Moab guide likely completes 250th White Rim lap in Canyonlands

Mike Smith may have been closing in on a 250th lap of the White Rim, but the number says as much about the road as it does about the rider. At 80, the Moab guide has spent decades reading a 100-mile loop that circles and drops below the Island in the Sky mesa top, a ride the National Park Service says usually takes mountain bikers three to four days.

Smith first rode the White Rim in the mid-1980s, after coming to the Moab area to bike, hang glide and climb. His road to Canyonlands began far from Utah. Raised on the East Coast, Smith left in 1976, sold his home and headed west with no fixed destination. He eventually settled in Boulder, Colorado, where he taught surveying and mapping at Red Rocks Community College and ran a surveying business.

A 1990 car crash that left him with a severe head injury changed his trajectory again. After a long recovery, Smith moved to Moab and became a backcountry mountain bike guide. He went on to spend roughly 30 years guiding for Rim Tours and leading hundreds of multi-day White Rim trips, becoming one of the people most closely tied to the route’s modern riding culture.

That kind of mileage matters on a road where experience can make the difference between a good trip and a hard one. The White Rim includes steep, exposed stretches such as the Shafer Trail, Lathrop Canyon Road, Murphy Hogback, Hardscrabble Hill and the Mineral Bottom switchbacks. The park service warns that bad weather makes those sections especially demanding, and high water on the Green River can flood the western side badly enough to make a complete loop impossible.

The logistics are part of the lesson, too. Day-use permits are limited to 50 mountain bikes and 50 vehicles per day. Overnight bicycle trips require a permit, and White Rim backcountry reservations are competitive in spring and fall, opening four months before each season on Recreation.gov. For riders planning a trip, the route is not just about fitness; it is about picking the right window and respecting the limits of the canyon.

White Rim also carries a history older than the biking culture that now defines it. The corridor was widened and extended by the Atomic Energy Commission to move uranium-bearing rock out of the backcountry, and the road takes its name from the White Rim Sandstone, the resistant layer that gives the route its shape. That is why a 250-lap milestone resonates in Moab: the loop keeps changing with weather, water and use, but the riders who know it best keep finding reasons to return.