Sunday, March 14, 2010

Boulder Bike Patrol helps out at Pueblo State Park

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!