Gold Bar Rim
This was our third trail of the day, following Poison Spider Mesa and Golden Spike. Ladd continued to lead on this trail. After Golden Spike, we missed the new trail markers and without Ladd leading at the beginning it may have been hard to follow the trail at points. Kris and Bob shared driving, and Kris was getting the hang of going over small obstacles.
After the two prior trails this was a fun and mostly easy way back out. We made it over Slide Rock, and had some water in the pool which made it slipperier than usual. We looked at a bunch of pockets in the rock with water from the rains earlier in the week. Our goal was to find Rusty Nail and scope it out so we moved along pretty well on this trail.
We turned at the sign for Rusty Nail and went down the trail for a bit, not knowing how far we would be going. It was early so we had plenty of daylight.
We met a small group heading the other way -- it was a strange mixture of vehicles. A tube frame trail buggy on 40" tires, a built pickup without a bed on 35" tires, and a little stock truck on street tires. Our first reaction was if they all made it over Rusty Nail we would have to do the same!
We stopped to talk, and the little truck was just hanging around with the other two. The buggy did Rusty Nail, and said with winches we might be able to make it. We talked for a bit. They were from Nederland, Colorado, and the buggy was brand new. It was the first time to Moab for the buggy.
We went on down to the the first obstacle called Riff Raff. It has a couple of lines, and the left, we were told, is the easy line. This obstacle is a two-parter. Part one is probably not too bad on 33" tires. Ladd posed but didn't push it too hard. The right line has a nasty rock that would jump out at you if you slipped. We walked it, and part two looks to be a bit more challenging. Without much room to maneuver we decided not to play.
We back-tracked to Gold Bar Rim and headed out, and met a shiny, new, white Grand Cherokee coming in. They had stopped at an obstacle they decided they had no business looking at, and were heading back. We also saw a couple of rental Jeeps looking over the trails.
Ladd showed Bob the rock that Monica could never do without lockers, and Bob with lockers couldn't do it either (although the sand was wet at the bottom, and that was Bob's excuse). Bob tried a different section of the rock and still had wet tires, so gave up after his Jeep started to slide to the left on the rock.
On the way out we saw a bunch of bikes, and stopped near one group having tire problems. We ended up hauling two bikes and two riders out. They had come in from Gemini Bridges on a rental deal and had two hours to get back to the parking lot. The long hill on the way out was killing them, so we helped them out safely.
Reports from Other Days: 12
Use the arrows or dots to flip through the previews of the other reports for Gold Bar Rim. Click one of them to read more and see all of the photos from that day.
