Customer Reviews

Mountain Biking Grand Junction and Fruita, 2nd

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2 star:		(1)
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I have a few problems with this book.

First is the selection of trails. It covers the 18 road and Fruita area extremely vaguely, and you have to keep flipping back to the maps to compare where the trails are in relation to one another. I wanted a good guide of the 18 road trails so I could connect them all. Now I'm smart, I can just flip back and forth and figure out where which trails are but I beleive if they were all grouped together you could see it better. It gets confusing out there.
Second, is there is great coverage of the desert trails around Grand Junction, such as 18 road, and Rabbit Valley, and a couple trails towards the Colorado National Monument. But for the summertime, you don't want to be riding these trails, and if you have been in Grand Junction at all, you know that it is way to hot to stay in the valley. The author has one trail loop for "when it is hot in the valley" but there are so many high country places around there has got to be trails out there (I haven't found them yet).
Third, if you are a beginner you are basically screwed. The rating system used is so vague and 80% of the trails are rated "2-4" on a scale of 5. This suggests that these trails range from slightly difficult to fairly advanced? So if you are a beginner your options are the couple trails rated "1-3". Now I know that's not the authors fault, the trails are how they are, but if you want to write a book for all levels of bikers then you should add some trails that are DEFINATELY 1 or DEFINATELY 2. I know they exist out there, you have to start somewhere.

Now the things I like about this book are that he gives a detailed cross section log of each trail, so you can see where you are climbing and how steep the climbs are, also on the cross sections are numbers corresponding to the wacky rating system the author uses (which is explained in the front of the book along with an explanation of how all bikers rate things differently so you shouldn't beleive it). He has detailed descriptions of the pros and cons of the ride, and there is an awesome glossary of terms (some of which are quite hilarious!) in the back of the book.

I would recommend this book only if you know the area somewhat, otherwise the best directions he gives are how to get to the trailheads. But if you know the area somewhat, you are only using this book to tell you how hard the trails are because you know where they are and how to get to them, and according to the author "all bikers rate things differently" so his rating system would be useless for that as well.

Spend your money on a map and ask local bike shops about difficulty.

This is another great book in the Falcon Guide series. I first used the Moab guide, then purchased this one before my first trip to Fruita. I was not disappointed. The maps are not the most informational ones out there, but they are more than adequate.