Some Phoenicians decide to go to CO...

[Scott4x]

And it's still amazing!
Berger, Bovads and I went for the better part of last week, planning to ride most of the trails in the Rico area. We left late tuesday afternoon and hit lumberyard up in flag for dinner then pulled off into the cinders a bit to sleep for the night, woke up and hit the road weds early, stopped at the forest service station in dolores for our co ohv stickers and made it to camp around 2pm. It was looking like rain, but Bovads and I were itching to ride, so we set out to do a little 20ish mile loop close to camp starting on winter trail, then taking west fork up to calico and down calico back to camp. Pretty fun and scenic loop with one casualty being Bovads brand new hammerhead brake pedal on his yz450... he smashed his brake pedal last year up there too, think it was a different trail though Anyway, we get back to our camp at 10,200' and get setup and wind down. Weather was about perfect for and

Day two was a bit of a late start... and we paid for that later.
I pretty much did all the route planning and the plan for the day was to ride into Rico for lunch, and do a little exploring on trails none of us had been on, so we started on the north th of Calico, which was about 1/4mile from camp and rode that all the way to the horse creek/stoner mesa intersection, took horse creek trail down into rico, hit the slab for a couple miles and stopped in at the Enterprise Hostel for some pizza and local lager... everyone in town was very dirt biker friendly, asking us what trails we'd done and what we were doing and telling us to stay dry, which was not going to happen. We had already hit a good bit of rain, but nothing compared to the later part of the ride. After lunch we were immediately back on dirt from the enterprise and eventually found burnett creek trail, rain and sleet coming down off and on, so after burnett we decided to get back to camp asap instead of exploring, and ended up taking calico(very cold being on the ridge, wet, and windy) down to east fork, had some pretty close lightning and thunder to scare us a bit and hit the road back to camp(again, very cold, wet and windy) got back to camp and started thawing out, it would rain for the next few hours, luckily we had a motorhome and plenty of ez-ups.

Day 3 was amazing!
Plan for the day was to Ride Calico from top to bottom, then Ride up Priest Gulch back to Calico and then go down Johnny Bull and try to find the Winter trail connector just north of Dunton. None of us had ever been on the southern most section of Calico(or Cowlico as I dubbed it) and it was awesome! Smooth flowy $hit and some technical fun stuff After finishing that Berger was not feeling the greatest so he decided to do a little ds'ing and hit the highway back to camp, Bovads and I pressed on and headed up Priest Gulch, which was definitely the hardest trail of the week... nothing in particular just a bunch of tough stuff spaced so that it was very hard to develop a flow. Once back on Calico we picked up the pace a bit and started in down Johnny Bull, another new to us trail. Pretty fun and scenic, kinda tight and at the very bottom some very oddly spaced log steps that would be a trick to go up I think. That put us out on the river which we took full advantage of, then headed off to find the winter trail connector... to no avail. so back to camp via dirt road it was. About 50 miles that day of almost all pretty gnarly singletrack in great weather!

Day 4 was to be the dual-sportiest day...
Plan was to ride to Hermosa(just north of durango) via jeep roads and singletrack, We rode Bolam Pass(very scenic jeep road) to the hermosa creek trailhead and rode that into hermosa. That trail started out as a pretty fun quad trail, but quickly turned into the singletrack trail we were expecting, some very technical stuff mixed in with some smooth flowy stuff, but it was very dusty. Berger was having some tire issues, we had to change a tube before we even got off the smooth dirt roads, and again right at the point the trail turned from atv wide-single track... turns out he nearly ripped a knob off a new bridgestone which tore a hole in the carcass, which pinched the new tube. we patched the original tube, cut the rest of the knob off and patched the tire and it lasted the rest of the day. On the way back to camp Bovads and Berger both just reversed the route as they were both having some bike issues, but we had met up with a group of *cough*rockstars*cough* and I rode with them on the way back and added in Jones Creek trail to the Pinkerton-Flagstaff trail-Dutch creek back onto hermosa creek and were very glad we did! Very fun additional loop! Ended the day with 104miles on the odo and ready for

Day 5 sucked.
We packed up and drove home

Ill add some pics soon, and have a ton of gopro footage to sift through...

[Scott4x]

View from camp

Just parked...

Not much later


Trail break on west fork on thursday.

Ominous clouds...

Lunch break in rico.

Day 3(friday) taking a breather at 12,235' on calico...

Bliss...

[Scott4x]

KTM log on Priest Gulch


Rick on his way to KTM log



River at bottom of Johnny Bull

Beautiful night for a fire s:

Hermosa Creek Trail, Todds tire change spot #2...

[ARZ]

These are from Eric's helmet cam, they came out pretty good.

Here is a video of Zach chasing Eric down Eagle Peak
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T65R5...hannel&list=UL

Another of a sketchy part on the Calico trail. Notice the exposure at 3:22, most video it does not do the actual trail justice, but this video actually did seem pretty representative.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnRod...hannel&list=UL

[hilslamer]

[Scott4x]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoXOM_6hdXk&sns=em
First vid I've uploaded, some highlights of calico...

[ARZ]

I love that little double on Calico you did @ 5:33 I think I got Eric clearing that. Ill have to look for it in my videos.

Here are some I posted from the first day.

Here is one of me following Eric on Hermosa Creek
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzvaM8UMTqw

Here are a few of the spots I wouldn't throw my kids at unsupervised. The creek is almost 200 ft a straight down at this spot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfL_MqvgeL4

Watch I give Paul a: "Yah Yah Yah", @1:44 Bummer is, he whacked his foot a little later. Hope I didn't cause that Paul.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlJChuhim7k

Pauls axle Wood
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoBYFlsl88U

Eric, Andy and Zach haulin 11 min+
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjVOfyVlrco

Bad gas? Listen at the end to how indignant Zach is when I ask him if he put 2T gas in my bike this am. At least he was trying to help my slow A$$ get ready. LOL.
http://www.youtube.com/my_videos_edi...id=6FdPTrIPXmk

This was after lunch and after I removed my filter skin, this Jones Creek trail was AWESOME!!! We had a total blast on this one. Early in the video @3:33 I catch my left arm on a tree at about 30mph OUCH!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?edit=vd&v=7vuxPjU13ko

Awesome stuff, chasing Zach. Video never does it justice. The rough spots were super rough, and we were flying.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHHihcghinM

Wish you coulda joined us Tim.

[Slowred]

Great RR Scott! Way to make those of us stuck in the Valley Blast Furnace jealous!

Thx for taking us along.

[Scott4x]

Thanks slowred, glad you enjoyed it! And yeah ARZ, I like that double too! Here's the second vid of mine... some more calico fun

[Scott4x]

Starting to go up priest gulch... not too tough... yet...

[Scott4x]

Rest of priest gulch, till the gopro died anyway... This section kicked our butts