On day 2 we were joined by Aspen Mike. He had his brakes fail just when he got to town, so we picked him up at the local mechanic. At Mike’s suggestion, we were going to shuttle to the top of Ribbon Trail, part of the Lunch Loops trail system near Grand Junction.
The start of Ribbon Trail is almost unbelievable. You ride up a little stack of rocks, and wind up on the top of an enormous rock slab that slopes off for over a mile. We played around up top for a bit and then got to riding. The grade is really steady, and the surface is smoother than the Slickrock Trail, so the riding was easy. We did some riding near the cliff edge, although Benoit almost had a human cliffside retrieval when he hit a juniper bush with his balance hand.
Near the bottom of Ribbon, as we were getting ready to climb out to the road for our second trail, we saw some mountain bikers go into a cave. Following them seemed like the thing to do, and it turned out to be a shortcut, and partly rideable. Most of us got our first experience of underground MUni.
After the cave we headed out on the Gunny Loop, a flatter trail, desert singletrack with a mix of ups and downs. There was still a bunch of fun stuff, but we were all getting tired, so not playing around as much. We got to meet a guy from COPMOBA, who was out doing work on a new trail to be opened the following week. They’ve clearly been doing a ton of work in the area and we were benefitting from it.
Taking a short cut near the bottom of the trail we managed to hit a scary-steep but Totally Doable chute, which most of us with a brake managed to do, biffless. For the day, Nathan won First Blood when his knee pad came down on impact, Owen took Best Biff with a facial bonus (though Adam also was in the competition).
We were all super-tired at the end when Nancy came by with beer and snacks, which is why we were all smiles.
