Monster Mesa – 6 Mesas, 120 Miles, One Day

Posted on

A Southwestern mesa landscape in predawn light with a tiny mountain biker riding a rail on the edge of a cliff.
Mountain biker Pierce Kettering, on the Flying Monkey trail, at the start of his 120-mile Monster Mesa ride.

Early this October, Over the Edge Hurricane retail manager Pierce Kettering, took on a huge challenge – riding all 6 Hurricane/Zion mesas in one day. We’re not talking about just pedaling a trail on each mesa, either. He rode them all in one continuous loop he named the Monster Mesa ride. The final stats were 6 mesas, 119.24 miles with 13 hours, 28 minutes ride time and 11,400 feet of climbing. Most mountain bikers are happy riding one mesa in a day – maybe two if conditions are right and they’re feeling ambitious. Riding all 6 mesas in one day, though – that ain’t right. That’s something that doesn’t even occur to normal people. Pierce isn’t your average mountain biker, though.

Watch Pierce’s video of his 120-mile Monster Mesa mountain bike adventure.

The sandstone mesas between Hurricane, Utah and Zion National Park are world-renowned for their technical slickrock trails and beautiful Southwestern scenery. Gooseberry Mesa, Grafton Mesa, Guacamole, Flying Monkey, Wire Mesa and Little Creek Mesa – these mesas are the reason mountain bikers travel from all over the world to ride the Hurricane/Zion area. Each mesa has its own character but they all share a similar mix of chunky slickrock, sandy soil and juniper-pinyon forest with a dramatic Zion backdrop.

A mountain biker rides a singletrack trail with the dramatic red rock cliffs of Zion National Park in the background.
Pierce, leaving Gooseberry Mesa (mesa number 3), with Zion National Park’s West Temple formation in the background.

Most mountain bikers tackle one mesa at time. Mesa miles are harder than regular miles and a ten or fifteen-mile mesa ride is a solid day for most people.  While we don’t have a lot of big climbs, the mesas have lots of steep, punchy uphill and chunky technical descents. They aren’t long but they take it out of you – 20 feet of elevation at a time. If you’ve ridden in Southern Utah, you know what we mean.

Pierce isn’t most mountain bikers, though. He’s done tons of racing in the last couple of years and podiumed in many of the races he’s entered. He’s also done a lot of endurance riding – knocking out 100 miles on the bike is nothing new to him. In hindsight, it seems natural he’d string together a ride that incorporates all the Hurricane mesas. It’s a natural outcome of all the riding and training he’s done over the past few years.

A cyclist pedals up a steep Southern Utah road in pre-dawn light.
The first challenge of the 120-mile Monster Mesa ride – an 1800 foot climb on the steep Mesa Road to access the Flying Monkey Trail. The town of Virgin down below with Gooseberry Mesa in the background.

The course Pierce decided on started and ended at the Sheep Bridge/JEM trailhead in the center of all the mesas. He started pedaling at 6:36 AM, climbed 1800 feet up the paved road to Hurricane Mesa, descended Flying Monkey trail (one of the trails Red Bull Rampage competitors warm up on) to Virgin, pedaled up Dalton Wash Road and rode the Guacamole trails. After Guacamole, he rode back down to Virgin, across the valley and up an abandoned pioneer road to Gooseberry Mesa. On Gooseberry, he rode North Rim to the Point, headed back east on the South Rim then followed Gander Trail to Grafton Mesa. He descended the notoriously steep and chunky Grafton DH (a shuttle trail for most riders) then pedaled up the Crybaby Hill dirt road and rode Wire Mesa.

A tiny cyclist riding a sandy road through heatwaves with the red rocks of Zion National Park in the background.
Pierce pedals the sandy Little Creek Road in 100-degree heat.

That left just one mesa – Little Creek. Ironically, the mesa with “Little” in its name is the longest and hardest part of the ride. There’s a long jeep road approach and it was hot – really hot. One thing Pierce hadn’t considered was an untimely heat wave. While it’s common for the Hurricane area to have temps in the triple digits in the summer, October is usually much cooler. The weather should have been perfect for a big mesa endurance ride but with the thermometer bouncing off 100 F, conditions were not ideal – especially late in the day with 60 miles to go. Pierce lives and trains in the desert, though. Even though cooler weather would have been nice, he’s used to 100-degree riding.

Pierce finished Little Creek Mesa right around sunset, tired, seeing ghosts and with the sun in his eyes. Even though the 6th mesa was complete, he still had 10+ miles to navigate to get back to the Jem trailhead. In the dark, mostly.

Just after 8 PM, with about 13.5 hours on the trail, Pierce pedaled back into the parking lot at the Sheep Bridge/JEM trailhead. He was surprisingly chipper for someone who’d just completed 120 miles of riding in tough conditions on some very technical terrain.

A nighttime photo of a cyclist with lights on his mountain bike, gets a hug from a friend while another man looks on in the background.
Pierce Kettering gets a congratulatory hug after finishing his 120-mile Monster Mesa mountain bike ride in Southern Utah.

The Monster Mesa Bike

Pierce did the whole Monster Mesa ride on his Ibis Exie – a 100mm cross-country race bike. Most people ride the Hurricane mesa trails on trail bikes or enduro bikes: 120mm to 160mm of suspension, beefy tires and long, slack geometry are standard equipment for the mesas. Flying Monkey and the Grafton DH are serious downhill trails. Modern enduro bikes are amazing and that’s what most people ride them on now; but some still prefer full-on freeride and downhill bikes. That Pierce chose to do the whole Monster Mesa ride on an ultralight, short-travel XC bike says a lot about his technical skills and confidence as well the Ibis Exie’s capabilities. We wouldn’t recommend taking the Exie on those trails. But Pierce has proven it can handle them.

An outdoor photo of a dusty, black carbon fiber cross country mountain bike in front of a red dirt Southern Utah mesa.
The Ibis Exie cross-country mountain bike Pierce used to ride the 120-mile Southern Utah Monster Mesa epic.

For more on the Ibis Exie and Pierce’s Monster Mesa bike setup, visit our Ibis Exie bike page and check out the Monster Mesa Bike photo gallery below.

Monster Mesa Conclusion

The Monster Mesa Mountain Bike Ride is an amazing achievement. For most of us, it’s just a fantasy – maybe even a nightmare. We are super proud of Pierce for having the vision, training and perseverance to complete the Monster Mesa Epic. If you’d like to attempt the Monster Mesa Challenge, follow Pierce on Strava and download his Monster Mesa track. We’ll be happy to give you more beta at the shop and help in any other way we can. We’d love to see more endurance mountain bikers coming to ride the Hurricane/Zion area. There’s a lot more to Southern Utah than Red Bull Rampage and technical slickrock.

Pierce Kettering’s Ibis Exie Monster Mesa Bike


Tags: , , ,

4a26c0f2-6d2d-4b98-bc4a-e6bc0356a263