Amazing views and sick trails | Western Spirit Colorado Singletrack Trip Day 1 | Engineer Mountain

The first day of the Western Spirit Colorado Singletrack trip we hit Engineer Mountain.

So yeah, I got my first good derailleur smash out of the way right at the start of ride. Thankfully, it was just cosmetic damage and the drivetrain behaved beautifully all throughout the five days.

See, the 1,100 ft climb isn't that bad, the grade is nice and constant with just a few rocks sprinkled in, however, you are starting 10,700 ft so breathing get pretty heavy pretty quick for those of us that live at sea level.

After the short climb I knew the trip was doable, I was definitely feeling the breathing, but the elevation was not particularly hard to deal with. This was a big deal as most of the trip was going to be in the 9,000 ft to 12,000 ft range.

The peak you see in background is Engineer Mountain; despite being a few feet short of being a 13er it towers over trail providing a great spot to take a break before starting to head down.

And head down you will, starting from this point you get 2,600 ft of scenic, fast, fun descending over 6 miles.

Despite being rated at a single diamond, I'd say this trail is on the easier side of that rating if you start at the intersection with Pass Creek; the grade is quite similar throughout with just a few sections that jump out as surprises, be it by steepness or by rockyness. So long as you're reasonable with how you treat blind trails, this one is doable by most high intermediate riders that have the fitness to get up to the start.

And that's probably the most unfair part of this ride, since both the views and the riding are the highlight its hard to know what you want to focus us, although I'd personally recommend paying attention to the riding just so you don't end up hypnotized and flying off the side of the mountain, modern mountain bikes are good, but they're not there yet.

It was great that we had gotten a few days in before this at Salida and Durango, if not my hands would have been falling off. All through the ride the lead guide would stop a few times just to regroup, it turned out the whole group was quite well balanced, the front pack usually never waited that much for the rest to catch up. What was interesting was to see how the lead pack was different when climbing and when descending.

And there goes Ricardo. So yeah, I was totally geeking out and had to stop for some pictures.

This ended up being an absolutely amazing ride; we were originally going to ride Hermosa Creek but due to the 416 and Burro fires that area was closed. The firefighting teams had already done an amazing job and the fires were controlled and near out, but the area was still closed for evaluation. I have no idea how good Hermosa Creek is, but Engineer Mountain was amazing.

Engineer Mountain on Trailforks: https://www.trailforks.com/trails/eng...