Heil Ranch Mountain Biking

Heil Ranch is a large parcel of open space north of Boulder with miles of hiking and biking trails. Within the past two years one of the trails was recently extended up to the town of Lyons.


When we hiked on some of the trails in January we thought they would be easy enough for us to ride. Today was a day to find out. It took an hour to bike 10 miles up to the trailhead this morning. (See our whole route.)

From the trailhead we climbed uphill for another hour on the rocky Wapiti trail. Thunder rumbled in the distance -- the clouds to the south did not look good. We decided to continue on, since the trail would eventually turn north and away from the storms.

We began our descent into the valley on a 1-mile section of the Wild Turkey trail, then picked up the 5.5 mile Picture Rock trail that would take us to Lyons. This last trail was the newly-constructed one. It seemed much more technical and rocky than the trails we had already ridden.

We felt occasional raindrops but there were never showers. It was nice to have cloud cover during the hotter parts of the day. The consistent downhills began to tire our palms, so it was fortunate that the last few miles of trail were fairly smooth. Three hours after starting on the trails we were back to the road.

Once in Lyons we took a short break then headed home on roads. Biking on 36 wasn't too bad. We made it home five and a half hours after we left.