Lunch Loops

Sunday was not a cycling day for day Heather since she had a nine mile training run on her schedule. She was nice enough to offer to stay home with Cailan in the morning while Chris and I went and rode some of the Lunch Loops trails. The Lunch Loops trails are just inches outside of Grand Junction. In fact, except for the challenge of riding down the road with Utah, it would have made almost as much sense to ride to the trails as to drive.

If I've got this figured out right, we actually started at the Tabeguache Trailhead and headed southwest until we reached Pet-e-kes and then climbed up to the Holy Cross trail. We followed Holy Cross to Holey Bucket, then the Ali Loop, Ali Alley, maybe around Curt's Lane, and then finished out with Kid's Meal. It's quite a network of trails, and it was good to have an experienced guide. 

Click here to see the Garmin log. Of course, I thought I started the Garmin when we set out, but did not, so I missed the first segment of the ride.

The trails were very fun, and on a much tighter ribbon than the wide jeep road the day before. It was also very nice to be able to follow my guide, Chris, through all of the really difficult sections. I would simply watch him go through and then do it myself by following his path. I must admit that there were quite a few spots, especially going up Holy Cross, where Chris cleaned sequences of obstacles on the trail and I did not.

The trails around Grand Junction are not quite so rocky as what we'd ridden the day before in Moab. The Lunch Loop trails comprise quite a bit more clay and sand, but there is plenty of exposed rock to make for some good challenges. The scenery is nice, stark, and the features of the landscape are more subdued and maybe not quite so creatively sculpted as those in Moab.

The Holy Cross trail presented some really fun challenges. Most of them were rideable. Some of them appeared to be possibly rideable, but not obviously so; I tried a few of those. And there were those that were clearly not rideable by the likes of me; Chris tried a few of those.

The images below were some that Chris and I took after spending some time scouting out the feasibility of riding this obstacle. My initial thought was, 'No way!' But after we walked around it, we began to think it really fell into the second category above: possibly rideable. Chris decided to give it a shot, so I got out the camera to capture his fall. As it turns out, the only tricky part is getting lined up and clipped in to get started, since the trail comes out of a steep drop and turns sharply right before hitting the first big rock. Once you're on the rock, you turn left and drop onto the second rock and then just roll on through. Chris liked it so much he did it twice.  

Chris made it look so easy I had to try it myself, while Chris took pictures. You can see in the first picture how the trail turns sharply as it approaches the first rock. It took me a couple of tries to get going. Then I was on first rock...

... and carefully turning down and left...

... and then just rolling on out.

Somewhere near the end, where Curt's Lane turns back toward the parking area at the top of a bluff we had a great view of the bike park and trailhead. 

And then a quick lunch and I drove back to Denver with two white bicycles on my truck.