I’d never done five days of MUni in a row before, but here we were on Sunday. Nathan and I were sore but doing generally well, while Chris and Dragon were still itching to ride more. Today’s plan was to go to the 18 Road trails at the foot of the Book Cliffs, which were repored to be mellower, flowy trails. Because it was warmer, and the trails were supposed to be easy, most of us decided to go without armor. (What could go wrong?)

For day 4 we added Chris and Dragon to our riding group. Nate, Jim and Jesse had to leave mid-day, so we made the plan to shuttle up to the top of Ribbon Trail, where those guys could do the slab portion and bail out where it crosses Little Park Road, while the rest of us would take a new route down to the trailhead. We’d had so much turnover in riders that only Nathan and I had been on Ribbon Trail two days before, so we got to share it with a new group, who of course really dug it.

On Day 3 we were riding at Palisade, on the other side of the valley from Fruita, in the Book Cliffs. It’s a beautiful area, with stark cliffs leading down to wineries in the river valley. The ride is a climb to the top of a mesa, a double lollipop with a short lower loop and a longer (4 mile) upper loop. The trail system is not as well developed as the ones on the other side of the valley; it’s very tight singletrack, with not many trail options, in contrast with the criss-crossing trails at Kokopelli and Lunch Loops.

On day 2 we were going to shuttle to the top of Ribbon Trail at Aspen Mike’s suggestion. The start is almost unbelievable, an enormous rock slab that slopes off for over a mile. We also got some cave MUni, and a bunch of desert singletrack on the Gunny Loop.