"Of course, it was done on a very small budget, so it's been pretty deteriorated for a while."
That's Faith Rodriguez, executive director of the Colorado Plateau Mountain Bike Trail Association, talking about the bike park at the Lunch Loops trailhead, the skills area most Grand Junction riders have pedaled past a thousand times on their way up Pet-y-kes or down Curt's Lane. If you ride out there, you already know the park she's describing: a decade-old cluster of jumps built for BMX bikes on a shoestring budget, worn down long before anyone got around to fixing it. This spring, that finally started to change. But the version of the story making the rounds, that the rebuild is happening and the park will be new by fall, skips the part that actually matters if you're planning your riding season around it. The cheap phase is done. The phase that fixes the real complaint is still short on money.
What's Actually Rideable Right Now
Construction on the first phase, a new dual slalom course, started April 6 and was announced in a COPMOBA news release two days later. It's a straightforward build: two identical side-by-side tracks where riders race each other over the same jumps and berms. It cost about $10,000, a fraction of the total project, and it's already open. COPMOBA and the Grand Valley Youth Cycling Club hosted a community event on it in early June, and trail builder Spencer Rugland of Thunderbird Trail Works, who's leading the rebuild, said the early feedback has been good.
That's the entire built-and-open portion of the rebuild as of this writing. Everything riders actually asked for in COPMOBA's own survey, more jumps, better skills features, terrain that matches how the Grand Valley actually rides, is still ahead.
Why the Old Park Never Fit
The park that's being replaced wasn't a bad idea executed well. It was built for a different sport. Rodriguez has said the original jumps leaned toward BMX riding, which doesn't translate well to the mountain bikes most people at Lunch Loops are actually on. Combine that mismatch with a construction budget that was tight from the start, and the park spent most of the last ten years wearing out faster than it could be maintained, even as the trailhead around it kept getting busier. That trailhead saw 227,000 visitors in 2025, according to COPMOBA, which makes the aging skills area one of the more heavily used pieces of recreation infrastructure in the city that nobody had gotten around to fixing.
The Part That Costs $225,000
The full rebuild, land use agreement and all, runs through the City of Grand Junction, which owns the trailhead property and leases it to COPMOBA for maintenance and operation. COPMOBA is fundraising for the total cost of the project, and the dollar figures tell a more complicated story than "it's happening this fall."
| Milestone | What it covers | Status as reported |
|---|---|---|
| April 2026 launch | Dual slalom course, Phase 1 | Built, open, cost about $10,000 |
| Spring 2026 fundraising | Total project goal | $225,000 needed; the Grand Junction Sentinel reported roughly $38,000 raised as of the campaign's April launch |
| June 2026 update | Committed funding | COPMOBA reported $85,000 committed, made up of a $35,000 down payment plus $50,000 in matching funds, with the remaining balance still to be raised |
Read that middle row again. Committed isn't the same as raised, and $85,000 against a $225,000 target leaves a gap north of $140,000 that has to close before the rest of the build happens. COPMOBA's own project page, which is more current than the spring coverage, doesn't promise a fall finish. It says the organization is "optimistic the Lunch Loops Bike Park can be completed as early as the end of 2026," language that reads more like a best-case target than a locked-in date. If you're the kind of rider who plans a fall trip around a new feature being finished, that's worth knowing before you build a schedule around it.
What the Fall Build Is Supposed to Include
If the funding gap closes on schedule, here's what Rugland and Rodriguez have described for the bulk of the rebuild:
- Four new jump lines, two rated blue and two rated green, each built with wood features
- A rock garden designed to mirror the technical terrain riders already find out on the actual Lunch Loops trails, not a generic feature
- A progression zone where newer and younger riders can get comfortable on wood features before attempting the jump lines
The design choice that matters most for anyone who's ridden the old park is what the features are built for. Rugland has said the new structures use a more open radius specifically because they're catering to trail bikes rather than dirt jump bikes, which is the opposite of how the old BMX-oriented park was built. The steel-frame features with rough-sawn lumber surfacing are being built in-house rather than bought as a prefab kit, which is part of why the price tag is what it is. It's a rebuild aimed at how Grand Valley actually rides, not a generic skills park dropped into a trailhead.
What This Rebuild Won't Touch
If you're an advanced rider hoping the $225,000 project finally gives Lunch Loops a serious expert line, temper that expectation. The current agreement with the city keeps the rebuild inside the bike park's existing footprint. COPMOBA has floated a future expansion into an area called Painted Bowl for bigger, faster advanced terrain, but that idea is still in the concept stage and hasn't gone to the city for approval. It's a separate project, on a separate timeline, and not part of what's being fundraised for right now.
Worth remembering too: COPMOBA has pointed out that "intermediate" at Lunch Loops isn't the same as intermediate somewhere flatter or less technical. The riding baseline in the Grand Valley runs higher than a lot of places, so the blue and green lines planned for the next phase are being built to a standard that assumes riders here are already comfortable with more exposure than a beginner park in a typical suburb.
The Trailhead Around It
None of this happens in isolation from the road that gets you there. Monument Road carries a steady stream of cars heading toward the east entrance of Colorado National Monument, right past the Lunch Loop and Tabeguache trailhead. In 2025, the city installed a flashing pedestrian and cyclist crossing signal at that intersection, a response to how much foot and bike traffic funnels through a spot that was never built with 227,000 annual visitors in mind. If you're riding out there while crews are still working on the bike park, that crossing is worth using rather than dodging traffic on your own timeline.
What to Actually Do With This
If the rebuild matters to you, whether you're the parent who's been waiting for a place to teach your kid to jump or the rider who's put up with a decade of worn-out BMX features, the honest read is this: the park you eventually see depends more on donations closing that roughly $140,000 gap than it does on any construction calendar. COPMOBA's fundraising page for the project lays out where the money stands and how to contribute directly. If you want the rebuild to land closer to "this fall" than "sometime in 2027," that's the lever that actually moves it.
This kind of thing, watching how a place invests in itself and who shows up to make it happen, is a lot of why people end up choosing one Grand Junction neighborhood over another. If you're weighing what it's like to actually live near this side of town, or anywhere else in the Grand Valley, Laura Black has spent nearly twenty years paying attention to exactly these kinds of details. Schedule a consultation when you're ready to talk about what life here actually looks like.
