Welcome to TEAM MAX'S Kokopelli Adventure

The trail was named after Kokopelli, a magical being recognized by many Native American groups of the Colorado Plateau. Kokopelli is the humped back flute player and is associated with the Flute Clan of the Hopi Indians. Legend holds that he was able to drive back winter with his flute playing. He wandered from village to village with a bag of songs on his back, and, as a symbol of fertility, was welcome during spring planting. He is also know as a trickster, not unlike the coyote of many North American legends. The figure of Kokopelli appears in many forms all across the Colorado Plateau. He also appears painted on Hohokam and Mimbres pottery and as the Hopi Kachina-Kokopelli. The trail was named for Kokopelli out of respect for our Native America heritage, and symbolizes the wandering of the Colorado Plateau Mountain-Bike Trail System.

Our Adventure:

Our adventure begins with a road trip to the trailhead, but long before that many long hours of planning and preparation. To maximise our traveling efficiency we decided to use a support vehicle to transport the majority of our gear between legs of the trip. We had eight members in this particular adventure. The majority of Team Max, plus a few other hearty souls. With the number of people we divided up the trail into segments so that someone from the group would miss only a minor leg of the trail to take his or her turn piloting the support vehicle. The natural choice of vehicle for this trip was "MAXVERT" a.k.a. Max's Toyota Fourunner. After carefull packing we were able to stuff all the gear into the machine.

We arrived after dark at the Loma trailhead, set up camp and dreamed about many miles of awsome riding. The morning dawned cloudly and cool, fortunately for us, one of our greatest fears were bright hot days that would drain our bodies and our precious water supplies. Nearly every menber was traveling with a "MULE" the camel back 90 oz. bladder with the mini-pack, some of us also carried a pair of addtional bottles on our bikes. The first segment of the trail was incredidle, single track riding with pocket views of the colorado river below, we were not sure of a river crossing that is shown on the map, in prepartion of this Gyver carried a 60' 9mm rope for possible knarly river traversing. When the river arrived we were fortunate to be blessed with a nice bridge. The information that was presented in our guide books was a little out of date, but in typical Team Max Style we were ready for the river crossing anyway.

After snacking at the river we had a little climb out of the drainage, Max flated a little way past the river, Gyver doubled back to investigate his tardiness to discover that his pump was fried, after repairs we were back on the trail. The first leg was draining on many of us, remember that this is early riding in the season and we were not in peak shape as in late summer. After some more food we were back on the trail, many of us had a second wind, and with the easier trail we covered the next segment without much incident.

We dinned, then went to sleep, the next morning dawned cool and overcast, the trickster was being nice to us. Our journey followed the river then dropped us back into civillization but not before challenging us with mud that would cling to our tires and never let go. Those of us with clipless pedal were cursing life at this point, and everyone struggled with bikes that had gained 30 pounds about the tires and frame. Eventually we dropped down on to a short section of pavement to hopefully rid our machines of this clinging plague. A couple miles of pavement and enough of the mud was gone to allow to ride on as a storm blew in. Again the Magical flute player was smiling, just as the front moved in we had the convienence of a bridge to hide under, in the land of few trees and not a whole lot of shelter we took refuge like a hobo under the bridge. After the storm had passed in the late afternoon we took the alternate route to Dewey bridge, we had had enough of the sticky mud, and with the recent rain we were all glad to be on the hard surface. We crossed the brige, then rode for another mile or so to our next camp. While dinner was cooking we made the necessary adjustments and cleaning to our trusty steeds. We were blessed with a beautiful sunset under magnificant sandstone formations.
 
 

The next day would be the day to remember, a lot of vertical, well over 6000 feet, and over 25 miles. We were some tired pups when we hit the hay after that long journey. We also experienced the "baby head" hill, a.k.a. Rose Garden Wall, if you can imagine a trail covered with rocks about the same size as a baby head, all loose and in motion as we descended, then you would have a little idea of what we rode on, a true challenge!!

We feasted again that night with the mini-keg of German brew, in the nights prior we were refreshed with a variety of "pub-styles". After all, we were in Utah, the land of Mormons and wimppy beer....we had to provide for ourselves. It was cold that night, we were high in the La Sals and the night temperatures were nippy.

Our final day dawned cool, and we aked ourselves how we could be so lucky with this weather? Today was the big reward from yesterday's toil. We had about 2000 feet of climbing, some minor descents and then the sweet 4000 foot descent into Moab. The minor descents on the pavement along the foot of the La Sals were incredibly fast, >45 MPH, then we moved back onto the dirt for the free ride into Moab. A portion of the group decided to steer away from the true Kokopelli and ride the "rim" into town, but some chose to honor Kokopelli and praise him for blessing us with such fine weather and a wonderfull ride. The day ended with the whole group at Eddy McStiffs, looking for some quality brew.....we were still lokiking when we left. Fortunately there were 1 or 2 pub-styles left in the cooler!

The team was treated to nothing but great conditions for riding.

Only one made the journey end to end without a "driving" leg..... he thanks those who drove portions of his leg so that the true spirit of Kokopelli could live on in the rocks, the hills and valleys of that great trail.