Moab 2019 – HyMasa and Captain Ahab

The Amasa Back trail is one of the oldest classic mountain bike rides of Moab area. It descends from the Kane Creek road just west of Moab and then climbs up onto an outcropping of rock (a.k.a. Amasa Back) that is surrounded in the distance by the Colorado River.

The trail initially climbs the broken ledges of the red-brown Kayenta Sandstone and then predominately exists in the tan course-grained slick rock Navajo Sandstone. Both of those formations are part of the Glen Canyon group which existed in the 175-200 million-year-old early Jurassic Era. The Kayenta sediments were deposited in a Fluvial (river) environment, while the Navajo were in an Eolian (windblown) environment composed of massive sand dunes which are comprised of two entities, large-scale trough cross-stratification, and flatter interdunes.

Many moons ago the only way to ride up to the Amasa Back was to use the rough, dirty and gnarly Cliffhanger jeep/4×4 road. Thankfully the local trail organization in the Moab area added the HyMasa trail in 2014 which switchbacks and leapfrogs back and forth across Cliffhanger and occasional leaves it far off in the distance before coming back to it at the trail’s endpoint. HyMasa is mostly a climbing trail with some tough short technical sections and occasional flatter pieces in between everything.

HyMasa is divided up into a lower and upper section, with the lower providing a way to access the midpoint of the Captain Ahab trail. While HyMasa is a stout blue/black, the Captain Ahab trail is mostly a downhill expert-level singletrack, that is chunky, technical, and wild. You can ride the HyMasa as fun out and back trail or use it to gain access to the more technical Captain Ahab trail. I pretty much consider the duality of the HyMasa and Captain Ahab loop as a complete, most do, and utterly entertaining package.

You’ll start at the Amasa Back trailhead parking lot on Kane Springs Road/Kane Creek Blvd about 6 miles west of Moab. You ride the dirt road for just under a half mile and turn right onto the HyMasa singletrack which drops you down to Kane Springs Creek (it was running about 6 inches deep at the time), and from there it’s a short ride up Cliffhanger until you turn right onto the main HyMasa singletrack. The local trail group is slowly working on new singletrack that will directly leave the trailhead parking lot and follow the creek until meeting the Cliffhanger trail, bypassing having to use the Kane Springs road.

HyMasa crosses Cliffhanger three times along its 3+ mile journey to its terminus with the upper Captain Ahab entrance, and you’ll pass a shortcut access point to get to the mid-Captain Ahab entrance if desired.

At the end of HyMasa is the start of upper Captain Ahab, which starts with a decently long grunt of a climb, and it offers spectacular views of Jackson Hole and Canyonlands off in the distance. Once the climbs and some side traversing is completed, you’ll come to a meaty significant rock drop, which is imminently walkable for us mere mortals. The upper section has lot’s of gnarly drops, ledges, chutes, pinches, rollers, and rock ramps, with plenty of short, punchy climbs here and there.

The lower half of the trail mellows out compared to the top, but it’s still significant, meaty, technical, and chunky, with ton’s of rollable slabs and armored ledges. Towards the bottom, the trail gains some exposure high above Kane Springs Creek, and it gets faster, tighter, dicier, spicier, and more technical and intimidating, though it is interspersed with fun flowy sections and reversals. I flowed and bashed my way through the bottom part without any dabs, and it certainly was exciting, thrilling and invigorating.

Unfortunately, towards the bottom of Captain Ahab, one of my teammates left some flesh on the rocks when he took a nasty arm and shoulder digger. Ouch.