Holly Annala lives in Crested Butte, but she’s now the author of a guidebook to riding singletrack in Southwest Colorado.
How does she have the audacity to do that?
It’s OK, folks. She grew up here.
Not only that, but she has spent the last two summers and falls doing 53 pretty awesome rides, staying with family and friends and inviting them to join her.
The result: Mountain Bike Durango, Cortez, Dolores and Rico Singletrack.
The self-published book came out in April, and you’ll now find it for $16.95 in most local bike shops and a few bookstores in Durango, Cortez and Dolores – and soon in Rico, she hopes.
It’s Annala’s fifth guidebook, if you count second and third editions. She’s done three editions of a guidebook for Crested Butte, Gunnison and Salida and one edition of a guidebook for Summit County and Vail.
She said she started her most recent guidebook in the fall of 2013, then finished the “research” last fall with rides around Rico and a couple of high-altitude Durango-area rides. Then she worked over the winter, with help from a map-maker and a designer, and now it’s a reality.
Cortez’s popular Phil’s World is covered, and your Durango basics such as Horse Gulch and Twin Buttes. Farmington’s Road Apple and Aztec’s Alien Run also get a few pages. You’ll find a major emphasis on backcountry, whether it’s along the Colorado Trail or up on the passes; that’s where the best singletrack is, after all.
Although Annala loves the high-altitude rides – Calico Trail and the Graysill and Colorado Trails are among her favorites – but she took great pains to emphasize that there are plenty of much easier, and much lower, rides in the book.
“The goal is to have fun. So many options,” Annala wrote in an email. “Hard to have a favorite with all that riding!”
So true, as those of us who’ve lived here for a while and have ridden quite a few of these trails know well.
If you’re new to the area or if you’ve been here awhile and just need some new ideas, you might want to check it out.