🌯 Give Your Sunday Scaries the Whole Enchilada

Last weekend, we had plans to check Monarch Crest off my mountain biking bucket list. It’s an iconic Colorado ride I’ve wanted to do since I found my love of mountain biking three years ago. We had the weekend blocked, the shuttle booked, and I was READY.

And then it rained.

In what has quite possibly been the driest summer I’ve ever experienced in Colorado, OF COURSE it decided to rain the weekend I was finally going to ride the Monarch Crest.

Plug pulled. 

I was pissed.

Until the consolation prize became The Whole Enchilada in Moab.

If you’re not a mountain biker, The Whole Enchilada is exactly as ridiculous as its name suggests: a massive ride that starts high in the La Sal Mountains at 11,500 feet and drops all the way down to the Colorado River in Moab.

34 miles, 7,000+ feet of descending, what seemed like five different rides, and 7.5 hours in the saddle. 

It was glorious, and instead of just telling you about it, I thought I’d take you along for the ride.

1. Sometimes the Consolation Prize Isn’t One.

I love Moab. It is one of the places that just fills my cup, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was still kind of mad that we weren’t going to Salida for Monarch Crest up until about halfway into this long-*ss shuttle ride. 

You pile yourself, your bike, and a bunch of other questionably sane people into a shuttle and drive WAY up into the La Sal Mountains. As we climbed closer and closer to the unique high alpine forest above Moab, complete with its changing fall leaves, I started to realize this wasn’t really Plan B. 

This was Plan A+++, complete with a red carpet rolled out upon our arrival!

2. Burro: Earn It.

You’d think a ride famous for more than 7,000 feet of descending would have the decency to start by going downhill.

Nope.

The ride begins with a kick-in-the-teeth climb to the top of Burro Pass somewhere around 11,300 feet above sea level, and you must make it there before you earn any of that sweet, sweet gravity.

And then came one of my favorite surprises of the entire ride: yellow aspens.

We hadn’t gone looking for fall colors, and suddenly we were surrounded by them.

For the dozens and dozens of times we’ve been to Moab, this was a first because we usually go later in the fall. 

Bonus? We got to ride through what we call the “yellow brick road” of changing aspens just as we pointed the bikes downhill into a steep, rowdy, fast, and INTENSE several miles that had all of us grinning.

There was no easing into this thing, and that was ok by me.

3. Hazard: Take the Wins.

After completing the Burro Pass downhill, there’s another come-on, cardio, climb to the top of the Hazard County section of the ride. 

This section was FUN. 

Faster, flowier, less technical, and full of those little trail features that give you about three seconds to decide whether you’re riding them or chickening out.

And I kept riding them. 

This is where the progress I’ve made over the past year of cycling started to really show, and my pride began to beam. There were features I cleaned that I know would have made me hesitate earlier this season.

There were definitely some audible screams of “HELL YES” that all four of us shared. 

It’s pretty awesome when you just realize you’re riding things you used to walk.

4. Kokopelli: Find the Familiar.

Then, in the middle of this completely unfamiliar epic adventure, we hit something we knew.

Kokopelli Trail.

Kokopelli stretches roughly 142 miles between Moab and Loma, Colorado, a section just west of us we regularly ride in our off seasons at home. This section looked different. It was wider and felt more like an old Jeep road, which meant we could absolutely bomb down it (sorry, Mom). 

But there was something really freaking cool about being hours into this enormous ride in Utah and suddenly realizing:

Hey. We know where this goes.

Familiarity can show up in unexpected places; savor it when it does!

5. UPS/LPS: Not Every Part Has to Be Your Favorite.

UPS and LPS were probably my least favorite sections, except for this incredible view where we clearly took a break for obligatory photo ops. 

This section was more like technical cross-country and slickrock riding, which I’m not as accustomed to. It also features a section literally called The Snotch (a ridiculous S-shaped rock formation). It was challenging enough for me to hike my bike down and hand it to Laurel at the bottom. I have no heavenly clue how anyone actually rides it. 

Those people are insane.

This whole stretch had more punchy ups and downs, twisty slickrock, and considerably less of the WE’RE FLYING downhill feeling I’d grown rather fond of.

But here’s the thing about doing something epic:

Not every part has to feel epic.

Some parts are hard. Some are tedious. Some aren’t your style. Some you just get through because they’re between where you are and where you’re going.  And if the view is the payoff, that’s ok too. 

6. Porcupine: Enjoy the Payoff.

And then…

Porcupine.

This was the payoff.

Big views. Big rocks. Endless choose-your-own-adventure lines where you could make the ride approximately as spicy as you wanted it to be. After hours of riding through aspens, forest, dirt, slickrock, Jeep road, and desert, we’d somehow landed in yet another completely different world.

And then, because Moab apparently has a sense of humor, the final couple of miles are some of the hardest riding of the entire freaking day (and in all of Moab ). 

At this point, we’d been on our bikes for HOURS.

I think my brain was more tired from making 135,000 subconscious micro-decisions over the previous six hours than my legs were.

Regardless. There was some walking.

Maybe a lot of walking. 

But eventually, after roughly 29 miles of actual trail, just as the sun glowed on the top of the rim it was setting behind, there I was…on a paved road next to the river. 

I had ridden The Whole Enchilada. 

Which brings me to…

7. Get the Hell Out of There.

Despite the several miles of road riding required to get to the car, I was done.

Including the lovely cool down on the road along the river, we’d covered about 34 miles, descended more than 7,000 feet, spent roughly 7.5 hours out there, and I’d burned somewhere around 1,700 calories.

I was simultaneously exhausted and completely wired. And hungry, and I ate every single bite of a burger, sweet potato waffle fries, and maybe even some shared nachos as we hangrily entered a restaurant covered in dirt, dust, and love for the experience we had just had.  

I was ridiculously satisfied.

The sense of accomplishment was remarkable, and I will forever consider this a Top Three life win. Very few things I’ve done have left me feeling quite like that.

Was every mile fun? No. I didn’t ride every inch of trail, clear every feature, or come away without a little blood (hey, you’re not mountain biking if there is no blood), but we did it. 

The entire reason we were there was because the plan had failed, and for that I will always be insanely grateful. 

The next morning, after a truly garbage night of sleep in a tent being pummeled by desert rain and wind, Laurel cooked pancakes, eggs, and bacon.

And then, because apparently none of us had learned anything, we got back on our bikes.

The fact that The Whole Enchilada didn’t wreck me enough to keep me off my bike the next day took the accomplishment to a new level, even if we picked a less-than-stellar option that had been totally beat up by the rain. 

Regardless, I set a big goal.

I failed to accomplish that goal.

Monarch Crest is still sitting there on the bucket list, unchecked, but in the failure to reach my goal, I got something just as good, if not better. 

Sometimes success looks exactly like the thing you planned, and sometimes, it looks like getting dropped off at 11,000 feet with a mountain bike and some of your best friends and discovering there was another win available instead. 

You can mourn the setback…or you can look around and see what other version of success might be available. 

Pretty glad we found this version of success.

Your Friend and Coach,
Angie

(PS: Monarch, we’ll be back.)