Moab - Salt Wash/Sovereign 04/19

We had tried to get over to Moab the previous weekend to this but got stopped by bad weather in the mountains. We were literally at the Eisenhower Tunnel when they closed I-70 westbound. It stayed closed for about 2 hours and we made the decision to turn around and head home very quickly after trying to go around the Tunnel via highway 6 and Loveland Pass only to see cars stuck spinning in the terrible conditions.

So we were very motivated to get to Moab for this weekend as we hadn't been on our bikes for a month because of bad weather and me travelling to New Orleans for work.

I had read on MTBR that there was some new trail options added to Sovereign and that seemed a great morning ride as we would be camping very close to the trail head and could get an early start to avoid the heat and crowds. (we failed to avoid either)

The new trail is called Salt Wash and is best ridden from the Willow Springs end and is well marked at all the junctions. We picked it up from the first junction on the very first section of slick rock on the Sovereign Trail.


It didn't start out that promising with a lot of very sandy sections, but they were mixed with some fun technical riding.


The ride really started to grow on us the further into it we got. It is definitely a good option to add to Sovereign if you have done it as an out and back many times previously. I think that Sovereign is the "better" ride but Salt Wash is still a good option with a nice variety of riding in it. It has a lot of steep (but very ridable) sections that drop you down into gulley's and is most definitely going to be better done in one direction rather than the other.


The trail wanders nicely through some very diverse terrain.


and has some really nice flowing sections.


It crosses Sovereign a number of times and joins it for a while to climb the last dusty hill on Sovereign proper but quickly breaks of it again on top of the hill.


We returned to the trail head via Sovereign and overall I would rate this as a very nice addition to the single track Moab has to offer - as long as you can get past the sandy first sections.


Moab single track is growing nicely, it still doesn't have as much as Fruita, but for me Moab remains the destination of choice on my weekends at this time of the year. The quality of riding compared to Fruita is higher and the atmosphere around around town much better! This is just my opinion and others will have different opinions - it doesn't suck being able to argue whether one possible weekend destination is as world class as another possible weekend destination.