A few friends and I have a couple weeks to ride this summer and are dropping our bikes into Denver, heading towards Park City UT next month. The hope is to collect a series of trails suitable for larger bikes (GSA, Guzzi, KTM Adv.) that will eventually cross CO and Utah after a few days. Everyone on the ride is pretty competent and looking to get off the beaten path so to speak. So if you have made a similar trip and have route advice, or better yet GPS tracks it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance, Taki
Depending on where you plan to go, Moab is always a wonderful place to go. White Rim Trail is very big bike friendly, and sure looks like a blast. (You can do that route in a Subaru easily enough.) Just know that it is 90 miles of off road trial, which typically takes jeeps between 12 and 20 hours to traverse. Ouray Colorado is flat Amazing! Vernal Utah is a beautiful place to see. Keystone, Breckenridge, Vail, Leadville Colorado etc are all great places to see. There are a LOT of tarmac roads that are pleanty off the beaten path. Steamboat Springs CO Durango Silverton Mesa Verde is worth climbing around (but they have a LOT of vertical assents and descents to tackle, so if you are not up for climbing a ladder on the side of a cliff... well.... The pass coming into Aspen is really beautiful. I think if I were you I would start in Denver, go due SOUTH to Colorado Springs, from there take HWY24 up to woodland park, follow that through Beuna Vista (SP?) and ride on up into Leadville, or out into Breckenridge. There is much to do and see out there. I guess the big question really is do you want just dirt, or are you ok with backwoods twisty windy tarmac?
I have posted several tracks on dualsport maps that kind of fit what you are looking for. We just did a 4 Corners loop and two of the guys rode 990 Adv bikes. I have other applicable tracks of Colorado, but they follow and were derived from the TAT. I do not post these because they are copywrited by the TAT people. So you might want to buy the CO TAT. Also did a trip last year all the way from Abq to Death Valley and back with 4 990s along: http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=587761