This South Table Mesa Gravel ride is exactly why we got into gravel biking. We were able to leave out our front door in Denver, ride out on pavement to South Table Mesa and then ride on some easy single and double track trails.

We passed about five people in total on the trails which is fairly incredible with trails so close to Denver.

This ride is great to practice gaining confidence on single and double track. It had a good mix of hard packed single track, gravel path double track, some deep grooved rutted single track and a few trails with some rocky portions. (We only had to get off our bikes twice along the entire route.)

It has been a fairly rainy spring in Denver and the positive side of that is that everything is green. South Table Mesa was in full bloom with green grass, spring flowers and blossoms on trees, it didn’t feel like a traditional high desert climate at all.

There were a couple of private property signs along the trail which always freak us out because we don’t want to get a ticket or be disrespectful of people’s property. Rose asked one of the local property owners what the signs meant and he said not to worry about them, they just want riders to go slow and be aware that they are in people’s backyards.

It is always a challenge to ride on single track while looking at the GPS route. It can constantly feel like we are either going to crash or miss a turn. I imagine after we do this ride for the fourth or fifth time we won’t be so reliant on GPS to understand the trail system.