Ute Land
Hey Joe Safari Bikepacking Route - Utah
Originally written and photographed in October, 2021
Load up, check coolant, check tire pressure, place appropriate snacks nearby. Plug in my phone for maps and a podcast. What’ll it be this time? Catch up on news and current events, or maybe a new serial? Maybe I should finally listen to that Scandinavian doom metal my friend keeps hounding me about. Probably not. I could listen to It Could Happen Here the entire drive, that’s great for my mental health. Let's do that.
365 miles, 6 hours, one way. That’s Boulder, CO, to Moab, Utah. It’s also probably true of countless other drives that we all have pulled off for various bikepacking trips. I-70 is broken and slow out of the Front Range, but that gives enough time to watch the snow whip off of 13,000’ peaks, if it's even there. The drive is uneventful, as drives tend to be. But I can't shake that sickly feeling: nearly 800 miles round trip to ride 100 miles. I suppose when our great lord Capital only grants so much time off, that is what most of our realities have to be.
Alex has a great campsite picked out for us to meet in Moab. We make camp tacos, and share a few beers while catching up. It feels damn good to see a friend I haven’t seen in awhile, that’s undeniable. We discuss the ride, and our new jobs. I debate as to whether or not I should bring my big digital camera on the ride. After all, I have some time these days to shoot and write more, which could be a way to subsidize the cost of my 800 mile trip. We chuckle a bit uncomfortably; recognizing the painful irony of monetizing recreation. He works as a guide and administrator for a private outdoor education firm, and I sell bikes and take photos of bikes and bike trips.I decided to bring the camera. But, after the first day, it started to become clear that I would in fact be writing this article, not another glowing trip report of playing in unceded territory.
Day One: Mass Extinction
We depart at noon from a parking lot off of Highway 141, north of Moab. Our route today will take us through 4x4 roads and the Sovereign trail system. I think about pointing out the irony of calling something that exists on stolen land “Sovereign” but I decide to keep the mood light for the day.
Our approach to the trails leads us through washes and over slickrock expanses. We stop to admire a desert pothole after the recent late October rains, and notice a sign informing us not to ride through them, as we could accidentally make cocktail out of Fairy Shrimp. We chuckle at the idea of shrimp in the desert, and feel happily humbled that two folks who have spent quite a bit of time in the desert just learned about a new-to-us species that demonstrates the resilience and absurdity of life in this landscape. We stop to admire the snow capped La Sals in the distance, have a snack, and move along.
These trails are objectively beautiful, even given their dubious naming. Ribbons of singletrack undulate between barren hills and the odd dinosaur bone fossil. I pause to consider the dark irony of a highway made from petroleum for fossil fuel based transport being so close to signs of an eons old mass extinction that literally fuels said conveniences. Ok, maybe most oil reserves are older than dead dinosaurs, but you get the picture.
We move along a locomotive track, trying to find the bush that Alex stashed our water in. The acrid smell of railroad tie tar baking in the Utah sun fills my nostrils, and overpowers the creosote and sage. We cross, and stand by the highway filling our water bottles. Alex stashed some warm beers as well, but we opted to save them for camp. We aren’t far, but the route is supposed to get sandy for a while, and both of us know that sand decimates all generalizations of pace.
The sand proved to be minimal, but the mud...oh, the mud. At a certain point, every adventure cyclist will end up pushing their bike through the impenetrable mess of decomposed shale, post-rain. This is the type of mud that forms entirely new pieces of a bicycle, sometimes to the detriment wheel rotation itself. For me and my disgustingly tukt Hayduke, this happened fairly quickly. It’s not the bike’s fault, I’m the one who purposefully gave myself far less than a hotdog’s worth of space between my seat-tube and rear wheel. I did this to myself. Alex is no better off. We laugh and plod, scraping off mud between wet sections to try and lighten our loads and make our wheels move again. This is...somewhat effective.
A campsite is chosen at the base of a hill. There’s a nice fire ring established, and it should give us a great view of the sun setting on the book cliffs between Green River and Thompson Springs, out on the horizon. We boil water and prepare dinner, which was lovingly supplied by Alex’s friends at Farm to Summit, a small company in Durrango that dehydrates food from local farms that isn’t pretty enough to sell, and makes delicious camp dinners out of it.
I eat a gummy and go on an adventure to collect a paltry amount of wood for our small fire. I notice rifle casings, pieces of broken dirt bikes, and some other trash accumulated in a dry wash, along with some signage discouraging motorized travel on a sensitive landscape. One has been shot and either cut at the base or flooded out, which I discover after removing it from the wash and propping it back up. The other sign sits on what can only be described as the idea of a fence, and is about as effective as a cotton mesh rain jacket. I also spot some animal tracks. The gummy is kicking in, and I choose to focus on those instead.
As I return with the wood, a caravan of dirt bikes flys by our campsite. The smoke from dead juniper branches does a good job at pushing away that lovely 2 stroke smell. I can’t help but think back to the dinosaurs that are fueling this activity and my trip out here. I ponder the concepts of mass extinction, and can’t help but focus on the idea that we are using the fuel created by organisms long dead to drive our very own mass extinction via mass emissions. This is the Anthropocene, and I am acutely aware of it. I inflate my polymer sleeping pad and try not to think too much about dead Triceratops and gasoline.
Day 2: Mass Extraction
We wake up with a healthy layer of frost on our sleeping bags. It’s refreshing to be wet and cold in the desert. Realizing that we camped at the base of a hill to avoid wind, we are now going to be in a shadow all morning. We slowly migrate over to a sunny spot to pack up, and begin riding. There’s a lot of sand today, mixed in with slickrock and dirt roads. We passed a family that managed to drive a sedan and a full sized camper out here, through the sand, along with a big truck. The physics of it all don’t make a lot of sense, but Utah is gonna Utah.
Today is the day that we will hike-a-bike down into Hey Joe Canyon. The hike itself was more of a scramble, and pretty entertaining. It’s not too often you get to use canyon route finding skills with a bike in hand, and the absurdity of it all was a highlight of the trip. Upon reaching the bottom of the canyon, we were greeted with some abandoned remnants of Grand County’s darker history.
You see, Moab was barely a place on the map before uranium was discovered there in 1953. The vast majority of this uranium was being used to create nuclear weapons during the Cold War, and given the Atomic Energy Commision guaranteeing a price for uranium, it created a mining rush to the area.
The Four Corners region has seen extensive uranium mining, and, in true American fashion, those who received the brunt of the consequences were the working class, particularly Diné (Navajo) miners. Few protections were in place for these laborers, and exposure to radon as well as other hazardous materials led to increased rates of cancer and respiratory diseases among the workers. In 1950, 3 years before uranium was discovered near Moab, the US Public Health Service began a study on the effects of radon to the human body, prompted by examples of significantly increased rates of lung cancer in European uranium miners. This study was carried out without the consent of those being studied, and the study focused primarily on White miners. There is record of mild warnings about cancer being distributed via pamphlets in 1959, but it is unclear how effective that was in disseminating information giving varying rates of written English comprehension among the working class and Diné miners at the time. A comprehensive review and analysis of the effects of radon among miners from Indigenous and European backgrounds alike wasn’t made until 1984. (1)
The bottom of Hey Joe Canyon is littered with old mining vehicles and other rusted detritus from the uranium bust. Though it’s upsetting to see, I can’t help but be impressed with how they got this equipment down here nearly 70 years ago. I think about the miners that sacrificed their health for a dollar, and what that uranium went on to create. Some say that the Atomic age and mutually assured destruction brought greater guarantees of peace to the world. While I can see this logic, it is still hard for me to stomach the reality of massive labor and bodily abuses to create weapons of mass destruction.
A family from Price shows up on their UTV’s, and we share some pleasantries. The mother, who must be in her 60s, asks where the motors are on our bikes. Alex slaps his thighs, and I cringe inside at the whole scene. They offer us water, and we kindly accept. I watch the family check out the old equipment with similar bewilderment as Alex and I, and I wonder if they have the same thoughts about the implications of this industrial detritus.
We pedal along the Green River for a while, and end up camping down below in the canyon. We have water stashed 15 miles and a steep climb out of the canyon, but we found a nice trickle here, and it’s far too pretty to ignore. I have to argue with Alex a bit on this, as he is feeling particularly spry. I am not. I see water in a red rock canyon, and I want to enjoy this rarity. The leaves are changing color here, and I have no intention of leaving. The first pitch of the climb and the sounds of trickling water fading away convince Alex of my case, and we make camp. Unsurprisingly, the voice of the Canyon is much more convincing than my own.
Day 3: Ways Forward
After climbing out of the canyon, we cruise dirt roads for an hour or two. Some olive drab buildings surrounded by fences are dotted here and there off of the road. I suspect natural gas extraction, and after some research at home, I found I was correct. It seems that we can’t escape this theme. Arriving at our water stash, we consider our options. We can stick to the primary route, but that would take quite some time, and we’ve been invited to a Samhain party. We opt for some fun singletrack and a more direct route to our vehicles.
The Samhain party is being put on by a dear friend of mine, who recently moved to Thompson Springs (just northeast of Moab) with a group of her friends. Thompson Springs is a mostly forgotten town off of the interstate, but my friends have a vision. They purchased some land (the buyer would only accept cash or gold), and plan to create a collectivist living situation. Most of these folks are former or current outdoor guides who have been priced out of the Moab housing market. This is more and more common these days. They are close with the owners of the Desert Moon Hotel/Hostel/RV park, and host one helluva party.
This party is attended by Moabite guides, foodservice professionals from Telluride, and your classic Desert Anarchists. It is a damn good time. I spend most of the time by the fire, as I’m a bit too dehydrated to participate in the real shenanigans. The discussion trends towards the long time residents’ of Thompson Springs perception of this influx of young, radical energy. I talk with one of the co-owners of the property, “J”, for some time.
“Honestly, at first, it was a bit tense.” J told me.
J is dressed in black, tattered jeans, work boots, and a leather vest. Their face is painted, and their hair is done in a neat mohawk.
“But then, something interesting started to happen. Our neighbor walked around with a MAGA hat most of the time. Then he saw me fixing the Jeep one day.”
J is referring to a barely street legal 1950s Willy’s that they all use to scoot around town. I still have no idea whose name is on the title, and I got the impression that it didn't really matter.
“He saw me fixing that hunk of rust, and was impressed. He didn’t think we knew how to work with our hands, and ended up asking for some help with his machinery. After some time helping him out and talking about the tenets of Anarchism, we found out that we had a lot more in common than either of us thought. Turns out, most people just want respect, community, and autonomy. We want to live happily and freely. That’s it. After awhile, he stopped wearing that hat, and now he waves to all of us.”
This story struck me. In a world where we are so divided and inundated with the turmoils of late-stage capitalism that I can’t even go on a damn bike ride without rambling about climate change, nuclear war, indigenous atrocities and labor abuses. But J’s story shows something so radical, and so simple: when hatred, mistrust, division and violence are so commonplace, kindness and community become an act of resistance. Waving to your neighbor is radical.
I went on a bike ride with a friend to “get away from it all”. Solitude, or the company of one other person, has so often been my answer. I can stick my head in the sand when I’m in the woods, or at least I used to be able to do that. It’s becoming more and more difficult to turn off the critical part of my brain, even when I am out riding. I’m sure I’m not the only one.
n the end, the best part of this entire bikepacking trip was actually the part I look forward to the least: coming back to town. A re-entry into a community that is being created for the sole purpose of being a community was more refreshing than any number of miles on a dirt road. This is good news. If we can make the world a better place by talking to our neighbors, maybe there is some hope.
As I drove home and mull over the themes discussed above, punctuated by more doomer-porn podcasts, I can’t help but feel a bit helpless. Then I remembered that conversation around a fire, and things started to feel a bit less broken. I took solace in knowing that there are people working, even in small ways, to try and fix things. That is what inspired me to write this article. I have immense privilege in even being able to do these things, let alone having a platform to share them on. I’ve written plenty about the joys of recreation, and it felt like it was time to write about what keeps me -and I would guess a lot of us- up at night.
If the topics above interest you and you want to get involved with making the world a better place, here are some resources:
1: Resource Generation's Land Reparations and Indigenous Solidarity Toolkit is a great place to learn some basics about the modern fight for Indegenous justice.
2: Mutual Aid Disaster Relief can help you get involved with local, grassroots and laterally organized efforts to respond to natural disasters that are only growing more common with climate change.
3: Radical Adventure Riders works towards inclusivity in the cycling industry for underrepresented demographics.
4: Community Rebuilds is a Moab based nonprofit organization working on building affordable and sustainable housing for the working class in the surrounding areas.
5: Talk to your neighbors.
6: Share additional resources in the comments below. I am by no means an expert on any of this.
Thanks for reading. I don’t mean to shame anyone for not becoming sappy and introspective while out riding. Please, enjoy your time. Smile, laugh, and do some wheelies. Take what that ride gives you (happiness, insight, sweat, whatever), and try to pass it on.
Sources:
(1) Brugge, Doug, and Rob Goble. “The history of uranium mining and the Navajo people.” American journal of public health vol. 92,9 (2002): 1410-9. doi:10.2105/ajph.92.9.1410