Back in 2008, our own aspenmike became the first person (we know of) to unicycle the whole White Rim trail near Moab, Utah. Here’s his post with some nice photos: Utah Epic - The White Rim
Two weeks ago today, a group of 8 of us, including Mike, completed the ride. This time, everyone was on a 36er - we took turns driving the support vehicle. The White Rim Trail is the most amazing ride I’ve done in a long time, although the best part of the trip was simply spending 4 days camping out and riding with such a great bunch of guys.
Wow, that’s a ton of pictures! I stayed up late to see the whole show. In two words: spectacular, inspiring. I felt like I got a good sense of the experience with all the pictures, and it’s nice that there were multiple photographers, so we get to see everyone.
It looks like y’all had a great time, and it was nice that half the group was father/son pairs. I don’t think anyone on the trip will ever forget it.
I’ll have to get the recipe for the gluten-free cookie dough cake from Mike. You guys were really roughing it with the trail food.
By the way, I couldn’t get the pictures to come up when I clicked on your link, but if anyone else has this problem I’m pretty sure this link will work, if you then click on “Moab White Rim 2010”. And I haven’t watched all the videos yet, as they don’t seem to play from the slideshow, so I’ll have to go back and look through the thumbnails later to play the rest. For now, it’s time for bed.
30 miles/48km
17 miles/27km
28 miles/45km
29 miles/47km (10 miles on paved road)
I don’t know how much climbing, a fair amount each day and there was also a lots of cranking hard into headwinds.
You can take anywhere from 1 to 5 or so days for this and you need a permit if you stay out over night. (On uni it would be a brutal one-day ride!) We had to apply for the permit 8 months in advance in a lottery system and got lucky. The number of people there is strictly controlled since there are so few camping places.
While it takes some organization in advance, it is REALLY worth it!
Awesome, I love that area, and I just got back from unicycling/camping in Moab. Seems I was there a week later than you all. How was the wind at night while camping? My first night camping, I woke up numerous times to the extreme wind and hoping my tent held in place.
Another fun thing about the trip was meeting so many friends in Moab. We had a huge reunion inside the City Market with lots of unicyclists from all over. James, where did you ride?
We had some very strong winds one night - those tents are amazingly strong! You can hear in a couple of those videos - afternoon winds were very strong. Day 2 it was pretty much constant 30mph with much higher gusts for a while. Wild weather just makes it more in a way though as long as you’re prepared for it.
I spent a long while messing around Bartlett Wash on my KH 29er, a fun slickrock playground that my 29er can handle better than the Slickrock Trail.
Did the Moab Rim trail…had to hike a lot of that though.
Did a road ride on the geared 36er through arches park…very windy that day too.
I was planning on doing thunder mountain down at Bryce, but there was way too much snow on the trails, so I just went to Bryce Canyon and hiked, it was amazing in the snow. Then headed out to Zion Canyon and hiked there as well.
It was a pretty fun trip, I went solo and camping/unicycling by yourself is a great experience.
Very inspiring! I hope to turn my attention to more lofty long distance all mountain MUni challenges very soon after my upcoming Pinhoti Trail adventure… Though on foot, it is the next step towards bigger challenges that I want to accomplish on my unicycle.
Very cool. The wind seemed pretty mean. I’m curious what you think the average-ish speed was on the 36s. Some of those videos and pictures made me think that I could do something like this on the 29, but not the 36. I loved the solar set-up. I have quite a few relatives in Moab. I should get out there.
Oh man, loooks sooo rad!! I really wish there was space for one more person; I would have totally gone. I guess I’ll have to plan my own trip next year
Hmm, that is kind of a problem. In order to do this you really need a robust 4wd vehicle. Found an interesting book on Google Books called 4WD Trails: Southeast Utah (click Preview Book).
It has a lot of description of White Rim Trail (page 31-37) and rates it 4 on a scale of 1-10 for difficulty. They say high-clearance 4WD is recommended although most SUVs might be able to do it (page 7-8). You definitely want to know how to drive real 4WD stuff for a couple of sections. I think over 90% of the way could be done by Corbin’s Prius, but the other 5-10% would be too exciting or plain impossible.
