Trail builders to begin on new Mud Springs Trail System in the new year
A new trail is now open to mountain bikers: Kestrel Run is the final segment of the Raptor Route, adding 2 miles to the trail system in Sand Flats Recreation Area.
“[Kestrel Run] comes off of Falcon Flow a little bit before the lower trailhead parking lot,” said Tyson Swasey, operations coordinator for Grand County Active Transportation and Trails. “It kind of goes up and over some really cool sandstone domes and up onto some fins. And then the end of it descends kind of down a steeper slickrock fin down into a canyon. It’s just super beautiful, [and a] really cool route.”
“The purpose of the Raptor Route is to provide an alternative to the Whole Enchilada,” Swasey said. The popular Whole Enchilada bike route starts high in the La Sal Mountains and descends thousands of feet to the Moab Valley. Swasey explained that Porcupine Rim, the last section of the Whole Enchilada, generates many bike-related search and rescue calls each year—and because it’s remote and difficult to access, a rescue can take upwards of six hours.
Raptor Route was first proposed in 2015, and the building process began in the fall of 2019 with the roughly 5-mile section called Falcon Flow. The trail system is now 11.4 miles total and is described by Swasey as “intermediate with advanced moments.”
Another new mountain bike trail system may be coming to the Moab area next year. The location of the proposed Mud Springs trail system is about 13 miles south of Moab, east of Highway 191. Construction of the Mud Springs trail system would be split into two phases, with the potential for 25 trail miles total. The proposed initial phase of the Mud Springs project has about 10 miles of beginner and intermediate trails.
Implementing a new trail
Swasey said the process for creating a brand new trail system like Mud Springs begins with identifying where exactly a trail can go. That involves talking with the Bureau of Land Management to identify any areas that should be avoided such as raptor nesting sites, habitat for sensitive plant species, and paleontological and archeological sites.
Next comes the actual trail design process, which Swasey said usually includes some community input. Then an official proposal gets submitted to the county. For a Grand County project, this involves getting approval from each non-motorized recreation representative of Trail Mix. Since Mud Springs is located in San Juan County, the trail proposals for the area went through a different approval process.
The county-approved proposal then gets sent to the BLM for an environmental assessment in compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act. Keri Nelson, outdoor recreation planner for the BLM Moab Field Office, said they are nearing the end of the NEPA process, which included a 15-day public comment period in November.
“We’re at the point of just reviewing those comments and providing a response from the BLM and factoring any of the necessary pieces that come from those components into our proposed action,” Nelson said.
From there, Dave Pals, the Moab BLM Field Manager, will make a decision on whether to go ahead with the proposal as-is or if any changes will need to be made. If all goes well, Nelson said, the trail-building process may begin in the spring of 2024. This area is used as winter habitat for mule deer, so the earliest construction could begin is April 15.
Mud Springs has been in the works for a while. In 2008, the BLM designated this location as a “Mountain Bike Focus Area.” Swasey said that Trail Mix started looking into the possibility of a trail system in that area in 2011. Since the Mud Springs area is in San Juan County, the initial steps entailed establishing an inter-county collaboration for this project.
San Juan County, Grand County, and the BLM began discussing a collaboration on the Mud Springs trail system back in 2018. Nelson said that the COVID pandemic stalled this process. According to Swasey, it wasn’t until 2022 that the project regained momentum with the help of Grand and San Juan county locals like John Knight, the National Interscholastic Cycling Association coach for Grand County High School.
“The area has potential for a NICA course, [a] high school racing course,” Swasey explained. “They require a lot of parking and a very specific course layout to make it work.”
First adaptive cycling trail system in Moab
In addition to providing a possible location for the high school race team, the Mud Springs trail system will be designed with other specific user groups in mind: e-bike users and adaptive cyclists. Nelson and Swasey said that Mud Springs would be unique as the only non-motorized singletrack trail system open to e-bikes on BLM land in the Moab area. The project was proposed to allow class 1 e-bikes, which have a pedal-assist but no throttle. Nelson said the trail planning involved conversations with land managers in Fruita, Colorado, where they’ve successfully opened trails to class 1 e-bikes.
Mud Springs would provide something that isn’t yet found in the Moab area when it comes to adaptive cycling as well. Adaptive cycling refers to cycling on bikes designed for people with mobility restrictions that prevent them from riding conventional bicycles. Adaptive bikes come in different designs to suit different needs.
“We don’t have any trails that were specifically designed with adaptive cycles in mind,” Nelson said. “And a lot of this technology and design standards have evolved and certainly been refined over the years. And so I think, you know, this would be a system that’s the most up-to-date and current with those design standards.”
Tyson said that while adaptive cyclists use other trails in the area, and Trail Mix has done work to modify existing trails to make them more accessible, this would be the first trail system built to specifications for adaptive cycles. Narrow and off-camber, or outsloped, trails can impede travel for adaptive cyclists, especially those who are riding without a support rider. Hand-powered adaptive bikes have three wheels, often two in the front and one in the back. Trails built with these types of bikes in mind need to be at least three feet wide.
Swasey said that the plan for Mud Springs is to use 4-foot wide excavators to create “a little bit wider and more stable of a trail,” which will be great for creating trails suitable for hand cycles, as well as more beginner-friendly trails. Swasey and Nelson both mentioned that the terrain itself, located near the foothills of the La Sals, is also different from what most cyclists might be used to in the area: fewer rock features, fewer ledges, and more dirt. Swasey explained that the dirt provides more opportunities to build the trail in different ways, including the use of machines.
“It’s a different type of trail—that’s kind of the objective of it as well—than you might see represented by the majority of trail systems in the area,” Nelson said.
