Gold Bar Rim to Portal

Pictures

We decided to do the epic Gold Bar Rim to the Portal Trail. This ride is a point to point ride, so we left a car a few mile up Potash Road, at the end of the Portal Trail and drove the truck to the start of the ride on the other side of the rim. It has been a few years since Kevin and I rode the trail, guided by “Dirty Bill”, but as we started much of what we encountered was extremely familiar. Mike had his new GPS so he could map the route out and have it for future reference. The beginning of the ride is a jeep road for a number of miles before you reach the backside of the rim to start the climb. Once you start to climb, it’s pretty much climbing constantly. We took a break in the shade a rock ledge, a quick snack and off we went to the rim. We checked out the awesome view for a few minutes, then proceeded to ride the rim towards the Portal Trail. We had planned on eating lunch in Pin Hole Arch, a very small arch right on the rim, very visible from the highway below, but almost impossible to see when riding. We had made some reference points to the arch from landmarks near the highway while traveling to the start of the ride, so we were pretty certain that we would find it. Good planning led us right to the arch and we took a few pictures and ate our food. Now that we had eaten the next portion of the ride is to follow the rim all the way to the Portal Trail. This is where the trail is difficult to follow, but there were a lot of cairns to guide us and eventually we reached a jeep road that both myself and Kevin recognized went to the Portal Trail. This trail is on the edge of a cliff and has some scary exposure to the river below, it is not for the faint of heart. The trail is short and in no time we were at the bottom to our car, so we could drive it back to get our truck that was left at the start of the ride. We took a little side trip down the road to see some petroglyphs and then headed back to town. An awesome epic ride. — John