For today’s adventure we drove out of town a ways to the Rabbit Valley area. Various Youtube videos indicated some of these trails were a delightful cross country jaunt through the desert. One thing to know about Rabbit Valley… It’s actually an OHV area, so we’re legal to ride our e-bikes there but it’s designed for motorcycles and side by sides. We chose a nice blue rated trail and started out. The first part was as expected until we arrived at a very technical rocky ledge area. We weren’t able to ride out bikes up it but walked them over and kept going. Because this was a motorcycle trail and not designed for bicycles, the climbs were steep and usually had an obstacle at the very top that we weren’t able to clear on the bikes. Not a big deal, but kind of annoying. As the trail climbed up the mountain, however, these steep rocky ledges became more and more prevalent. Eventually we were just hiking our bikes up the rocks. Even Jason said he had no idea why this was a blue trail because it was unrideable, even on a motorcycle and he’s a damn good motorcycle rider! At the top of one of the ridges we were finally able to descend a bit down a steep section with more of the rocky ledges. I’m happy to report that I did awesome at it and even conquered the loose sandy section at the bottom! We rode out to an overlook on the river and had a well-deserved snack!
After another hour of mostly hiking and suffering we finally reached another cool spot to take a break, eat more food, and take some more pictures.
From here the trail was actually pretty nice and flowy through the high desert lined with colorful sandstone.
After the cool little slot canyon we were able to ride a bit further until we came across a section that was steep descents and climbs, but completely made of deep sand. This was pure torture because even with the motors on the bikes we had to hike up every hill through the sand. Eventually we made it back to the truck and had a well-deserved hamburger! What a day! I’m not sure you could pay me to ride this trail again… however the area looked awesome for gravel bike riding, so we may end up back here again eventually.
Sadly, we had to head back home. We left early in the morning because our plan was to just do the 15 hour drive in one sitting and not have to deal with dragging our bikes into a random hotel room etc. We made great time at first until we hit Vail where a snowstorm and accident had the entire pass locked down. Luckily (i guess) we got there right after it happened so we were the first to turn around and take an alternate highway south to Pueblo. It was an amazingly scenic drive but ended up adding 2 more hours of driving to our final total of 17 hours. We were so sore from biking that I didn’t really mind sitting in the car, but that was still way too long and the last half of the trip was just Kansas, which is miserable and smells like cows.
Overall, Fruita is an amazing place! We had a blast biking at 18 Road and can’t wait to come back and do it again!