2013 San Juan Solstice

2013 Colorado Trip – We headed out to Lake City CO for the San Juan Solstice 50 miler to start off this trip.  We stayed in a small cabin at the Matterhorn and it was the perfect place to chill out and unwind while we prepared for and recovered from the race.  The rest of the week we stayed in Westminster CO which is easy access to Boulder and all the places we decided to play.

6/25/13 – Betasso Preserve – 7 miles of rolling singletrack with views of Boulder Reservoir.  This is a great place just outside of town off of Canyon Road.  It is a two loop configuration with a connector trail.  There is also a way to add more mileage by coming in off of Four Mile Canyon Road but we didn’t explore that.

We took off from there and decided to go back to the Valmont Bike Park.  We were there a week or so after they opened the park up in 2011.  Very little has changed at the park, just a few updates.  It is a great bike park with about all you’d want whether it is big air or technical trail features.

6/26/13 – Buffalo Creek – 21 miles of mountain biking.  There are many more miles but we did a “short” loop.  Much of this area is wide open due to some fires so be prepared for full sun.  We had been told to come here on our last trip.  We parked at the Buffalo Creek Trailhead and rode in on the dirt road to Shinglemill.  Took this mostly uphill to road 550.  Crossed the road and got on the Colorado Trail heading west.  We took this to a rocky sandy descent down Tramway, then back up road 550 to Shinglemill.  This time we took Shinglemill to Morrison Creek and out on the dirt road we started on.  Morrison Creek was a great trail to end on.  It was downhill and flowy the whole way.

6/27/13 – Centennial Cone – 17 miles of mountain biking this loop.  We went Clockwise.  This was a fairly non-technical loop.  It had about 2700ft of climbing and one area with a technical rock step downhill.  We started off of HWY 6 at Mayhem Gulch.  This was a tough start with a 1.5 mile uphill.  Once to the top it wasn’t too bad.  Expect more full sun exposure for most of this loop.  Gina stopped a lot to take pictures of the endless wild flowers.  There were some nice views of the snow capped mountains in the distance.

6/28/13 – Forest Lake – 7 mile hike.  This started at the trailhead at the East Portal of the Moffat Tunnel.  Here you hop of the Boulder Canyon Trail which gives you a number of options of where to go.  We chose the trail intersecting it and headed up hill to the snow covered area around Forest Lake.  We hiked around the lake and hung out a little bit before heading back down and going off to Nederland to coffee.

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