One of the world’s most prolific deserts extends into western Colorado. This intense, mesmerizing landscape abuts the towering Rocky Mountains to the east and Utah’s Great Basin to the west. Known as the Colorado Plateau, this expanse covers roughly 130,000 square miles of the treasured Southwest. As with any moisture-deprived climate, this arid environment is full of extremes, from scorching summers to cold winters.

Unfathomable gorges and vibrant red rock buttes have been eroded throughout the plateau by the Colorado River, which commences in the Rockies and flows southwest 1,450 miles to Mexico, carving the Grand Canyon along the way. The Grand River, as the Colorado was formerly known, separated the Grand Mesa—the planet’s largest flat-topped mountain—from the Book Cliffs, the world’s longest continuous escarpment.

Stretching 215 miles from the town of Palisade, Colorado to Castle Gate, Utah, these sandstone-and-shale cliffs form a dramatic backdrop to some of Colorado’s finest trail networks. Not far from the town of Fruita, ribbons of speedy singletrack along spiny ridgelines follow the fans of the Book Cliffs. Fluid laps along technical basalt and sandstone-tossed sections give energizing views of the sapphire Colorado River. The area is stacked for desert bike play. Yet even with the sport’s burgeoning growth, these trail systems do well to disperse mountain bikers, preserving that mystical sentiment of uncultivated desert solitude. It’s no wonder this is where the Centennial State’s premier high-desert riding communities thrive: Fruita, Grand Junction, and Palisade, surrounded by 19th-century farmland and fruit orchards.

The region’s earliest known inhabitants were the Paleo-Indians, circa 11,000 B.C.E., followed by the Fremont, who grew maize and squash. The Ute people occupied the land from 1,300 C.E. until European-descended settlers pushed through the American West.