World-Class Lunch Rides in Grand Junction's Lunch Loops

Get out for a rocky, rugged lunch ride on Grand Junction's iconic Lunch Loops trail system!

Mountain Biking Easy, Moderate, Severe, Extreme

The Ribbon -> Andy's Shuttle — Photo: Greg Heil

Description

It's a rare city where you can ride your bike from the bustling downtown business district onto rocky singletrack and then pedal back to the office—all on your lunch hour. But in Grand Junction, Colorado, you can do precisely that on the Lunch Loops Trail System.

While the Lunch Loops trails were named for their accessibility, they are renowned for their dramatic technical difficulty—which makes this network an even greater anomaly. In some other cities, you might be able to ride singletrack on your lunch hour—but it's often a bland, flowy affair. The Lunch Loops, on the other hand, is home to some of the most technical bike-optimized singletrack in Colorado.

In a state as renowned for mountain biking as Colorado, that's a bold claim—but any rider who's sampled the rocky drop-filled goods found in the Lunch Loops knows it to be true. In fact, the Lunch Loops is home to the first-ever purpose-built mountain bike freeride trail constructed on public BLM land in the entire United States: Free Lunch. Built by the mavericks at Singletrack Trails in conjunction with local trail advocacy group COPMOBA, Free Lunch is a mountain bike-only downhill-directional trail filled with huge drops, challenging rock slabs, and all manner of technical features. They since followed it up with another bike-only downhill trail called "Pucker Up," which promises to keep the pucker factor high.

But that's not all. The Ribbon Trail is an epic shuttle run down a massive slab of bedrock where riders can easily achieve speeds of over 40 miles per hour! This iconic line has become internet-famous due to Youtube videos, but it deserves every bit of the fame.

Lower down, the trail system is packed with a maze of singletrack options to choose from. Holy Cross is an iconic black diamond trail that winds through beautiful rock formations, ducking under overhangs and squeezing through tight slots. Other trails, like the Gunny Loop, are more cross-country-oriented while still offering plenty of classic Lunch Loops chunk. You can even find a few beginner-friendly trails near the trailhead, but these easy loops are quite short and can't be extended without getting into the more challenging trails in the network.

No, Lunch Loops is all about the gnar, and these brutally-gnarly trails have helped the local riding scene to evolve into one of the best in the country. It's no wonder that a slew of professional racers call Grand Junction home and that brands such as MRP use these trails as their local testing grounds. If you can ride the Lunch Loops, and your products can withstand the beating doled out here, you can ride and perform anywhere in the world!