So my mom, dad and I drove my sweet red van down to Mexico after Christmas. We arrived at Douglas on Sunday morning only to find that there were no mexican insurance places open. We then opted to drive over to Nogales and see if we could find an insurance place that was open there. We did.
We crossed the border, made it about 20 miles, we then got stopped at one of the army checkpoints and found out that I never put the 2007 registration paper in the van. And the 2008 license plate sticker was going to expire before we got back to the states. We were going to try and bribe the guy to let us go, luckily he was nice and he just let us go anyway.
We proceeded down to Guaymas, and checked out the beach. It was cool. After that we drove over to Creel and hung out for a while. We decided that since we went Batopilas a couple years ago, that we would go check out Urique. It was a crazy drive, we drove for a really long way on a gnarly dirt road, we got disoriented and drove in circles in some town for a while. About that time it was getting dark so we decided to stop and head down in the morning. The next morning we continued our really long bumpy drive. For the longest time we didn't drop down. We knew that Urique was at 1800', but we stayed around 8000' for a long time. We finally started heading down, I took my bike off and started riding down the road. Shortly after that I round a corner and stoped. There I am standing above a roughly 3000' vertical cliff and I can finally see the town and the river and the steep, rough, road switchbacking below the cliff and continuing down the rest of the mountain. It was pretty spectacular. The road down into Urique is longer and more of a descent (you descend over 5000' all at once) than the road into Batopilas.I began my sweet downhill ride with a jacket and long pants. Closer to the bottom, I got really hot. At the bottom of the canyon I'm going to guess that it got up to 80. Urique is cool, a small town with an airstrip right in the middle of town. It took me a while to realize what the rutted, bumpy dirt road actually was. I think the only thing that gave it away was the tattered remains of a wind sock. Dad wanted to go explore an area up the canyon, we made it about 2 miles to the first river crossing. It was a rocky descent down into the river bed, and there was some water that looked shallower than it was. My dad and I wanted to go, my mom didn't. We tried it, we started in, I wanted to keep my speed, my mom kept saying stop, and my dad kept saying go slower. We evidently went too slow because about halfway we got stuck. So we're sitting in the Rio Urique with the exhaust and most of the rear wheels under water, my van has pretty good ground clearance, and the water was within 1/2" of flowing into the van. Luckily the river was super rocky not sandy. We tried unsuccessfully to pile rocks to try and get out. After a few minutes of rock stacking, I took my bike off and rode back to town looking for someone to come pull us out of the river. I got directed to the policia and they told me it would be 25 min, and to ride back to the van. By the time I got back someone had pulled out the van and my dad was backing out of the river bed. This still left us with the task of making it up the really steep, rocky bank. The first try, we got the van up on 3 wheels, I was scared for van. The second try I got out and stacked rocks, my dad got more speed and still barely made it, flinging those rocks I had stacked right back at me.
The drive back up was pretty steep and you had to watch out for other people bombing back down the hill. We made it back to Creel for new years eve, it was actually strangely calm, the most exciting thing happening was the guys driving around town with the subwoofers blaring classic mexican music. New years day, started the long drive back up to Utah, these trips are always shorter than you want them to be. It was cool though, and we discovered a whole bunch of cool things and places.
On the way up, we were actually hiking through the inversion cloud. It was cold and icy down below at the truck.
We finally broke through about mid way up the climb. It was amazing, clear and sunny with bluebird skies.
There are levels to Mt. Garfield. Who knew? From town it looks like a sheer cliff. But what we found were flat levels like this one. It was a nice break from the relentless steepness we had been hiking up.
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After years of doing the "Berm" drop to the left of this line I finally nailed the actual "Super 8." Not doing this drop once cost me a race win, as I lost to Andy Adamson during a race we had years ago. (assuming I would have beat him had i done the drop????)
After the ride we headed to The Diner for the second time that day. The entire Over The Edge crew was there so we hung out and ate some dinner with them. Noah had forgoten to invite me on their ride, but the trail we rode was WAY more fun anyway, right Noah???
The sunset leaving Moab was typical. It lasted for two hours and made me want to move there, buy a McMansion on a hill, visit said house twice a year and complain that to many people are moving to Moab. Damn Sunsets!