Great mountain-bike trails: From Devil’s Backbone to Super Magic Bus

While Boulder isn’t spoken of in terms of inventing mountain biking — Crested Butte or Cupertino, Calif.,  are usually credited with that — the city wasn’t far behind in embracing it to the fullest.

“I actually remember when you could still ride the Mesa Trail,” offered Duane Duggan, who has spent almost four decades in Boulder County real estate, a substantial amount of it on top of two fat and knobby tires. “And I do remember when mountain bikes were ‘clunkers,’” conventional road bikes with gears and tires swapped out.

From the advent of the first manufactured mountain bikes in the late 1970s,, Boulder has been quick to embrace the sport, and also to regulate it — for example, banning bikes from the more popular hiking trails, such as the Mesa Trail.

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Still, there’s little lack of bike trails within minutes of the city, which Duggan, a broker associate at the Boulder Property Network at Re/Max of Boulder, credits with keeping interest high for outdoor-sports enthusiasts to move here.

“Definitely, Boulder’s got everything but an ocean, and it’s a great sports economy, just lacking surfing,” he said.

So where does a fourth-decade cyclist ride? One of Duggan’s favorite rides is Flatirons Vista, which is somewhat of a southeast county thing. The relatively benign two-mile loop is accessed from Colorado Highway 93, south of Eldorado Springs.

While the Flatirons Vista Trails (north and south) are relatively easy single track, they do hook up with a fairly vast network of trails both west of the highway, including trails coming off of the Dowdy Draw trailhead, near Eldorado Springs, and the Dirty Bismark, a 15-mile loop extending out to Superior.

Hall Ranch: A more difficult 11.8 miles of single track, Hall Ranch is accessed off the South St. Vrain Canyon west of Lyons. A very popular trail with more-advanced riders, it does offer a glimpse of Buttonrock Reservoir, something anglers with pack rods tend to notice.

Heil Ranch: Accessed from the trailhead near Geer Canyon, the Heil Ranch trail actually offers a 38-mile loop riding north to Hall Ranch and back. That trail includes moderate difficulty, but easier and shorter loops are available here, as well.

Walker Ranch: This eight-mile single track is rated moderately difficult and can be accessed either by Flagstaff Road or on the Gross Reservoir Dam Road from Coal Creek Canyon (Crescent Meadows trailhead). Another favorite for cyclists with a pack rod (it crosses South Boulder Creek twice), the Ranch ride actually has a couple areas that most everyone walks. Duggan remembers riding it on Sept. 12, 2001, when air traffic was still cancelled. “It was eerie, almost surreal because it was so quiet,” he said.

High country

After a career as a professional World Tour bike racer — including a national championship in 2012 and an Olympic berth, Timmy Duggan has settled in Nederland, and followed his father into real estate. He’s just as comfortable riding the fat, knobby tires as he was the skinny ones, though perhaps not as widely acclaimed for doing so.

“Within a 20 minute radius of Nederland, there’s plenty of trails,” said the younger Duggan. “You can pretty much find any kind of trail you want.”

Interestingly, the new owner of Eldora Mountain Resort will probably open up more mountain bike routes, Duggan said. “It’s pretty cool, he’s made more positive changes in the last season than the previous owner had in 20.”

But his personal favorite trail?

Super Magic Bus: Part of the extensive West Magnolia trail system, this loop includes more than 1,600 feet of climb in a 12.3-mile single track. Oh yeah, there is an old abandoned school bus, along the route, as well. It’s rated as moderately difficult.

Fort Collins

Duggan isn’t the only professional bike rider capable of swapping to knobby tires, Patrick McCarty, the men’s team director of Rally Pro Cycling, is a Fort Collins resident and an avid mountain biker. On skinnier tires, his team member, Rob Britton, just won the 2017 Tour of Utah.

“I live in Old Town, and I can pretty much get to a lot of trails in five minutes, he said. “The mountain biking is really good here. The Horsetooth Mountain/Lory State Park trail is one of my favorites.”

Horsetooth Mountain/Lory State Park Tour: Located on the west side of Horsetooth Reservoir, this is a 21-mile single track with more than 3,200 feet of climb/descent rated as moderately difficult. But it isn’t the only loop available, either. From the main loop, there are many other loops, as well ranging from fairly easy (Stout Trail) to difficult (the West Ridge and Lory Park small loop).

Foothills/Maxwell loop: A decidedly easier loop lies on the eastern side of the reservoir, the 5.7-mile Foothills/Maxwell loop. A single-track that runs parallel to the reservoir for most of the path, it offers a rather benign 800 feet of climb/descent.

Loveland

Kenny Bearden, executive director of Overland Mountain Bike Club, said that while Loveland doesn’t offer quite the variety of much of the northern Front Range (his group represents mountain bikers in Northern Colorado and southern Wyoming) it does offer one gem many cyclists often overlook: Riding the Devils’ Backbone trail up to the Horsetooth trails.

“It’s an opportunity to turn a short loop into a 50- or 60-mile ride,” Bearden said.

Devil’s Backbone: This 13-mile loop is very appropriately named, as it runs along the hogbacks (the term “razorback” works here) west of Loveland. The moderately difficult trail doesn’t has about 1,300 feet of elevation change and what appears to be a lot of rocks. The trail connecting this loop to Horsetooth is the relatively benign Blue Sky, six miles of easy single track trail.