The Best Trail in Colorado

This is the installment for Thursday and Friday but as we are having internet issues here at the campground, Im not sure when it will actually get posted.

Thursday we were leaving Fruita for Glenwood Springs CO, but first a beer recommendation. I was in the mood for some brown ale but the beer store did not have any moose drool, and HO had gotten a 6 of the SKA’s brown (a brewery in Durango) that was not good at all, so I opted for Sweet George’s Brown Ale from dillon DAM brewery, Dillon CO. Its very good. Anyways, we couldn’t check into the place in Glenwood Springs till 1pm and it was only an hour and half or so from Fruita so we switched on the Olympics and stuck around long enough to see the US women loose to the dutch in water polo in the gold medal game. We finished packing up and headed across I-70 with only a minor slow down for some repaving. HO followed us to the campground to help us get set up then continued on to Denver to turn in his rental car and stay near the airport for his flight out Friday. Now to the name of the post, when we checked into the campground mountain biking came up and the guy here let us know that they had the best trail in Colorado right here in Glenwood Springs. We had already planned on doing it, it’s a loop but the final “great” trail is called Scout or Boy Scout. Since it started right in town we decided to do that Thursday afternoon. We parked at a park downtown and proceed outta town first on the wrong road, 3 bonus miles, then on the right road. Up Red Canon road then to lookout mountain road where we picked up a serious 4wd jeep trail. This is where we ran into problems with the directions and a hidden trail sign. We got to a decision point and misinterpreted the directions as they said stay straight which really meant right (as we figured out on Friday) so we went on the straightest of the three possible trails. After more climbing and a couple miles it dumped us out on the road we had been climbing on before, just up higher. The maps we had from the guide books were not very good either. We back tracked to that bad decision point, took the other possible way that was not correct, back to the road again. It was getting late and we were both getting dehydrated as the water we had filled our camelbaks with from the campground tasted awful, well, kinda salty/soapy, and we were not drinking much. So we ended up bailing back down the roads that we came up, 2400 feet of climbing for nothing.

Not to be deterred we decided to try again on Friday. First we needed to find some good internet downtown, not a problem, then over to one of the bike shops to see if they could help us figure out what we did wrong as well as pick up some tubes since we were down to one between the two of us after David’s couple of flats and HO taking off with my last one in his pack. The kid at the counter helped us out a bit so off we went, back up the mountain. We got to the bad decision point and poked around a bit, found the trail marker and now realizing what direction we really wanted, we continued on the jeep trail we needed. Some up and downs and under power lines the book kept referring to, we made it to the first more or less single track. The book refers to a trail sign here but none could be found but we figured it had to be it. This took us down a pretty good pitch for a little less than a mile then a left on a real single track, I believe that was Forest Hollow trail, but hard to tell when that officially started. It was actually a very nice benchcut single track, basically flat for about 2 miles. It was actually rather tight with tall grasses and other greenery encroaching, a bit reminiscent of Pennsylvania, except no rocks. There were a few nice view points of the canyons to the east of Glenwood Springs.

This took us to Boy Scout. It started steep and loose, but not too bad, even howie made most of the switchbacks. He had been having some issues with his rear brake over heating and getting brake fade on previous rides (it a lot work for those poor brakes, keeping all the weight of a well fed harp seal under control) so proactively he decided to cool them off with his camelback. I never gave it a second thought until we just started back up and he said something to the effect that he hoped that wouldn’t make the brakes sticky, then I remembered he had gatoraid in his camelbak. It was kind of interesting after that, I just smelled sort of a carmel / sugar cooking/burning smell for the rest of the ride down as his brakes heated up. The second half of Boy Scout was less steep and had some really nice benchcut sections carved into the rocks. Total of about 19 miles and 2500 feet of climbing. It was a nice trail but hardly the best in Colorado, but I guess if that’s the only trail you have really ridden, it’s the best to you.