5 Miles of Hell! San Rafael Swell, Utah

[shang]

Well it's been on the list for years, but I finally rode 5 Miles of Hell. If any of you are familiar with this trail, then you know it's really 8 miles of hell. (Rumor has it that the creator of the trail, Dick Brass, thought that if it was named 8 miles of hell, then no one would ride it. I have no idea if that's true.)

As usual, the gasser worked flawlessly. Climbed like a goat and never let me down. Even after I let it down, (even upside down) several times.

The trail is pretty relentless. Lots of shelved slickrock climbs covered in sand, gravel, and basketball sized rocks. The only time it ever lets up is when it drops into short sand washes, but even these are bottomless sugar sand and proved to be hard to keep upright in. Normally my confidence in this type of terrain is really high, and since 90% of this sport seems to be mental, I should have slayed it. But... as I began to fatigue, it started to get into my head. It took about three miles of fighting the bike through the rocks to get my head back in the game. After that, I felt pretty good again.

We rode probably 50 miles in 8 hours. And 6 of the hours were on the 8 miles of 5moh. There were times when I couldn't pull the clutch anymore or lift my arms. I started with a full camelbak, but ran out of water two miles from the end of 5moh, and 20 miles from the truck despite the temps being high 50's - low 60's. It was work. I think we could have done the trail in about half the time, but we were in a fairly large group. I think a group of three experienced riders would be the most efficient way to do it.

If you had a catastrophic bike failure out there, you would have to leave the bike. There really would be no way get it out short of taking it out in pieces on your back, or a helicopter.

Neat place!



Beginning of 5moh



End of 5moh (and some of the orange pride parade I rode with)