Today is (or was) IMBA’s Take a Kid Mountain Biking Day.  I usually don’t pay any attention whatsoever to these kinds of made up holidays, but really, this is as good an excuse as any other to go mountain biking.  It doesn’t take much for Nathalie & I.

Rather than a nice simple plan like riding around the lake near our house, we decided to pick the kids up after school on Friday afternoon and head to Moab.  This idea sounded really good at the time, but we really didn’t count on the early October snow in the mountains.  After some uncountable number of hours waiting on Vail Pass for an accident to be cleared up due to snow, we didn’t arrive to our hotel until the middle of the night.  Actually calling it the middle of the night is not fair to nights – it was far closer to morning.

To our surprise, the kids slept very well in the car and woke up early ready to go.  After coffee and tea were applied to the parents, and alternatives were found to various closed BLM & National Park trails (due to the government shutdown) we headed up to Dead Horse Point State Park.  The trails system is perfect here, because you don’t need to decide on length until you get out on the trail.  We headed out on the Great Pyramid Loop at just over 4 miles, knowing if things went badly we could always take the Intrepid Loop cutoff and declare victory after only a bit over a mile.

We shouldn’t have worried.  The trails were absolutely perfect for kids.  Like many mountain bike trails, much of it is spent on the edge of a cliff.  Unlike many of the scarier ones though, you never seem to get too close – we never had to worry about the kids safety while at the same time had amazing views the whole way.  The trail was perfect Moab, just scaled down for kids.  Slickrock, drops, steps, swooping singletrack – it’s all there, but the drops & steps are never more than a few inches and the trail never gets steep enough to have to change gears.  It really was as close to a perfect trail for kids as we could have asked for.

By the end, we had all forgotten about the epic drive.  The kids were saying things like “this is awesome!”  or “this is the best ride ever!”  So take a kid mountain biking day was a total success.

Thanks for reading,

ned.