CHASING DOOM

A different kind of outfitter is mapping a different kind of backcountry adventure that tests limits, with unknown outcomes. Three friends accept the challenge to combine backpacking and packrafting and chart a freewheeling path across the rugged Southwest.

- GRAHAM AVERILL

“I BET SHE GOES,” Doom says, peering down the dusty trail we’re currently riding, a trail which, technically, doesn’t exist. It’s not on the National Geographic map, and registers only as a faint line on his GPS, like a ghost, disappearing abruptly in the middle of a canyon.

This situation is nothing new; Doom uses plenty of trails that were originally scratched into the desert by motorcycles or cowboys but have never been made official. But this trail is supposed to be our exit strategy after four days of hard biking, and if it doesn’t go, we’re going to have to make some painful adjustments.

“I don’t know. I hope she goes,” Doom says with an uneasy laugh as we cross an active creek and push our bikes up the sandy bank. We hop over a downed tree and…the trail vanishes in a wall of thick sage.

She doesn’t go.

We’re in Bears Ears National Monument, in southeastern Utah, trying to climb out of a dusty gorge choked with head-high brush. The mystery trail was great for 6 miles or so, a wide path that dropped elevation fast and narrowed as it crossed the creek a half-dozen times before it unceremoniously died.

It’s a good news/bad news deal. The good news is that the creek is the most reliable water source we’ve seen in days, so we won’t die of thirst.