Moab 2008 Bartlett Wash

Hi Guys,

Another post today. The snow is on the ground, roads are fine, my wrist is back in action and ready to begin another season.

This time last year, I was on the a boat crossing Drake's passage on my way to Antarctica.

If you get a chance, check out the Abu dhabi Anventure Challenge. 36 teams from around the world are comepting over a 6 day stage race. A buddy of mine, that I can sometimes, keep up with, his team won entry into the race and early last week was somewhere around 14~15th place over all. World class athelete. Look for team Dart-Nuun.

Hope to start training for a 70.3 Ironman this next year. I was hoping to complete the 1900meter swim in 50 minutes. A good goal, until I spoke with my 7th and 8th grade cousins who can swim a 1600 under 23 minutes...If you don't dream big, you wont get there.


Back to Moab: I have crazy video once I figure out how to compress it to put it on this site.


This was Thursdays ride at Bartlett. We wanted a easier day to go play around rather than another 5 hour day on the bike before our monster 33.5 mile day on Friday. On this ride the steel framed hardtail riders out did the fully suspend guys. Those guys were nuts.

Trey found his hill right away and what better to do on a hill than a front wheelie
Matt demonstrating how to go really slow down something ridiculous steep.
The camera view for Matt came out better than for me. Yes, it was crazy steep.
Matt took getting back off the seat to a whole new level, but he didn't crash so it worked.
I decided to let off the front break and just bomb it when I got 1/2 way down because my tire was getting destroyed trying to go ultra slow down this. The end result was the same...no crashes.
This ride Trey got to ride off a bunch of rocks. He didn't flat on this wheelie drop.
Everywhere we went there were these cool little bowls. This one was a bunch of fun.
Our ridge to get to the lunch spot was ~3 feet wide. If you got off the ledge, you couldn't stop for another 30 feet before another ledge to get some more traction. Our side walls of the tires got a good workout.
This panorama demonstrates the steepness of the next couple of photos. Scott is in the background falling over...not really but made for a neat picture.
San Diego Mike Crossing the great ridge hold bowl.
Here is a panorama of me in different stages of dropping in the bowl. Note two photos above for the steepness.
Scott on the steel framed hardtail got the Wow...can't believe you just did that award. Though the steepness isn't as bad as the first hill at the start of the ride, if you bailed here, the pain would be much worse. Yes it is as steep as it looks.
We couldn't believe he was really dropping in this thing.
He made it...somehow. Lean back, keep the back tire in a constant directional skid and hope you make it. Way to go Scott...but no way I am doing that. I got to go to work on Monday.
Trey found another hill to climb and played on the way down. He was also on a steel framed hartail and it took a lickin here but did just fine.
At the top of the rim, here is a pano of the surrounding area.