Beyond the horizon, day one

Since November I'd been itching to return to the Utah desert, but then there was this and that. Life in the time of COVID moves at a strange clip — a jerking sort of plod that hurls time into the void when you're not paying attention. Summer barged in as the April sun climbed over the horizon and it seemed that it was not going to happen. But then Erika e-mailed a few friends with a proposal: "Want to bikepack the Grand Staircase Loop?" As I zoomed in on the digital map, my eyes widened. This route cut through the heart of it all: the rough, waterless, and largely inaccessible land beyond the periphery of what I knew and loved of the desert. The Great Beyond.  

In the early aughts, when I was a 20-something living in Salt Lake City with nine roommates that included my then-boyfriend, I spent nearly every weekend in the Utah desert. Even in the winter when our Nalgene bottles froze solid, and often even in the summer when we'd while away 100-degree afternoons while lounging in Crazy Creeks in the shade. We'd follow our friends while driving a 1987 Honda Civic as far as we could up steep and sandy roads, park next to a sandstone outcropping, set up a small city of tents, and watch the Milky Way spin over our heads for a couple of nights. 

Sometimes, after nursing the Civic up chunky blocks of sandstone, I'd see a sign listing the distance to the next point of civilization. The signs would say something like "I-70, 70 Miles," and my jaw would quiver. Seventy miles of sand and rocks and nothing else? Who would even dare travel that far? What if you broke down? Even if you were somewhat prepared with a backpack and water, you'd still probably die of heatstroke before anyone found you. Anyone attempting the journey is seriously brave. (Granted, this was the early aughts when cell coverage was much more sparse and satellite messengers were not a thing. It is easier to be brave now.)

It's easier to be brave, but still not that easy. It seems to be a thing with me, that the places I love the most are also the places I fear the most. Utah's desert is the fire to Alaska's ice. Both are wide-open, remote, inhospitable and volatile places that can kill a person quickly. I may be from the Wasatch Front, and I may reside in a region with a nearly identical climate to the one in which I grew up, but I'm built for Alaska. My blood runs warm so I wither in the heat. I prefer long nights, I require a lot of water, and I have extremely sensitive skin that cannot handle sunlight. So yes, I am basically a vampire. A vampire who, perhaps unfortunately, has an insatiable thirst for wide-open spaces.

The Grand Staircase Loop is just one of an almost overwhelming number of user-generated routes listed on bikepacking.com. I clicked over to that site once, felt almost sick to my stomach with FOMO and desire to explore it all, and admittedly haven't been back. But because hot deserts and lack of water are two of my many fears, I spent as much time as possible researching the route in the week I had between deciding to go and embarking. From the town of Escalante, the route travels 180 miles on mostly unimproved dirt roads and jeep tracks, skimming the Arizona border before returning north. There is only one 100 percent reliable source of water on the entire route, and that's the town of Big Water, Utah ... a town that seems entirely devoted to the storage and repair of motorboats for Lake Powell, and offers little else. The route has about 15,000 feet of climbing, which seems a small number for 180 miles. But as I would soon learn, the total does not take into account that much of that elevation change happens on intensely steep and rocky pitches in and out of sandy washes. As I told Erika, "Steady 5,000-foot climbs look impressive on an elevation profile, but when your day is full of 5,000 feet of 14-percent grades over rocks and sand, it's at least five times harder." 

My trip preparations coincided with Boulder's first heatwave of 2021. Temperatures rose into the 80s for several days in a row, and I jumped full-face into the cauldron, hopeful that it was possible fast-track heat acclimation. On April 3 I took my road bike and four liters of liquid for a 100-mile ride through the foothills between Boulder and Fort Collins, with temperatures spiking to 85 degrees as I rounded Horsetooth Reservoir. 

That went reasonably well, so on April 5, I set out to run a double Sanitas after my monthly allergy shot. Since the appointment came first, I smartly stuck my two-liter bladder filled with ice into an insulated grocery bag, thinking I'd have ice water after three hours of sitting in a hot car. But three hours later, when noon temperatures spiked to 81 degrees, the bladder was still filled with only ice — those insulated bags are incredible. So I only got water in the tiniest sips as the ice melted. I pushed hard up the first Sanitas and continued the tempo pace for a second. About 200 feet below the summit, the heat hit me like a bag of sand. Suddenly I was extremely dizzy and so nauseated that I doubled over, retching but not quite vomiting. I had to crawl into a thin spot of shade for 10 minutes to wait for the world to stop spinning. It was all I could do to limp back to my car.

"I really am going to die out there," was a thought I had about the desert.

Still, sometimes a vampire just needs to slap on some SPF 100 and a sunhat and take the necessary risks. On April 7, I headed out early enough to drive eight hours to Boulder (Utah) and still have enough daylight to find a place to camp and go for an evening ride. Before the time of COVID, it had been a number of years before I traveled this way — loading up all of the food and water I need for a week and camping every night on undeveloped patches of public land. Dirtbag lifestyle. It's actually pretty awesome ... for a week or so. Then my legs are covered in an impenetrable paste of dirt and sunscreen, my hair is a big rat's nest, my lungs fill with phlegm from too much dust-breathing, and my joints creak when I get up to pee during the night. That's when I'm about ready to admit that I'm not 22 anymore. 

I found a nice spot on a ledge overlooking Death Hollow, at the base of a ridge called Hell's Backbone. Such fearsome names for such a lovely place. I also discovered I only had about five tent stakes left in the bag, which became ... annoying ... as the wind-blasted week went on. 

Hell's Backbone proved the perfect intro to the desert. Starting at 7,000 feet and climbing along the narrow spine of a mesa to 9,500 feet, it was 55 degrees when I started and just above freezing as the sun began to set near the summit. A stiff breeze forced me to put on my puffy jacket while climbing, which was concerning ... maybe I hadn't brought enough clothing for the bikepacking trip. I had the capacity to haul 10 liters of water, but only one puffy. Still, what a treat. Climbing through the bare aspen and ponderosa forest, I'd almost forget that I wasn't in Boulder (Colorado.) Then suddenly I'd round a corner to a jaw-dropping view of sheer sandstone canyons rippling off the side of the ridge (some views shown in the previous photos.) 

In 33 miles, I saw one jeep. Just one other group of humans in four hours. This definitely isn't Boulder (Colorado.) When I was 22, I really believed I'd grow old in this region. My then-boyfriend and I even talked seriously about buying a cabin in Teasdale, which is an even smaller town just down the highway from Boulder (Utah.) And yet I've explored so little of the area — just the perimeters, the places a young and inexperienced person can reach with a Honda Civic, not-yet-athletic legs, and a single weekend to burn. I've long thought of the central Utah desert as one of my soul places, so it's startling to return two decades later and realize I'm seeing it for the first time.