A Desert Legacy Complete: K2-Play Trail Closes the Book on North Fruita's Landmark Master Plan
On a rainy October morning in the high desert of western Colorado, something that took nearly a decade of advocacy, bureaucratic navigation, volunteer sweat equity, and genuine community grief finally came to a close. Representatives from the Bureau of Land Management, Colorado Plateau Mountain Bike Trail Association, Mesa County, and other trail supporters gathered to cut the ribbon on the K2-Play trail on Saturday, October 10 — the final three miles of a 30-mile trail expansion at 18 Road. It was the official finish line on one of the most ambitious public land mountain bike trail projects in recent Colorado history, and for many in the crowd, it was far more than a bureaucratic milestone. It was a moment of tribute, celebration, and closure all at once.
The North Desert Trails Master Plan has now finished, meaning improvement projects for the trail network are complete. The Bureau of Land Management released a statement showing improvements to the recreational area including paved access roads, campsites, and many trail expansions and repairs. What that dry official language doesn't quite capture is what the 18 Road trail system means to the tens of thousands of riders who have been showing up here every spring and fall for years — and what the completion of this plan means for the future of public land trail development across the American West.
Nine Years from Grant Application to Ribbon Cutting
The road to K2-Play was long by any measure. Planning on the trail network began in 2017 after the City of Fruita, the BLM, and COPMOBA — the Colorado Plateau Mountain Bike Trail Association — jointly applied for a grant from Colorado Parks and Wildlife for funding. That coalition of municipal government, federal land managers, and a nonprofit trail advocacy group would prove to be the model that made everything possible. But even with funding secured and partners aligned, the gears of public land management move slowly. Environmental assessments, cultural surveys, paleontological reviews, public scoping periods — all of it takes time.
The BLM's Environmental Assessment Record of Decision for the North Fruita Desert Master Plan was completed and issued in 2022. That gave the green light for physical construction to begin in earnest, and in addition to those organizations, local businesses, bike enthusiasts, trail builders, and volunteers worked on the site beginning in 2024. For years, the project had been a patchwork of survey work, community input sessions, agency coordination, and waiting. Once boots hit dirt, though, the transformation came fast.
The scale of what was ultimately approved was substantial. A master plan for the North Fruita Desert was completed in 2019, and it recommended construction of nearly 25 miles of new trails and 2.4 miles of re-routed trails. Further work by the BLM identified around 38 miles of new routes, plus closed and rehabbed routes. What emerged from that planning process was one of the most comprehensive rethinks of a desert singletrack network in the region's history.
What the 18 Road System Actually Is
For riders who haven't made the pilgrimage to western Colorado's Grand Valley, a little context is essential. The North Fruita Desert Special Recreation Management Area includes 72,000 acres and 250 miles of designated recreation routes. That's a staggering amount of public land, and the 18 Road trail system sits at its beating heart. The North Fruita Desert Recreation Area, also known as the 18 Road Trail System, is a trail system mainly used by mountain bikers in the desert hills about 11 miles north of Fruita, Colorado.
The system offers world-class singletrack mountain biking trails accessible directly from adjoining campsites. The trail system and associated camping provide great opportunities to experience the diverse terrain of the desert environment along the base of the Bookcliffs. That geological feature — the Book Cliffs — is what gives this place its drama. The trails don't just roll through flat desert scrub. They punch up into ridgelines, drop into washes, and thread through juniper-studded terrain that has a raw, unvarnished quality you don't get at many built-up trail systems.
The Riding Character That Built a Reputation
The system is built for momentum: smooth, punchy singletrack with rollers, berms, tabletop jumps, and plenty of high-speed ridge runs. It suits riders who want fast and fun laps, but there's plenty of room for bikers who want longer runs, too. That combination — accessible enough for intermediate riders, deep enough to keep experts coming back — is what has made 18 Road a perennial bucket-list destination for American mountain bikers.
18 Road mountain biking is known for its punchy climbs and quick descents. The trails weave in and out of junipers and follow ridges of the Bookcliffs. Classics like Joe's Ridge — a narrow singletrack perched along the spine of a desert dune — defined what 18 Road could be. Some favorite trails in this system include Chutes and Ladders, Frontside, Joe's Ridge, Pumps Bumps and Rollers (known as PBR), and all the trails with "Zippity" in the name. These aren't just popular routes; they're the corridors that helped put Fruita on the global mountain bike map decades ago.
According to Singletracks, the network ranks as the fifth-best mountain bike trail system in all of Colorado and 16th in the world. That kind of ranking doesn't happen by accident — it reflects years of intentional trail design, maintenance, and a landscape that genuinely rewards technical skill and rewards those who simply want to go fast and feel alive.
Infrastructure That Matches the Ambition
One of the understated achievements of the master plan is what it did to the supporting infrastructure around the riding. Trails in the area had been popular for decades without infrastructure supporting over 100,000 visitors. That mismatch between visitor volume and facility quality is one of the quiet crises facing popular public land recreation areas across the country. The North Fruita Desert Master Plan addressed it directly.
There are now many more established BLM campsites — 111 to be exact — each with picnic tables, concrete slab fire rings, maintained outhouses, and in some cases tent platforms. The campground itself has become a draw in its own right. The lower campground is integrated into an event staging area designed for hosting mountain bike and running events like races and festivals. That design thinking — building a campground that can double as a race venue — reflects a maturation in how federal land managers are thinking about recreation infrastructure. You're not just managing day-use visitation anymore. You're managing an economy.
K2-Play: More Than Just a Trail
The K2-Play trail, which serves as the capstone of the entire expansion, is not your typical 18 Road trail. While the system has historically been celebrated for its smooth, flowy character, K2-Play brings something different to the menu. It is a stunning advanced, narrow, technical trail along the base of the Bookcliffs, connecting the existing "Chutes" and "Edge Connector" trails.
The trail is a little different than others in the 18 Road area, as it includes some technical features, according to retired BLM recreation planner Chris Pipkin, who gave remarks at the ribbon-cutting ceremony. "That's kind of a capstone project or a highlight of the expansion," Pipkin said. "It's a trail that has a different character than a lot of the trails at 18 Road. A lot of those trails are, in general, known for their smoother, flowy... character." K2-Play's narrow, technical nature fills a gap that riders at an advanced level had long been hoping would be addressed.
The trail features 469 feet of elevation gain, 385 feet of elevation descent, and an elevation range spanning from 5,389 feet to 5,573 feet. It is rated black diamond for climb difficulty and tagged as physically demanding — a genuine test of technical riding chops set against a backdrop of one of western Colorado's most iconic geological formations.
Named for a Rider Who Left a Mark
The name K2-Play is not a random branding exercise or a nod to the world's second-highest mountain. It carries weight within the western Colorado riding community. The K2-Play trail is the final piece and also a special one for the riding community as it is named for longtime COPMOBA leader Kristina Kittleson. Kittleson was not a figurehead — she was in the trenches, the kind of person who showed up on dig days, who fought for trail access in meetings that most riders never see, who connected the social fabric of advocacy to the physical act of building something lasting.
Rodriguez said at the ceremony: "(Kittleson was) a very beloved community member and rider that really connected and did a lot for the trails on the Western Slope. It makes us very proud to be able to name this trail after her. It was really special to do the ribbon cutting to honor her legacy and have her friends and family there."
It is the kind of trail Kittleson, who passed away in 2021, would have enjoyed, Pipkin noted. Kittleson's passion for cycling in the Grand Valley left an indelible mark on the community she served — and the trail named in her honor is not merely a plaque on a kiosk. It is a living, rideable monument in the landscape she helped steward. Rodriguez said having her family present for the ribbon-cutting ceremony made the event a particularly special one.
Community volunteers had been joining organized trail-build events throughout 2026 specifically to complete K2-Play — "This trail is being built in honor of Kristina Kittleson and we can't wait to get it done!" — a sentiment that speaks to how personally invested the local riding community was in seeing this particular project through.
The Economics Behind Public Land Trails
There's a tendency in the outdoor media to treat trail building as pure recreation philanthropy — good people doing good things for the love of the sport. The reality is considerably more tangled, and considerably more interesting. According to the BLM's press release, BLM-administered land supports 12,000 Colorado jobs in addition to generating $2 billion for the state annually. That figure puts the investment in trail infrastructure in an entirely different light.
Fruita is a case study in what a world-class trail network can do to a small town's economic identity. The town once famed for apples is now a mountain bike hub with desert trails, races, and 250 miles of singletrack. The agricultural past hasn't disappeared, but it no longer defines Fruita's draw. Riders from Denver, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, and beyond book trips to Fruita specifically for the trails — they stay at the campground, eat at local restaurants, fill up at local gas stations, and buy gear from local shops. The master plan's investment in trail miles and camping infrastructure is, functionally, an investment in the regional economy.
Camping fees at the North Fruita Desert Campground pay not only for campground maintenance and improvements, but also for trail construction and maintenance on the 18 Road trail system — a self-reinforcing cycle where recreational use funds the very infrastructure that sustains recreational use. It's a model that trail advocates have championed for years as a way to make public land recreation economically sustainable without relying entirely on federal appropriations or grant cycles.
How COPMOBA Made It Happen
Founded in 1989, the Colorado Plateau Mountain Bike Trail Association is a nonprofit organization dedicated to building, maintaining, and advocating for sustainable singletrack trails in the Colorado Plateau region of western Colorado. Over more than three decades, COPMOBA has refined a model of partnership-driven trail development that the K2-Play project exemplifies at its best.
COPMOBA is governed by an appointed board of directors from local communities in western Colorado and is funded by individual and business membership fees, donations, and grants. They have four chapters that work with members and volunteers in cooperation with various land agencies to build and maintain singletrack trails in western Colorado. That distributed, chapter-based structure means the organization can deploy volunteers and expertise across a wide geographic area while maintaining local knowledge and local investment.
The origin of the organization's connection to the 18 Road area runs deep. COPMOBA's origin story is tied to the establishment of the Kokopelli Trail in 1989, connecting the Grand Valley in Loma, Colorado to Moab, Utah. Ongoing trail development activities in the 1990s focused primarily on the nascent Kokopelli Loops network, the Lunch Loop network, and the burgeoning 18 Road Trails network in the North Fruita Desert area. The 18 Road expansion is, in many ways, the fulfillment of a vision that has been decades in development — the completion of what COPMOBA's founders started when they first began carving trail through this desert landscape in the early years of American mountain biking.
Volunteers, Dig Days, and Community Muscle
No federal press release can fully account for the human hours that went into the K2-Play project. Trail planning and construction have become increasingly complex, costly, and time-consuming, and the project would not be where it is today without the dedication and collaboration of all involved. Those organized dig days — community events where riders show up with tools instead of bikes — were essential to keeping the project moving between funded construction phases.
Groundbreaking events began at 8:30 a.m., with lunch served and a community ride taking place after, a format that turned trail construction into a social occasion, blurring the line between volunteerism and recreation in a way that sustains long-term community participation. When the people who build a trail are also the people who ride it, the relationship between the trail and its community becomes something fundamentally different than the relationship between a user and a managed facility.
What's Open Now — and What's Next
Further improvements to facilities are planned. The current trail system is open for individual use and larger events such as races. Work on new trails is also underway. That last point is significant. The completion of the master plan's 30-mile expansion doesn't signal the end of trail development at North Fruita — it signals the beginning of the next chapter. The appetite in the community and among agency partners for continued trail building is real, and the infrastructure investments of the past several years have made the area better positioned to support that growth.
K2-Play is open to riders from May through November, dogs are allowed, and Class 1 e-bikes are permitted on the trail. That e-bike access is noteworthy — it reflects a broader policy shift at North Fruita that came through a public input process. After collecting public input from the community, the BLM decided to open the North Fruita Desert trails to Class 1 e-bikes. The decision was not without debate, but it reflects a pragmatic recognition that e-bikes are now a mainstream part of mountain biking culture and that excluding them from non-motorized trails was increasingly difficult to justify for a Class 1 pedal-assist system.
The North Fruita Desert, also known as the 18 Road trail system, offers 33 miles of singletrack mountain bike trails along the base of the Book Cliffs, along with another 25 miles of mixed-use singletrack in the Book Cliffs north of the campground. With K2-Play now open, those numbers are updated — and the range of experiences on offer has expanded meaningfully. A first-timer can spend a weekend lapping flowy classics and never touch a trail harder than intermediate. A seasoned technical rider can point at K2-Play's black diamond singletrack and get genuinely challenged in a way that the system's traditional character hadn't always provided.
A Model Worth Watching
The completion of the North Fruita Desert Trails Master Plan is worth paying attention to beyond its immediate local significance. It represents one of the more successful examples of a multi-stakeholder public land trail project reaching completion in an era when such projects regularly get stalled by funding gaps, regulatory complexity, or the collapse of interagency partnerships. The coalition of BLM, the City of Fruita, COPMOBA, Mesa County, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, local businesses, and community volunteers held together across nearly a decade, across changes in administration, and across the grief of losing one of their own in Kristina Kittleson.
The North Fruita Desert Campground is just north of Fruita, Colorado, which serves as a hub for outdoor recreation on nearby public lands including the red-rock canyons of Colorado National Monument and the adjoining McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area — home of the Kokopelli trail system, the Ruby-Horsethief section of the Colorado River, Black Ridge Canyons Wilderness, and the Rabbit Valley recreation area. That broader ecosystem of public land recreation gives the North Fruita Desert trails a context that makes them part of something larger — a connected landscape of riding, camping, climbing, and river access that positions the Grand Valley as one of the most complete outdoor recreation regions in the American West.
The ribbon cut on a rainy October morning was for three miles of trail. But what those three miles represent — the persistence of a community, the power of a well-structured public-private partnership, and the enduring legacy of a rider who gave everything to a landscape she loved — is considerably larger than the mileage suggests. K2-Play is open. Go ride it.
