Amasa Back – Captain Ahab -Pothole Arch – Moab, Utah – Mountain Bike Route
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Style of Riding: XC, All-Mountain
Distance: 13-23 km depending on how you put the route together.
Time: 2-5+hours
Elevation Gain: 950 meters (if you go all the way to Pothole Arch).
Trail Head: Click here for Google Maps Parking Location the actual trail-head is just a few hundred meters up the road on your right. See trail-head here.
Sub area: Amasa Back
Description: Amasa Back is an awesome riding area in Moab. You can actually ride here from Moab and it is a fairly easy road ride to the trail head, but it ads quite a bit of time to your day in the saddle.
For all rides: –> Climb up the Cliff Hanger jeep road or the HyMasa trail if you are feeling like a single track climb – from this road you can access all of the Amasa Back riding. We then suggest the following:
For an easier ride (that is still really fun) simply descend right back down the Cliff Hanger jeep road. You can go along this road for as long as you want and then just head back out.
For a harder lap we suggest you keep riding all the way out to the Pothole Arch and then either descend the HyMasa trail or the Captain Ahab trail. HyMasa trail is a memorial trail built in honor of Johnny Hymas: a lifelong cyclist who managed Moab Cyclery for a number of years. He passed leaving a beautiful family of 5 behind. Both HyMasa and Captain Ahab are incredible to ride and have loads of flow (but they are still pleasantly rough) and natural features to play on and jump off of. Such a great ride. Be warned that the first half of Captain Ahab has lots of climbing, but you can bypass some of this by riding the first half of HyMasa then crossing over to the second part of Captain Ahab.
Rockstacker or Jackson (Hole): We do not really recommend either of these trails – they are really fun, but if you only going to ride the Amasa Back area once we recommend the other rides listed above first. That said, if you are looking for a super challenging option you can ride either Rockstacker or Jackson (Hole) (or both of them) and in either case you will be in for a super technical and super hard ride. Rockstacker actually has lots of climbing as well as super hard descending and is known to be one of the more technical trails in Moab. Jackson (Hole) is a sustained descent with some large drops, views, exposure and technical riding.
Key trails are: Cliff Hanger jeep road, HyMasa trail, Captain Ahab and Pothole Arch trail.
Amasa Back – Pothole Arch, Captain Ahab, Cliff Hanger, Hymasa – RideSpots.com on Trailforks.com