Memorial Day at Fruita

Jerry gave me a call at around noon on Saturday. We agreed to meet at Over The Edge Sports within an hour. "Just look for the 6'7" guy with a ponytail," he said.

I tossed my bike in the back of his truck and we headed for the desert, after a short detour back to our starting point to pick up the helmet I'd forgotton...

One other truck was parked at the trailhead. "Kevin's here," Jerry remarked with some surprise. This particular trail doesn't see a lot of traffic. The trail's name, you ask? Uhh, sorry, I forgot. I'm not good with names.

Kevin and a friend finished their ride at the end of the trail before we'd really started. A quick chat about trail conditions, and then Jerry led the way up a gradual slope toward the hills, spinning in his toe clips at a rate that got my heart pounding after the first 100 yards. That man can ride! We traced a route through a maze of 8-inch wide cow trails, over a couple of bridges that seemed barely wider than that (I felt the need to walk one of them), and then into a twisty section of trail through a Juniper forest.

On the way, Jerry talked about the local ethic in Fruita. Fruita mountain biking is all about keeping the 'single' in singletrack. This minimizes impact on the fragile desert environment and keeps the riding both fun and challenging. As local guidebook author Troy Rarick states, like any sport, mountain biking has rules and must be played in-bounds. If you ride off the trail, you're out of bounds and play must stop. If you can't ride over an obstacle in the trail, you don't ride around it. You carry your bike over the difficult section or turn around. "This is our idea of what singletrack should be," Jerry mentioned, neatly hopping a small boulder that would have had ugly tire tracks around it if this were a Front Range trail.

After the Juniper forest, we began climbing in earnest. Several sections of the trail had not been cleaned by anyone yet, and I could see why. Since this trail had not seen much traffic, the soil was often loose, and many sections that looked reasonable proved to be too difficult for me. Jerry impressed me with clean ascents of many climbs that I couldn't even touch.

Up we climbed, until eventually we emerged at an incredible point with steep dropoffs of hundreds of feet to the left, front, and right of us. We paused for a few photos and watched a large thunderstorm make its way over the ridge behind us. Then we began a steep and somewhat hairy descent off the point. The drops were all ridable (well, at least Jerry rode them all!), but I chickened out on several of the crazier sections.

In the valley below, we meandered in and out of washes, past red, pink, and yellow prickly pear blooms, and through fields of wild mustard that reached to our knees. We closed the loop with a half-mile section of trail that Jerry himself had scouted and built. This section offered some of the most challenging terrain of the entire trail, with a couple of steep drop-ins and a difficult loose climb that Jerry cleaned for the first time that day. One final, high speed run on narrow cow track brought us back to the truck, for a total distance of about 12 miles and a time of three hours or so.

Jerry had to go to work soon after our ride, and I decided to head up to the Bookcliffs, where I hit the amazing Joe's Ridge for a late afternoon ride. Not another soul on the entire trail! And this was Memorial Day weekend, no less.

I woke up the next morning amped for a big ride, in spite of the fact that I still had a nagging cold that was making me feel less than prime. The Edge Loop was calling my name. I started off at 8:45, beginning on the Zip trail heading west. I figured that if I wasn't feeling very well after the first four miles, I could just do the Perimeter, which is less than half the distance of the Edge.

After the first couple of miles I stopped to check the map and realized I'd left it in the car. What a stupid mistake -- starting a 30 mile ride into remote desert backcountry, solo, sick, and with no map. Oh well, I remembered the directions pretty well, and I could always retrace my route if I got lost.

At around 3.5 miles I came across an absolutely disgusting sight -- beer cans, a fire pit, and Burger King remnants scattered around a hundred foot radius. And there were tire marks where the culprits had driven right onto the cryptobiotic soil. It appeared that they had gone to extra effort to trash the area as much as humanly possible. I didn't have room in my pack to carry out all that garbage, but I made a mental note to return later to do the job. Unfortunately, that never happened.

Spinning up into the hills on beautiful narrow singletrack, I quickly forgot about the ugly scene behind me. The guidebook fails to mention how incredible this section of trail really is. Fun, swooping trail winds in and out of washes, with steep dowhhills and challenging climbs alike. All too soon, this gorgeous section of trail ended and I began the long climb up Coal Canyon on a dirt road. Although the biking wasn't very exciting in this section, the scenery did not disappoint. Steep sandstone walls towered up on both sides for miles.

I finally finished the hardcore climbing after 15 miles or so, and the views quickly became spectacular. The terrain suddenly became more challenging as well, with several very steep descents down a ridgeline before beginning a long descent through the trees to a sandy wash below. Just before reaching the famous waterfall "rappel", I luckily caught a couple of riders going my way. Dan was kind enough to true up my rear wheel, which had suddenly gotten way out of whack, and then we used teamwork to get our bikes down the waterfall.

The last few miles are fantastic singletrack, but at this point the heat was beginning to take its toll on me. I enjoyed it nonetheless, and eventually pedaled back to the car four hours and 40 minutes after I'd started. This certainly ranks among the best rides I have ever done!