Biking the White Rim Trail in a Day

The White Rim Trail continued to elude me up to the morning of our big, one-day jaunt through the Canyonlands National Park. I set my alarm for 4:00 AM the morning of (what we were calling) “Rim Job 2022” and was both nervous and excited for the long day ahead.

The hundreds of millions of stars and the Milky Way lit up the sky at the Island in the Sky Visitor Center where we all gathered to start this adventure. The weeks and arduous training days all led up to today. As I clipped my helmet straps and slid on my sunglasses, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to hang with the guys, that I’d fall behind and they’d have to wait on me.

Not knowing what to expect, it was easy to doubt myself and my abilities to ride this far (even though I had a handful of road bike centuries under my bibs). As the only woman in our group (and my first invitation to this yearly ride), I felt a certain self-induced pressure to prove I could keep up with the guys for 100 miles. I didn’t want them to regret inviting me to this seemingly holy expedition.

You might be thinking, “White Rim Trail? Never heard of him.” And I hadn’t either until the guys rode it last year and couldn’t stop talking about it. It piqued my curiosity and then I found out it’s a 71.2-mile-long unpaved road that runs along the top of the White Rim Sandstone formation below the Island in the Sky mesa in Canyonlands National Park, Utah.

Not-so-fun fact: Back in the 1950s, The Atomic Energy Commission constructed this trail so companies could mine for uranium deposits to use for nuclear weapons during the Cold War. So, while this trail exists because of war, at least we can enjoy it now without the fighting.

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