Headed down to Pueblo State Park Saturday with fellow Patrollers Jason and Andria to avoid Rock fall on Hwy 70 heading to Fruita or Moab….. Spectacular day out with great temps and weather. We ran into Art out there too just randomly who joined up with us a for a few miles on Voodoo. A map of the trails can be found here which is maintained by the Southern Colorado Trail Builders who built most of the trails there. I highly recommend this place for spring and fall for a great day trip or they have campsites so you can come the night before. There are about 33 miles of trails, but many loops are easily done several times to add it up to 50 or 60. There is a mix of super smooth and sweet Fruita 18 road type trails mixed with great narrow rocky canyons with as hard as you want it techy rocky drops/buildups/ramps/and wooden ladders. Its not North Shore, but sure tough and fun. You can ride 40 miles without hitting a techy sections, or of course you can hit all the techy you want-there are about 15 gullies I think that have short tech sections but unlike most technical we ever see here in Colorado. Not much tree cover so the exposure in the middle of the summer would make this place a bit warmer, yet you can always jump in the rez after! Here are a few pics.
Getting all unloaded and dialed in for the ride…
Happy to be out on the bike and in one of the narrow canyons playing on the rocks. I had a rough day since my legs felt like Lead but the trail was so sweet, there was no way not to have a good time!
Andria taking a quick brake-the trail is 12 to 15 inches wide pretty much the entire network except for some double track here and there. I will say that all the folks from up North were not yielding at all and just riding off the trail all day making things wider….some day they may get a clue!
This is Stonehenge trail-named for the cairns folks have built up.
Here are the patrollers at work helping out a guy for the second time on the trail. Art from the patrol had already helped this guy once on the Voodoo Loop as he had rolled his tubeless and after attempting to fix it with two CO2′s and no luck. He passed at Voodoo and Outer limits junction and headed out OL to Pedro’s for a little more trail like we were going to do. A few miles into that loop he was on the side of the trail asking for more assistance due to a slow leak. After inspection, he had a large hole torn in the tread of the tires (super urber lightweight racers-not recommend for the sharp rocks there). So we booted his tire with a piece of an OJ container (more robust than the soda pop bottles and can take a rock hit-highly recommend always carrying one with you versus the power bar wrapper), got him a new tube and he was off…hopefully back to his car! You will notice that we are on the trail working-there are many cactus and goat heads so you want to stay on the trail as much as you can. No crowds, so its easy to move quick for the occasional rider.
Here is a good idea of the trail network-on the right side there are trails up and down all those small canyons-we just did not hit them all. You will see below the elevation-lots of short up and down, but only about a 1000 feet over 30 miles. Great day overall and worth the drive!
Welcome to the new Boulder Mountain Bike Patrol website! We sure hope you like it and use it often! The new design is intended to accomplish a few key tasks to make your ride more enjoyable…
- streamlined and easy to use layout
- quick and easy access to the latest trail conditions & weather
- access to the latest news and ride reports from patrollers
- new & improved patrol reporting system
So please check out the new site and enjoy! Get out and ride!
*** FYI - more updates are happening on the site, specifically the patrol report link is now located at the top right ***
So for everyone that is curious what it can be like on one of our Night Rides I put a few pics together from this past Thursday night. Turned out to be one of our best rides yet and only by a fluke incident! I pulled up to the Saver’s parking lot in Boulder already running late to find my rear brake completely flat, I mean lever all the way to the bar with no chance of even a little friction on the rotor. Since there was snow and ice out, I had to do a quick bleed right there in the dark. Luckily I carry my tools….35 minutes later, we had a rear brake!
David showed up ready to ride…..
Me happy to have a rear brake again…front brake only in snow/ice = many wrecks and bruised hips!
Best thing was we decided to ride over to Marshall Mesa TH since we were almost an hour behind at that point and guess what we found-first tracks on perfect snow and frozen ground! We saw a lot of animal tracks too which always adds to the entertainment of the ride…no big kitty tracks though!
Had to walk the steps….and well, the snow packed up real good in the cleats. We both had to use my flat head screw driver to clean our shoes out!
We call this the “Shifter” gate. One thing that is really interesting on the Marshall trails is that no two gates are alike, so some you can get through without a dismount, others, has to happen.
Here David is heading over to Hwy 93 to check out the Dowdy Draw area-fresh tracks all the way! Kind of amazing for this area so close to Boulder.
The climb up Prarie Vista trail was mixed snow and frozen dirt-you could not even see the tire marks after we rode over it.
We hit up Dowdy Draw and here is a little crude video from my point and shoot.
Here is a shot on Spring Brook Loop-you can see the Hoar Frost on the grasses. Right after this we turned the lights off and rode through the meadow area with just the light from the snow and low cloud ceiling.
Some more on the trees up on the back of the loop-the spikes of frost were almost an inch long.
Here is a map of what we did and an Elevation profile. We ended up riding about 22 miles that night. We added on the Springbrook loop due to my recommendation and then missed the Kitchen at Southern Sun after picking out what we were going to eat on the ride back along Broadway! We enjoyed a stout anyway and then off to IHOP to grab a monster late night breakfast to refuel. Can it get any better? Hope to see more of you come out soon!
Check the main patrol site for preliminary patrol data for 2009. Thank you all so much for your hard work and effort this year!
http://www.bma-mtb.org/patrol/
Another great year comes to a close. We ended up having 27 folks show up for the end of the year party including Amanda and Ed from the various rep areas! I think a good time was had be all. Thanks to Avery again for giving us a great place to meet up each month. We ended up with a record number of hours and miles this year-details to come.
MK and David S. talk serious stuff!
Chip and Bruce enjoying the great Avery Beer!
Chuck, Jon A., Ken, Jake, and John D. all relaxing and enjoying the salad and pizza.
Thanks again for making this such a great year for the trails in Boulder County and the Bike Patrol!
