- [Narrator] The four corners area draws millions of tourists each year.
I've been through the region often but now I have a new way of visiting this, one of the world's most unusual landscapes.
It requires special clothing.
- [Biker] I was nervous to recommend this ride and I knew this would be one of the most difficult challenging parts, but you get to the bottom and it's all good.
(group chattering) (upbeat traditional music) - [Announcer] Funding for "In the Americas "with David Yetman" was provided by Agnese Haury.
Funding for "In the Americas with David Yetman" was also provided by the Guilford Fund.
(upbeat guitar music) (slow guitar music) - In the four corners region of the western United States is a vast area called the Colorado Plateau.
It has eight national parks inside it and is visually the most spectacular place in our country, if not in the world.
You can drive there in a bus.
You can take a car.
You can go on an ATV.
You can go on a motorcycle.
You can hike, but the best way to go is on a bicycle.
(upbeat country music) - Ideal tire pressure on a ride like this is close to 25, 'cause if it's too low you can bottom out, if its too high you're gonna bounce around like a tennis ball.
- Why don't you drop it down?
- We have packs all ready.
- I've got a little computer on the top.
- Gettin' my bike fixed up man.
Gettin' ready.
- I have seven friends who have come from Southern Arizona, one from Denver, and we have been riding bicycles together, many of us, for more than two decades.
They are super-pros.
I'm mini-pro.
- A lot of these guys here have raced, and a lot of us have raced together and usually you're trying to cut off a couple pounds and here we're adding 35.
- Four day trek on bike, you have to have everything with you except food.
There are huts along the way where we stop, and they have food but everything else you have to have with you.
- We've got 16 huts in total so we've got two bike routes, one starts in Telluride and ends in Moab and the other starts in Durango and ends in Moab.
Pack light, don't bring too much stuff.
Leave your cellphones behind.
- [David] We're at about 6,000 feet here.
We will go up to about 11,200 feet.
That's high!
And then drop down to Moab, which is below 5,000 feet.
(accordion music) - On this first day we will be riding across some kinda high mountain desert terrain.
This is pretty remote West end terrain.
So there's some sage country.
We'll have views of both the San Juan Mountains, where the complete trip starts, and the La Sal mountains, where you guys will be going.
And it's really pretty remote, rugged, western terrain.
So, my dad started a hut system called the San Juan Huts when I was just about a year old.
It started out with a few ski huts, and eventually those ski huts that had to be moved from the forest in the winter became bike huts and stretching from Telluride to Moab, a six night, seven day trip.
So on a bike you're really able to cover ground, move from A to B, and still be human powered.
You still get the endorphin rush.
And it's just a great way to see country and enjoy life.
A lot of the roads out here were developed during the uranium mining era.
- Dotted all over this very convoluted, crazy country, we find the fragments of a past that's almost forgotten.
The mining area, the uranium craze of the 1940s, 50s, and early 60s.
These were individual miners who would put their entire lives into building roads just to get at the mother load, sometimes silver, sometimes gold, but more often uranium.
Look at this.
This is a probably a '37 Dodge, and it brought the miner up here, but ultimately the mine failed and it was too much work to take the thing out, and here it sits as this gorgeous reminder of that strange era in American history when there was a uranium rush.
(slow country music) - This is really some of the most, kinda, wild, remote areas that's left in the U.S.
The main defining factor of who comes and does these rides are people who are looking for an adventure.
It's definitely not for everybody.
You're gonna have some kinda challenge on this trip.
You're either gonna have a mechanical problem with the bike, weather, seemingly insurmountable hill, technical terrain, and plenty of other unexpected things, and think there's not too many other trips like this or aspects of our daily lives where we really still have to be that self reliant.
The trips are often the hardest thing anyone's done, but I think the unifying factor is kinda the quest for adventure and remoteness.
The highlights for me are really the variants of terrain.
So the difference between going through the San Juans, above treeline, very alpine, (accordion music) to dropping down to these high plateaus and down into the canyons and red rocks, around Paradox, and then again back up through the alpine zone of the La Sal Mountains, and then finally ending in the canyon lands of Moab which is such a stark contrast.
Lows in the 30s in the mountains, and the highs in the desert can be 115.
So it's all traveling through that kind of spectrum within a week, you really feel like you are going somewhere.
- These are two and a half inch wide tires that hold only about 20 pounds per square inch of pressure.
So they kinda glide over bumps and rocks, and the shock absorbers help a lot, too, so it's a very comfortable ride.
This is really Great Basin Desert.
There's low sage.
There's Mormon tea or Ephedra.
Few cacti, but with only about ten inches of rain a year, they're not gonna get much more.
Looks like it's just flat.
On a bike like this, it's pretty heavy.
You've got 25, 30 pounds of stuff on it.
Once you start even a little bit of a grade, you feel it.
And I don't quite know what to make of the fact that we will hit a 20% grade in a couple of days.
(calm guitar music) - [Paul] While the hundred mile races, like for example, Leadville 100, those are tough one day events.
It's also an endurance event, but I'm not as long as a 24.
I've also done some fat bike racing in the winter.
- [David] What's a fat bike?
- It's a, typically, 26 inch wheels with big fat five inch tires, anywhere from four and a half.
- They look like automobile tires, right?
- Yeah, they're pretty heavy, but they roll very nice on snow, and in sand, actually.
(gentle music) - One of the advantages of coming on the San Juan tour is that you get to see canyon country that a lot of people don't get to see.
This is the Dolores River below, and it has carved a canyon, and that canyon continues way out into what's called the Paradox Basin.
One of the most unusual and deeply studied basins in all of the west.
The story has taken a long time to unfold, but we get to see the end result 300 million years after the action began that produced this landscape.
The La Sal Mountains in the background are our goal for two days from now.
(slow guitar music) This is The Wedding Bell Hut.
It will hold eight of us for the night.
It is well stocked with provisions, but it's very hot in the afternoon here, so we stay in the shade.
They chose this place because, first of all the view is unmatched, but also it's already been flattened for a mine.
The Wedding Bell Hut took advantage of that history, and gave us a place to stay.
- It's bear country.
They have bears come around so we can't leave any garbage.
We can't leave any kind of edible stuff out.
Bears will get it.
And they do have a little rattlesnake called The Great Basin Rattlesnake.
They don't get much bigger than about this, but their young ones have just come out this year.
(gentle guitar music) - Now what we're gonna do is send three guys on.
- [Biker] Day two is gonna be tough because it's hot.
It's already getting hot.
- [Biker] Pretty hot already.
- Yeah, I got dehydrated, and today I'm gonna try to drink more water.
- We've gotta climb out of this valley, and then we have to get over the top of the ridge, and then we're going to push over the top down into the next valley.
And then that's gonna get real obvious that we're gonna end up right here.
And this is looking over an entire Paradox.
- I'm not nervous.
'Cause you found the map.
- The bike itself, 18 pounds, but with all the gear, I estimate about 55 to 60 pounds.
- You find that your front end is bouncing too much, then we can let out three or four psi.
It's time to go.
(accordion music) - Beat the heat.
- [Biker] All right, we are leaving.
Hut number one.
- [David] Getting out of The Wedding Bell Hut is a very tough time.
- [Kelly] The second day of your trip we'll be starting out at Wedding Bell Hut which is perched on the Dolores River, and then you will ride out onto a Mesa, and then descend the Catch-Em-Up Trail, which is an infamous trail.
It was originally a Native American trail and then became a cow trail and is a very steep descent for about three miles which is pretty much a mandatory hike or bike.
Most people have a few choice words by the time they get to the bottom at some point.
And then you will go by the Bedrock Store.
Thelma and Louise has a scene there, and that store has been there since the 1800s, and then you will ride through the Paradox Valley to Paradox Hut.
People have gotten lost on probably all of our routes at some point or another.
It is definitely a self guided trip and some tricky route finding in places so definitely navigation skills are required.
- [Evan] My shoe broke.
And I tried taping it but my tape kept tearing, and so I couldn't wrap around my whole foot.
- [David] So we are at about a 12% grade which is illegal in the interstate highway system, it's too steep.
And then it goes on and on.
And finally I look at my friends, all of whom are young enough to be my great grandchildren, and I say, "I'm gonna walk."
(accordion music) And then at the very top we behold a magnificent vista.
Paradox Valley which is a story onto itself.
It's about 2,000 feet below us.
By a trail they call "Catch-Em-Up Trail" which doesn't tell you much, but now look it below us, and it gets steep.
We have to carry our bikes down, lower than down rocks, hand them to each other, and then there are some who will look up and sneer as they go faster than others.
(wistful guitar music) An hour and forty minutes later we emerge from the cliffs to the store at Bedrock.
- This other group came through with three adults.
After the fourth hut, one of the adults flipped his bike and cracked his rib.
He had to be helicoptered out.
That was last year.
Everybody's got their own journey.
Yeah.
That was the Catch-Em-Up Trail that used to run cattle up way back in the day, yeah.
Now they use you guys as cattle to come down.
- I understand how big horn sheep feel after a rough day in the field.
It's up and down, up and down, just trying to get a little bit to eat and feel like you've done a good job.
- Glad it's over, and I probably don't wanna do it agan for a long time.
- It's nice to get down here.
It's fun to look back at it and look at how dramatic the cliffs are and realize we just came down that.
- Doing that alone would have been miserable, wouldn't have been any fun, but having these guys around.
Let's do it again.
Look, that's what we came down.
- I was nervous to recommend this ride, and I knew this would be one of the most challenging parts, but you get to the bottom and it's all good.
- [Kelly] On your third day, you will start at Paradox Hut down in the valley of Paradox and climb all the way up into La Sals up to Geyser Pass Hut, and so you will have your biggest climb by far of your trip, and you will be leaving behind the lower elevation, desert country and getting up into the La Sal Mountains.
You'll have close to a 4,000 foot elevation climb that day.
- We just left the Paradox Hut in Paradox Valley, and now we face the dreaded climb to Geyser Pass.
And that's at a little over 10,000 feet ... and it's very steep, 10 to 12 percent grade.
The advantage of a mountain bike is that it has many, many gears, so that you can go like this and barely be moving, and then change as the terrain changes.
I look ahead and there she looms.
(accordion music) - [Evan] I'm on the climb, and you can see it's pretty switch backy and steep.
My bike with the gear weighs about 60 pounds.
(accordion music) - After that brutal ride, you come out of that great basin desert, sage brush, hot and gradually you come over the Junipers.
You come over the rim like we did, dead tired, I mean worn out beyond human comprehension, what you have pine for.
Smell the sweet pines.
They create a shade, and they actually make it a bit cooler.
All right guys, the state line.
Utah and Colorado, I gotta stop here.
See ya, farther at the pass.
- [Biker] Okay David, see you later.
- State line of Utah and Colorado, the place we're gonna stay tonight, at Geyser Hut is another almost 3,000 feet higher than this.
We have a long way to go.
(accordion music) - [Evan] 5,000 vertical feet.
- [Kelly] It's the toughest climb on any of our routes, and I would say if you are still friends by the end of it, you guys are solid friends.
One of the last times I rode this route I got to the hut and one girl was crying, the other one was not talking to anybody.
- Hey man!
Why don't you just back off a little bit, okay?
I had a bad day in the saddle.
(people bickering) - Why don't you have some tortillas and sit and talk about it.
You drink too much anyway.
- I've been riding all day.
- You drink too much anyway.
(mumbles) let the animal out of the cage.
- It was hard you know, the maps, people were lost, and we couldn't figure out.
We didn't get lost, but we had a conflicts of instructions.
- [Biker] We were all pushed right to the limits.
Right to the limits to this place.
Geyser Pass Hut.
- [Biker] We see squiggly lines.
- [David] We see squiggly, that's always a bad sign because that means contours, contours, contours.
- This hut is at about 9,700 feet in the grove of thousands of acres of quake and aspen.
The mornings are cold.
The afternoons are cool.
One interesting thing about being at this elevation is it's more difficult to sleep, but we were so worn out yesterday from that slog up the mountain that nobody had any trouble.
(bacon sizzling) All the huts are accessible by four wheel drive, but this one is a tough one because they have to have a high clearance vehicle and four wheel drive to get up here so they stock it every two or three days.
- Today's the last day, and it's going to be a little bit of a grind up to the top, but then we descend 25 miles into Moab, so that should be a hoot.
- The entirety of this Colorado Plateau is going to be out in front of us, and we're gonna to go down, and we are gonna go down very, very fast.
And then we will arrive at Moab, which is in Great Basin Desert, hot, right down at the Colorado River, completely different place from this.
(accordion music) - I would suggest 21 psi for the rear.
There's sort of a mixed feeling.
It's the last segment of this ride, and it's bittersweet.
- [Biker] So when was the last time you were mountain biking up at 10,000 feet?
- [David] That was in a different life.
- [Kelly] On your final day, from Geyser Pass Hut, down to Moab, you will have several options and a lot of descent.
- [David] We're really close to timberline here, probably no more than 300, 400, feet below it.
I'm finding that there's not much oxygen to breathe.
- [Biker] Yeah.
- [David] Just makes me wanna breathe harder.
You look, we might have a little down hill here.
Well, I do it every day.
(laughing) - [Biker] Let me tell you, this altitude is not something we're used to.
- [David] I'm off.
- [Biker] Yep.
Okay.
- [David] Well, when the grade gets above 10%, and the elevation is over 10,000, we drop a certain percentage of our pride and push our bikes.
- You know, last time we were out here, we were riding with a buddy, and the first day he fell in the creek and split his knee open so his skin was split all the way to his knee cap and fortunate enough we brought a suture kit, and we had to sew his knee back up so he could finish the trip.
It was kind of motivation for all of us.
Pretty impressive.
- This is a water shed moment in my life.
I can, if I'm silly, go behind me here up to the bureau pass trail head a half a mile up almost straight, and then hike up to 11,200 feet.
But, or I can stay here.
I'm already at 10,000 or I can go up just a little way and be at 10,600.
I'm gonna take the road less taken.
This habitat we see here is a perfect example of Rocky Mountain coniferous forest.
Mostly, Spruces and Firs.
This area has been important for human beings for several thousand years.
The Yutes viewed this as a sacred mountain, and archeologists say that everywhere you go here you will find signs of their respect for it.
They lived down below because there would be ten feet of snow up here in the winter time.
They revered the peaks.
They had special ceremonies to honor them.
- So we are at the top.
I like summit because you know what that means?
Down hill.
All right, let's go.
(accordion music) We've come down a couple a thousand feet from the high point.
Now we get to see the Moab area.
We see the Colorado River and what it's done.
We're still in the Paradox Basin and all the formations we see out there is a result of salt, that very deep, has become liquified and pushed up, causing these formations, and the river then has cut through it.
The Grand Canyon, which is only 150 miles to the south of here is only five million years old.
What we're seeing out here, this formation, has been brought up beginning 300 million years old.
The time scales are beyond our comprehension, but from up here, standing on a mountain produced by magma, we get the big picture of seeing what the canyon lands are, what the Colorado Plateau is, and why the Grand Canyon, Arches National Park, Capital Reef National Park, and Canyon Lands National Park are so sensational and the object of attention throughout the world, as they should be.
(accordion music) Moab, Utah is the end of the line for us.
We'll have gone about a hundred miles, a little bit over through all these passes, all these mountains we have, The Paradox Basin is always part of the story that we're telling.
We wind up in Moab, there is food, showers, and relaxation.
Join us next time, "In the Americas," with me, David Yetman.
(gentle guitar) (gentle drums) Most of the Southwest is desert, but a group of mountain ranges in Arizona and New Mexico jut out from the desert.
And as we ascend these island ranges, we pass through what biologists call, life zones.
They end in thick forests at the highest elevation, which is why they're sky islands.
(upbeat guitar music) - My friends call me Paulie Walnuts.
(laughing) - John's starting to well up already, but he's a sensitive male, and that's who he is.
(triumphant orchestral music) (upbeat traditional music) - [Announcer] Funding for "In the Americas "with David Yetman" was provided by Agnese Haury.
Funding for "In the Americas with David Yetman" was also provided by the Guilford Fund.
(accordion music) Copies of this and other episodes of "In the Americas with David Yetman" are available from the Southwest Center.
To order, call 1-800-937-8632.
Please mention the episode number and program title.
And please be sure to visit us at intheamericas.com or intheamericas.org.