We finally arrived in Moab to finish off our trip. We had originally planned on staying here for the entire week…but as we’ve all been to Moab before and ridden most of the classic trails, we decided to stay in Fruita for a little longer.
Today’s ride would bring us to the Sovereign trail system. The trail was originally built by dirt bikers who opened up the trail to mountain bikers as well. It is one of the newer trails in Moab though it has been around for quite some time. The trail system is a mish mash of ATV trails, dirtbike trail and mountain bike trails so there are sections of jeep trail that connect some of the single track together.
Finally time to break out the sunscreen
After a missed turn, we back tracked a little bit and found the single track then started on the first section of the ascent. Most of the first part was climbing on slickrock with a few ledge hops thrown in. While trying to spot the line for the climbs, I could already see the tire marks for the downhill portion...I was already hoping we’d get to come back this way again and bomb down the ledges. We got to the top of the first section and caught up with a few other mountain bikers who let us go on ahead. Then we got to another steep rocky section, the other guys were able to clear it but I stopped when another riders was walking up and wasn’t able to get any momentum for a line, so I quickly ran my bike down.
We then did another section of twisty single track descents and a few climbs. The single track was already way different then the stuff we were doing in Fruita. The climbs were a little more technical and a little bit steeper...or maybe that was just my legs after 4 days. After riding on the top of the mesa made up of broken slabs of rock we did a quick descent for our first lunch break.
After the break we did a descent down to the ATV intersection. We crossed over via single track and did a quick single that led up to a nice climb on a massive section of slickrock. After the slickrock section we did a nice climb then did a pretty technical creek bed/slick\rock single track. After finishing off the singletrack we once again got to a ATV trail. We rode up the road to a map where the second entrance to the trailhead is. After looking at the map we found a single-track loop close by.
The loop looked like it went around the top of a mesa...but there was a ton of climbing involved. The climb was tough with lots of dirt and pretty steep in some section. We got to the top of the mesa and decided to start the loop counter-clockwise. The trail climbed a little bit more before dropping down a sandy creek bed. There was a lot of sand in the creek bed and lots of big loose rocks so the descent wasn’t nearly as fun as it could have been. After the getting to the bottom we figured we would have to climb up to the top again but climb involved going up another sandy creek bed which given our current fitness levels was pretty tedious. After the climb up the creek we were treated more really rocky single track. This was really tough to climb as pedals and chain rings were hitting huge rocks strewn about the single track. This was a trail that wasn’t used nearly as much as the main trail and it showed.
After completing the loop we got treated to a nice technical single track descent back to the ATV roads. This time we opted to take the ATV route back as the creek bed single track would have been really tough to climb given our energy levels. After backtracking on some single track and going down the slickrock portion we got back to the main junction. Now it was a long tough climb back up to the top of the mesa. After retracing our steps back to the top it was time for the descent.
We got back to the car moderately exhausted but had a great time. It was one of the nicest days we had so far and our longest ride. We got changed and drove back to town for a well deserved dinner at the Moab Brewery.
- Kyle
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