RunninRubicon said:
Thanks Uphill,
I believe I'll to try this one out next month. I hope to run this on my way back from Black Bear and Imogene above Telluride. Great pics and great idea.
:088:
That's precisely what we did. This group ran the trails out of Ouray/Teluride, CO for a week and then hit the Kokopelli and following that, Moab. Members of this particular trail run were from SoCal, Missouri, Illinois & Arkansas. It's not a bad way to spend a couple of weeks.
Black Bear and Imogene, for example, are not a lot more than county-maintained roads and while SPECTACULAR, are roads widely traveled by people who rent Jeeps.
(photo of Black Bear taken from Imogene)
Black Bear, reputed to be difficult, has that first steep turn where you're looking down on Teluride, but isn't really "difficult".
The nice think about the Kokopelli Trail is that it's not beaten down by tourists. As mentioned, we never saw another rig or bicycle. The road from Top-Of-The-World to the end of Rose Garden Hill is considerably more challenging than anything offered on the trails around Teluride (but the scenery there is breathtaking). Having said that, nothing on the Kokopelli Trail is "difficult", but there are challenging spots.
On the road from T-O-W to the Rose Garden we had to do some trail building because the road had washed out in one area where it was quite steep and in another where there was a cliff face where the road cut into it. Even after throwing rocks, my tires were still 2/3 overhanging oblivion on the outside of the road when I traversed the wash-out. It's the sort of place where you need spotting and have to be prepared to throw rocks.
On the Rose Garden, gravity, loose boulders and shelves you drop over remind you why you have skids and sliders. The trail changes subtly with each passing truck because of the way the rocks are re-laid after rigs roll through them.
One of our number high-centered and had to be winched back off the rock. The degree of incline of the principal road bed would have made using a hi-lift to jack him up and stack rocks very challenging/dangerous. Fortunately he wasn't the last rig in the procession down the hill.
The Kokopelli lizard looked on impassively.
