It's coming — do you hear it? It sounds like rubber tires crunching down a gravel path and it's gaining momentum.

“Mountain Bike Eagle” — the first guidebook for biking trails in the area — will hit the shelves in the coming week.

Locals Bob and Laura Turitz compiled and published the guide, which is selling for $14.95 at retail stores and online at www.MountainBikeEagle.com. If it's ordered online, the book costs $20.56 after shipping and handling.

The Turitzes have lived and biked in Eagle for the last four years and started the guidebook almost by accident.

“Many of the trails around Fruita and Moab are well-marked and documented very well in guidebooks,” Bob said. “We didn't have to worry about getting lost in those places. Our guidebook started as an effort of self-preservation. We kept getting lost on our local trails, so we started collecting our own GPS data and notes.”

“We put in well over 1,000 miles of bike riding last season (for the research),” Laura said.

Once the couple got the idea to make a book, they kept it secret at first.

“When the word got out, people were really supportive,” Bob said. “People started talking to us and the book took on a life of its own.”

First of its kind

Eagle has a very active biking community but information about the trails has been somewhat underground.

“This book will save me a lot of phone calls from people who are lost on a trail,” said Charlie Brown, owner of Eagle's Mountain Pedaler bike shop.

Brown said that up until now, the only resource for visiting bikers has been word of mouth and a small map that he hands out at his store.

“The trails can be hard to pick out in places and that map is hard to use,” Brown said. “There are unmarked game trails and things up there, and it can get confusing. People get lost, call me from their cell phone and I have them describe where they are so I can tell them how to get down.”

Those kinds of experiences inspired Bob and Laura to compile more detailed information.

“It was frustrating that we got lost more at home than when we were visiting other places,” Laura said. She added that when trails are misused — when social trails are made — it's often because people are lost.

“We're trying to get everyone on the same page,” she said.

Good for business

By making the information more accurate and accessible, the Turitzes have provided Eagle with something that is likely to increase tourism.

The town and merchants have provided great enthusiasm and backing for the guidebook, Bob said.

“Everything about the book is geared toward promoting the whole community because we want people to come here and stay,” Laura said.

That's why the book contains directories for restaurants, hotels, bike shops and other amenities in addition to the trail information.

Brown said bikers driving to places like Moab are now more likely to break up the drive with a short ride in Eagle on their way through.

“When you ride, you're going to eat right after, so I think the hotels and restaurants will benefit more than my shop,” Brown said. “This book will help people roll in and do a ride without getting lost, and I think they'll come back when they see how good it is.”

Brown said Eagle's mountain bike trails are similar to those around Fruita (“minus the rock”), which is a popular destination.

“Plus we've got high alpine riding that people don't take advantage of — we've got Vail and Fruita riding all in one town,” he said.

Kraige Kinney, the Eagle Town Board representative on the town's marketing committee, agreed that Eagle offers quality mountain biking.

“We hope this book will be a mechanism to get people to eat and shop here,” he said.

Additionally, Bob said the guidebook could help galvanize efforts to enhance the local biking even more.

“The mountain bike community seems to see this book as a catalyst for the sport in this area,” he said. “We've got local groups, such as the Hardscrabble Singletrack Coalition, that do trail clean-ups, maintenance and construction, but now we have a better chance of getting a group like the International Mountain Bike Association involved here.”

The IMBA is a non-profit, educational association. Its mission is to create, enhance and preserve great trail experiences for mountain bikers worldwide.

The book

“Mountain Bike Eagle” is not a comprehensive guide.

“There are more trails up there than what is in the book,” Brown said.

However, it contains plenty of info to help people select the kind of riding experience they want to have. Trails are rated like ski runs — green for easy, blue for intermediate and black for expert. There are profiles that show a trail's elevation gain and loss, and “sweat ratings” to indicate how grueling a route might be.

“This book takes out the guessing,” Bob said. “You'll know if a route has 1,000 feet of elevation gain and is no good for a 6-year-old.”

The book is just over 100 pages, which are very durable, and has a spiral binding. The latter makes it easy to keep it open to the page you want.

Historical tidbits about some of the trails are also included.

“The Boneyard area was once an illegal trash dump,” Laura said. “Trail work and clean-up started around 2003 and the trail has slowly expanded. It used to just dead end at one time.”

Bob added that some easy trails near Eagle Ranch were made by fathers who wanted something their kids could ride.

“There are new trails all the time — we'll update the book,” Laura said.

The authors

Bob, 46, and Laura, 41, met when they lived in California. That's also where they fell in love with mountain biking and maybe where the seed for their guidebook began to take root as well.

Laura owned a printing business, where Bob worked. It wasn't long before he and Laura were riding together. Eventually, they decided to move to Colorado.

“I'm originally from Evergreen and always knew I wanted to come back,” Laura said.

She sold her business and they started looking for a place to move.

“Our first thought was Vail, then Eagle hit us as immediately appealing,” she said. “I hadn't biked here when we moved but we knew trail access would be easy — we pedal out our back door to any of these trails.”

Nowadays, Bob has a morning radio show on KSKE-FM Ski Country 101.7 and Laura works at home, doing graphic design and now ... publishing.

“We took the skills gained from our past life,” Bob said. “It's an adventure, we're experiencing things people wouldn't know unless they tried ... Once you go fat, you never go back.”

Book Release Party

Where: Bonfire Brewing, 127 Second St., Eagle

When: 7 to 10 p.m. Friday, April 8

Visit BonfireBrewing.com for more information.