Adventure Travel Grand Staircase
By Thomas Mann

Adventure Travel Grand Staircase.My wife of 6 months and I decided to take a winter off from work, an easy decision considering my job (stone mason) and the climate in which we live (Colorado mountains). Masonry in the winter is miserable. Four months off – wow! What on earth would we do? We decided to break it down into four quarters. The first quarter was easy…Dual Sport Riding! Normally, December 1st is storage time for Agnes, my BMW 1150 GS, but not this year. We spent the first quarter Adventure Travel touring Baja California and it was awesome. Great roads, easy to bribe law enforcement and, of course, The Baja Margarita. The second quarter involved climbing in Joshua Tree and preparing for the third quarter – Thailand. Now, Thailand is one great country but we were not dual sport riding so I will not bore you all with those details. But as wonderful as the first three quarters were I could not stop thinking about the fourth quarter. And of all the places I could have experience an epic (Baja, SE Asia) it happened right in my own back yard, Dual Sport Adventure Travel to the Grand Staircase.

The fourth quarter entailed 10 days dual sport touring dirt roads in the Grand Staircase area with my childhood friend Jay-bag (Jason had this silly idea for a rock climbing equipment invention: a bag you put in a crack and blow up for an anchor. He has since become Jay-bag). All throughout Baja I wanted dirt roads. Now there are plenty there but my wife understandably doesn’t enjoy bouncing around on the back looking right at my ass as I stand on the pegs taking in all that scenery! Even while eating Thai food and climbing and lounging on the most beautiful beaches in the world all I could think about was dual sport riding in the desert for 10 days with a good friend…a friend with a strong back to help me lift the BMW GS 1150 beast after the inevitable spills I would take. Jay-bag rode from Boulder to meet me in Kayenta, Arizona. On the phone the night before he mentioned that he had never seen the Grand Canyon “hint, hint.” Now I was really craving some long distance dual sport dirt, and the road from Kayenta to the Grand Canyon was not what I had in mind. So during my brisk three-hour ride from Pine to Kayenta I tried to come up with all these reasons not to go to the Grand Canyon; “I’ve already been there.” No, too selfish. “It’s not that big a deal.” Bold-faced lie. “the road there is really straight.” He won’t mind. So, after a lengthy discussion and checking the map I gave in to the Grand Canyon route. This put us farther south than I had planned so “we” decided to take some dirt roads. You know, Adventure travel Grand Staircase area. Jason’s map of this area did not distinguish between unpaved two wheel or four wheel high clearance roads. Research? We don’t need no stinking research! All we knew was to head north for plus or minus 100 miles and come out in the town of Escalante. On day one from Big Water we rode about 70 miles on decent roads, mainly first gear. We were expecting to see the north shore of Lake Powell at several different spots but the water was so low we only saw silted in sandstone and cul de sacs. About 60 miles in we came to a fairly steep, long, loose hill and spent about half an hour clearing a single track to gun up. Speed is your friend on such hills. At this point I would have definitely turned around had I been solo. But you know, safety in numbers!

We were able to negotiate most of the hill however some sections required a push from the back and a lot of burning clutch. While I was on push duty a small plane passed over a couple of times. I could almost hear the laughter from the pilot as I tried to push the bike with one hand and protect my most valued parts from flying rocks with the other hand. What a work out! We would look at each other every now and then and ask “is this stupid?” Naw, this is adventure! Adventure Travel GRAND Staircase!

Ten miles later we camped and slept very well. At least, I did. After dinner Jason spilled canned oyster juice on his only pants. I informed him of the mountain lions’ attraction to anything fishy smelling, especially oyster juice. Sweet dreams! Day two was to be pretty straight forward. The road was improving, allowing us to move into second gear occasionally. For a good 20 miles we noticed a lone set of footprints on the road. “Wow, someone must have gotten stuck, poor soul.” Whoever it was had already walked 20 miles and had at least 20 more to civilization. “Ouch, that must have sucked.” Meanwhile, Jason’s Therma Rest had bounced off somewhere in the first 6 miles of our second day. He rode all the way back to the previous night’s camp with no luck finding it. It didn’t help that the Rest was sandstone colored. Bummer. After giving up the search we rode another few miles to what we thought was the highest elevation we would encounter. We had to negotiate a couple of minor mud sections, quite squirmy but no big deal. Then we came around the corner and the road dropped a couple of hundred feet to a creek. Good, this is what we want – lower elevations meaning no more mud. But the road dropping in front of us was quite muddy and steep. So with no discussion I led us down The Hill in what I would like to say was a “controlled slide.” But, it was not. Towards the bottom of The Hill my little toes searched for purchase to stay upright, but they found only deep, slimy, adobe snot! Over I went. Some Grand Staircase. I was sure Jason had already begun his bouncy little chuckle at my dumping, but when I looked back up The Hill I was rewarded with the sight of him already laid over and quite messy! Adventure Travel at its best. So we did the mandatory BMW GS dead lift and made it to the bottom dirty and still unaware of our predicament. “You know", I said, “ we could never get up anything like that.”

A mile further we came across another muddy section. This one appeared to be much shorter than the first but it was situated at the bottom of a dip in the road, perhaps 20 feet of slick, slimy, clay-like mud. Jason went first taking the obvious best line. Then his rear wheel spun faster and faster and the bike crept slower and slower until finally all forward momentum was lost. His rear tire was only in one inch of mud, but he was going nowhere! “No problem,” I said. “Let me just squeeze by and then I’ll push you out.” I figure more momentum will get me through and I sort of punched it and pointed the bike to Jason’s right. Then I had this sinking feeling. My bike’s back end dropped until the swing arm was resting in mud. It was kind of strange dismounting the bike and not having to use the kickstand. Agnes was a stuck pig. First I helped Jason out, then I completely unload so we could try and lift the back end out of the mud. After several heave ho’s and a weird feeling in my groin we got the back end out and to the side on firmer ground. I then got on and eased forward only to discover my front wheel was completely locked up with mud, skidding along on dry ground – ugh! I quickly discovered that the tool used to adjust the front spring also works well for digging and scraping out mud from underneath that stupid little sup-fender on the GS (I never liked that fender). This all took quite some time. After reloading the gear onto the bikes we cruised about 150 feet to the top of the next "grand staircase". Then I had another sinking feeling. Ahead was a 300-foot down hill that looked 100 times worse than the two piddly puddles it just took us four hours to get through. If we spent the day it would take to get through this nightmare, we know we would never be able to get back up. It already seemed impossible to go back and up the first "grand staircase" hill. You know, The Grand Staircase we slid down, tires locked and bikes falling over. We were stuck between to very soft places. Many questions ran through my mind while Jason immediately began melting snow (we were out of water). “How long does it take adobe mud to dry when there’s a foot of snow on both sides of the road?” “Why am I so stupid?” “Wait! Why are we so stupid?” “Was that a shard of beef jerky I saw in my pannier earlier?” Then I spent quite some time trying to remember how much food Jason had left when he packed that morning, not counting the oyster juice on his pants. If I were to inquire he would simply say ”I have nothing” and proceed to sneak off with his goods and bury them. We didn’t have enough fuel to actually boil the water from the snow melting. And, I remember thinking “if and when we get out of here we’ll be treated with the bonus of having contracted giardia.” Completely bummed at the thought of spending the next few days waiting for mud to dry, I set up my tent in the middle of the road and crawled in at 4p.m. Lying there I kept looking for the bright side, but I couldn’t seem to find it. We were 70 miles in, hadn’t seen a soul since we left Big Water, we had no food, no beer – no fun at all! A couple thoughts did make me feel a little better; the forecast was for good weather for at least three more days, I did have my sleeping pad, unlike Jason and I didn’t smell like oysters, unlike Jason. Jason’s lost sleeping pad actually saved us. Since he didn’t sleep at all during the night he got up early and hiked back to The Hill. He found it adequately frozen to render an attempt at escape. We did the speed pack and headed back towards The Hill.I’ve never loved adventure travel riding on frozen mud more than that morning. We actually got out with out even dumping once. Yee-haw! We took a slightly different road back to Big Water (45 miles instead of 70), then to Page for celebratory ale (just one) and then north to Canyonlands to meet my lovely wife. All in all we were only “stranded” for one night but the thought of playing survivor for four days was enough for me to learn a valuable lesson: Don’t assume two is better than one and avoid the Grand Canyon at all costs. It’s not that big a deal…