Gold Bar Rim
We ran this trail immediately after Poison Spider Mesa and Golden Spike. Unfortunately it was completely dark long before we even started the trail at the far end, so we didn't get any pictures of that trip. These pictures are from when we went back to get Derek's Cherokee off of the end of Golden Spike at Body Snatcher.
When we finally got Derek packed up in the Wranglers and got his Cherokee out of the way and locked up, we started down the trail to the entrance. It was challenging finding our way at night and we lost the trail a couple of times. The bars can be hard to find!
We were all doing fine all the way through until we hit Slide Rock -- the big hill of rock that basically divides the trail into two halves, one half is moderate and the other is difficult. The most difficult thing is Slide Rock itself.
Monica had done Gold Bar Rim before so she went up the Rock fairly easily, sliding only a little in the sand. Matt followed, showing everyone up in his stock TJ.
Tom had been having a few troubles since Body Snatcher and Slide Rock was to be the end of it. He was working away at the sandy, slippery rock and something made a clicking noise and wouldn't stop. It sounded like something in the front axle somewhere, maybe in the differential. Needless to say he couldn't make it up any challenging obstacles after that, so Ladd went around and towed him up the hill. Derek also went up without too many issues.
We took the rest of the trail out going about 5 mph at the high end. It took a very long time to finish the easy part of the trail at that rate. We even took the highway going under 20 mph most of the time. What a long trip! But Tom made it back to town and took his Jeep to the shop the next day.
The next day, Derek, Ladd and Monica did Gold Bar Rim again in the daylight to go fix Derek's Cherokee. He got it working again in a couple of hours and the three Jeeps finished the trail, including going up to the Overlook just past the intersection with Golden Spike. It was very impressive!
We have usually done Gold Bar Rim down from Golden Spike so it was cool to actually run it up to Golden Spike. It's a challenging trail in that direction, with lots of shelves and ledges to climb. This trail would be a fun one to run on its own.
Our last trip we saw some Moab residents taking Gold Bar Rim in to get to the Golden Crack faster. They ran the Crack backwards, then turned around there and went back down Gold Bar Rim. It's a good idea! Not only is it much faster (and you can see the Crack in daylight for a change) but you get to run the Crack both directions as well as Gold Bar Rim both directions.
Though it was a drag that Derek's Jeep broke down it was cool to get to run Gold Bar Rim again, this time in sunlight.
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.
