Moab Brands Focus Mountain Biking

In preparation of Conor coming out to Moab next week, I have been scouting out some of the mountain biking and hiking trails to keep the young mind occupied while he is with me for the week. Today I visited and sampled the Brands Focus area just north of Moab which has 11 different trail options for mountain bike riding from beginner to higher level intermediate riders.

I went out, what happened to be, early in the day… starting just after 10am. There was only one other car parked in the lot, so I had the place to myself, mostly. I started with the ‘Lazy EZ‘ loop which is 2.8 miles of mild biking.The first half was fairly flat as you navigated around a hill of slickrock. Once at the southern tip, you climb right up and into the slickrock and begin a mid-speed decent full of twists and turns making it a worthy climax to the trail.

It was a great warmup and a good sample of what was to come when I decided to also do the ‘North 40‘ loop for another 4 miles of intermediate and semi-technical biking. The North Loop tested me a lot more than Lazy Ez, but I still felt well within my abilities and had a great time biking the up’s and down’s over dirt an slickrock. There were a few fairly brutal climbs, but the trail designers kept them short enough to handle (with a small break after) without killing me. The speeds were well below what I expected as the trail itself was very narrow and lined with large rocks to keep you on it. If you did happen to go off trail, either by accident or stupidity, you hit very soft soil and sunk right in. It was not the way to go, so keeping it on the packed-dirt ribbon was crucial so I slowed my speeds to do just that.

I will be revisiting this area when Conor is here, and I will be sure to take some pictures and video while we are out on the trails.