Road Trip America EP:3 - Crashing Out On Moab's Slickrock Trail

From the moment I was born, I wanted to explore the world. As a child, I was always discovering something new. When I got my first set of wheels, I learned something about myself. I was born to ride. In 1986, Life Magazine called Highway 50 the loneliest road in America and advised all its readers to avoid it as there were no points of interest. I decided to find out if this was true or not for myself. What a fantastic little bit of history in this town. I love it. Moab. Millions of years of flooding and desertification has created a land before time where the fingerprints of Jurassic giants are still visible in the earth. Vast open landscapes filled with towering natural arches, smooth red-walled canyons, and slick sand rock has created a paradise for off-road enthusiasts. I've been wanting to ride Moab for a long time, but I knew that the donkey would not cut it on these trails. I also knew that I had actually no idea where to go, so I hired Andy from Rocky Tracks to show me around. Not only did he bring a wealth of knowledge of the local trail networks, but a brand new Kawasaki KLX for me to ride. Look at that. I mean, it's such a cliche, but that rock is pretty dang slick looking. Hence the name slick rock, but still, look how smooth it is. That is way bumpier than I thought it would be. Boy, when you watch a video on YouTube, it doesn't look bumpy at all. Jeez, that was scary. There's no guardrail to the left. If you fall, you're going into that dry lake bed. Man, that view is epic. Whoa, sand, sand, sand. Not my favorite. Holy shit. So it turns out that Moab is a lot harder to ride than I anticipated, as evidenced by my dead action cam. Here's the deal. When I was putting this trip together, the whole focus of the trip was to go to Moab, because I've always wanted to ride Moab. In fact, when I started mountain biking a few years ago, that's when my interest in Moab started to come about, because I remember seeing video clips on YouTube of people mountain biking in Moab. It just, it looks so different than what we ride in BC. And one of the trails that I was looking forward to riding the most was called the Slick Rock Trail. Now think about that name for a second. If someone told you they're going to ride a trail called the Slick Rock Trail, how hard does that trail sound? It doesn't sound very hard at all, right? It's called the Slick Rock Trail. If that trail was called the Gnarly Rock Trail, or like the Bumpy Rock Trail, or something like that, then yeah, that sounds like a pretty difficult trail, right? But if a trail is called Slick Rock Trail, it doesn't sound that difficult. And I watched a bunch of videos on YouTube of people riding the Slick Rock Trail, and I thought, how hard can that be? Because it's Slick Rock. In BC, our trails are never smooth. They're never slick. They're always bumpy and rocky, and we've got roots and rocks and all kinds of stuff in there. So when I looked at Moab, to me, it looked like riding on the surface of an egg. Like, I just thought it was just like a bunch of eggs everywhere. Like, everything is smooth, and you're just basically going up and down and up and down. Turns out I couldn't be further from the truth. What you don't notice in those YouTube videos, you don't notice until you get there, is how bumpy is not the right word, but how uneven the surface is. Oh, this is way bumpier than I thought. Holy crap. Which line do I take? This one here? Oh my god. So Moab was like a really big challenge for me, and it was actually kind of disappointing, to be honest, because I thought Moab would be fantastic. I had all these ideas for drone shots and all this kind of stuff, and I was going to film like this epic thing, and none of it turned out. The drone was overheating. My phone that I used to control the drone was overheating because it was so hot there. I couldn't use the drone that much. I didn't really get a lot of good GoPro footage because I was looking down most of the time at the trail. But the good thing is, I kind of realize now what my limitations are and what I need to work on. Because when you watch those BDR videos, and they go to super remote places in North America, or you see these guys at super remote places in Nepal or something, man, that looks exciting, right? I want to go there. But I realize now that's actually probably a lot more challenging than I realized, or than the video makes it look. So if I was to plan a route like that, I got to be a lot... I got to improve my off-road skill level quite a bit, actually. You know, I got to watch more of that Brett Tacks, the hat guy video. I got to study more of his videos. I got to perfect my hat technique, and then I'll be good for off-road. But yeah, off-road stuff, man, is not ever challenging. But anyways, the good news is, the rest of the trip should be super easy. I've got Colorado tomorrow, and then I got Wyoming. And even though some of those areas are off-road, I don't think it'll be as difficult as it was in Moab, and I don't think I'm going to have any problems with the rest of the trip. What the f**k is that buzzing? Is it this? Why is this old woman like riding, walking in the middle of nowhere here? Tell Morgan it'll be an hour, because he's all the way up here in Silver Jack. You know what? I better actually slow down, because that could be mud. That could be... Whoa, whoa! Oh, s**t! Damn it! Oh, no! Oh, that's pretty muddy.