Lake Pueblo State Park MTB ride

 Some shots of yesterday's ride in Lake Pueblo State Park, around a 3 hour drive south of Ned.  Our mtn thermostats were taken a bit off guard when the temps rose over 80 degrees with hardly a breath of breeze to speak of...but it was fun to swirl around on narrow singletrack and try not to use your brakes around the corners. 

 The trails in Pueblo are pretty flat so you can do most the trails on the south side of the reservoir in 3 hours if you keep moving.  And that's what gets you in the end, not taking the time to drink water, and just going as fast as you can on these swoopy trails!

 I definitely felt that the trails were fun, but I did get a bit mentally tired at the end of the ride, not from concentration too much on avoiding the huge cacti on the sides of the trail, but it's not extremely technical terrain and it's VERY smooth for the most part.  A rigid singlespeed would be the call here, with something like a 34x15 for gearing.

 The Freeride trail was the highlight for me, had some techy sections as seen in the bridges above which weren't difficult but just unique.  In all, we did: Southside, Waterfall, Pronghorn, Voodoo (clockwise) where we ran into the Brit.  He and Toopa were down there camping for the weekend and getting some warm weather singletrack and road riding in.  After Voodoo, we went back on Log Drop, up Rock Canyon to Roller Coaster, down Skull Canyon trail, to Southside and then back to the car for more water.  Then after some rest in the shade, we headed out for another hour on Conduit over to The Duke, up to Roller Coaster, down Broken Hip, up Watertower (not recommended, road climb and steep), and then down Freeride to Southside and back to the car.

In all honesty, it's a great place to go once or twice a year in the early spring or late fall when it's not too hot.  But The trails did leave something to be desired. It's similar in feel to Fruita but much less technical and flatter topography.  The map on the website is also pretty poor quality.  There's no topo or aerial background and just lines on a white background.  It's not easy to get lost since the signage is pretty good out on the land, but the map was just bad.  Maybe I'm picky since I make maps but I was wanting more!