Ride Report for Rampart Range and Taylor Park.
If any of you dirt folks are interested in some dirt riding in Colorado, here are a couple of areas we hit up recently. Note there are a variety of shops that rent off road bikes in Colorado. Also, if you are on a dual sport (i.e. plated) bike, you do not need the Colorado OHV permit. Having said that, it is wise to get one. If you need to be rescued, you won't have to pay for the helicopter ride if you have the OHV permit, so it might be good insurance. I forget how much it costs, but I think it is only $26US or something along those lines.... I could be wrong.
So met up with a local friend and other one from Ontario. All of us did Rampart Range the first day. My friend from Ontario and I stayed at Rampart another day then we went to Taylor Park. The local had to go back to work. The plan was to ride Taylor Park for 1.5 days before going back to Fort Collins (friend's house). Except my friend's bike developed a leak in his Husky's coolant bottle and then while refilling the rad, he forgot his radiator cap on the trail side at Taylor Park on the first day, so we only got 1 day of riding at Taylor.
Some pictures:
Rampart Range:
This was the first real ride on my new to me bike. Getting use to the Reklus and a 2 stroke.... and a much higher seat height than what I am use to..... and WAY nicer suspension. I have only been riding dirt for 1 year. Rampart is kind of a strange surface, it is slick when dry but has lots of grip when wet. It is a big granite dome and the loose bits of granite act like marbles. It doesn't have many rocks or logs etc. It is a good place for beginners.
Off to Taylor Park. After driving over Cottonwood pass, we got to Taylor Park and it was hailing, lightning strikes all over and plain shite weather. Hence we decided to not camp and we rented a cabin instead.We're NOT hardcore campers. FYI - Cottonwood Pass is one of the best paved riding roads I have been on (done it on a ZX-6R back in 2003 and it is still awesome). However only the east side of the pass is paved.
Taylor has extreme elevation, up to 12000' ~ 4000m my carbbed bike did OK but preferred to be below 11,000 ft.... but was doing OK. We ended up only riding 1 day, but we did cover +73miles (~118kms). The really gnarly stuff we don't have pictures of, because we were too tired/busy getting out of those spots.
Here is the cabin when we got there, after the hail. The next picture is just outside the cabin next morning looking at some old machinery.
Scenery is stunning. We were actually riding through snow at the upper elevations.
Lunch Spot:
Cabin View:
Ya it was FUN, tiring and I learned A LOT.
Just an FYI
Rampart Range - is close to Denver (SW of Denver) and opens early in the season and closes fairly late. It is relatively beginner friendly with the hardest bits being the water ruts in the middle of the trails. Plus as mentioned it is relatively slick when dry. There is some tight technical single track, but for the most part a beginner/average rider will be comfortable on all but the tightest single track -> this coming from a guy who is no expert (dirt riding a little over 1 year). If you are coming from Sea Level it might be a good place to start riding to get use to the altitude. One nice thing about Rampart is that there are very few Mosquitoes.... but there are quite a few flies during the day light hours, but they don't bother me as much.
Taylor Park surrounds the Taylor Park Reservoir and is a bit east of Crested Butte. At the high elevations there was still A LOT of snow in certain spots (which we had to ride through), so just check to make sure the area is open before you head out. The degree of difficulty is exponentially higher at Taylor when compared to Rampart. You can get a really good map at the Trading Post that tells you how hard the trails are. Note that a difficult ATV trail is no where near as hard as a difficult single track. Trails such as Star Trail and Timberline Trail and much of the stuff to the west towards Crested Butte are expert only. We took Star trail to connect to another trail and got our butts kicked pretty good. There are some easier single track trails.... and there is a lot of variety. As mentioned scenery is stunning. Keep in mind I am a relatively new dirt rider. Also, there are some serious elevation changes at Taylor, and nothing is really all that low, so you might want to stay a few days at a lower altitude before you head up there if you are coming from Sea Level. Note if you are a beginner there are still a variety of trials you can go on. There is some easy single track and easy/intermediate ATV trails, plus a variety of gravel roads where you can just appreciate the scenery. Just be careful. The difficult stuff can be extremely difficult.
I hope you guys enjoyed the ride report.
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