Mineral Bottom side, we met up in Moab at 2, and rolled out. Our first campsite was Labyrinth, which made for a quick first day. I can say for certain - one of the greatest parts of driving this trail is reflecting back to when I was suffering for miles on end and struggling with climbs... as I opened up the throttle and rallied through the terrain.



My buddy, Scott, in his supercharged 4R. Super clean rig. He's writing for Forge Overland, check 'em out and keep an eye out for his report on there. Rumor has it, he may be working with TCT Magazine a bit as well in the near future.









Made it into camp pretty quickly, considering Labyrinth is only about 20 miles in from the start, it's a short but sweet day.

I told my Nemo rep that if he let me borrow a bag and tent for the trip, I'd get him a bunch of pictures with the tent. I'm thoroughly impressed with their tents, both the tent and bag have some really sweet little details that my old go-to tent lack entirely. I'll admit though, I'll likely end up with a pop-up tent from Slee for about $100 and much quicker setup time.







Day Two.
Labyrinth CG is a stone's throw away from a really fun wash, we got no pictures until later down the road after the dust and fun powdery sand was behind us... On a side note, Mark and I explored where the wash dumped out into the river, and found the quicksand we had heard caused closures further south in Canyonlands around the Needles District. We then proceeded to play with it, and mess with it until we got a branch stuck in it about 4' down... turns out quicksand is real, and it's pretty damn fun to play with. Additional side note, we may not have used the best judgement in poking the bear there...

Texting and driving? Try operating a full-manual DSLR while wheeling.











It's really not until you get to the top of the Murphy Hogback that you understand why the trail is called the White Rim. All along the route, the exposed rock along the edge of the lower canyon is white. Further back, at the base of the secondary set of cliffs, you see another white layer of rock and dirt. As many times as I've gone into Canyonlands, I've still yet to figure out a good way to capture and reflect the many layers and fingers of canyons within canyons. From tiny slots, to massive miles-wide expanses. I love this place.


Mark gearing up to ride his bike in the desert.






I kind of selected the black-and-white shots in pairs... Also based off of which shots I wasn't satisfied with the color variant between highlights and shadows.










Plenty of things that wanted to make you hurt if you let your guard down. And/or weren't wearing shoes.


End of day two. It was a long one, on the trail for something like 5 or 6 hours. We pulled into camp and Scott and his wife wanted to sit back and relax, while Mark and I felt like exploring. We saw the Lathrop Canyon spur which took off from White Rim just past where we were camping. It's about a mile and a half down from the Rim and drops you right down to the river. We figured we'd explore that before heading back and setting up camp and getting dinner ready.

If you're ever planning on doing the WR, I definitely recommend taking the time to do this spur, it's a short, and rather steep descent into a small canyon, and the trail winds along the wash at the bottom of the canyon. There's times where you can stray off of the trail and climb some fun ledges as you return up the trail, and there's plenty of opportunity further down to get your braaap in some wide sweeping sandy turns. Sadly, we were having too much fun to get any pictures, but here's the traildamage link: http://www.traildamage.com/trails/index.php?id=137

Not a bad place to sleep. Aside from the unrelenting wind and eventual rain.




Shameless promotion. This tent is badass.


Day Three.
It rained. A lot. From about 1am till 8am. Very steady rain. Glad I decided to set the tent up, and not just roll the bag out. We woke up to a low cloud ceiling behind us enveloping Island in the Sky and clear skies throughout most of the valley below till the other side.





That's all from the final day, we stopped to make up some bacon and sweet potato patties (and make every passerby drool) at Muscleman Arch, then before we knew it we were done with the trail.

All in all, an awesome trip. We got some time on the bikes in Thursday morning, and had it not continued to dump rain Saturday night, we would still be out there playing bikes.

 

Cool trip man! Great photos.

 

so beautiful

 

I...I wanna go there...

 

no one wants you there.

 

This is true. I ruin everything beautiful.

 

Awesome pics and sounds like a great trip. I need to do White Rim one of these days . . .

 

Love these pics. The one with the stars, do you remember your settings and what camera you were using?

 

Great photos! Thank you!

 

Awesome. Cant wait to go to moab in a few weeks

 

Let me know when you do, I could stand to do it again! I might be teaming up with a friend who does guided bike trips on WR for some part time work.

Thanks. I believe for that one I had it set to ISO 650, F/5.2, WB auto (raw, then set in post), shutter set to bulb and did a 60-second exposure. I was hoping to get a star trail from this perspective, but the intervalometer I used was my bad one, which resets itself to having a 99.99.99 (hr, mn, sec) delay between pictures after the first shot... so I only managed to get the one picture.

Camera is Nikon D7000 with a Tokina 12-24 f/4 lens, I think I was at about 14-16mm when I took this.

 

Awesome pics, man! I was down in S Utah back in February and saw the White Rim trail from some of the viewpoints into Canyonlands. Can't wait to get back down there hopefully next year and do that trail.

 

Amazing! I'll be there in a few weeks but wont have the time to run White Rim. I'd love to though.

 

That is awesome.

 

Great photos! Can't wait to go back to Utah. You are making me want to go back, NOW!

 

man we need to make a group meet up there.

 

Awesome write up and pictures.

Well done.

 

Holly F.............k Someone knows how to take pictures.

 

Beautiful photos man. I'm hoping to do this run at the end of December. Hopefully it won't be iced over.

 

That's a ballsy time of year to do that trail. I've been to Moab a few times in the days following Christmas, and the first year it was gorgeous, sunny and 70's every day... the second year was much colder and snowy/snowing periodically. I know peak seasons for doing this trail are like early-mid fall, and mid-late spring. Parts of that trail shut down completely in inclement weather; on our last night it rained (a shit load) and caused the Shafer switchbacks to shut down for several hours due to peanut butter conditions, by the time we got there it had dried out enough, but there were a lot of folks just waiting or turning down Potash.

It's an awesome experience though, highly recommended.