Beyond the horizon, day five

It was after 11 p.m. when I arrived at my destination for the night, rumbling up a rough road to the edge of a windswept mesa. My head was still muddled with fatigue and stress — traversing a remote ridge, battling dehydration, trying to rescue a stray dog, and absorbing a jarring impact when I crashed my bike. These events already felt like weeks ago. The blister bubbling from my sunburned lower lip and the sting of bruises all over my legs reminded me that this happened just a few hours earlier. I was ready for comfort again — a soft bed, a bottomless supply of water, and real shelter out of the harsh sun, relentless wind and icy cold nights. These abundant luxuries could be mine if I kept driving. But I wasn't quite ready to leave the desert behind. 

This is a place I remember from my youth. There are frustratingly few such places — most are now fragments of memories permanently detached from time and space. For all of the trips I took to Southern Utah in my 20s, I lacked the drive to plan an adventure. I was content to let my boyfriend and friends decide where to go, which trails to hike, and even what to cook for dinner (that was never a surprise — dehydrated pinto beans, tortillas, and an enormous block of cheese.) I rarely bothered to glance at the unrolled maps that my roommates spread all over the living room, nor did I endeavor to understand the geography of the routes we traversed. I didn't own a camera or keep a journal about my travels. I was so different then! 

The consequence of this lack of intellectual curiosity is that I can no longer trace the origins of some of my most formative experiences. There are fragments — names such as "Mexican Mountain," shapes of rock formations burned in my memory — but if I ever wanted to return to the places that helped shape my identity, most of the planning would be guesswork. The fact that I've lost much of what I experienced is one of the reasons I'm such an avid documenter these days. I understand now that memory is not permanent, that even the best moments flicker and fade. I don't operate under the delusion that anyone will care about my records once I'm gone. The digital archives — the photos, Strava feeds and sprawling blog posts — are treasures for me and my future self. 

One place I do remember — or at least retained enough details to return — is Temple Mountain in the San Rafael Swell. The location wasn't much of a secret even 20 years ago, and it's funny to see how little it's changed. Instead of old sedans and retrofitted school buses, it's Toyota Priuses and Sprinter vans, but the vibe is the same. Some might argue the region is much more crowded in the Instagram age. Maybe. I don't have the hard data to guess one way or the other. At least now, when you visit a pretty patch of public land in Southern Utah, you're as likely to see mountain bikers as four-wheelers, as many tent campers as obnoxious oversized trailers. That, to me, feels new. And you can still pull in at 11 p.m. on a Saturday night and find a secluded place to camp, with perfect silence, sweeping darkness and stars upon stars in the sky. 

Ah, Temple Mountain. I enjoy camping at a site overlooking the San Rafael Reef and sipping coffee as the sun rises. It's usually windy and cold, but the views are worth it. For this visit, I decided to stay two nights and take an entire day to explore on my mountain bike and find new connections for my scattered memories of the area. 

I climbed to the high point on Temple Mountain Road and turned onto a doubletrack that wraps around the mountain. This is a ridiculously fun descent, with a few chunky rollers to wake up the legs. I was lucky that my legs weren't terribly sore from crashing the previous day — DOMS would come later. The impact knocked enough out of me that I don't fully remember what happened. Piecing it together, it seems I landed chest-first, hitting my face second, and then tangled my legs in the bike, which is what seemed to cause most of the lingering pain. A patchwork of bruises now covered my legs. Still, it was a bloodless crash with nothing torn or broken, so I was lucky given how fast I was likely moving when I suddenly slammed into a hard surface. 

It certainly was nice to ride a mostly unloaded bike (I did have six liters of water for what I figured would be a 5- to 8-hour ride. I was taking no chances with that.) I had expected to feel more destroyed after the stressful day on Death Ridge, but there's always something left in the tank. In fact, I felt pretty good. I continued to operate under the delusion that I was moving with my usual amount of pep until two mountain bikers passed me like I was standing still while I was granny-gearing up a chute. 

The Utah desert is full of classic cars that came to their final resting point at the dead-end of a rugged road. 

View of Temple Mountain from the southern end. It was fun to wrap all the way around it. 

The circumnavigation didn't take as long as I expected, so I continued pedaling out Behind the Reef Road. I also rode this segment when I visited last November. The chunky rollers were more difficult than I remembered — truly, even the scope of recent memory has a blurred lens.

I had no knowledge of roads beyond Behind the Reef, so the plan was to ride out and back. But after Chute Point, I came to an intersection that wasn't marked on my map but did contain a trail marker. "BLM 858" was rated as a black diamond route, meaning most difficult for OHVs. Curiosity struck me. "Maybe it goes through." Before I made this right turn, I was languishing with late-afternoon lethargy. The prospect of something unknown injected my blood with renewed enthusiasm. The route snaked along the sandy bottom of a wash, meandering into a sandstone canyon. 

The road continued to twist through a narrowing canyon. It seemed likely to dead-end. GPS showed no hint of connectors. It was a great big blank spot on the map. But I had to know. I'd already passed and ignored my "back by dark" turnaround time when I encountered four men with three large side-by-side ATVs. They were all standing next to one vehicle and using a thin hose to siphon gas into a water bottle. They were surprised to see me, as I was them — I gotten used to seeing no other people on this beautiful spring Sunday. They'd come from the other direction. They asked me about the trail ahead, so I described the sandy wash. They seemed more concerned about hills. They didn't have enough fuel between them to climb many more hills, they told me.

"Well, there's a pretty steep one up and around Chute Point. But it's short. Of course there are still rollers until Crack Canyon. Where are you headed?" I asked, as though I knew this area like the back of my hand and was prepared to give directions anywhere. 

They just looked at each other blankly. So I turned the questioning to them. "Does this road go through to McKay Flats?" Again, blank looks. "I think it eventually connects back to Temple Mountain Road?"

That name sparked recognition, and one guy nodded. "It's a big ol' maze back there. Roads going off every which way. You got a GPS?" I pointed to the eTrex on my handlebars. "And there are big rock steps. You got enough water?" 

I pointed to the yellow bag on my rear rack. "I still have three extra liters in here. And headlights. A coat. I'm basically prepared to be out here until tomorrow, not that I want to be." 

"Good thing you have that GPS. That was one thing we didn't bring."

I thought about the hubris of driving large vehicles down a rough and unknown canyon without knowing exactly where you were going or whether you had enough gas to drive out. People think it's dangerous to be a solo bike rider, but as I viewed it, I had much more flexibility with my choices.

"Anything I can do to help?" I asked as I got back on my bike.

"Got any gas in there?" one guy chuckled.

"Just granola bars," I replied, and pedaled away. 

Sure enough, there was a steep and extremely chunky climb along precipitous cliffs out of the canyon — I'm impressed those guys got their vehicles down it — followed by seemingly endless rollers along the wind-blasted mesa. My instinct told me that nothing was out here and I needed to turn around, but GPS promised that McKay Flats still existed beyond the blank spot on the map. The guys were right about a maze of tracks veering in many directions. But from my slow-moving bicycle, the fact this was a main road seemed obvious enough. Anyway, I'd already set a straight-line track to McKay Flats, and as long as I kept to that general direction, I'd be okay. 

My instinct continued to insist I was hopelessly lost. The meandering nature of the road didn't help, and I battled nervousness as I pressed forward. It is funny, the way my brain reacts to unknowns, telling me I'm screwed even when logic says otherwise. Perhaps this is what comes from being an incurious youth, content to let others tell me which way to go. My instinct tells me that I can't trust myself. That the decisions I make are wrong. I've spent much of the last 15 years trying to deprogram this instinct and take ownership of my place in the world. It's a forever battle, I can tell, because I've managed much harder puzzles in the past, yet I remain frightened of even small uncertainties — even with an overabundance of food and water, and no physical issues that would prevent simply turning around. 

 

I was proud, perhaps overly so, when I reached the graded gravel of McKay Flats and knew for certain that I could close this loop. With that, I'd drawn a 51-mile circle around a map of fragmented memories. I'd connected decades-old dots. In five days, I'd traveled to farther horizons than seemed possible for much of the five years I spent weekend warrioring as a young adult. That alone is worth the sunburned lips and bruised legs. Successfully closing an unfamiliar loop and returning with plenty of time to watch sunset over an endless expanse of unknowns? Even better.