More adventures in Dr. Peabody’s “wayback Machine” wherein our intrepid travelers ride the first mountain bikes on the White Rim Trail. The winter of 1975-1976 was a drought year in central Colorado, with diddly squat for snow pack in the high country. In a normal snowfall year my friend Steve Morgan and I might be found doing multi-day ski tours in the Elk or West Elk Mountains around Crested Butte. If we tried it on this particular winter we would be carrying our skis on our shoulders for many miles, which held no appeal at all. Since we would typically retire to Canyonlands in Utah during spring break in March for a little warmth and sunshine after a cold Gunnison winter, we decided to just move our desert trip up by three months instead. This was during the era in Gunnison of the “roll-your-own” mountain bike, wherein we would get an old single-speed clunker for about tem bucks and build it up with various off-the-shelf components into the first mountain bikes. Commercially available mountain bikes would not be marketed for another couple of years. So Steve Morgan and I both had proto mountain bikes that we had built that previous summer, and decided what a cool thing it would be to ride the White Rim Trail in the winter.

We arrived early one December morning at the Island-in-the-sky ranger station to announce our intentions (daft), get any beta on water availability (not much), and to indicate that our truck would be in his parking lot for several days, but don’t worry about it. He was cool with it. We didn’t have panniers, just big honkin’ mountain packs crammed with our gear, a couple of liters of water apiece, and about one and a half clues to rub together (you don’t get a lot of heat that way, dontcha know). We descended the Shafer Trail without actually burning our brakes out, got onto the relatively flat White Rim trail, and made pretty good time. We would occasionally find small depressions in the sandstone of the White Rim that held a couple of inches of water, and that comprised our water resources for the first day. It has always amazed me how much suffering a young lad can take and still convince himself that this is all great, grand fun. That first night was spent camping on the White Rim on the Colorado River side of Island-in-the-sky. It was a dry camp, using just the bottled water we brought, but there was enough for dinner and the following morning’s breakfast.

The days were cool, the nights were cold, but the weather stayed clear for the first three days. On the second day we rode around the southern end of the White Rim and into the Green River side of Island-in-the-sky. For the most part the White Rim trail was hard-packed dirt or bare sandstone and we were able to ride many miles with relative ease. Occasionally we would hit energy-sapping soft sand, but these stretches seldom lasted more than a few hundred yards.

About the bikes: Steve’s bike is a Schwinn “paper bike” frame with custom aluminum rims laced to hub brakes from a moped. He has the usual rear derailleur and 5-gear rear cluster off a road bike in back, and the original single piece cast steel crank and single chain ring in front. I have one of the very first custom frames with a three piece aluminum crank, and aluminum rims laced to the same moped hub brakes. Both Steve and I have motocross handlebars, grips, and brake levers. Steve has the only bike pump on our little expedition, which we thankfully did not need.

On the second day we camped on the White Rim Sandstone where it was near the Green River. We were able to find a chimney crack system down through the sandstone ledge that gave us access to the Green River, which was good because we were out of water. For that night and the following morning we filtered the sand out of the water through a bandana and boiled the water before filling our water bottles. The second day and night were the warmest of the trip, with daytime temps in the 40’s and night time temps in the 20’s.

On the third day we road into Mineral Bottom and the end of the White Rim trail. This was our shortest day, but the weather was looking unsettled so we looked around for some convenient sandstone ledges to sleep under as we had not brought a tent. We were able to get water out of the Green River again, filter and boil it, and prepare our evening meal before it started to rain. Although it rained pretty much the whole night, we were snug in our bivy sacks underneath the rock ledges, and didn’t climb out of our bags the following morning until the weather was clear. Up to this time, the bike riding had been smooth sailing on easy roads with stunning views. That scenario did an abrupt about face on the last day. Much of the Mineral Bottom road is a consistently steep jeep road on a clay substrate that gains almost 2,000 ft of elevation in just a few miles. With the previous evening rain it had the consistency of gorilla snot, and pushing our bikes up that road was like trying to climb up King Kongs’ nostrils during hay fever season. An then we got high enough where the previous evenings precipitation had turned to snow. At first we thought the frozen conditions would be better because the clay would not stick to the tires. The snow stuck instead, and was actually worse. Once on top we had to ride in 4 – 5 inches of snow on a sandy road for about 15 miles back to the Island-in-the-sky range station. It was standing on the pedals in first gear the entire way back. Without a doubt, that last day was the longest bike ride I have ever done, including double century’s I would do later in life.