El Freako: March Moab Mag 7 Ride

Monday, March 4, 2013

March Moab Mag 7 Ride

With the weather looking prime Paul and I shot over to Moab on Sunday to ride the Mag 7 trails.On the drive over the weather was looking cloudy and rain like. That changed once we put rubber on 7UP trail. The clouds burned off and it was feeling like 70 degrees within a few miles.The trail conditions on 7UP weren't perfect.....loamy, loamy and more loamy. It took some real effort to climb the ten miles to Bull Run trail. There was snow and ice in spots up high but once we were a couple miles down Bull Run the trails were perfect....slick rock and sweet dirt single track. We ran into a shuttle group with a guide from Magpie Adventures that used to live in Ophir. We chatted and talked bikes for a bit. These guys could ride and Paul and I put the hammer down to show them some love and how we do it on hardtail singles. I think they got it. LOL.

We split form the full squish riders and made a left turn onto Arth's from Great Escape to start the climb back to Getaway. The legs were feeling the hard effort from the previous days ride in Mesa Verde Nat Park on the Mean Dean road bike. Once we on onto Getaway the trail was pretTy good until we climbed higher up and hit more snow and mud. The trial was soft and made the grunt work on the singles even harder. After Getaway there is a mile plus on a connector 4x4 road that was in horrible shape. Snow, mud, rocks and more climbing. This brought us back to 7UP where we would back track to the TH on HWY 313. More loamy soft trail conditions and my legs woke up and I felt super........I put down the hammer to see if Paul was going to answer my pace. Nope....not at all. He was feeling the pain and I was smiling ear to ear. He just wanted to be done with it.

The ride stats were 36 miles with 3k plus of climbing in 4 hours 15 minutes of moving time. It was my first ride on my 29er Salsa single speed and it felt good. Going to Sedona for a 50 miler this next weekend. It should be a great time.