Ask anyone who has ridden Lunch Loops what to expect and you get the same answer: it is not for beginners. The trail system that climbs out of the Redlands off Monument Road has built its reputation on slickrock drops, exposed ridgelines, and a version of Holy Cross that locals warn newcomers about before they warn them about the heat. Free Lunch and Pucker Up are downhill-only for a reason. This is a place where "intermediate" gets redefined the first time you hit a step-up you didn't see coming.
Which makes what is happening at the base of that same trail system this fall a little strange, in a good way. The Colorado Plateau Mountain Bike Trail Association, working with the City of Grand Junction, is rebuilding the bike park at the Lunch Loops trailhead, and the entire design brief runs against the terrain's reputation. Four new jump lines, two blue and two green. A rock garden. A progression area built specifically so smaller kids can get comfortable on wood features before they try anything with air under it. The trail bikes people actually ride here, not the dirt jumpers the old park was accidentally built for. Nothing in the plan is for the riders who made Lunch Loops famous. That is the point.
What already changed
Phase 1 is done. Construction started April 6, 2026, and by early April the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel was reporting equipment on site and sections of the park closed for the build. The first piece to open was a new dual slalom course, a relatively small $10,000 addition compared to what is coming, but it gave COPMOBA and the Grand Valley Youth Cycling Club a place to run an event almost immediately after it opened. If you have ridden past the trailhead since spring and noticed two parallel tracks where there used to be aging BMX-style jumps, that is what you saw.
The old bike park had been sitting there for about a decade without a real update, and it showed. It was built on a small budget, geared more toward BMX riding than the mountain bikes people actually bring to the Lunch Loops trailhead, and had deteriorated to the point where a COPMOBA community survey turned up a clear message from local riders: more jumps, more skills-based features, built for what people are actually riding.
What's coming this fall
The bulk of the rebuild happens after summer. COPMOBA Executive Director Faith Rodriguez has described the fall scope directly: four jump lines, two blue and two green with wood features, a rock garden, and a progression zone for younger or newer riders to build confidence before moving to the jumps. Builder Spencer Rugland of Thunderbird Trail Works, the same trail builder handling construction, has been explicit about who this is for. The wood features are being designed with a more open radius because the park is catering to trail bikes rather than dirt jump bikes, and the steel-frame features with rough-sawn lumber surfacing are meant to hold up longer than the budget version they are replacing.
None of that reads like a park built for the crowd that comes to Lunch Loops for Eagle's Wing or the exposed rock moves on Coyote Ridge. That crowd is not being ignored entirely. COPMOBA's own project materials mention a possible future expansion into an area called Painted Bowl specifically to give advanced riders something scaled to their level, but that is framed as a later phase, not part of this fall's build. For now, the investment is going toward the rider who has never hit a jump line before.
The number that decides how much of this actually gets built
Here is the part that matters if you want to know what the trailhead looks like by Thanksgiving. The full rebuild carries a price tag of $225,000. As of COPMOBA's June 2026 update, the organization had committed $85,000 toward it, made up of a $35,000 down payment plus $50,000 earmarked as a fundraising match. That leaves a gap of roughly $140,000 still to close.
Rodriguez has said the plan is to fundraise through the summer and have Rugland finish the build in the fall. Summer is closing right now. Nothing about the fall timeline is locked until that gap narrows, and COPMOBA has been clear it is relying on community donations rather than grant funding to get there. If you have wondered why local trail groups keep showing up in your feed asking for small donations, this is why. The difference between the full four-line, rock-garden version of this park and a scaled-back one comes down to whether that match gets funded before the crews come back in the fall.
Why this changes the trailhead you already know
The Lunch Loops trailhead is not a quiet corner of the Redlands. It logged 227,000 visits last year, making it one of the busiest access points on the Western Slope for mountain biking, hiking, and trail running combined. Parking there fills up on an ordinary weekday, not just weekends, which is why the paved Monument Connector path from the Riverfront Trail exists as a workaround. Riding in from the connector instead of driving straight to the trailhead lot is already the local move for avoiding a full parking area, and it is worth knowing if you have not tried it.
A friendlier bike park does not shrink that pressure. It adds to it. Beginner and intermediate riders who would have skipped the old, deteriorated jumps now have a real reason to show up, and families with younger kids who were never going to attempt Free Lunch now have a progression area built for exactly that. More cars, more kids on the pathway between the parking lot and the trailhead, more reason for the flashing pedestrian crossing installed on Monument Road in 2025 to actually get used the way it was designed to.
None of this is a complaint about the rebuild. It is a reason to plan around it if you live nearby and use that trailhead the way most Redlands residents do, as a five-minute drive from home rather than a destination. Fall weekday mornings will likely stay quieter than what is coming once the new features are finished and word spreads. Weekend afternoons, especially once school lets out for the day, are where the added traffic will show up first.
What to watch for through the fall
The most useful thing a Redlands resident can do right now is pay attention to two things: whether COPMOBA closes the funding gap before construction resumes, and how much of the bike park stays closed once Rugland's crew is back on site. COPMOBA has asked riders to respect temporary closures during construction, and given that this is a two-phase project completed as funding allows, sections could open in stages rather than all at once.
If you want to see the full four-line version happen on schedule rather than a scaled-back build, COPMOBA's fundraising campaign is still open, and every dollar closes part of that $140,000 gap before the fall crews return. If you would rather just watch it happen, keep an eye on the trailhead itself. The dual slalom course sitting there right now is the smallest piece of what is coming.
Whatever shape the finished park takes, it marks a real shift in what the Lunch Loops trailhead is for. A trail system that built its name on punishing the unprepared is putting real money into the opposite instinct: meeting new riders exactly where they are, at the same parking lot where the experts have always started their day.
If you're weighing what a home near trails like these is actually worth, or want a local read on how projects like this affect a specific block in the Redlands, Josh McGuire knows this area block by block. Reach out for a quick, no-pressure market conversation whenever you're ready.
