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.

This year’s MiniFest started out with me, Nathan, Owen and Nancy taking the train out to Grand Junction, where we met an international group, consisting of Jenni and Emma from Denmark, Adam from the UK, and Benoit from Montreal. After getting in around noon, we headed out for a quick afternoon ride on the Kokopelli Loops system.