Posts
318
Joined
6/19/2014
Location
Denver, CO
US
Edited Date/Time
9/4/2017 6:52am
I am planning to do some riding in the Montrose Colorado area and am looking for trail recommendations. Already planning to hit Peach Valley OHV area and Sidewinder trail. Anyone have recommendations for which trails are more technical and/or rocky around the area?
The Calico trail system is the Holy Grail of high alpine single track. No one knows about it these days. Every time I've brought it up with others they look at me like I am nuts to go there as no one knows what is out there. Its insane. Its mostly all up or down steep gnarly rocky singletrack in the trees. Once on top its rolling singletrack with crazy exposure in some areas. Its all black or double black rated.
If you look into the moto lore of the area its wild. Crazy videos are up on youtube showing how radical it is. There is a write up on some forum somewhere too about a guy that was riding there and fell off the edge of a trail on a cliff. He and the bike tumbled a long ways down and he broke a bunch of bones and couldn't get out. Luckily a passing group of riders heard the dude screaming for help. The riders arranged an evac and the dude lived. He never went back for his bike. Trail maintenance crews disassembled the bike and drug it out over the course of a few years.
Crazy thing about the area is Rico the town hates motorcyclists with a passion. The town website doesn't mention anything about riding and only talks about hunting. All Rico wants is hunters to come to town and spend money at the resorts. Even though motorcyclists have been riding there for decades without a problem big money hunters decided they wanted the forest all to themselves several years ago. Rico got behind the hunters and a bunch of big wigs in the area tried to shut down the area to riding. There were lawsuits going on with the NFS for a while. Luckily in the end everything blew over because the haters didn't have a case. The whole debacle is written up in the local newspaper articles online. When I finally make it out there I am not gonna spend a nickle in Rico as protest. If they don't want us riding there to the point of suing the NFS to try and get riding shutdown they ain't getting my money. All they are gonna get from me is muh BRAAAAAAAAAP!
The Shop
No matter, the rest of Colorado is full of great riding. Do some research, the trip reports on KTM talk is a good place to start. You'll have to dig a little as most people aren't sharing trail info freely any more. If you go to Taylor Park you'll see why. What used to be a great trail riding location has been over run by quads and side by sides at the lower elevations. But, you can still find good stuff up high there, and you can still ride your unplated dirt bike right into Aspen and be welcomed by the locals. Try that here in New England!
I personally don't ride too much single track on the KLR, but I go high elevation adventure riding every weekend.
You come across all kinds of wild stuff above the treeline... Hope your trip works out!!!
Sorry to thread jack Manco, wish I had some info on the Montrose area. Let us know how it goes!
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