Bonus Ride

Well we had the first mechanical of trip with regards to the RV. I had found one of the tires on the rv rather low before we left from fruita and pumped it up. This morning I discovered that it was pretty much totally flat. The plan was to empty the waste tanks to lessen the load of jacking up the rv along and bring in the slideout, the flat was on the back side. The truck has a 4 ton bottle jack that I was planning on using to get the axel up and the tire off but as we were getting things together, the nice gentleman across the road from us came over and offered us the use of his 20 ton bottle jack. Although I was 99% sure the 4 ton would work, the 20 ton made lifting it effortless. The biggest issue was just getting the jack back to the middle axel of the triple. So we got it off and into town, the first place was closed on the weekends but the place across the street was open so we rolled it over there. Turns out the only issue was the valve stem needed tightening and they didn’t even charge us. By the time we got back and the wheel on, Howie made the decision that it was really too late to bother getting started on the long trip back so we decided to head over to the Monarch Crest Trail and stay another night here. This starts at the Monarch Pass, about 11,200 feet and follows the Continental Divide Trail that crosses there. Normally the rides here are done as shuttles, with a vehicle left at the bottom of the valley at any number of finishing points but with our lack of planning and only one vehicle we had to “settle” for an out and back on this amazing piece of track. It starts with a bit of a gravel road climb then about three quarters of a mile of bench cut before a half mile grunt up a rather rutted gravel road but then its pretty much single track heaven for the next eight miles. You end up climbing/descending 1000 feet each way for a total of 2000 feet of climbing over 19 miles. Most of it is at or near tree line so the vista/ views are incredible.

In a number of spots you see the ribbon of single track just laying out before you, at one point I sort of measured and you could see the track over a half mile ahead of you. The last couple miles before the turn around were through forested benchcut, rather rocky and rooty and included a skree field that puts anything in Pennsylvania to shame. We ate our fluffer nutter sandwiches then started back. The climb up through the trees was not nearly as bad as we had thought it would be as it was so much fun coming down through them, it seemed like it had to be steeper than it was. Across more ribbons of alpine meadowed single track and we hit the one section we were dreading, it was a loose steep downhill the first time, motorcycles are allowed on the trail and have beat this part up pretty bad. So it was a quarter mile of mostly hike a bike, but all in all not bad. Then off we were across more amazing single track with the views in the opposite direction from earlier. Too soon we rounded the last turn and we caught sight of the parking area where the Beast lay. Another mile and half or so and our western riding was at an end. There is a private “visitor’s center” there and I went in to use the restroom and thought howie was following but when I came out, still no howie so I got some ice cream and went looking for him. I figured he went to use up the last of film in the film camera as the sun was going down and the lighting was good. As I walked out though, I realized they were closing up so I hoped his shots were good as they cost him the potential to get ice cream.

Back in Gunnison we stopped at Garlic Mike’s, a place recommended by Russ at the office who had stopped there a number of years ago when he was out here. It lived up to his recommendation, most excellent Italian food.

The Best for Last

The weather finally cleared, beautiful blue sky with a few wispy clouds around. The plan was to revisit a ride we did last time, a combo of a gravel road climb, Reno divide, and a few single tracks, Flag Creek, Bear Creek and Deadman’s gultch. There was also the potential for adding on an extra bonus 5 miles with some extra climbing near the end. This is another classic Crested Butte ride, right there with 401, just tougher to get to the trailhead and a tougher ride in general, but simply amazing. We started from the Deadman’s gultch trailhead with a temp of 49 degrees. The first five miles are a gravel road climb, starting at about 9600 feet and ending at 11200. It starts easy gaining only about 400 feet in the first couple miles then it gets steep but at least the road is in good shape so it’s a smooth grind. We ran into 4 guys from Georgia at the top before we headed down one of the most amazing sections of single track ever. It was a rather wide meadow to start then funneled into more of a creek canyon where beavers had dammed up the creek into a series of small ponds. We crossed flag creek and started up one of its tributaries. 2 and half miles later and some climbing we found ourselves on a gravel road. This seems to be where we screwed up last time but managed to make the right navigations this time heading up to Bear Creek trail. This is where things really became magic.

This started one of the best downhills howie and I have ever been on. It rolled through a mile or so of alpine meadow then started at a little steeper pitch but still a ton of fun. It opened up a bit again for the last bit of bench cut down to the intersection of Deadman’s Gultch trail 15 miles into the ride.

At this point the choice was either go right and up, with 5 miles back to the truck or head left and take 10 miles to get back. We were both feeling good and in love with the ride so we opted for the bonus miles and went left. We headed down the trail another mile along the creek until we hit Rosebud trail. There were a few hunters getting ready to head into the bush as some sort of bow hunting season started the next day. The trail was not a lot of fun, the motorcycles had really beat it up and it was very loose with lots of baby head and baby fist sized rocks everywhere. 2.75 miles and 1400 feet of vertical and a bunch of hike a bike later we were at Cement Mountain trail with promises of downhill rides through open alpine meadows with amazing views. For the most part it was true although there was also a few small climbs in there as well.

There was also a section that went through some dark forest that was still quite wet and didn’t seem to ever dry out very well, slippery and lots of puddles, not much fun. That was short lived and across more alpine meadow bench cut before intersecting with Deadman’s gultch trail with a couple hundred feet climb to the top before a 1000 foot vertical drop in 2 miles on switch back trails back to the truck. In hind sight, the miserable climb up Rosebud really was not worth the extra alpine views across Cement and we’ll just head up Deadman’s next time. Besides the rosebud climb, the only other detracting point of the route was the number of mud puddles in the trail from motorcycles.

401

Although the title may sound like a knock off household degreaser, its actually the name of one of the classic Crested Butte trails. It rained us out yesterday so we took a drive into town and checked out one of the local bike shops. We picked up a Gunnison sticker for the RV and asked about the Crested Butte trails, how quickly they dry and he said pretty quickly. It rained a bit over night but not much and the weather forecast looked more promising so the plan was to head to CB in the morning. It was quite a pleasant morning here but still quite cloudy towards CB but we packed up and headed out. It was still quite cloudy over the ridges as we headed into CB but no rain in site so we continued on through town, through the ski resort area and up the gravel road to Gothic. Im not sure what all goes on in Gothic but like howie said, it is straight outta little house on the prairie. Anyways, about a half mile past there the loop starts/ends so thats where we parked. Like most good CB rides it starts with a long gravel road climb but this one isnt too bad, about 5 miles and 1100 feet. The truck thermometer had the outside temp at 54 degrees and it was quite breezy. Heck of a thing, just a few days ago we were riding in the high 90's. It rode alot easier than 6 years ago when we did this, thats for sure, but any climb at 10,000 feet is tough and we warmed up quickly. And its about one of the prettiest gravel road rides you'll ever make as well, up this beautiful valley along some small alpine lakes. At Schofield pass you pick up the single track trail and really start climbing. About a mile or so later and 500 feet higher you break out into the alpine meadows.

The gravel road had some puddles on it but was basically dry but I still wasn't sure what the trail would be like. Amazingly it was in great shape, a few puddles here and there, but otherwise perfect. We climbed a bit more through the meadows then headed back down along the valley we climbed up, just a bit higher.

I think this is what makes this ride so special, a few miles of slightly downhill benchcut trail with some of the most beautiful views you will see from a mountain bike. Its smooth enough and not too steep so you can actually enjoy the view rather than have to concentrate so hard on not killing yourself you don't see anything. Eventually you have to loose some altitude on some switchbacks through a nice aspen grove. A little more trail and you take a bit of gravel road down towards the road you climbed up but then start heading up on the side of the valley over a creek and through a meadow. The trail goes through some private ground which is used for grazing cattle and unfortunately there was a bunch around, so they were a pain to get around but even worse they really beat the heck outta the trail with the recent rain so it was quite muddy. We got through all that and back to the truck about 3.5 hours and 15 miles later. We both remarked on how warm it was, truck said on the way out it was 64 degrees, but since we both figured we would be in jackets at the top, it was a pleasant surprise.
We stopped in town to pick up a sticker and something to eat, CB is one cool little town. All the locals cruise around on "townie bikes." I was actually surprised it was so busy for a weekday after labor day, but there must still be people out vacationing. Back to Gunnison with a quick stop at Wally World for a hose nozzle since the water pressure through the camper's outside hand shower was not good here and the bikes were quite muddy. I think next year we'll get a splitter and an extra piece of hose for cleaning bikes.

Tuesday

Yesterday we decided to take the day off. The 97 degree heat and lots of short anaerobic bursts took a toll on us so we took advantage of the cable and watched some of the US Open Tennis tourney and took a quick trip to the Over The Edge Bicycle Shop. I also made it out to the hot tub and ran into 4 guys from Australia and New Zealand that had been working at a summer camp near Asheville NC and were working their way back to their flight home via some great mountain biking sites. I also got a chance to clean the bikes up pretty well and patch my flat tubeless that I had been running a tube in. This morning, Tuesday, we packed up and headed for Gunnison Co, just outside of Crested Butte, one of the mountain biking meccas. The drive over was a little more adventurous than I had anticipated, up and down and twisty, but other than holding up a few cars at one point, no issues at all. We were actually held up by some chick in a jeep that we actually saw holding a camera out the window while she was driving at one point snapping pictures. We got to camp and Howie had set us up with another pull through so getting in was a snap. We got things set up and saw that the afternoon storms had set up in the mountains so heading up to Crested Butte seemed like a bad idea so we settled for Hartman Rocks, just outside of Gunnison. We got a little screwed up to start and after an initial hike a bike we ran into a gravel road that we rode down looking for all this supposed single track. After a couple miles and some disappointment we finally found a signed intersection with some real single track. We traversed down then up through some washes and small canyons then across the mesa.

We could see storms on three sides of us but it was still sunny where we were. At the next intersection we decided the smart move would be to start heading towards the vehicle and we actually did the smart thing. We ran out of trail and consulted the map but were not sure which end of the trail were at so we headed down the jeep trail to find another trail marker to figure it out. We found the start of Rattlesnake trail, I think it was named more for the twisty nature of it rather than critters found on it. It was starting to get dark and we had not really checked the map, but it seemed like it was headed in the right direction. It was definitely the most technical of what we had rode, up and down through some pretty sweet rock formations and seemed to keep heading where we wanted to go. It started to rain on us and the trail still was not ending, causing a bit of consternation, but we soon saw a marker and found a jeep trail that we were able to follow back to the vehicle although the rain had slopped thing up a bit and got the bikes and ourselves quite messy. We headed into Gunnison for some pizza then grocery shopping at a Safeway that had probably been remodeled in the early 80’s at best. Back at camp we have no TV again so we are checking out the video footage from Fruita.

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.

Opps, outta order

Im updating finally with a good internet connection, but missed last thursday so here it is as I had written it but not been able to put it up.

Well today was to be the Virgin River Rim trail ride. This was the first time that I actually saw howie try to talk us outta doing the whole ride as written. It was supposed to be about 30 miles and 4000 feet of climbing, but howie was proposing cutting it down to 20 miles and 3000 feet. It was to be a shuttle either way, just depended on the end point. After some negotiation we settled on the shorter route with the potential for some bonus mileage at the end. Ho was not feeling up to riding today so he stayed back and did the housecleaning. That left five us, the perfect number for the Beast as a shuttle vehicle. Off to Strawberry Point to drop off the bikes and Bernie and Rick, I navigated, howie drove the beast and Scott drove the van to the end point, Teah campground at Navajo Lake. We left the beast and drove back to Strawberry Point and started the ride. The first mile or so was a nice downhill switchbacky single track from the elevation gained on driving up the mountain. We then started climbing up a nicely graded single track, some loose rocks but not bad. That joined up with a jeep road that we were supposed to take up about 0.3 miles but took up about 0.5 then had to back track a bit, BONUS mileage and climbing. That went down to a drainage then more climbing. We finally got up to the rim after circumnavigating around some private ground and a bunch of climbing. It was a rather impressive sight, some nice redrock cliffs and the whole virgin river valley including Zion in front of us. It started sprinkling on us and we could see some serious weather to our right but we seemed to be on the edge of this mountain induced storm cloud. The issue was the trail would turn to “gumbo” if it got too wet and it had seen some rain the day before. We rode along the rim with peeks of vistas and heard thunder off to the right but no serious rain. We picked up the pace a bit and didn’t really stop for photo opps. Scott got a few pictures but his stupid Olympus camera has an XD card and won’t take my mini USB cable so we don’t have any pictures from today. We had a nice downhill to a potential hike out to some waterfall type vista but again the weather looked scary so we continued on. We had made it as high as about 9400 feet then dropped down to closer to 9000 before the painful climb up to about 9500 then a bit of a drop then back up to about 9700 around Navajo Point before the last decent to Navajo Lake. Overall it was about 20 miles with about 3000 feet of climbing all on single track and much of it on relatively loose track, some at upto a 10% grade. The nice part was all the downhill was really sweet, nothing too steep and no super crazy switch backs. We really got lucky with the weather, we could tell it had rained on the last few miles of track we did earlier in the afternoon, a few “muddy” spots but not bad, just tacky and by the time we returned to the start, it had rained there after we had gone through. All in all not a top 10 ride, howie and I are so spoiled but another ride that did not suck. Back at camp Ho had cleaned up the RV, did laundry, and had the baked potatoes ready for the rest of the steak meal we were gonna cook.

Friday and Saturday

Well Friday was the last ride for Scott and Rick, they needed to take off by 7am the next morning so the plan was to hit something close then get back and take down the swamp and they would just use the two cots in the garage area of the camper Friday nite. They wanted to do the Cassidy trail again so we did an out n back on it to Casto canyon, turned out to be a great ride although by the time we were done, so were they.

Saturday morning we packed up the RV and headed for Fruita CO, just across the boarder with Ho as the remaining survivor. The ride was quite nice, just up a river valley to I-70 then a surprisingly scenic ride across, not as flat as I had anticipated but not bad at all. 5 hours later and a couple of extra pit stops due to Ho’s tiny bladder, we were pulling into the Monument RV park. Howie got us another pull through site so no issues in getting the RV placed. We got hooked up including cable TV this time and off we went to the Bookcliffs aka 18 road area to ride. This was actually the first or second ride I did on my first western trip with Howie 7 years ago and was really looking forward to the return. We got out there about 4pm, still 93 degrees out. There were a few other silly people out riding in that heat but not many, especially for a Saturday. We headed up Prime cut towards the cliffs, a nice gentle climb in and out of a wash along 18 road. It started to get a little steeper as we reached Chutes and Ladders, think the game when you were a kid, up and down and up and down. Really fun tight twisty stuff with a few ups steeper than our tired eastern legs could muster but what’s a ride without at least a little hike a bike. A fun blast across the desert with a stop for pictures, the lighting was really sweet that late in the afternoon/evening

And we were back at the parking lot ready to make our next ascent to the cliffs. We did a similar climb up the other side of 18 road to frontside. I had a recollection of a really cool spot where you are in and out of these spines without much of a vista for a while and the all of a sudden you come around one corner on a bench cut and things just totally open up and I remember coming to a stop with an audible WOW. Im pretty sure I found the spot of 7 years of doing this has spoiled me and it was not quite as impressive as I remember, but still pretty darn cool. We were keeping and eye on some rain in the distance

And modified our plan a bit incase it made it too us, skipping Joes Ridge for the moment after doing our out n back to Western Zippity and just heading down Zippty Do Dah. This is one trail that anybody that rides it will never forget, it starts down one of these spines, I would say 45 degrees on each side, maybe 100 feet to the desert floor. At the end of the first spine you make a 90 degree turn and head straight down. I actually got a series of pictures of Howie wrecking on it last time but to his credit, after I successfully made it down, he conquered it this time. Down and up another spine with another 90 degreeish turn into the downhill, this time both Ho and Howie bailed, it was a little more tricky as the turn was more into the downhill, hard to describe but I got a little worried as I went through it but once I got her pointed straight downhill I knew I was home free. It had cooled down a bit by that point, about 7pm, some clouds etc. We were pretty much done by the time that put us back at the parking lot so we headed into town for what turned out to be pretty sub standard Mexican but we were really hungry so it was OK. A quick walk through “downtown” made us realize there was no ice cream store to be had so we ended up stopping at the grocery store for Bryers.