I've been hearing about
slickrock trails in Cody Wyoming for a few years now, and always found one excuse or another to not check it out. Big thanks to a new friend from Red Lodge for motivating me to check it out finally. We went down on Friday.
The parking lot and first mile are not encouraging; it was like the mesas in Albuquerque: fun to ride but certainly no destination ride. Then you hit a cool little canyon with singletrack, a short up, and you get the above view.
Honestly, it's a bit misleading to label this a slickrock ride. It's like three miles of county road & a mile or two of desert singletrack like the shot above (really fun BTW), and these trails connect little stashes of slickrock. It's a series of playgrounds more so than a ride.
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| The elevation chart makes it look bad. Climbs are extreme and punchy, but very short. |
I'll definitely go back, but I'll take a different approach. I think the way to ride this trail is to head directly to the top of the big slickrock downhill. It's right around here:
Then you set up a base right there. There are lots of little coves etc to stash your pack, etc. Then you just tool around the surrounding few miles of trail in each direction, looping out and back to your little camp. After all, the whole ride is around 7.5 miles, so you're going to have to redo it a few times to make it worth the trip from MT, so just setting up a camp is another good way to go.
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| First big slickrock playground |
I can't wait to go back, because when you do get to them, the playgrounds are insane!!! The rock may be less consistent than the slickrock in Utah for example, but what it lacks in consistency it makes up for in variability of terrain- there are lots of little mesas, hop ups, ladders, bumps, bowls, etc.
Long story short: Cody slickrock is legit and worth the trip, as long as you know what to expect: a cool desert ride that links up five or six slickrock bike parks.
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| One of my favorite sections of rock, with my approximate line drawn on |
