Press "Enter" to skip to content

Mapping the Tabeguache Trail

Saturday, June 6, 2009

After finally running the full Kokopelli Trail last month, I decided I wanted to finish off the ‘Grand Loop’ trails. Today I tackled the second trail; the Tabeguache Trail. The Tabeguache (pronounced ‘tab-a-watch’) Trail is mountain bike trail that starts out near Montrose, CO and ends up near Grand Junction. Like the Kokopelli Trail, it is made up mostly of 4-wheel drive roads with a few sections of single-track mixed in. However, unlike the Kokopelli, there is not a lot of information about the Tabeguache available…especially for someone wanting to take a Jeep along as much of the route as possible.

I spent the last week and a half researching the trail and putting together my best guess at a track using a bunch of BLM and Forest Service maps along with Google Earth. While the track I ended up putting together was pretty close, I did run into some problems early on. I ran into some downed trees, an ATV only section of trail and a few locked gates at private property.

I left Montrose around 8am and got back home around 7:30, so I was on the trail for almost 12 hours! Including all of my backtracking, I ended up traveling just over 160 miles off the pavement.

I’ll be putting together a much more detailed page about the Tabeguache Trail shortly (once I get the track I kept cleaned up) so I won’t go into much detail about the actual route here. Since I was more concerned about not getting lost today I didn’t end up taking too many photos, plus the skies were cloudy most of the day so I didn’t get that many good pictures, either.

Anyway…enough talk, here’s some pictures 🙂

Signs at the trailhead in Shavano Valley
IMG_6651.JPG

The trail was fairly well marked, but there were a number of broken and missing signs along the way, too
IMG_6653.JPG

Headed down to Dry Creek
IMG_6654.JPG

IMG_6657.JPG

My first wrong turn….my Jeep won’t fit over that bridge 😉
IMG_6659.JPG

Dry Creek is not very dry
IMG_6663.JPG

IMG_6670.JPG

A few rough sections early on in the trail
IMG_6674.JPG

IMG_6675.JPG

Climbing up higher onto the Uncompahgre Plateau
IMG_6680.JPG

IMG_6686.JPG

Up in the Aspens
IMG_6694.JPG

Waterfall
IMG_6695.JPG

I was able to move this one by hand…
IMG_6700.JPG

IMG_6705.JPG

IMG_6719.JPG

IMG_6731.JPG

IMG_6732.JPG

La Sals in the distance
IMG_6747.JPG

IMG_6751.JPG

Dominguez Canyon
IMG_6762.JPG

IMG_6771.JPG

Finally…some blue sky as I near Grand Junction
IMG_6772.JPG

Unaweep Canyon
IMG_6779.JPG

Now, it’s time for me to get some sleep! Enjoy!

Leave a Reply