Jasper

Nearly two miles of downhill under red rock walls

Jasper drops nearly two miles and about 550 feet through the pinyon and juniper of the Highland Area, stringing tight corners together with stretches of mild embedded rock. What sets it apart is the scenery: the trail keeps opening onto a huge wall of rose-colored rock across the drainage, with longer views running out to the Grand Hogback ridgeline. In late spring the reddish dirt at trail’s edge blooms with cactus flowers in yellow and orange. The 120 feet of climbing along the way barely registers. This was one of the trails formalized in the 2017 environmental assessment, and its berms got the network’s first professional rebuild in 2019, work by Dante Harmony and Kim Sallee funded by Garfield County.

Ride it top to bottom as the finishing descent after climbing Stairway to Heaven or one of the Highland-side routes. The corners are tight enough that flow comes from braking early and exiting clean rather than raw speed. Nothing on it is mandatory tech, which makes it a good first taste of the Highland descents for strong intermediates. It holds interest in the shoulder seasons too; the red walls look their best dusted with snow under a blue February sky.

Elk sign is everywhere off-season — game tracks stamped across the snow and red mud, a scattered skeleton bleaching in the oak brush. Prickly pear blooms both pink and yellow over the lichen boulders, and the summit viewpoint layers the ranch-valley floor, the serrated hogback, and snow-capped peaks behind. Heads up that the upper sections cross chunky loose talus of shattered red sandstone — rockier than the smooth lower tread — and spring melt turns the red dirt to sticky chocolate.

More on this trail: View on MTB Project → (original description contributed by community members on MTB Project)