TRAVEL | CLOSER LOOK
STRETCHING ALONG PUBLIC LANDS ON THE COLORADO PLATEAU,
KOKOPELLI’S TRAIL PIONEERED A NEW SPORT.BY AARON GULLEYTrail Association, the group that has stewarded the
Kokopelli since its 1989 completion. “When the guys
first talked about biking out there, it seemed crazy.
But it’s land that’s hard to resist.”
It’s also land that’s highly valuable. Every mile of
the trail is on public property, a patchwork of Bureau
of Land Management–administered rangelands,
national forests, and the McInnis Canyons National
Conservation Area. Linking so much public land is
no small feat in Utah, a state with a vocal political
movement for land transfers and privatization. In
recent years the state’s land conflicts bubbled onto
the national stage with the fight over Bears Ears andTHOUSANDS OF VISITORS speed daily along Interstate
70 between the soaring cliffs of Colorado National
Monument and the fantastical sandstone of Utah’s
Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. Compared
with those marquee destinations, the borderland
between them—an open range of cinnamon-colored
sand and scraggly juniper—seems barren and
anonymous. But out of sight, a backcountry mountain
bike path, Kokopelli’s Trail, takes in 142 miles of slot
canyons, bluffs, and desert mesas as formidable and
astonishing as anything in the parks.
“It’s big, wild country,” says Chris Muhr, vice
president of the Colorado Plateau Mountain Bike‘BIKEPACKING’ THE WEST
On the 142-mile Kokopelli’s Trail, a group of bikepackers race against dusk on Porcupine Rim, a fast and scenic descent into Moab, Utah.PHOTO: LOGAN WATTS