Palisade – Palisade Rim Trail
Grand Junction – Lunch Loops – Ie. Butterknife… These trails are a lot of fun, but also have some techy sections. Don’t ride these in the rain or right after hard rain as the clay gets slippery and deep.
Fruita – 18 Road – Beginner to Advanced trails. Chutes and Ladders has a hard section or two at the top, but its run out/downhill section is super flowy and fast. PBR, Prime Cut, Vegetarian are intermediate trails and Kessel Run is a pretty easy/beginner trail. There are a few others out there, but we haven’t had a chance to hit them all yet.
Loma – Highline State Park – there is a main trail that loops around the reservoir that is just over 7 miles long. It is a fun beginner trail that is used for the 18 Hours of Fruita race. There is great camping here, with lots of shade within the campground area, but zero shade out of the trail.
Moab – Way too many to list here. Moab trails would be a full website in itself and I am sure that there are a few out there that do or at least try to cover all of Moab, but here are some that we have recently ridden and really enjoyed:
- Dead Horse Point State Park – These are just the trails we rode and really enjoyed:
- Intrepid
- Pyramid
- Big Chief
- Raven Roll
On the otherside of 313 is Whiptail, Crossroads, Twisted Tree, and Prickly Pear (the last two having the more difficult sections)
- Bar M Trails – These trails are right off US 191, just past the shell station which is about 10 miles north of Moab. There are two vaulted toilets and a large gravel parking. The Shell station has water, bathrooms, ice, Gatorade, and snacks including Cliff bar products… These trails are great beginner and intermediate trails and or great for someone looking to ride a good distance and be able to keep a good pace. Ie. a great place to get a training ride in. Trails we did (and in this order) are:
- Lazy EZ (beginner, super flowy)
- North 40, Mavericks
- Circle O (mostly slickrock)
- Bar M (mostly jeep road) back to Lazy EZ to the parking lot.
In this order you can do a loop that starts off easy and ends easy that will get you just about 14 miles.
- Navajo Rocks Trails – These are relatively new trails located and can be accessed via a couple different trail heads off US 313. 313 is the road that takes you to Dead Horse Point State Park as well as the entrance into the Island in the Sky area of Canyonlands Nation Park. For the first access point/trail head, there is a parking lot with vaulted restrooms right off US 313, but if you go a little further, you can access the trails right off Debinki Well Rd which is a dirt road off US 313. These trails combine just about every type of condition. There is a fair amount of sand, dirt, loose rock and slickrock. There is a lot of great camping in and around this area, especially off Debinki Well Rd. The trails out here include, but not limited to (these are just the trails we rode in this order from the second trail head location off Debinki Well rd.):
- The Big Lonely – this trail has the most sand, but still a lot of slickrock/sandstone
- Coney Island – a little bit of everything. There are a few tricky spots, mostly due to steep and or sandy areas, but can be ridden without putting a foot down.
- Middle Earth – This is a .4 mile connector trail that connects the end of Coney Island back to the first trail head off US 313 and where you would cross to connect to Big Mesa (or Ramblin)
- Big Mesa – this section has the most slickrock or at least the longest stretch of slickrock, but then again, it was the last trail we rode, so maybe it just felt this way.
If you do the trails in this order, you will do approximately 12 miles (or just a little under), but if you add in the first two trails below, I think this will get you closer to 19 miles.
The other trails in this network include:- Rocky Top
- Ramblin
- Seven Up is also accessible from this network, but off the other end of the Middle Earth trails and doesn’t loop back to any section of these trails.