This year’s MiniFest started out with me, Nathan, Owen and Nancy taking the train out to Grand Junction, where various other unicyclists would be flying in or driving through during the 5-day period we’d be there.
The train was really nice, quite a civilized way to travel, although we wound up running a couple hours behind schedule because they had to 86 two drunk guys from the train in the middle of the desert, so we were a bit late were meeting up with the folks who’d be sharing our condo for the first nights. That was an international group, consisting of Jenni and Emma from Denmark, Adam from the UK, and Benoit from Montreal.
Once we got settled in the condo (awesome, huge!), we headed out to the Kokopelli Loops trail system to go ride Horsethief Bench, hitting the trail around 3:00pm for a short ride. Horsethief is a lollipop loop, starting with a rocky doubletrack climb, a little like Amasa Back, but not as technical. At the top of the climb we hit the entrance to the loop, which is a huge stack of boulders that almost all bikers walk down. All of us walked down at least some of it, although Benoit and Owen rode most of it, and everyone tried something. Unfortunately Owen pinch-flatted going for one of the big drops, but he had a spare tube and we got him back on the road soon enough.
The lollipop part of the ride had a bunch of fun stuff on the way out, slickrock and benches, and the way back was a climb on mostly smooth singletrack. All of it had amazing views, and we got nice late afternoon light. Benoit won First Blood trying to stay off the cryptobiotic soil. He wasn’t even on his unicycle but I say it still counts. Owen later took Best Biff on a little nothing on the singletrack. And Nathan got some good drone footage until he broke his drone.
The wind came up when we hit the end of the trail, kicking up a bit of a dust storm. We sheltered behind the restrooms until Nancy showed up with beers (Colorado! Not Utah!), and then headed back to the condo, where Scott and Patricia had made it on their road trip to Moab.
