Palisade Plunge: Mesa Top TH - Shirttail Point TH Section

Dogs Unknown

E-Bikes Unknown

If you are planning on biking the whole Plunge trail, get started early and bring lots of water. The Grand Mesa can vary between sweltering hot and freezing thunderstorms in the middle of the summer. Then you'll have to descend the sun baked western slope of the mesa into desert environs before finding water in the town of Palisades…or other libations.
Mesa Top TH is accessible by a paved road with a large parking lot and a couple vault toilets.
The Shirttail TH also has a vault toilet. It accessible by the Lands End dirt road that all cars can navigate, albeit with a little exposure. Keep in mind this road does not open until summer time due to lingering snow. Check ahead before venturing up.
Neither has running water and in the fall the creeks along the way are not necessarily reliable.
There is a ton of dispersed camping on top of the mesa. In the fall, it fills up a little with hunters.

The trail starts from the Mesa Top Trailhead off the scenic byway with 10 miles of cruising across the Grand Mesa. The trail is mostly mellow and non-technical with small patches of jagged basalt rocks that keep you on your toes and makes you pump the legs at times. The land is an open range so cows and their hooves share the trail.
Enjoy the meander across a unique landscape, pass numerous lakes, soak up the summer wildflower season or fall aspen colors. Keep an eye for a moose from the thriving local population the USFS reintroduced in 2005. Or turn your eyes upward to spot one of the many birds of preys in the area like a Ferrugenous Hawk or Golden Eagle.
This was a purpose built trail by the wonderful folks at COPMOBA. This section is not a "destination trail", but if you want the whole experience of biking from 10780 feet across numerous ecological zones connecting with the rest of The Plunge all the way down to the Colorado River then don't pass this section up.