Tuesday? Yes, Tuesday. With leaving on a Sunday, our days have been all screwed up. We had breakfast of coffee and housemade granola at the Aspen Coffee Club in Fruita before coming back to the cottage and saddling up for the day. We had decided the night before to check out the Kokopelli trails outside of Loma. Those are classic Fruita trails, a little more technical than what we were on the day before but from everything we had read, a ton of fun. Unfortunately, the weather was not cooperating. Radar showed rain all over that area. So we decided on our second choice, the Western Rim trail, which according to the local “ride guide” was listed as being in the Palisade area. Palisade is east of Grand Junction and well out of the way of where it appeared the rain was going. Well, after getting on I-70 for a few miles in an easterly direction, JMac realized that Western Rim is not, in fact, near Palisade but back near our original destination and in the rain. Why it was listed in the Palisade area of the ride guide we’ll never know. So I turned around and headed west. Maybe it would be like yesterday and the rain would just circle around us.
We got off the highway at the exit for the Western Rim trail. Rain. Cold rain. Bleh. We pulled into a parking lot, shortly after a brief adventure where JMac decided to try driving down a dirt road clearly labelled as requiring a “high clearance vehicle.” Yes, it’s a rental, Dear, but we still have to pay for it if we bring it back without all of its pieces attached. <Sigh.> After quietly listening to the sound of our prepaid MTB rental go down the drain, we decided to head back towards Fruita, return the bikes and get a jump on our day in Moab. It didn’t appear to be raining there. But lo and behold, once we were on the highway, the sky cleared up some. We had to drive right past the exit for the Kokopelli trail so we jumped off to check it out. Cloudy, dark in the distance but no rain. More importantly, the trails appeared to be dry. Dire signs put up by the local trail community warned us to not ride on wet trails.
We unpacked the bikes and headed up Rustlers Loop. After a shortish rocky climb which had me maxed out on my 1x, we arrived at the top of a plateau and the start of a very fun loop of riding.
More rocky than the trails the day before, it was a mix of slick rock, gravel, sand and hard-packed dirt. There were enough bench steps and drop offs to keep it interesting but nothing too scary. The scenery was everything you could imagine with the Colorado River in one direction, the red walls of Colorado Monument behind it, open sky in another and curving sandstone (?, I’m not a geologist, people!) walls in another.
It was nice being able to test the Juliana on some more technical terrain. I was definitely able to get over some ledges that I wouldn’t normally do at home. Was it the bike or just that I had more confidence on this bike? I don’t know but it definitely has me continuing to ponder an upgrade. I also was able to test the dropper post. I don’t know how useful it would be for Ohio cross country riding but I could appreciate it for some more serious sketchy downhill riding. JMac seemed to enjoy the Mach 6, even inquiring at Over the Edge for it’s now retail price. They apply the cost of your rental plus depreciation for previous demo’s if you want to buy the bike you rode. Unfortunately, if JMac bought a new bike that would immediately take his riding up a notch, which would then necessitate me definitely needing a new bike to try to get my game back up. Since we haven’t won the lottery recently, I don’t see two new bikes in our futures. #buzzkill
We made a brief stop at Gears in Fruita for a green smoothie, very tasty, and jumped on I-70, destination Moab!