Day 2: Kokopelli Kraziness

GPS Data: http://connect.garmin.com/player/29125585

Today’s trip was over to the Kokopelli trailhead which is starting point for the famous Kokopelli trail ride to Moab. It seems that many of the trails in Fruita are area based with a whole bunch of loops in each area so your ride can be a short or as long as you want it to be.

Today’s ride was pretty interesting and was a huge test for my now rapidly dwindling fear of heights (I know crazy right?).

First we started off with Mary’s loop which starts out with a moderate rocky climb up onto the first ridge and then some fast jeep double-track to the first optional loop.

Horsethief’s Bench:

We rode up to the trailhead and met fellow Canadian Dave Whitten (Tara, his daughter, is on the Canadian National Track cycling team), who was having a snack with his son after just completing the Horsethief’s Bench loop. We looked down and there was an extremely rocky staircase descent onto the bench. I’m sure someone has ridden it…but to most mortals…it was much safer (even recommended) to just portage the bike down.

Rock staircase down

We started the loop in the recommended clockwise direction and right away it was fast, flowy and fairly technical. Before you knew it we were riding on the edge of the bench with a spectacular view of the Colorado river on the left (not to mention a 400 foot drop about 10 feet away). There wasn’t a huge amount of climbing on the trail but it was pretty fast and lots of fun. There were a bunch of cool sections that really stood out for me and it was a great way to start the ride. After we completed the loop, we hiked up to the top of the rocky stairs for our first break.

On Mary's Loop looking down at Horsethief's Bench

After the break we kept on Mary’s loop until we got to Steve’s Loop (Handcuffs).

Steve’s Loop:

Steve’s Loop was pretty technical but full on single track. This one ran much close to the edge of the plateau with more death of the left as we rode. But in the words of Ken, “It’s not fun, if you can’t die”…not too sure how I feel about that, but there were several instances where I would only look at the single track in front of me and try to completely ignore the sheer drop only a couple feet to the left.

Lion’s Loop:

After’s finishing Steve’s we got to our first junction in the trail. We hadn’t really ridden that far and we still had some energy to we decided to do Lion’s loop to go all the way around the Mesa. The loop started out with a steep rocky climb which seemed to keep going. After the big climb we were treated to a steep rocky descent. The wind was really starting to pick up here and there were several times I was blown a little off my line as we did the descent. As we started heading more towards the north we had the wind at our backs which made things a little easier. There was one section that we had to ride a little bit to the southwest and suddenly there was a huge crosswind. I tried to ride forward a little bit and a gust of wind blew my bike off the single track and careening into a slab of rock. Needless to say I bailed pretty hard as I was not expected to be literally blown off my bike. I picked myself up and had to wait a while with my bike in hand until the wind died down before I could move again. After we met up, Jeff said he had been blown off his bike as well. It was really crazy…and far beyond any wind I’ve ever encountered in Calgary.

Trying to not get blown away by the wind

Mack Ridge:
This was a deciding point for us. There was a huge climb looming before us or we could take the service road back to the car. We opted to do the climb as Jeff said that Mack Ridge would be an awesome way to finish off the ride. The climb was a death march…you can see on the GPS elevation chart we went from the lowest elevation to the highest point of the entire day. There were several false flats with tiny descents where you thought you were at the top but there was yet more climbing. I was to the point where I was wondering how we were going to get down again. When we finally got to the very top we could see everything…imagine looking down at 3 plateau levels of single track…and we had probably done most of it. Then it was time for the Mack Ridge descent. The descent was fairly steep with rock gardens littered throughout. There was one portage section but the rest was really tight technical single track.

At the bottom of the descent we made a group decision to skip Moore’s Fun as we were all pretty tired and running out of water. It would have been another massive climb with one of the most difficult descents in Fruita so we decided that it would be best to take the service road back to the car. When we arrived back at the car, we all ran out of water pretty much at the same time so we thanked ourselves for not going too overboard…still plenty of riding days left.

- Kyle

P.S. Brent has been recording Hero Cam video all week so I will be making some short videos to music when I get back to Calgary.