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Maah Daah Hey trail

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John Saxby:
Brilliant stuff, mickeg--enjoy!  Look forward to your stories & photos, including outwitting the pointy bits... (Assume you're using dense-foam sleeping pads, not inflatables?)

I had heard of this trail, but hadn't looked at it in any detail.  Sounds like an 8-day safari is about the right amount of time to enjoy it to the full.  Hope your water supply will be OK.

mickeg:
UPDATE.

I should have posted this some time back but have been a bit busy.  I did not have much time between getting home from that trip and leaving for my next trip (us retired guys just do not have enough time).  But, finally decided I better do it while the memory is still a bit fresh.

I friend who is also a former co-worker and I went out there in mid to late September.  We have bike toured several other gravel routes before, we expected single track to be a bit rougher but doable.  The photos I was seeing on the internet suggested it would be as easy or easier than the White Rim Trail in Canyonlands, so we were optimistic that we could bike tour it.

When we got there we learned that (1) the river at the starting point would be unsafe to cross due to recent rains and (2) the first campground we planned to go to did not have potable water at this time.  So we modified our plans slightly, we drove to the second campground with the intent to just day trip on the first day on the trail and then start touring with our panniers and camping gear the next day.

After riding our bikes a short distance on the trail on day one, we decided that day tripping each day while car camping instead of hauling our camping gear on our bikes to the different campgrounds would be the best option.  Some of the parts of the bike trail would have been immensely difficult to haul our camping gear on.  Unfortunately there is very little information on the internet about this trail and we really had no warning how tough this trail is.

While we were there a total of three groups (one of which was one person, yet I am calling it a group) were attempting to bicycle tour the trail with their camping gear.  All of them had problems with running low or out of water on their first day and this was in September when it is not very hot.  And everybody was doing it with bare minimal amount of lightweight gear and only carrying food for a couple days.  One of them quit after a day and a half.  We however would have had over a week of food and stove fuel, which weighs a lot more.  Bottom line - we had a much more enjoyable time car camping and day tripping on the trail than we would have had if we had attempted to bike tour it.

Photos are all reduced in size, comments on the photos are as follows by photo number, in order:

Photo 1956 - The photo is deceiving as it is much much steeper on the hills than it looks, this part of the trail has switch backs because it is so steep.  I saw some experienced mountain bikers walking their bikes down part of this hill.

Photo 0130 - My fiend took this photo, it shows a short hill we had to push bikes up, some of these hills were pretty steep.  If we bike toured this, this is one hill I probably would have had to drop the panniers, push the bike up, then go back down for the panniers.  I also would have had a dry bag that started the trip full of food on the back rack.

Photo 1977 - Nice view.

Photo 1990 - A better part of the trail.  If the entire trail looked this good, we would have hauled our camping gear on the bikes and had a great time.  There are some petrified forest stumps in the photo, they are the tannish brownish rocks.

Photo 2055 - Scenic view.

Photos 2066 & 2068 - Some of the steeper areas.

Photo 0135 - Photo of me digging into my tool bag to fix my flat tire, we were on a gravel road at the time.  My flat was caused by a valve stem separating from the tube, not by a thorn.

Photo 2145 - The camera does not do it justice, it was extremely steep here.  There were a lot of small cacti hiding in the grass off the trail waiting to puncture our tires.   If you look closely at the photo you can see a lot of cacti in the foreground, I am not sure but I think they were prickly pear cacti.
 

mickeg:
More photos attached.

mickeg:
And one last photo.

Danneaux:
Very nice photos, mickeg; terrific to see the update for "the rest of the story"!

All the best,

Dan.

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