Photos and Story by Monique Beeley 

Spring has once again sprung in the Northern Utah mountain town of Park City, which, as always, means a few things; the ski season is over, the “mud” season has begun and it’s prime time to head to the desert for a “ladies only” mountain biking adventure roadtrip with my riding partner in crime, Sharon. 

The plan was to head out for some much needed time on the bike.  First stop-Red Canyon Lodge, a beautiful resort that sits high atop the eastern section of the Uinta National Forest overlooking Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area. The Lodge has comfy log cabins, great scenery and wonderful trails for riding. We arrived at the Lodge just in time for an afternoon rainstorm, which was fairly short-lived, followed by a beautiful sunny, albeit damp evening perfect for a quick pre-dinner ride. Our short spin turned out to be a great opportunity for wildlife viewing.  We stopped to observe herds of bighorn sheep and deer that frequently graze along the short trail leading to the overlook of the Gorge from our cabin at the Lodge.

Next on the agenda was to head south to Vernal, the northeastern Utah mountain biking capitol. The Vernal area offers miles and miles of some of the sweetest singletrack around. Our choice for the morning was the Jazz-Chrome Molly ride, which is part of a network of trails located near Red Fleet State Park, one of 42 in Utah’s quality state park system. The ride was an exhilarating singletrack adventure, filled with rolling hills, great descents, and, of course, adrenaline-pumping fun! 

After a quick lunch we were back on the road again for the 2+ hour drive to Fruita, Colorado. Since I’d never been to Fruita, but had heard many great things from mountain biking pals, I was extremely excited to check it out. We would be hooking up with a local lady, Kaisa, a longtime friend of Sharon’s.  Fruita is an eclectic town just west of Grand Junction and has a growing and glowing rep of supreme singletrack for the mountain bike enthusiast.  After a good night’s sleep, we were ready to check out “the goods.”  We met up with a couple more local gals and headed to the trailhead.  Today’s adventure began at Rustler’s loop for a quick warm-up, before heading to the infamous Mary’s Loop and Horsethief Bench. This ride offered some fast and sweet singletrack and some of the best views of the Colorado River. After the ride we stopped into The Hot Tomato Café for some of their legendary pizza.

Day 4 of the roadtrip led us back into Utah. Moab, one of many outdoor playgrounds in the desert, was our next epic ridin’ destination.  Waking, feeling a bit groggy from the past few days of excitement we decided to start the day with a hike to get the body moving. We ended up heading to the Eye of the Whale Arch, a great place to explore some infrequently traveled canyons and hoodoos in this slickrock Mecca. Next on the list was a Moab classic trail, Klondike Bluffs. This short ride takes you past some impressive dinosaur tracks and is a great ride for all abilities. For dinner that evening we decided to treat ourselves and dine at the Desert Bistro. And what a treat it was! Great food, superb wine and the best of company since our friend Kirstin, owner of Rim Tours in Moab, joined us for the evening.

The next morning we were having a little trouble choosing a ride from the many Moab classics. After much discussion we ended up selecting Amassa Back. This epic ride is fairly technical and always an adventure. We were feeling a little slow on the pedals and within the first couple of miles both of us had took some pretty good crashes. The first few rides of the season are always a bit challenging and this was no exception. By the time we made it back to the car we both had several bruises and scrapes, but were still smilin’.

The final destination on our roadtrip was Price for the first annual “Bookcliffs TrailFest.” IMBA was in attendance and taught a day of trail building and an afternoon of work creating new sections of trail. Fuzzy of “Bicycle Works” in Price is the local “Trail Dude” and is responsible for the design and construction of many of the great trails in the area. There was a great turnout for this first of many more to come TrailFest events. We rode for many hours in the morning and then hooked up with the IMBA crew to build a new section of trail. The evening was filled with lots of excitement; beer, live music, delicious food with lots of great friends all accompanied by many riding stories of the day, some of them perhaps true!  For the final day of the festival I hooked up with a group heading to the extremely technical Dead Dog Spine, which is a bunch of wooden bridges connecting huge boulders on the spine of a mesa.  This was a little out of my comfort zone, but extremely cool to watch. The ride back took us through some of the many miles of classic desert singletrack that Price has to offer. That afternoon we said our goodbyes, loaded the bikes on the car and headed for home. On the drive home feeling quite content, we recapped the previous week’s adventures. What an epic roadtrip it was!