Riding the White Rim Bare-Rack

There are roads that look like they shouldn’t exist.

Twisting across bedrock shelves, diving into canyons, climbing straight up alluvial fans.

The White Rim Trail is one of them.

I’d been wanting to do it for years.

So when two of my closest friends—both desert-savvy, wilderness-comfortable, and always up for something absurd—agreed to go, we made it happen.

Loaded up the FJ Cruiser and dropped in at Mineral Canyon Road.

We had no idea what kind of ride we were signing up for.

Well… maybe some idea.

But none of us had ever actually driven the White Rim Trail before.

It had been a long time since any of us had experienced that much remoteness, that much gravity, that much trust.

For a good portion of the trail, I didn’t ride inside the car.

I rode on the roof rack.

My Ugg

Seated on a folded blanket, gripping the metal bars when the road got bumpy, arms overhead when it didn’t.

Tai kept saying, “Please tell your mother I tried to talk you out of this.”

Rox, from the passenger seat, would call up to me every ten minutes:

“You’re holding on, right?”

It felt like riding a bucking bronco.

Bucking FJ

We were going just fast enough that the wind ruffled my hair.

Tai drove with this perfect mix of caution and confidence—

controlled, aware, just wild enough to make it exhilarating.

And somewhere along the way, I laid back.

Let my body stretch out across the rack, the metal warm from the sun.

Watching the sky move above me.

Clouds drifting. Hawks circling.

Letting the vastness wash over me.

Afterward, it hit me how much I trusted him.

Some people might have driven too fast without thinking—

might’ve rounded a corner too sharply, resulting in a broken… something.

But Tai knew exactly where the line was.

And he never crossed it.

It was November.

The sun hung low in the sky, sharp and soft all at once.

A hint of warmth in the air.

Coolness in the shadows.

The views? Unreal.

From up there, everything looked different.

Bigger. Wilder. Like I was riding the edge of the Earth.

Which, honestly, I kind of was.

There were stretches of trail where I looked down and thought,

There’s no way this is a real road.

Hairpin turns with nothing but air on the other side.

Stone ledges where one wrong move meant… well, best not to think about it.

But that’s the thing about wild places:

You stop overthinking.

You trust the machine.

You trust your people.

You hold on.

On the second day, we were descending a mesa—Tai threading the FJ through steep, tight switchbacks—

and I looked up to see a mountain goat standing motionless on the ledge above,

watching me.

Just… watching.

Earlier that day, a guy in a Jeep had passed us going the other direction.

He looked up from his driver’s seat and said:

“That’s… very brave.”

I don’t think the mountain goat agreed.

He wasn’t impressed.

He was just curious.

Probably wondering What are those crazy humans up to now?

We came out via the Shafer Canyon route.

That climb was the most intense road I’ve ever been on.

I was inside the car for that part.

White-knuckled. Attempting to still my racing heart so I could reassure Rox.

Tai driving—thank goodness.

Schafer Canyon

Switchback after switchback,

we climbed what looked like a vertical wall carved by ancient hands.

Mixed in with the fear was this strange, electric aliveness.

Like the trail itself was breathing.

I’ll never forget that ride.

The friendship.

The freedom.

And the kind of joy that only shows up

when you let the world crack you open.

Sometimes, you’ve got to ride the roof.

Sometimes, you’ve got to lie back and let the sky hold you.

Sometimes, you’ve got to grip the edge with bare hands and a brave heart.

And sometimes—just sometimes—

you’ve got to ride the rim bare-rack.

The Green River