Trail conditions this year (Nov 2025) is excellent. The silt pits are nonexistant which means a much much easier climb for sandhill (counter clockwise). I’ve done whiterim a few times clockwise, but never counter clockwise. I like that you get the challenges over with doing it counter clockwise.
We had 9 riders, half of those on 250 lb smallish dual sports and the other half on 450lb+ bikes.
No major mechanical issues nor medical issues. End of sept my buddy washed out his front tire in some sand and crashed injuring his ribs and putting a hole in his side-case (T7). I laid his bike down on its side. Removed the side case and cleaned it best I could. Then I applied epoxy putty from both sides and it held and he road it out of there. With no bailouts and being half way through the whiterim, it could be catastrophic to have any medical/mechanical issues.
So, it was a rescue operation as soon as the bike was down. Thus we wanted to complete the ride. I’d rather do 4-5 riders, but we just kept inviting more and more people.
Day1: Sandflats to Onion Creek and back to moab was about 85 miles. All super-hwy dirt roads (50mph+) except a few spots that were fun on the big bikes.
Day2: Long Canyon to Cowboy campsite to Mineral Bottoms to whiterim, up shafer and then down long canyon again.
Long Canyon is becoming like Shafer to me. its fun to go up and down at almost every trip to Moab. Both take about 15 minutes to do one direction. In fact those that did long canyon beat those that went the Potash road route by 15-20 minutes.
My buddy Eric dropped his Africa twin on the sandhill(hardscramble). It trapped his leg and I was right behind him so I was able to quickly pull the bike off of him. Glad he listened to me and upgraded his boots from last year (hiking to mx boots)! He was limping the rest of the day. I hope he doesn’t need surgery or suffers too long in pain!
At about 3 hours in, I noticed we were about half way through making good time. So we stopped at several places I road past in past rides. Colorado River overlook (you can ride right up to the cliff), Musselman arch (really close to the road), gooseneck overlook (5 min walk).
Everyone did great staying together. The guys that enjoy riding fast would go ahead and stop at any intersections or viewpoints. If there was no view points they would stop about every 45 minutes and take photos and take a break.
Metrics:
Total time about 9 hours.
Moving time 5h 45 min
stopped time 3h
Distance gaia gps recorded (didn’t start before I left town). 124miles, but trip meter was pretty close to 160 miles. When I filled up my T7, it only had .5 gallons left, so that is about 20 miles. Near the end the light came on and of course blinking for a long time the last bar of fuel.
I learned a valuable lesson. There was a truck slid off the trail (soft solder and really went off, almost rolled). We tried 20-30 minutes to help them. As we are on the slider rail of the truck, with one of our guys driving with the idea of anchor to another truck, but spin the rear tires and get it to go down the hill and then back it down/out. 4 of our largest guys, including me on the rail. I got a strong impression that one or more of us was going to get hurt. So I put my hand on each persons shoulder and said, we are out, lets get back on the trail. Not our circus not our monkeys. I was grateful they each listened to me as I know how strong of an impulse it is to try to solve problems. I offered my inreach to send a msg. but it was near the beginning so the best option was to catch a ride to the top with cell service. I satellite msg my remote travel support guy and didn’t hear back because cell service. Later that night the guy was in Helper Utah just fine, so he did get help.
Borrowed video I found that is the best video of whiterim I’ve ever seen!
