Friday, October 20 - Back to Kokopelli Trail

Most of us rented bikes from Single Tracks in Fruita, and were very pleased with the service and condition of the bikes. Jeff still had a day of rental already payed for at Over the Edge, so he had a bike from them. Irv decided to do some road riding today and rented a Jamis from single tracks, which he enjoyed very much. He road up into Colorado National Monument.

The rest of us returned to the Kokopelli Trail area witht he idea of getting a half day of riding in before driving back to Salt Lake City in the late afternoon or early evening. We parked in the first main parking area and headed over tot he eastern trailhead of More Fun. It started off fun, but turned nasty in short order as we tried to ride up a steep, rocky slope. As usual, Chris B. road ahead of the rest of us. From the top of a ridge, he called down saying it appeared to be more of the same for quite a while. Scott and I decided t turn back because we would probably end up walking more than riding, and we wanted to ride on our last day. Jeff and Ed continued with Chris B., and we did not see them again until we returned to the bike shop in Fruita later in the day.

Scott abandoning the ride up More Fun

While the rest of the crew made their way up More Fun, Scott and I road back to the main frontage road, and headed west. We hoped to meetup with the More Fun group at the intersection of the More Fun, Mary's Loop, and Mack Ridge trails. When we arrived at this point, Scott called Ed on his cell phone to find out how far along they were. Ed said that they were still climbing, and mostly walking. It turns out that the east to west ride on More Fun is much more difficult than the opposite direction because their is a lot more climbing. We waited for a little while, but decided to ride a part of Mary's Loop while they made their way to the intersection. After riding along Mary's Loop for a little while we saw the singletrack trail called Handcuffs that follows along the cliff-edge of one of the lower sandstone benches above the Colorado River. This trail loops back to the intersection so we decided to ride it back to that area, and hopefully meetup with the rest of the group at the intersection or along this trail coming in the opposite direction. We tried to call them and inform them of our plan, but cell phone service was spotty, so we were not sure of they got our message or not.

The ride on Handcuffs was great with mostly easy cliff-edge trails. Where the trail dipped back into canyon heads, it became more technical and difficult with some hike-a-bike sections. The views are glorious and we encountered some fossils (probably dinosour) along the trail as we were climbing back up to Mary's Loop. When we reached mary's Loop there was no sign of the gang. It was now about 2:00 pm so we decided to take Mary's Loop back to the parking lot and the van. Unfortunately, we took a wrong turn and followed a steep jeep road up the side of the mesa thinking it was part of Mary's Loop. We road all the way up this road until it stopped at a cliff edge well above Mary's Loop, which we could see running along the bench below us. A little dishartened and knowing we were running short of time, we road back down the dirt track to Mary's Loop.

Riders on the Handcuff trail

Once on Mary's Loop, we road all out to get back to the van where we expected the rest of our group was already or would soon be waiting. This was great fun as the trail is fast and, for the most part, not very technical. Shortly after passing the portage down to Horsethief Scott got a pinch flat in his front tire. I had a tube, but no pump (I gave it to Chris B. yesterday when he road up to the ridge view point along. He gave it back to me this morning,but i apparently did not put it back in my pack.). We stopped a rider going by who had a pump, but it took us quite a while to figure out how to get a good enough seal to fiil the tube. While Scott worked on this, I called the rest of the group who were now waiting at the van. I informed them of our situation, and returned to help Scott.

Scott trying to fix his flat on the way back to the van

A strong wide was blowing out of the SW, so rathe than wait for us, Chris, Ed, and Jeff road their bikes back into town along Hyw 6. Once we fixed the flat, it took Scott and I about 10 minutes to ride the rest of the way to the van. Scott and I made it to the bike shop shortly after the rest of the group who road back. We all turned in our bikes and headed across the street (more-or-less) to the Hot Tomato pizza parlor for some snacks before returning to our hotel to cleanup, pack, and drive to Salt Lake.

The drive to SLC was beautiful until the sun set completely, and we faced two-lane traffic on Hyw 6 between Green River and Provo in the dark. There were some hair-raising momnets, but Scott did a fine job driving, and we made it to the hotel near the airport by about 10:00 pm. We all had early flights the next morning so there wasno socializing before heading off to bed.