It takes a special kind of idiot.....

April 25, 2005: Day5: I predict that we’ll be encountering rocks today…

We went to the Lunch Loops area for a ride today. These trails are on the south side of Grand Junction. OH MY GOD What a ride!!! I’d seen Pete Fagerlin’s videos about a lot of these loops and they look pretty amazing. Most are quite technical with lots of rock stunts, drop-ins and stair steps both up and down.

After all the rain we’d had, we were looking forward to a great day with great weather. Mom Nature didn’t cooperate too well. Our goal was to climb a trail called The Ribbon. This is normally done as a shuttle run. Since we had only one car, and I didn’t want to ride up the road, we climbed lower Eagles Wings and then cut over to the Tabeguache doubletrack. These climbs were steady small and middle ring climbs. Each are punctuated with little rock steps here and there. Both Jason and I were a little rusty after an easy day yesterday. Neither of us really were handling the bikes so well. Fortunately that went away pretty quickly as we warmed up.

We hit the base of a hill called “The Widowmaker” and the clouds rolled in. It started raining. I was not happy. I had worked out some options though that would allow us to continue riding. One trail that I KNEW we would want to do was Holy Cross. This trail was designed by the same dude that did Moore Fun in Fruita. That means lots of big rocks, steps up and down and plenty of trials riding. We’re talking one freaking technical trail with some sweet sections of flowing single track between. We were in heaven.

When we got to the bottom, the weather looked much better. We started climbing up towards the top of The Ribbon again. When I say climb, I really mean climb. The trail climbs 3100 feet in about 8 miles. Most of the last three miles is climbing steep slick rock. That means that you’re in your granny gear and pedaling straight up the fall line.

I was happy to make it about 1/3 of the way up the widowmaker climb. It is steep and rock strewn. It is climbable. I got off line and sketched. I don’t know if I would have had the lungs for it or not, but I made it up the toughest section before stepping off (the story of my day for some of this).

At the top of Tabeguache, you hit the road for ¼ mile or so. A right turn down the Ribbon Connector made for a really amazing downhill. There were some sections that we walked, but others that were amazingly steep and twisty, but very rideable.

This trail skirts the base of a cliff that is home to the Eagles Wings trail. It got its name appropriately. From below we could see a nesting pair of golden eagles on the cliff. They were beautiful!!!

At the bottom of the connector, the trail turned up hill for good. This begins the last 3 miles of serious climbing.

It takes a special kind of idiot to ride this trail in the up direction. Everyone else either shuttles it or rides the road. I think going in the direction we did was a big strain on Grumpy J’s patience. I knew he’d be happy when we got to the top.

There were two sections of steep sandstone that we had to climb. That isn’t easy in cycling shoes. It was all we could do to scramble up with our bikes. The climb just kept going and going. It had me working to come up with an alternative that would give us a break when we got to the top.

I’m glad I studied my Fruita guide and Pete Fagerlin’s videos. They were very helpful. From the top, we rode down the road for about 3 miles to another trailhead. I figured we’d hit Gunny on the way down and enjoy some buff singletrack. On the road down from the Ribbon, we topped out at over 40mph. It didn’t suck at all. 

Gunny is a cool mix of really buff singletrack followed by sections of singletrack peppered with rocks. Between many of these sections are little rock stunts and stair steps. It keeps you on your toes. At the bottom, there is a really sketchy downhill section that is steep, rocky and a little twisty. We had fun picking our way down it.

This trail dumps us out at the exit of Holy Cross. We’d already done the climb out from that once. It is steep and twisty, but very fun. Just at the top when your lungs are hurting and your legs are on fire, there’s an 8” step up that you have to hop before you can finish out the climb. Very fun. Very challenging.

We twisted down a few other trails and finally wound up on a new trail that rides the ridge above the parking area. At the end of the ridge it has 5 seriously tight, rocky and steep switchbacks. It was my own little slice of heaven. We took our time down this because we were both pretty tired. It was the perfect end to a perfect ride.

The rain held off. I took a jacket for both of us since I knew we’d be up in the high country and it might get chilly. We were about 150 feet below the snow line at the top of The Ribbon. We could see that it had snowed across the valley quite a bit. Those hills were white. There was a Chic-Fil-A about a mile from the car. We went and ate too much.

Jason had some great technical sections today. It was fun to watch him taking rock stairs and drop-ins with ease and confidence. There were some that we both walked, but I think we both rode a lot more than we would have a month ago.

Time to go to Borders and post this crap up on the blog. I’ll send photos too.

Pete