Day 1: 18 Road Trails

Fruita Day 1
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/28981504

I have finally arrived in Fruita, Colorado. I had planned this trip with a couple of friends back in December so it’s been a really long wait until the day finally arrived. Of course as luck would have it…I got really sick Tuesday after my testing at the University (I’ll go into this later when I’m all finished up) so spent most of the week trying to battle a cold and the first day of the drive blowing my nose and taking cold medicine. We decided to take it easy on the drive so we drove to Helena Friday night, stayed at a hotel and then finished the drive off to Fruita the next day.
The trip was pretty much incident free. The only problem is it was super windy through Montana and Idaho which had us pretty worried about all the bikes on the roof and the road was covered in snow through one of the passes in Idaho so that was a little sketchy to say the least.

Anyways onto Day 1:

Today we drove up to 18 Road Trails and decided to do a few fun loops out of the lower parking lot trailhead.

The first loop we did was an ascent up the Prime Cuts trail and back down Chutes and Ladders. The first part of Chutes and Ladders was pretty technical with a few tricky spots but overall not too bad. The second part was slightly downhill and super flowy. We pretty much hammered out in the big ring and twisted our way through the single track at some pretty high speeds.

The second loop was up the Kessler trail and then over to the Zippedy Doo Dah. The only problem with Kessler was everyone was descending at some pretty high speeds while we were trying to climb the trail so it was a lot of stopping and waiting and watching people with huge smiles on their faces fly past us. When we finally climbed up to the Zippedy Doo Dah trail, I have to admit I was a little worried when I saw the sign and it said Double black diamond – experts only. Brent looked at me and said I’ll be fine…so I followed them through to the trail. The trail actually wasn’t really as bad as I thought it would be..but juding by some of the people we saw riding the lower trails...it's probably a good thing they put a sing thre. There were a couple really sketchy exposed areas on the trail and a few really steep descents but overall, it was all rideable…even for me. There was only one section we all walked because it was pretty eroded and the risk to reward factor was pretty high but for the most part I cleaned every section…although a little bit slower than the other guys.

After getting back to the parking lot we decided we needed to get in one more loop. After watching yet another group of people come out of the Kessler trail with huge grins on their faces…we knew which one it had to be. We decided to ascend up the Prime Cuts trail again as it was not as busy and then cut over to the Kessler trail. After getting to the top of the trail we shifted into the big ring and bombed down the Kessler trail. That was super fun…so much flow and it felt like we were in a downhill race. It wasn’t overly technical but it was more trying to control your speed so you didn’t fly off the single track through the tight turns and banks. Near the bottom it was awsome flow through banked turns with a few gulleys thrown in but we could totally see why everyone had huge smiles on their faces after riding the trail.

Overall, today was a really good day. The trails were really dry and temperature was great for moutnain biking. My legs felt fine but it was a little weird getting used to the mountain bike again. This is only my second ride on a mountain bike all year so it took some getting used to riding trails again. Really glad I took my Prophet along with me for this trip as I’m sure my back appreciates the extra travel on the suspension. Tomorrow's forecast does not look awesome so I'm not totally sure what we will b riding.

- Kyle