UT-12 from Escalante to Torrey<\/a> – takes the cake. From the town of Escalante, the road slides in a generally easterly direction off the Paunsaugunt Plateau region of the Grand Staircase into the Escalante River basin. After about ten miles, the real fun begins: the drop steepens, the road twists more sinuously and the world becomes slickrock. The next five miles down to the river and the subsequent 12 miles up to Boulder – about 1000′ higher elevation than the town of Escalante – are some of the most technical, hair-raising road miles I’ve done.<\/p>\nOne section of this stretch of road runs along a razorback ridge line for what felt like miles – it was probably less than 1\/2 mile but was quite nerve-wracking. The ridge had been shaved to the width of the two-lane state highway plus a narrow shoulder, and on either side the terrain fell away with dizzying verticality.<\/p>\n
Clearly that’s not enough. After Boulder, the road climbs up the Aquarius Plateau, topping out at roughly 9200′ (probably my highest elevation so far), with plenty more mountainous twists. As I climbed back into the treeline, there was still a lot of snow on the ground – probably several feet in northslope locations – despite the low-to-mid-50s temperatures, which is cold enough that I needed to stop at one point to close up all my vents in my gear. \u00a0To make things just a bit more interesting, the tar used recently to patch winter’s cracks proved to be rather slippery, to the point where on a couple of occasions I felt my wheels slide out a little under me as I hit patches while leaning into a turn. At this point, I’m certain that my adrenal glands work very well.<\/p>\n
The final descent off the Aquarius into Torrey offered 1.5 miles of 8% grade followed by 2 miles of 10% and then several more 8%. All with lots of twists. Over a cup of coffee, I considered striking on through Capitol Reef, but decided I couldn’t take any more for the day. So, here I am in a too-expensive hotel room with one bed more than I need. Exhausted and happy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WARNING: Contains thrills, chills (thankfully no spills) and a little bit of geekery on the geology of the Southwest. I love exploring new roads, whether by car or motorcycle. It’s one of the big reasons I have done small motorcycle trips in the past and have embarked on this grand adventure – I want to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147,"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions\/147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}