RR: Sweet, Cool Colorodo Singletrack

[pshloss]

Just got back from a week's vacation in Colorodo at Breckenridge, which is about 2 hours west of Denver. Definitely some awesome riding to be had. Average elevation was 9000-10000 feet and the highest ride I did was a climb up to Boreas Pass at 11,500 feet.

They've had a lot of afternoon thunderstorms recently so everything was very green and tacky. A lot of riding in dense forests with green undergrowth, giant mushrooms and creeks. The highlights were the Colorodo Trail (I did about 15 miles of it) and local loop I did that included a nice singletrack called the Blue River Trail and then after a lot of climbing up a service road an awesome unnamed singletrack up one side of Mt Argentine and then down the other. Also did a great 10-mile singletrack trail called Peaks that they had recently done a time trial race on. And a fun, short, rocky little devil called Burro. They have DH stuff at most of the ski resorts a la Mammoth. But if you are going to go that far, it should be for the sweet singletrack. Even the service roads are pretty spectacular as far as scenery goes. I got lucky with weather, too, as the highs were in the 60's all week. Highly recommend it!

Pics:
1) Nice view from the ski hill at Vail
2) A shot of my rented Superlight from Peaks Trail
3) Peaks Trail
4) View from Boreas Pass Rd
5) A fox on the Blue River Trail
6) Giant orange mushroom
7) Some sweet smooth singletrack
A lot of the trails were rocky and rooty and pretty challenging when climbing at 9000 feet plus

[P-Funk]

Great pics! I just returned from a week-long bike vacation in that same area. We stayed in Dillon so we could ride Vail, Keystone & Breck. No XC though. It was an all-lift-assisted DH vacation. And talk about afternoon rain storms. You could count on it raining just about every day at 3pm, like clockwork. Beautiful trails out there, though.

[pshloss]

Which area did you like the best?

[P-Funk]

For DH, Keystone by far. We actually took our XC bikes also, but we were having so much fun at the resorts that we never got an XC ride in. I'd still like to go back and do some XC in the Crested Butte area.

[dstepper]

Sweet pics, and don't eat that mushroom.

[Epic_Mtn_Biker]

awesome pix, Pete!! see you out on the trail soon.

I've been itching to do Turnbull

[CalEpic]

Nice pics Pete - Looks like a great place to ride. The roadtrip possibilities are endless...

C

[pshloss]

True, and that isn't even the famous area in Colorodo. The better known area is near Fruita and Durango and Telluride and such. Check this link: http://www.backcountrybiker.com/

There was a cool article on it in one of the local papers. Seems like an excellent deal if you can get there.