Broken roads ranch louisiana1/28/2024 ![]() Thirteen hours after setting out I steer into my campsite. “Tools not jewels,” I mutter to myself, slamming into another unseen big pothole. Excited for the prospect of my sleeping bag, I ease off the brakes and fly down the remaining dirt roads until the skis sound like machine guns rattling on the bike frame. I’m thankful to be able to enjoy this place so freely, to be able to just pack my skis onto my bike beside some random canyon and set out to ski far-off mountains without waiting in line or paying a toll. Riding by headlamp down the dirt road, I see the sunset peel through the alien landscape of Canyonlands National Park on the horizon. I kick off my skis and boots, racking them on my bike frame just as the sun sets. Seven hours after switching to skis, I’m standing above the valley where I left the bike, transitioning for the last time to ski a small hillside down to the dirt. The sun is low in the sky now as I navigate and thrash back through the maze of dense shrubs and over the plains to where I began the tour. Still giddy from the payoff of linking turns in great spring snow, I chug back through the burnt forest hoping to find a better vantage point toward where I had ditched the bike. Due to Utah’s impressive winter precip, my intended road into the mountains has been cut short by six miles of snow cover, forcing me to break down into skinning mode sooner than expected. A Moab hard-o with calves the size of my head drops the affirming head nod before buzzing by in a cloud of dust.ĭry dirt roads soon turn meltwater soggy with the occasional mud pit to steer around while gaining elevation to the snow line. This solitude is eventually broken by other cyclists, slowing and matching my speed for a moment to admire the ski/bike rig. Up before the sun, I find myself keeping a good pace and enjoying the empty and pristine gravel roads. So I mapped out a route that twisted up to the base of the La Sals and lashed a pair of Reason 120s to my bikepacking rig. My mission was to find the confluence where opposing worlds join it wasn’t intended to be easy. From the burly canyon walls and spires that sprawl across the desert to the pristine high alpine peaks near the state’s border, the stark contrast between desert and snow is unique. ![]() Since my first visit eight years ago this place still seems otherworldly-nothing like the Sierra, Cascades, or the Rockies where I've lived, and certainly not like the White Mountains in New Hampshire where I first began to toil in the mountains. “I'm gonna ski those today,” I say to the vast expanse of red rock desert as I mount up and pedal off.įor the past few years, I’ve been biking, climbing, and running around Moab while looking up at the La Sal mountain range that crowns the canyon country. A thin band of snow-covered mountains looms in the distance. ![]() Massive canyon walls hulk overhead and funnel down to the Colorado River below. Something feels so wrong yet so right as I toss my avalanche beacon and camera gear into a backpack and strap skis to the bike. Photo: Mack Lambert ( A man on foot, on horseback or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles.” Mack sets off on a solo human powered adventure.
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