Day 61: The Legendary Metal Dorito

Zion, UT -> Lava Point Campground, UT — 29.75 mi, 4,975 ft

Hi hi, It’s Joseph again¹ with a blog for the shortest mileage day of the trip! Don’t be fooled though, today was anything but short. It was also the day with the largest single climb of the trip…

It was a great start to the day. I had gotten great sleep for the past two nights in a row, a rarity on this trip. I felt ready to tackle this day head on. Today, as is usually the case, the team left at different times, though unusually enough, I was not part of the last group to leave. I spent the first hour speeding along a slight descent and attempting to catch up to the frontrunners of today² as I approached Kolob Terrace Road, where we would spend most of our day.

Allow me to give some context about where we were headed. Zion National Park is bigger than some people realize. There’s the main section of the park inside of Zion Canyon, where most of the tourists go and where we hiked Angel’s Landing the day before. Then, there’s the Kolob Terrace, the high elevation area of the park, many thousands of feet above the bottom of Zion Canyon. Our destination for today was Lava Point Campground, near the top of the terrace and named after Lava Point, a vista with views spanning the entire park.

Back to the biking. The climb started and I managed to catch up to Tian and Sarah before the first rest stop, and then made it to the rest stop, where Ruth and Ramona were. The car had earlier passed me, then not 5 minutes later turned back around. I didn’t see it again for another half an hour. I wondered what happened, but I didn’t see a second bike on the car when it drove by the second time, so I assumed it was fine. Turns out that Ishaq accidentally ran into The Legendary Metal Dorito™, a mystical weapon used by the gods of cycling to strike down anyone who dared to ride too fast, fly too close to the sun, if you will. Ishaq had done just that, and he paid dearly for it. In one swift motion his tire was slashed open. The Specialized tire he had gotten a week or so ago was slain. It was no more. Ishaq, devastated by the loss of his companion, turned to The Metal Dorito and promptly curb stomped it, returning it to being a regular dorito shaped piece of metal. He called Ruth in and snatched her wheel.

Back to me, I guess. I spent a while at the first rest stop, since just as I was about to leave, the rest of the gang showed up. Eventually I leave to catch up with the frontrunners³. The views were becoming increasingly scenic, with the road winding up and around jagged cliffs. We started the day in the plain dessert, but as we climbed the landscape became greener and meadows and groves of pine trees started appearing. It took an hour to make it to the next rest stop only six miles up the road. The climbs were generally fine, but every once in a while, the grade would become very steep, but everyone kept on chugging along just fine.⁴ After the next rest stop some of us split up into pairs. I started cycling with Charles. Sarah paired up with Greta. Often times it’s hard to chat with people on the climbs, but the road was empty enough that we could do it comfortably.

At this point we were fully in Alpine forest and it even started to become a little chilly. At the third rest stop we arrived to find Ruth watching TSITP aka The Summer I Turned Pretty. After being a responsible support vehicle for the morning, she had embraced the bum driver lifestyle. After the last rest stop me and Charles continued the climb, feeling like the end was now in sight. Eventually we make it to the top and we hear the familiar and loved beep of the Garmin, signifying the end of this immense climb. We waited at the top for Sarah and Greta to complete the last couple of miles together.

We pull into the campsite and see the tents already set up thanks to the efforts of Ramona, Ishaq, Tian and Ruth.⁵ Though seems like it wasn’t easy for them, as the wind caused stuff to ascend, including causing one of our tents into the forest. There were no showers at the campground, so I devised a plan to go to Kolob Reservoir for a dip. When we found a spot to pull over to the water, we realized the water was very cold and the shore was really muddy. Most people opted not to go in all the way if at all, except for Charles, who went for a full plunge. I also went in and dunked my head in the water to get the dirt out of my hair. I promptly ran out of the water violently shivering and dried myself off as quickly as I could.

On the way back to the campsite, I sneakily took us to Lava Point, where we soaked in the views – the product of all of our climbing today. It was also the only place where we had any service in the area.

Then we headed back to the campsite where Ruth cooked ramen for dinner. I actually quite enjoyed this meal. I ate more for this camp dinner than I almost ever do, so good job Ruth! Not much else happened that night, though the night sky was as beautiful as it had been the rest of Utah.

If you take anything from this blog, let it be this. Don’t bike too close to the sun, otherwise you too might get struck down by The Legendary Metal Dorito or similar phenomena.

1. And Ramona transcribing (the next three Joseph blogs are being written in the process of driving back across the country) ↩︎
2. Editor’s note: spoiler: he doesn’t ↩︎
3. Reminder: he doesn’t ↩︎
4. Don’t quote me on this. ↩︎
5. Listing in order of arrival ↩︎