MOAB -- The Slick Rock Trail turned 30 this past Thursday, and what better way to say "Happy 30th" than an over-the-hill party?
Armed with two PowerBars, my son Eric and I left the parking lot on a Trek 7000 and a Cannondale 900 at Sand Flats Road just after 7:30 a.m. We meant to get an earlier start. Story of our lives.There was just one other car in the parking lot, which could only mean one thing: It's July.
If it were January, when the temperatures are less jacuzzi-like, it would look like the opening of a George Lucas movie.
But a birthday is a birthday, and it deserves to be commemorated. I told the other group about to negotiate the 12.7 miles of absolutely perfect mountain bike terrain that it was the Slick Rock Trail's birthday and they responded, appropriately, "Really?"
Flashback: in the spring of 1969, a Moab off-road motorcycle enthusiast named Dick Wilson leads a crusade to get the Bureau of Land Management to officially sanction a section of badlands Navajo Sandstone above the town dump that will become known as the Slick Rock Trail. Wilson gets the OK to paint dots marking the out-and-back route that skirts the plateau east of town all the way north to an overlook of the Colorado River.
The BLM paints bigger dots and on July 22, 1969, in the evening, dedicates the trail for public use with a series of speeches. On hand are approximately 50 people -- 20 motorcyclists and 30 government people giving speeches.
It is such a big deal that the Moab Times-Independent runs the story deep inside on Page A6, right next to the classified ads, which feature, among other things, this item: "For Sale: 38-unit motel and house, $95,000."
Well, who knew?
Who knew that 30 years later you could drive through Moab and see the "Slick Rock Cafe" or the "Slick Rock Building" or the "Slick Rock Cinemas" or "Slick Rock Bike Tours" or T-shirts that say "Slick Rock Bike Trail?"
Who knew that off-road motorcycling would never catch on with the masses but that a new bicycle with big, fat tires would, that they would call it a mountain bike, and the Slick Rock Trail would become the mountain biker's Mecca?
Who knew that a town with exactly zero bicycle shops in 1969 -- little Moab kids used to order theirs through the Sears catalog -- would now have them lining the streets, selling and renting mountain bikes like crazy to visitors the world over, all of them bound and determined to follow Dick Wilson's dots?
Who knew that a 38-unit motel for $95,000 was, like, the bargain of the century?
The Slick Rock Trail hasn't put Moab at the top of the outdoor recreation world all by itself.
Gotta give some credit to nearby Arches and Canyonlands and Dead Horse Point and river running on the Colorado and Jeep climbing and fishing and hunting and camping and running and cross-country skiing in the nearby LaSals.
Moab isn't a town, it's an aerobic sport.
But ask a local and they'll tell you, the place hasn't been the same since the invention of the mountain bike met the invention of the Slick Rock Trail.
On an overlook high above the Colorado River, Eric and I laid down our bikes and looked across the enormous expanse of red and yellow rock and in the distance saw the early morning sun peeking through an arch in Arches.
OK, the late morning sun.
In commemoration of the day, we drained a bottle of strawberry-kiwi Gatorade and, like a million riders before us, drew a deep breath of high desert air and, by now satisfied and refreshed, headed back from where we came.
Send e-mail to benson@desnews.com, fax 801-237-2527. Lee Benson's column runs Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.