SuperSlinky wrote:
> Minna Nevalainen said...
>
>
>>Moah ...... always wanted to go there. A must, but I might go there next
>>year instead, for the Fat Tyre Festival.
>
>
> Moab has an average daytime high of about 7°C on Christmas day, courtesy
> of weather.com. Decent riding weather, but it may cool off a lot at
> higher elevations. You could spend a few Euros on phone calls to bike
> shops in the towns you plan to visit and get expert advice. It would be
> easy to find them with Internet Yellow Pages.
I have ridden Slickrock several times between Xmas and New Years. It's
perfectly do-able, but there are risks.
The daytime temp is as high as 60F (15-ish C), but can be near freezing.
Snow cover is usually very light, but stays on the north-facing slopes.
This can become a problem because the snow will cover parts of the
marked trail. Sometimes long parts, which makes trail-finding difficult.
The last time I did it, I barely dodged a cold night in the desert and
busted my ass pushing my bike up and down unmarked slopes for a couple
hours, looking for the trail.
You don't want to head out cross-country in an area like that, because
you will very quickly become more lost.
Since Arizona is close, if that's your destination you can possibly flit
up to Moab depending on conditions. If the Winter has been dry and/or
warm, the Moab trails will be "open."
--
--
Lynn Wallace
http://www.xmission.com/~lawall
"We should not march into Baghdad. ... Assigning young soldiers to
a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning
them to fight in what would be an unwinnable urban guerilla war, it
could only plunge that part of the world into ever greater
instability." George Bush Sr. in his 1998 book "A World Transformed"
/Minna
