USA Trip: Fruita, Colorado

If you love mountain biking you have to travel to the US.

It’s not only that they invented the sport, not only they design some of the best MTB bikes but they also have some of the best trails you can find. There may be awesome trails everywhere, but in the US they are usually well signed and next to places where you can eat, sleep and rent very good bikes.

So we went to Moab, but first we wanted to give a go to Fruita which is on the way to Moab from Denver, where we landed … like 20 hours after leaving Barcelona.  The road from Denver to Fruita through the Rockys is pretty enough, but we’re here for the ride.

There are two main areas to ride in Fruita; 18^th Road trails and the Kokopelli loops. They are all quite easy to find in www.mtbproject.com

The Bikes

We rented our bikes at Otesports. The shop was beautiful, filled up of dream bikes.

We rented a couple of SantaCruz (Bronson and Hightower +) an Ibis Mojo 3+ and a BMC 29”. All of them perfect bikes for the area, especially for the Kokopelli loops. I was eager to test a 27.5”+ and we had a couple of them. In my opinion, if you’re used to 29” with at least 5” of travel you don’t need the +, I didn’t feel that I was safer of descended better or climbed more than I did with the BMC or the Bronson. But there were riders on our group who were not that used to sketchy terrain that found them to be safer. These riders came from Epics or even hardtails and for them the 27.5”+ was a blessing!

18^th Road

Not so technical trails but fun. Somebody must have spent a lot of money to make and maintain these trails, and it pays! It’s was pretty crowded the Saturday morning we rode them.

Although is called the North Fruita Desert and the land is really dry and dusty, it is not much different from we’d find at home in Spain. Mostly hardpack with sandy bits every now and then and some rocks to spice it up a little.

The trails go up and down the hills but you won’t pedal up for longer than 30 minutes. We started up with the Chutes and Ladders Loop. The end of it was like a bobsleigh track 15” wide in the middle of the desert, really nice!

Then we went up again for a loop of zippity-do-da and this time it was more of a roller coaster with very steeps ups and downs. All in all a perfect beginning to our trip. Not very technical so not to scared some of the group who had read scary things about the trails in Moab.

Kokopelli Loops

These trails are on the south side of the I70 highway, just 10’ by car from Fruita.

This was more the terrain we came looking for. It’s a perfect appetizer for Moab, and it’s really fun to ride. First day we did Horsethief with its very sketchy entry (check youtube) and the second day we planned a longer ride including the ridgeline tour and more. We had to cut it short because it started to rain mid ride and parts of the trails became a nightmare. The parts that are not rocky are just clay and in 5 meters the bike gained like 10 kg of mud. No way to ride it or push it, you had to carry all 25kgs of bike. The rain didn’t last long and the trails dried up very quickly, but if you’re there and it rains; stay in town, there’re enough restaurants and bike shops not to be bored.

If I had to choose one trail, that’ll be Moore Fun, sure you’ll hike a bit going up and there are a couple of foot on the ground places going down but the trail is worth it. Flowy sometimes, challenging others, with great views of the Colorado River, we could do it over and over … but we had to drive to Moab ;-)