May 5th, 2007 - Top of the World

A cold, wet front was coming through colorado for the weekend so we decided to escape from Boulder and head over to Moab. The weather prediction was cool and scatter showers which is perfect Moab riding weather! The drive over started off looking really ominous with some nasty driving on the way up to einshower tunnel and it looked like we might have bad driving all the way to Grand Junction. Luckily as soon as we were through the tunnel conditions improved dramatically and we had good driving until we got to Grand Junction where it was raining torrentially!

It always seems to be much wetter for Fruita than for Moab because once we got to moab it was overcast but stars were showing through in many places it looked to be an excellent weekend.

Unfortunately, we woke up to overcast conditions and it had rained on and off most of the night. We were thinking to do either Flat Pass or maybe to shuttle Porcupine and headed to Moab to get breakfast and decide what to ride. Moab itself was getting rained on and it was obvious that the closer you went to the la sal mountains the worse things got.

So we decided to head away from the wet stuff and drove over the Top of the World which is out past the fisher towers and castleton valley.


Things looked fairly promising as we set out. There were some ominous clouds around but we seemed to have found a pocket of fairly good conditions.


Top of the world is a 4 mile climb to a Rim with amazing views. The climbing gets pretty technical at times, but as long as you sit and just grind your way up it is not that bad and is a good workout. Just keep telling yourself on the way up that everything you ride up you get to bomb down on the way back!


Although those clouds are getting darker out there.


Some fun technical riding on the way up - as long as you have been protecting your leg power. It is a constant steep grind up the hill with the occasionally technical sections that drain and attempt to destroy you!


The closer we got to the top the more the conditions worsened. We finally decided to turn around once it really started sleeting and snowing heavily. The ground was getting really wet and seemed like it would be pretty sketchy to come down to fast so we decided to bail and head back down in the hope of getting a decent descent.


It actually ended up being really fun flying downhill with it being wet and sketchy. It was the mud and not the rock that ended up being the most sketchy as it was slick as oil once it got wet.


But it was fun and fast. Amber was started to really feel the cold on the way down with her gloves being soaked and her fingers getting really cold. It meant that she could only ride the brakes in bursts - which probably made the riding even more interesting!


It was still pretty wet by the time we got to the bottom.


and coming back to moab the weather had really settled in around the area and the normally spectacular views in castleton valley were very obscured.