CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
On the way it passes Zion Canyon junction, Zion Mount Carmel Tunnel and Checkerboard Mesa. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,250 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For 8 km this is Zion-Mount Carmel Highway, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Springdale is a one-street town pressed against the walls of Zion Canyon, and its few thousand sandstone-coloured buildings, cafes, shops and motels all exist for the national park next door. Mormon pioneers founded the settlement in 1862, drawn by springs and the Virgin River, which cuts a narrow gorge through the red rock, and they farmed orchards and fields along it. Today the main road is lined with cottonwoods, and the huge cliffs of Zion rise above the rooftops, turning from pale pink to flaming red at sunset.
Read the complete Springdale write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Springdale is where the day begins. Next is Zion Canyon junction.
Zion is an odd park, because its main road is closed to you. The Zion Canyon Scenic Drive, which runs up the Virgin River valley between towering sandstone cliffs, is generally given over to shuttle buses for most of the year, and the spot where it leaves Highway 9 is Canyon Junction. The shuttle stop is a few steps from the road, with the Watchman rising behind it, a blunt buttress of red rock. The motorcycle stays on Highway 9, which means the real ride starts here, up the switchbacks toward the east.
Read the complete Zion Canyon junction write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Zion Canyon junction comes up 17 km in. Next is Zion Mount Carmel Tunnel.
The Zion-Mount Carmel Tunnel is a long, narrow bore through a cliff, a mile and a tenth from end to end, and it was one of the great engineering gambles of its time. Crews working in the late 1920s drilled it by hand and dynamite through solid sandstone, and carved a series of windows in the canyon-side wall to let in light and let out dust. Those openings are still there, glimpses of daylight and drop and sky that flash by as you ride, which is as close as you will come to being inside a cathedral on a motorcycle. The tunnel opened in 1930, and for a long time it was the only way across the plateau.
Read the complete Zion Mount Carmel Tunnel write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
34 km in you reach Zion Mount Carmel Tunnel. Next is Checkerboard Mesa.
Checkerboard Mesa looks as though someone has scored a giant loaf of bread with a ruler. The great dome of Navajo sandstone is crossed by two sets of lines, one set horizontal and curving, and the other vertical and straight, and the effect is a checkerboard pattern that runs the height of the rock. The horizontal lines are the ancient dunes, the sloping layers laid down by wind in a desert some 190 million years ago. The vertical cracks came later, as the rock shrank and the stone dried and split, and weathering has deepened both.
Read the complete Checkerboard Mesa write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Checkerboard Mesa, late in the day. Next is Mount Carmel Junction.
Mount Carmel Junction is hardly a settlement at all, just a crossroads on US 89 where the road from Zion comes out onto the high plateau, with a motel, a diner and a petrol pump or two. But after the narrow gorges and tunnels you have come through, its openness is a relief. The land is a wide, pale, sage-covered plateau, with low pink cliffs in the distance, and a big sky overhead.
Read the complete Mount Carmel Junction write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Finish at Mount Carmel Junction. That is the ride.
Springdale → Zion Canyon junction is 9 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Zion Mount Carmel Tunnel → Checkerboard Mesa is 15 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Checkerboard Mesa → Mount Carmel Junction is 40 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.