Up Next: The Grand Loop

It's been a great school-year and now it’s time to enter wilderness and take up adventure!

Next adventure? June 1. The Grand Loop.

The remote and varied topography of the Grand Loop — deep canyons, pine forests, badlands and aspen groves of the CO-UT borderlands — is calling. It’ll be a 7-day out-there single-speed escapade, mostly on the kind of intense, 4×4 tracks and abandoned uranium mining roads that the Grand Canyon Trust's 2005 Recreational Survey (and contemporaneous studies by conservation groups) found to be in "poor" condition for future use. Which translates to adventure, right? Made up of the trio of long-distance routes - the Kokopelli, the Paradox, and the Tabeguache - the Grand Loop has very little single-track segments. Along those routes lay the "grand and unparalleled" riding (and walking) I hope to have. It is not a route for gravel bikes. It calls for fat tires, and who knows I may go with the 6.25” Molendas. On the Morning After The Revolution Bike. Only a few services can be found. The seasonal water sources are widely spaced. Indeed, the few public water taps along the route are seasonal. But I’ll be able to look down from high plenty of times daily to spot water sources, as there’s 39,000’ of climb.

It'll be hard for the old duffer, but's that's the idea, right?!