In the east of the Utah desert, nestled among ancient sandstone canyons, is Moab, once a small mining town populated by prospectors and cowboys, today a cycling mecca like no place on Earth
Words James Spender Photography Mike Massaro
There is a type of man to whom time and lifestyle bestows a certain kind of hair. Matt has this hair, a wonderful snowy bulb offset by the deep tan of a life spent outdoors. Matt hands my bike up to Dave, who is stood on top of the Ford Excursion; Dave square-jawed, ex-military and easily 6ft 5in; the Excursion a true American also, with seats like sofas and wheels like a tractor. At 4.30am Matt’s sun-visor seems comically redundant, his easy smile in stark contrast to my stinging eyes.
The duo work for Rim Tours, Matt as owner, Dave as guide, and our objective in being up so early and starting this ride not on our bikes but in the truck is to reach the canyons in time to see the sun rise. For any prospective Moab gravel rider, a self-supported day is feasible, but the going rate in a town where 5,000 locals support five million adventuring tourists annually is that you ride as part of a tour group. The wilds can be pretty wild. Blowing a tubeless tyre out here could result in the plot for a moderately successful survival film. In fact, Aron Ralston, who hacked off his own arm after it got stuck under a boulder (an incident portrayed in the movie 127 Hours), was hiking nearby in Bluejohn Canyon.
Beyond the city limits we are the only visible light save for the returning flashes of nocturnal creatures’ eyes. The headlights illuminate a continuous face of rock to the right, which could be ten metres high or a hundred – only the enveloping blackness could say.
‘We call this Wall Street on account of that wall of rock,’ says Matt laconically. ‘Look left and that’s the Colorado River.’ I take his word for it.
With a crunch of tyres and a nodding of the Excursion’s bonnet we leave the road. Even with the lights on full beam I have no idea how on earth Matt can see where he’s going, let alone where I am. He and Dave seem nice, but I wonder at how trusting one can be when a couple of blokes say they can drive you out to the desert in the middle of the night to ride bikes.
We come to a stop in a cloud of dust.
Gold in them hills
A half halo of sun peeps over the horizon, tentative at first, then gathering momentum to illuminate the desert in a blaze of orange. Sandstone mountains are seemingly pulled from the floor by the sun and set
