Bike/Raft La Sal 4-Day Trip – Days 1 – 2 – Joel and Alison’s Excellent Adventures

Still trying to catch up on the blog posts! I think I am getting close, though. These next couple entries will show some of the great times we had again with Holiday River Expeditions. This trip was from the end of July!

This time we opted to do a split trip which included 2 days of biking outside of Moab in the La Sal Mountains and then looping back through Westwater Canyon and rafting on the Colorado River. We are sort of getting close to the end of the itineraries that look interesting to us, and this is the last of the bike trips that Holiday offers so we decided we better give this a go!

At North Beaver Mesa where our first camp was.

Following the theme what seems to be a horrible fire season in our area, we received correspondence from the main office prior to the trip that a new fire(!?) had started in the southern part of the La Sal Mountains. More than likely it was far enough away from us but they were to send the guides and the main Operations Manager out the day before our trip to look at the route. After their assessment, we did end up having to ride a different route on the first day as the normal road was indeed closed for firefighting access. In the end we lost about 7 miles of the normal 52 mile 2-day total, but since those 7 miles were basically up 3,000′ I was secretly VERY happy!

We rode about 17 miles today and after being in the van for about 2 hours, we were all happy to be on our bikes. Joel and I were sort of outliers as the rest of the group was all related. But it was a fun, cordial group and we all got along well. Another bonus was that the lead guide, Jack, was a guide that we had had a couple years prior so it was fun to see him again.

Lots of photo opportunities on this trip – in the background you can see a different forest fire that is actually across the border in Colorado.

Our camp for the evening was at North Beaver Mesa which was up the ridge and to the right.

We had one of the “official” photographers for Holiday River Expeditions with us on this trip, along with her sister, fiancée and her mom.

The weather was beautiful and since we were up close to 8,000′ in elevation, it was pleasantly cool for most of the riding.

A little Juniper fighting for space with a Pine Tree made for a great photograph!

The second day we pedaled out to the edge of the mesa and then started the near 4,000′ foot descent down to our camp at the Colorado River. There were ups and downs along the way but it was indeed a 27-mile downhill adventure. (As I am a bit hesitant to go too fast downhill, my hands were a bit tired from grabbing the brakes!)