Mapping the Tabeguache

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 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 route 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.

While I managed to nail down a pretty good 4x4 route on this first attempt, there are a few more routes I want to test out in the future to see if they might work better.....so this project is still a work in progress.

Anyway...enough talk, here's some pictures

Signs at the trailhead in Shavano Valley


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


Headed down to Dry Creek




My first wrong turn....my Jeep won't fit over that bridge


Dry Creek is not very dry

A few rough sections early on in the trail




Climbing up higher onto the Uncompahgre Plateau




Up in the Aspens


Waterfall


I was able to move this one by hand...

La Sals in the distance




Dominguez Canyon




Finally...some blue sky as I near Grand Junction


Unaweep Canyon


Enjoy!

For the too lazy to search crowd, what are the start and end points?

old_man said:

For the too lazy to search crowd, what are the start and end points?

Click to expand...

Starts in Shavano Valley west of Montrose and ends at Unaweep Canyon near the Gunnison River just west of Whitewater

My trip on the Tabeguache Trail yesterday ended when I reached Highway 141 in Whitewater, even though the actual trail continues on to Monument Road in Grand Junction. The reason for this is that there is no motorized access to the trail on the north side of the highway. However, the section on the other side can be driven, but only as an out and back ride from Little Park Road. Most know this section of trail as Bangs Canyon. I have driven part of this trail before, but not all of it.

Amanda and I set out this morning to take a short trip and drive more of the Bnags Canyon section of the Tabeguache Trail so I can add it to my full trail track. Here's a few photos from the short trip.

Still a work in progress, but I have posted the trail info page here:

http://www.myxj.net/blog/?p=1100

Great pic's again Randy. I keep adding your adventures to my list of trails to run.

Damn you.