Climate advocate Bill Barron brings 700-mile bike tour to Four Corners

Bill Barron’s 700-plus-mile ride through Utah’s Mighty 5 is ending where access is easiest to feel and hardest to ignore: on the park roads and backcountry loops of Arches and Canyonlands. The Salt Lake City climate advocate started in Zion on May 8, rode northeast through Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef, and is using the final leg to push climate solutions while talking with local communities about the places they bike, hike and explore.

Barron is set to hold a press conference at 3 p.m. Friday, May 15, at Grand View Point in Island in the Sky. On Saturday, May 16, he is inviting the public on a 35.6-mile Grand Fondo through Arches National Park, beginning and ending at the visitor center and climbing the main road to Devils Garden before returning the same way. The tour wraps Sunday, May 17, with a 102-mile group ride in Canyonlands, starting at 5:30 a.m. for a full-day run of the White Rim.

Barron’s own tour site says the ride is meant to bring people together around “protecting the places we love” while building political will for climate solutions. Along the route, he is hosting conversations about Citizens’ Climate Lobby policy commitments to reduce emissions and remove climate pollution. That mission fits a long arc of advocacy work that started in Utah in the 1990s, when Barron moved there to work as a ski patroller in the Wasatch.

He later founded Renewable Energy Resources, then helped launch Citizens’ Climate Lobby’s Salt Lake City chapter in 2010. Citizens’ Climate Lobby says Barron became Mountain West Regional Coordinator in 2013 and leads its Ski and Outdoor Industry Action Team. Protect Our Winters says he has run for office three times on a climate platform. Barron has said he has ridden more than 4,700 miles speaking up for climate solutions.

The park settings make the itinerary matter to more than cyclists. Arches has more than 2,000 natural stone arches, and Devils Garden sits 18 miles from the visitor center at the end of the park road. Canyonlands’ White Rim Road is a 100-mile loop around and below Island in the Sky, and day-use permits are capped at 50 mountain bikes a day, with groups limited to 15 bicycles. Zion drew 4,946,592 recreation visits in 2024, a reminder of how much pressure these landscapes carry.

That is what gives Barron’s ride its edge: the final miles are not just symbolic. They run through the same crowded, carefully managed terrain that makes the Mighty 5 both a playground and a proving ground.