My First Gravel Ride
The Shafer—Long Canyon Loop in Moab
While I was on my first ride since 2023 last week some memories surfaced. Specifically, I was reminded of the first time I intentionally took my bike off the pavement, and that I’d not written about it. I surfed through the files, found some photos to help remember that day and looked up the ride on Strava. It seems even sillier today because everyone knows what’s up with the sport … I probably wasn’t the only cyclist ignorant of what was happening back then but do accept that I may have been. The ride described below happened about four months after my first hip replacement and I was testing what I could and couldn’t expect of it all. Mountain biking was out as the doc told me that I couldn’t afford to wreck and crack or break the prosthesis. This whole “drop bars, off-road” thing I’d been hearing about piqued my curiosity though so, without having looked past the term itself, I decided to have a go
I was a roadie. I owned mountain bikes, rode, and even raced them one year but was never committed to the idea. I'd rather go up than down, and billy-goating was pretty far from my idea of riding. My travel bike — a Hampsten Strada Bianca titanium frame with S&S couplers and a carbon fork — was set up for Bulgarian "pavement" and English lanes, whatever The Continent might throw at me while I was working over there. The wheels were built with wide rims and wide-by-road-standards tires; Ruffy Tuffy 28s, meant to withstand sharp things and ride OK, which they actually did. I had put a lot of miles on that bike and those tires and knew what they could and couldn't do. Or so I thought.
One day I was in Moab and sick of riding the paved standards so I walked into the Poison Spider bike shop to ask about something more interesting. I had already been shut down by deep sand on a road others had described as rideable — probably on a fat bike with gigantic pillows for tires — so figured some local guidance would be useful. When I told the shop employee what I was looking for he asked what kind of bike I had and I replied, "a gravel bike," not realizing that I had no idea what I was talking about. After all, 28s are wide AF, or seemed so at the time, albeit 700c with tubes inside them.
The fellow suggested I park at the base of Long Canyon, ride Potash Road until the pavement ends, then ride the dirt road to Island In The Sky visitor center where I would find pavement again. He advised, "ride that north to the Dead Horse point road, turn east, and after a couple of miles, when the main road heads south, continue straight on the dirt cutoff to Long Canyon, down it and back to the car." It sounded simple and fun and, with only 3700’ of climbing over 36 miles, easy.
I packed for a 2-3 hour ride, knowing I'd be light on water because the travel bike has only one bottle holder but it was early-season and not blisteringly hot. I would tank up beforehand and roll out with a 20-ounce bottle, a few gels ... and, yeah, that was it. After parking in the shade of a single tree I buckled up my road shoes and pointed the bike south.
The pavement was easy, and the initial dirt road section smooth and solid. Zipping along, I was quite confident about how the ride would go. Once the road steepened and got rocky my rear wheel started to slip and wash out even when I was seated, putting as much weight as possible onto it. I had heard that folks reduced tire pressure to widen the contact patch and get better traction so I stopped and did that. A few hundred yards later I flatted, probably a pinch flat. I changed the tube and used one of my two CO2 cartridges to inflate it. That meant if I flatted again I would have to patch the tube, use my last CO2 and cross my fingers. Still confident, I kept going.
It was incredibly beautiful, and I was fit enough to enjoy the views and the amazing location for the first fifteen miles. But the truth of gravel riding became clear; you pedal for every inch. Just past the so-called Thelma and Louise overlook I caught a glimpse of the climb up to the visitors center and it didn't look too bad. Distance will do that. The business part of the climb is 2.3 miles and gains 1000' while the whole climb gains 1300' over 4.5 miles. I was parched but saving enough water to wash down my remaining two gels, and getting nervous about how much longer it would take. I didn't have a friend to call for a ride if I had to sit down by the road and DNF. And I would not be walking anywhere in those shoes.
Traction on the climb was adequate and the angle flattened a bit at each switchback. It was just enough to keep me going but I did stop once or twice, not just because my legs were wrecked but to relieve some pressure from my ass; a skinny, barely-padded road saddle was ten kinds of wrong for this ride. I reached pavement and faced a dilemma; turn left and add miles to get water at the visitors center before returning to the same intersection or turn right towards the canyon to finish sooner. I reasoned that the sooner I was out of the desert sun the better so turned right onto the false-flat and another 300' of climbing to reach the descent down Long Canyon. The bottle was dry, my last gel choked-down some time ago, and I had dirt on top of cottonmouth.
The approach to the descent was low-angle but I had to push a big gear to smooth out the washboard, which is when the cramps came. I finally dropped into the canyon proper and realized it wouldn't be an easy slide down to the car. It was so steep that I walked one section; the sand was deep and speed would have been the answer to stay afloat but I wasn't sure the caliper brakes would be effective enough to stop me once I hit the harder surface below. There was no safe zone where I could bail out, just jagged sandstone blocks crowding the road, one of them making a short tunnel. Walking gave the rims time to cool though. Once I started rolling again I stopped a couple of times when spit sizzled as I tested their temperature. They were too hot to touch and I'd heard horror stories of tires blowing up when the rims super-heated from over-braking. Not cool.
During the latter half of the ride I thought a lot about the gallon of cold water I'd left in the car. By the time I reached it I had been out there for so long it was hot, but wet, and rinsing the dirt out of my mouth felt good. I hadn't left any food in the car so I drove shakily back to town, hitting the first convenience store I came to for cold water, an ice cream sandwich, and to stand in the beer cooler. Those were the first of a lot of calories ... if memory serves I ate meatloaf AND mac-n-cheese at The Spoke before passing out.
The next day I rode to the bike shop to replace the tube and CO2 cartridge I'd used and to thank them for pointing me towards such a good, tough ride. I was still thinking that what had happened was normal. When the guy who helped me the day before saw my bike he said, "You didn't ride THAT out there, did you?" Yes, I did. "I thought you said you had a gravel bike," then proceeded to show me what that term meant. We talked a bit more and he informed me that I was "fucking crazy ... and tough." At that point I just felt lucky to have gotten away with it.
On Strava I named the ride, "Road Bike-Inappropriate", which it certainly was. My friend Tim was working at that shop for a while and told the story to people from time to time, so word got around. For a couple of years afterwards, especially when I went all-in on the gravel scene, I would sometimes run into someone who had a little choice commentary for me — always supportive, always incredulous. One more tale added to the canon, a mistake that transformed me in ways it would take a few more years to understand. Looking back now reminds me of one of my old sayings, “When you bite off more than you can chew, you never go hungry.”
p.s. The second time I did that loop I knocked quite a bit of time off, and rode the climb itself at 25 watts higher average power for the same heart rate. By that point I owned a proper gravel bike. The four-mile descent went faster on a bike with plush tires and disc brakes because I didn't have to stop to let the rims cool.
First, let me dabble on the pedantic side.... you won't break your prothesis. That thing is titanium, ceramic and high molecular weight polyethylene. But you can experience the devastating "periprothetic femur fracture" (bone) and live that nightmare. But yes, don't crash on your hips!
Second, the adventure seems a prototypical Twight adventure. I've had a proper gravel bike for years but recently read an article on Reddit titled, "The best gravel bike is a hard-tail MTB". So, I dove in. I now have a Specialized Epic and I put 32mm tires on my Diverge and ride it on the road. Pretty nice. I have way more fun on the Epic while not feeling quite as "special" as I was riding free-ride single track on the Diverge.
Awesome version of asking the question without being dependent on an answer. And when using the "wrong" tool for the job becomes a great teacher and subsequently expands the map. These days it can be hard to imagine the days before high-volume tubeless tires, so thanks for channeling some old-school energy here!