Our annual photo book always sparks immense excitement among our team members.

This special issue is traditionally meant to be a visual and written tribute to a marquee mountain bike destination filled with incredible singletrack, passionate people, and its own distinct culture. From the moment we choose each location, its name instantly becomes the most uttered word at Freehub for the next several months.

As we dig deeper into each zone to be covered, identifying the must-ride trails and the hardworking figures who brought them into existence, the mystery begins to unravel, and we can more easily envisage the shape our photo book will take. It’s always an invigorating and enlightening experience, even when the locales are ones with which we’re already quite familiar.

Perhaps for this reason, when we decided that this year’s edition would be dedicated to Colorado, my usual elation was tinged with a formidable feeling of trepidation. Colorado. Such a massive state, choked with the most mountainous terrain of the Lower 48 and boasting more world-class riding spots than anywhere in the world apart from, arguably, British Columbia. How could we even begin to cover this vast and diverse swathe of tectonic uplift in a single, 116-page book?

Being fortunate to have friends from all over The Centennial State—and knowing the fierce pride that each hold for their chosen home bases—I wondered how we could possibly do them all justice. The only relief from my anxiety and night sweats came from myriad phone conversations with trusted Coloradans, who assured me it would indeed be a herculean endeavor, but one they could happily help us undertake.

It was immediately clear that it would be impossible to include every outstanding riding zone in the state, so we set about dissecting it into four broad geographic chunks that could largely be defined by their topographic similarity and
the relative proximity of the major towns within them. By focusing on the Gunnison Valley, for example, we’d be able to highlight both Gunnison and the crown jewel of Crested Butte while also underscoring its historic importance as the de facto birthplace of modern singletrack riding.

Grouping together the main hubs of the San Juan Mountains, we could emphasize standout communities such as Durango while also giving prominent nods to Telluride and the rapidly expanding networks around Cortez and Rico. Under the umbrella of western Colorado’s Grand Valley, we could chronicle the revitalizing role that mountain biking has played in the high-desert towns of Fruita, Grand Junction, and Palisade. And in high-elevation, north-central Colorado, we’d use the Summit County centerpiece of Breckenridge as a staging point for the surrounding alpine gems near Frisco, Arapahoe Basin, Vail, and Salida and Buena Vista to the south.

The fact that we couldn’t include every celebrated riding area in Colorado is simply a testament to the state’s undeniable greatness—and to the sheer abundance of hardy, committed outdoorspeople who continue to make this state one of the best places on the planet to ride a mountain bike. Hats off to you, Colorado.

—Brice Minnigh, Editor in Chief