Return to Kokopelli

Today we took Ho to the Kokopelli trails, again either the first or second, and third ride I did on our first western trip. This system of loops runs along a really nice canyon section of the Colorado River just west of Fruita. As we rode it, it starts on more less of an old jeep trail called Mary’s loop. We happened to be getting going about the same time as another traveler, Don, from Arkansas was and he asked if he could ride along with us. He had a nice bike and seemed to know what he was doing so off we went. He certainly didn’t hold up and he didn’t seem to mind our pace. We passed a family with a couple of younger kids, stopped at a view point for pictures, they passed us again, and then ran into them at the intersection of Horsethief’s bench.

There was a bit of a hike a bike down to this few mile loop of really nice singletrack, combo of slick rock, riding in washes, and smooth dirt track with more amazing views of the canyon and river. A tough little climb that had us out of breath and we were back at the hike a bike back up to Mary’s loop. There was some blowhard scoping out the hike a bike down “figuring out” his lines that he was gonna take as he rode it down, he had a blur LT, nice bike, but he was too old and the bike was at least 2 inches short in travel on both ends of doing this piece of track. We stuck around to see what happened and he bailed at the same point we did when we headed down earlier, we just didn’t waste nearly as much time. More of Mary’s loops, and we hit the intersection of Lions Loop. Basically the loops were half on the river side of the ridge then went back on the “boring” side. Don had told his wife he would be out 2-3 hours so he figured he need to head back as we were almost 2 hours into the ride at this point. We headed out Lion’s loop, single track, loose bench cut above the river. Great views, nice technical sections, lots of fun. This ran us into a jeep road that we took up towards Troy built loop. We took a left on Troy’s while Lion’s headed over the ridge on the jeep trail. This was more single track, down towards the river then bench along the river, more smooth than the Lion’s loop’s bench. About the time I-70 came into view we started heading around the end of the ridge. Some down hill bench with a little run down a rock wash then more bench and we were at the end of the jeep road that runs the “boring side” of the ridge. Typically people just do one of these loops and we had more or less done three. We could have taken the jeep road back up and down to the truck without too much effort but there is a route called Mack’s ridge that we had decided to do. That required heading up the jeep trail that Lion’s loop comes over on, Im not sure what the elevation gain was, but it was tough, totally open, as everything out there is so the sun was beating on us, easily into the 90’s as it was 97 by the time we got to the truck an hour or so later. Howie had killed off the water in his camel bak so I gave him the water bottle I had to put in there, he still had his water bottle full of gatoraide. We had about 7.5 miles left at the start of the climb. We found the intersection with Mack’s, another jeep trail heading towards the vehicle. More climbing and we arrived at what seemed to be the top of that world, amazing views of the river canyon and all the single track we rode below us.

The route turned to single track as we routed along the edge of the rim, really sweet track. We could see where we needed to get down to and were curious how this was gonna happen. There was a couple of exposed hike a bike sections but for the most part it was ridable bench also some little finger sections. We reached the intersection with Mary’s loop with the potential of one last trail back to the vehicle, Moore fun, but we were outta water so back the 2.5 miles on the gravel road to the truck.

We headed back to the RV, got a shower then headed to Grand Junction so Ho could grab his rental car to head back to Salt Lake to catch his flight back to PA tomorrow. We also managed to find some good Mexican food in GJ.