Destination: Utah : The Capital of : Rock and Roll : Wheeling up, down and around the unique red rock formations surrounding Moab, Utah, the mountain biker’s mecca

Before the phrase “sprockethead” entered the local vocabulary, before Bill Groff started selling 10,000 cyclist’s water bottles a year, and long before anyone dreamed that this town would become the mountain biking capital of North America, Moab was already an improbable place.

It sat here in the southeastern corner of Utah, surrounded by dinosaur tracks, Anasazi petroglyphs and billions of tons of sandstone, baked, warped, exploded and decayed into a desert-scape of thousand-foot fins, blood-red mesas, unengineered arches, gritty winds, gnarled junipers and a deep, damp, crooked gash in the earth known as the Colorado River. Beneath its crusty skin, the place was stranger still: Uranium lay here in enormous quantities. Forty years ago, when the leaders of the American nuclear industry went looking for the power to do unearthly things, they ended up digging under these rocks.

But Utah uranium isn’t in demand the way it once was, and for the last five years Moab’s future has been rolling in on knobby rubber tires. Moab is where mountain bikers migrate to careen down the inclines of the 10-mile Slickrock Trail, to glimpse the snow-capped La Sal Mountains, to explore hundreds of miles of rock-strewn old mining trails, to torture $2,000 bicycles. To the north sprawls Arches National Park. To the southwest, Canyonlands National Park.

“I love this!” huffs Dina Kilgo, 25, a vacationing teacher from Fairfield, Calif., pumping her pedals toward the nearby summit of Poison Spider Mesa on a hot, dry afternoon. To get here, almost 5,000 feet above sea level and 1,000 feet above the trail head, the helmeted Kilgo has negotiated seven miles of path that Todd Campbell, guidebook author and bike-path sage of Moab, has described as “gonzo abusive.” She is ecstatic.

There are thousands more like her. Bicycle traffic on Slickrock, the area’s most popular trail, will probably pass 100,000 riders this year.

Most of the area’s trails were cut decades ago by off-road vehicles on land now controlled by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) or the National Forest Service. Jeeps and motorcycles can legally share most of these trails--a “Jeep safari” early this month drew more than 1,300 four-wheelers to local trails--but on most days, bicycles now outnumber motorized vehicles 100 to 1.

In town, bicycle culture burgeons. In a community with 7,000 residents and a Main Street fewer than 10 blocks long, three bike shops thrive, each with a steaming espresso machine out front. The taxicabs feature roof racks--the better to haul you and your bike to a trail head outside town. Even crime statistics--puny by any urbanite’s standard--reflect the rise of the bicycle. Police chief Alan West counted just 14 car thefts in town last year, but 41 stolen bikes.

Retrieving those bikes, by the way, is not always difficult.

“You see one of our local low-lifes riding a $5,000 bike,” says West, “and you go, ‘Aha!’ ”

Some days, the volume of strolling and coasting visitors makes the place look like one big Patagonia fashion show. Yet so far, Moab’s accommodations remain relatively modest--there are no tennis resorts here, and only one golf course--and prices remain far lower than those in this country’s most famous red rock desert retreat, Sedona. Most hotel rooms run $35-$85.

There are drawbacks. Self-consciously quaint Western art galleries are shouldering aside the optometrist and insurance agent’s offices along Main Street. The first McDonald’s arrived 3 1/2 years ago, along with a sign proclaiming itself Moab’s “other arches.” (That sign vanished after repeated vandal attacks.) Almost everyone is nervous about Moab’s newfound popularity, from Park Service veterans who worry about wilderness purity to the core of longtime locals who still prefer four-wheeling to biking.

“I have never, ever lived in an area that has meant so much to me, in my bones,” says Deb Nester, 44, who moved to Moab from Colorado four years ago.

“We are really overwhelmed. Everyone should stay home,” says Jim Stiles, publisher of the monthly Canyon Country Zephyr, a committed hiker who refuses to take up mountain biking.

Fourth-generation Moabite Cindy Winters tells me amazing tales of how some of the town’s home-grown youths used to pass leisure hours four-wheeling drunk by moonlight on the skid-marked rock formation they call Lion’s Back.

No, she allows, that wasn’t wise. But she’s bothered more, it seems, by these new bicycle people and their manners. Winters leads me out to the parking lot behind the Moab Times-Independent’s offices to show off her four-wheel-drive truck, a high-riding behemoth of a vehicle with the following, ah, cautionary message displayed above the grille: SPROCKET TERROR .

“Makes people think twice about darting out in front of you,” she says dryly.

Blue sky, red rocks. A brilliant, chilly April morning. Six of us are jouncing out of town in a four-wheel-drive Ford toward the Gemini Bridges trail. Our bikes (most of them rented for $20-$25 per day) are clipped to the roof, and trail guide Maggie Wilson of Kaibab Bike Tours is slurping highly potent coffee and briefing us on the 14-mile ride ahead.

The landscape is familiar: Cinematic characters Indiana Jones and Thelma and Louise have all been seen here, as has John Wayne in various films. It was here 30 years ago that the Chevrolet people plopped one of their new cars down on top of Castle Rock. But we’re thinking about two-wheeled exploits now.

“If your body and your mind say Whoa! listen to that,” Wilson is saying. “Otherwise . . . it’s Biff City.”

I’m no expert on Utah geography, but I know I don’t want to go there. Wilson goes on with advice on braking (use the rear brakes more than the front) and etiquette. We should stick to the well-trod trail, thereby avoiding the cryptobiotic crust that coats much of these hills and directly or indirectly sustains virtually all plant and animal life in the desert. (The best biking and recreation maps of the area are published by Latitude 40 in two parts, Moab East and Moab West, and are widely available in town, usually for about $8 each.) Like many of Moab’s year-round cycle people, Wilson has a background in environmentalism--biology bachelor’s degree, UC Santa Cruz--and choice words for riders who stray from trails.

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I strap on my helmet, poke toes into the bike stirrups, aim downhill, and start operating my jackhammer . . . that is, riding my bike, which, despite the fancy shock absorbers up front, feels like a piece of heavy machinery striking concrete rubble. The trick of downhill mountain-biking, experts say, is to absorb those blows with one’s arms, keep one’s center of gravity low and toward the rear wheel, and balance the bike in a sort of controlled forward hurdle. Heading uphill, the key is keeping your legs churning, conserving momentum in gear-shifting, and guiding your tires toward ground that allows maximum traction.

And if bumpy biking doesn’t agree with you, there are rides on smoother trails. Or you can ditch the bike and go for a hike, or sign up with one of the outfitters running rafts on the Colorado River.

The day after the Gemini Bridges ride, I explore Hurrah Pass, another 14-mile route for beginners. The trail flanks the Colorado River and peels off alongside Kane Creek, climbing, winding and swooping through shade and sun. “Physically easy/technically easy,” according to Campbell’s guide. Fine by me. Here a rider can round a corner, lean into a hard climb, and find his world reduced to the path below, the sky above, the immense canyon walls on either side, and that merciful arrangement of chain and sprocket that cyclists call “granny gear.” Time slows down, and all you hear is the desert rustling and the wind racing.

Given the time and energy, I’d ride the 16.5-mile Monitor and Merrimac trail next, then maybe the 25.4-mile Back of Behind, or the 25.2-mile Courthouse Loop. A rider could stay weeks and not run out of possibilities.

But it only makes sense to venture out on these trails when temperatures are reasonable. In July and August, highs reach between 95 and 100 degrees. In winter, temperatures dip below freezing. April and October bring the best weather for biking (though April also brings throngs of students on spring break and ski bums just released from seasonal jobs at Colorado’s resorts). Every year the season semi-officially ends with a Fat Tire Festival and Halloween party.

Author Edward Abbey once described Utah’s canyon land as “naked, monolithic, austere and unadorned as the sculpture of the moon . . . clean, pure, totally useless, quite unprofitable.”

Abbey, the unofficial bard of these parts, died in 1989. But even in 1968, when he published those words in the book “Desert Solitaire,” Abbey knew he was wishfully thinking about profitability.

After centuries of on-and-off occupation by the Anasazi and Ute, and by Mormon missionaries (the original Moab, named in the Old Testament, was an ancient kingdom in what is now Jordan), it was prospecting that built Moab into a full-fledged city in the late 19th Century. The minerals most in demand were radium (derived from carnotite ore), later followed by vanadium (used as a hardening agent for steel) and, once the worldwide run on nuclear weaponry began, uranium.

The biggest local winner in the arms race was a young miner named Charlie Steen who, working a claim he called Mi Vida, struck a massive supply of uranium in 1952. Within a few years, he grossed more than $60 million, built a fancy house on a hilltop, and from fancy parties on his deck, watched Moab’s population grow to more than 10,000.

The good days stretched into years, and Moabites got used to both working and playing around their remarkable rocks. In 1969, a motorcyclist named Dick Wilson persuaded the BLM to mark off an off-road sandstone trail near the city dump (“America’s Most Scenic Dump,” a sign announces these days). Slickrock, it was called. Since the path was on sandstone, the BLM decided, it appeared not to threaten soil and plant resources.

Then in the early 1980s the mining industry collapsed, the town’s population fell by 20%, the unemployment rate reached 19.5%. And the seeds of the new Moab were quietly and frugally sown.

Brothers Bill and Robin Groff, whose family had worked for years in the mining business, somehow decided a bike shop might fly here, in a mining town on the verge of drying up and blowing away. In 1983, with $4,000 in start-up money, they opened their small shop, Rim Cyclery, concentrating on road cyclists.

Word spread, and, gradually, mountain bikers effectively took over the Slickrock trail. Now Rim Cyclery’s inventory fills 8,000 square feet. A new visitor center stands at Center and Main streets, with fancy xeriscaping outside and dozens of pamphlets from outfitters, bike shops and hotels inside. And Charlie Steen’s fancy house on the hill is the Mi Vida restaurant, having been converted in 1974 after Steen encountered tax troubles and a run of bad mining luck.

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Bikes may be lighter than Jeeps, but they still make tracks. And the habits of their riders have authorities groping for new ways to protect the desert.

Alex VanHemert, outdoor recreation planner for the BLM in Moab, says riders on Slickrock and other popular trails could be assessed day-use fees as soon as next spring, and is hoping for added staffing to discourage riders from straying off trails. (The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, staunchest conservation group in the region, has opposed motorized off-road vehicles in many areas, but has stopped short of calling for broad mountain-biking bans.)

Then there’s the human waste problem. In heavily used camping areas such as Slickrock and along the Colorado River, budget-conscious campers have been setting up their tents for free on BLM land, but failing to properly disposing of their solid waste. (Depending on the area, the BLM requires that campers either bring portable waste containers or bury waste six inches deep and 300 feet from the nearest water source.) Portable toilets and camping fees have been added in some heavily used areas, but BLM officials and activists agree Moab needs more camping restrictions or responsible, enlightened campers.

Meanwhile, the old Atlas uranium mill, idle for a decade, lies crumbled a few miles from town. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is holding hearings over where to dispose of the controversial rubble.

It may look unearthly, but Moab ain’t heaven.

“There is a lot of tension here,” affirms Campbell. The trail-guide author, 32, arrived not quite 11 years ago as an environmental studies major from UC Santa Barbara. Since then, he has led bike tours, worked for the BLM, collaborated on a trail and written a biker’s guidebook. Now he’s promoting a May 30 reggae concert that he hopes will raise money for local wilderness education efforts, and fretting more and more about the future.

“Six-hundred-year-old juniper trees are getting pulled down and burned for campfires,” he says, and the town and trails are getting awfully busy for him. In five years, he says, he may not be here.

But the cliffs keep coming up rosy every morning, and the trails beckon. Before he leaves, Campbell has a vexing problem to solve:

“Where do you go after Moab?”

GUIDEBOOK: The Moab Cycle

Getting there: Moab is about a 12-hour drive from Los Angeles, roughly 700 miles northeast via interstates 10, 15 and 70, and then south on either U.S. 191 or Utah 128. The Moab airport gets weekday commuter flights via Alpine Air from Salt Lake City. The airport in Grand Junction, Colo., 100 miles east of Moab, gets daily flights from commuter lines in Denver, Salt Lake City and Phoenix. Cheapest restricted round trip fares for connecting flights from Los Angeles begin at $302 (Continental and America West) and $307 (United and Delta). Rental cars and four-wheel-drive vehicles are available at the airport.

Where to stay: There are now more than 1,000 hotel and motel rooms in the Moab area, plus scores of B&B;, guest-house and vacation apartment operations, and camping at Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service sites. I stayed at the Moab Valley Inn (711 S. Main St., Moab, Utah 84532; telephone 800-831-6622 or 801-259-4419), which was clean and efficient, but which bans bicycles from inside spaces and doesn’t bother to provide any bicycle storage. With double rooms renting at $77 nightly, they should. A typical middle-range lodging is the Sunset Motel (also known as the Arches Inn, 41 West 100 North, Moab, Utah 84532; tel. 801-259-5191), where most double rooms usually run $65 nightly. Cheapest non-camping option is the Lazy Lizard International Hostel (1213 S. Highway 191, Moab, Utah 84532; tel. 801-259-6057), a dormitory arrangement that holds up to 55 people sharing nine showers and eight toilets. Rate: $7 per night. Bookings at most area lodgings can be made through Moab/Canyonlands Central Reservations (92 E. Center St., Suite 1, Moab, Utah 84532; tel. 800-748-4386 or 801-259-5125).

Where to eat: Center Cafe (92 E. Center St.; tel. 259-4295) specializes in contemporary American cuisine. Most entrees: $9.95-$12.95. Mi Vida Restaurant (900 N. Highway 191; tel. 259-7146) offers views and a menu heavy on steak, seafood and pasta. Entrees: $9.95-$17.95. The Grand Old Ranch House (1266 N. Highway 191; tel. 259-5753), an antique-stuffed 1896 home, offers standard American and German specialties. Dinner entrees run $8.95-$17.95. The Fat City Smokehouse (36 South 100 West; tel. 259-4302) features both Texas-style barbecue and several vegetarian dishes, and is a good bet for lunch. Main dishes: $4-$14.50. The town microbrewery, and a hot spot with mountain bikers, is Eddie McStiff’s Restaurant and Brew Pub (57 S. Main St.; tel. 259-2337). Entrees: $7.50-$13. Pints: $2.50.

Where to find bicycle gear: Moab’s big three bike shops, each selling and renting bikes and accessories, are Rim Cyclery (94 West 1st North; tel. 801-259-5333), Poison Spider Bicycles (497 N. Main St.; tel. 800-635-1792 or 801-259-7882) and Kaibab Mountain/Desert Bike Tours (391 S. Main St.; tel. 800-451-1133 or 801-259-7423).

What to read: “Above and Beyond Slickrock” (by Todd Campbell, 282 pages, $16.95, published by Moab Outabouts, P.O. Box 314, Moab, Utah 84532) is a detailed, map-filled compendium of 40 rides around Moab. The book is available in bookstores and bike shops throughout Moab.

For more information: Contact the Moab Travel Council (200 North 100 West, Moab, Utah 84532; tel. 800-635-6622 or 801-259-8825).