Bike Hopping to Marble Canyon (2023)

Route 89A took me through Marble Canyon and the Vermillion Cliffs.  It's a steep climb over 40 miles to Jacob Lake which chasms through the snowy glades of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.  Much like Vermont these roads aren't plowed frequently and I knew a storm was brewing in the clouds ready to dump another blanket of snow over the already glistening landscape.

But at the time, I just didn't know how much snow we were talking about or what the road conditions were like.  I only knew there was a 4000+ foot climb ahead of me, 20 mph headwinds and I was making no progress at all, but maybe 2-3 miles per hour, at best, having decided it was in my best interest to walk rather than waste more energy pedaling and balancing my body through the fierce gusts of wind.  

The desert was unforgiving.  Hot days of blistering sun ate away at my nose and lips, cracking my skin like a shriveled prune. It flaked off like the peeling asbestos on the old walls of an abandoned building.  The wind never let up and my body ached since I was not used to cycling such long distances.

The nights weren't much better, not because of the cold desert floor sucking the warmth from my bones, I had the right gear for that, but the howling wind called out like a massacre through the treeless landscape with nothing but scrub brush and towering cliffs to calm its screams. It made it difficult to sleep.

So, I knew the trek into the gray abyss would take days and I often thought I wouldn't make it, but there was no turning back.  The last time I bike toured I was 23 years old.  I was super depressed and confused with life.  I had sold all of my shit out of impulse and really didn't care much about anything or myself.  I just wanted to keep going.

My life has changed a lot in 10 years for the better.  That naiveté that once masqueraded as a fountain of confidence has since disappeared.  As I've gotten older, my mind wanders more and more to the possibility that it doesn't always work out, the what-ifs, the fear of the unknown, that mental setback in my head that tells me I can't, it's much more present now than it was in my 20s.  I'm old.  My body is worn and broken.  In the past year I've fucked up my back and I very much feel like I have arthritis, issues I didn't have when I was younger.  At times, these thoughts and pains set me back, but I just tell myself to keep going.

So, while I walked that endless road watching the trail of rain creep up behind me like a shadow of darkness, I couldn't help but deviate from positive thinking.  "One more mile. One more mile."  Instead, I stopped to weigh my options, looking anywhere for cover as snow flurries poked outta the clouds to the north and rain bellowed down in a thick blanket to the south.  I was very much in the eye.  The gods were taunting me for all of my cursing and fist pumping to the sky, which had transpired over the past 3 days of never-ending headwinds. But, as such, I saw a crest of highway in the distance and kept pushing forward, wanting to see what lay ahead beyond it.  I knew it was elevation, but maybe there was a shack or a storm drain I could cubby up in for a while before finding a better place to sleep.

Trucks and cars and semis and the endless supply of campervans and RVs pummeled by me at 65 mph and were gone within a blink of time, disappearing to the likes of little black ants in the far off distance.

I never made it to the top of the hill though.  An older couple from Texas slowed down on the shoulderless roadway and asked if I needed a lift.

John spoke like the low talker from Seinfeld, but behind that grizzly gray beard he held a smile as wide as jolly old Santa Claus.  He looked so happy to see me and I didn't know why.  Generally, my experiences cycling are much more positive than just plain hitchhiking.  Maybe that was why?

Anyway, they were headed over the pass to Fredonia, which would get me past the treacherous elevation gain so I was pretty happy.

When I got into their truck the squalls of wind hailed from the sky bringing streaks of blinding white across the road.  My timing for getting a ride was quite serendipitous and now came 70 miles of slippery adventure.

Snow accumulated on the ground quickly as we slowly climbed in elevation and it covered the road in a perilous coat, sheen with ice and slush, the worst to drive in especially towing a camper.

I thought nothing of it, dude had a truck, clearly he had 4WD, but then we started slipping.  The wheels surrendered to mother nature and we'd lose control riding dirty face into the wind, screeching and squealing side-to-side until we'd regain traction and put along, up and down, meandering this maze of death through the mountains.

It was then I realized we drove into the storm without 4WD, without snow tires, with only luck and prayer and the will to move onward.  John was pretty hopeful.  He kept calming his wife down who clasped the door handle with such force veins bulged throughout her fingers from the stress.  She was pissed and wanted to turn around, but where would we?  It was too late.  "We've gone too far…"

She prayed to the lord under her breath whispering hopeful and positive words for our journey onward.  I just sat back in my seat, along for the ride, looking straight ahead at the whiteout that laughed at us all and decided to buckle up.  Cars drifted and sank into snow banks, nestled in white pillows of snow with no hope of escaping the dark dreams until a tow came along, which happened more quickly than I thought.

We just putted along at a solid 15 mph following the path of those before us, the tire tracks that had pressed down to the dark pavement that poked through the opaque layer of snow.

We were riding blind through the icy, endless slopes with limited visibility, but aside from a few slips here and there, we managed to mosey along past Jacob Lake, which doesn't have a lake btw.

It seemed to only go up and up and up, until a brief plateau near the north rim and I looked out the window at the squiggles of snowdrifts that piled up along the wooden fences, covering some of the posts, at least 4 feet deep.

It looked like barrels of cream cheese spread out infinitely through hats of forest green, a backcountry paradise in the making.  But shortly thereafter, the road knocked me out of my wandering thoughts when we reached a 6% grade.  The truck croaked and moaned and the orange needle tickled the top of the RPM gauge as he slammed on the gas, but we only slid further down the hill until we were completely stuck in a film of ice.

John and I hopped out and I grabbed a shovel from his camper, not a snow shovel, a small metal shovel for digging in a garden just bigger than a spade.  I scraped the ice from beneath each wheel and we took turns swapping on and off, clearing a path 5 to 10 feet out in front of each tire.

We did this several times over a half hour and the truck achieved a distance of about 10 feet, but continued to get stuck.  It was futile and ineffective.  So the best we could do was wait, and that's what we did for about a half hour.

A red jeep from Utah stopped and this burly man with a cowboy hat and trim, gray beard stepped out of his vehicle, offering us a tow to the top of the hill.   Our luck had changed as I watched this Jeep tow a truck and a camper, skittering balls of ice and slush into the air like we were out mudding as it worked to pull us up the steep slope.  I was amazed at the sheer power behind this machine.

It worked.  We reached the top.  The man disconnected the yellow towline and then it was smooth sailing all the way to Fredonia.  I think that 70 miles took about 3 hours.  I had just enough time to ride to the other side of town and find a spot to sleep in a field of scrub brush.