DIRTY ATHLETE

I have whizzed through Fruita Colorado several times in the past years, heading east to west or west to east on I70.  Not even knowing that some of the sweetest single track was hidden around Fruita.

Lately though I had been hearing about it and was determined to stop off for a ride the next time through.  Well that day finally came and even though I only got to do a few rides, I realize this is a place I will be coming back to explore.

The riding there is amazing and you know its going be when there are two bikes stores in a town that has like four restaurants.

Fruita is not a big town, but it is a nice town, clean and friendly from what I found.

I decided to hit up a few of the classic single track rides there like:

Zippity Do Da

This is a roller coaster type of a ride, a lot of up and down.  The trail is on the top ridge of the “mt” top.  I don’t think it is quite high enough to be classified as an actual mountain, but when you looking over the edge, you find yourself high enough up that one false move would be likely the end of things for you. There is a reason this ride is considered a double black diamond here, it shouldn’t be ridden if you are a beginner rider.

It isn’t so much a technical trail as it is high and on a windy crumbling edge.  It really was quite windy up there and there are some steep quick down hills that flow into a steep little uphill.  The reason why you don’t want to ride this if your not ready for it, is because you may try and walk some of the trail, but that is a big mistake, for a couple reason: First there isn’t much room to walk and push you bike, your literally on the trails edge, several 100 feet up high and there are not many bail out options to get off the trail.  Secondly, it highly damages the trail condition, because the dirt and sand there is very fragile and when you try to walk on the dirty, the trail crumbles away and off the sides.

Another easier and supper fun run to try out is kessels, really I don’t think there could be a much more fun and fast single track ride around.  This is such a fun ride to do you will find yourself smiling all the way down.

Kessels Run

Kessels is fast and curvy ride, its definitely worth hitting up if your cruising through Fruita.

Overall

There is so much to explore in Fruita as far as mountain biking goes and different types of riding your have dirty single track on one side of town and more rocky Moab feeling on the other side.  Another perk is the camping is free there!  This may be going away soon if the laws change, lets hope not.  I will definately be back for some riding in the fall time, when its not over a 100 degrees there.

More Fruita Colorado Mountain Biking Pictures

Map of Fruita Riding

Popularity: 19% [?]

So While we were at the Teva games, we wanted to do a little mountain biking up Vail mountain. We hit up a couple bike stores to ask them what we could ride, unfortunately no one seem that interested or excited about any of the rides open on the mountain. The best suggestion we got was….” well you could ride the fire road up to Eagles nest and back down.”

The reason being, is because most of the good rides on the back side of the mountain weren’t open, due to the snow. Also I guess some of the area is closed because the animals, like moose and elk, are coming down from the winter to eat and they are not to be bothered. Which all makes sense, but slightly disappointed, because I wanted to ride some sweet single track.

A long climb up the single track is what I settled for and I guess it was nice to get a solid climb in.  The bike store had a simple bike map to follow up the mountain, there really were only a couple paths you could ride up.  It was nothing like Park City’s map which you could stare at for the half the day, plotting your route.

We took Gitalong trail up, which was a gradual climb and got a bit steeper towards the end of the trail when you got closer to eagles nest.  We climbed on Saturday and it was gorgeous out, sunny blue skies, nice weather.  As we got closer to Eagles nest though it got super windy and you could see why the backside would still be closed, there was a ton of snow left up there near the ridge and in the trees.

We took Liondown, back to the the village, it was a pretty easy fire road most of the way.  At the very end, it turned into a little bit of single track, that was actually super muddy because the Xcoutry mt bike race just ended.  It was fun though, to at least get a little single track.

It was a pretty long ride and some great climbing and views.

Popularity: 53% [?]

Florida Canyon is the closet single track riding to downtown San Diego

Distance- 2 to 8 Miles

San Diego Mountain Biking Association Trail Map

Click On Map For Larger View

The paths are East side of Balboa Park.  I rode these trails just on weekend day a couple weeks back here are my overall thoughts:

-There is some single track but also walkers, dogs and joggers to watch out for
-You have Highway noise, since it is right off the 163
-A quick easy ride and some okay single track
-Easy starter area just to get some miles in and maybe practice some bunny hops
-If you live downtown it is a way to get a quick trail riding fix
-There are some stairs and bridges which add some technical element.  One of the staircases was pretty ridiculously steep to consider riding up or down

Popularity: 70% [?]