Month: December 2021

Mt Gower Snooping

This another one of the places that has been on my check out list for quite some time. Typically whenever I had interest it was in the heat of summer which this area has been known to be mighty toasty.

Was I going to get rain on?

That was not the case on this day when I set out to do some snooping. I started off heading up a forest service road that good lists as Eagle Peak road which I’m pretty sure is not right.

At the “end” of the forest service road.

I really enjoyed the views on the way up the climb. Eagle Peak as well the north end of El Captian Reservoir visible and the “new” angles to them were very cool.

Solid Advice

I found a single track just past the end of the forest service road. Well I should say the boundary of the Forest Service land. The road was kinda deconstructed at that point. A short bit beyond that spot I picked up a downhill singletrack that quickly dropped back onto Forest Service land. This singletrack mighty fun.

I soon came to the junction of a route known as the Mt Gower transverse. It appears to see little use from the east end of it that I was at. I hear there are some high quality rock slabs to play on but getting up to the requires a lot of work. I was starting to get rained in so nixed any thoughts hike-a-biking up to those the mountain.

I did indeed get rained on quite decently on the trail back down into the community that I started in. It however stopped raining just as I came off trail so I decided to do some more wandering in the are. More goodies of questionable status were found. I’m looking forward to getting back out there to snoop around some more.

ATT Playtime Videos

It had been quite a while since I was last on Anderson Truck Trail. Last week I got back out on it while my long time riding partner in grime, Steve. It has rained a few days earlier which made for some really nice dirt out there. Here some video from the bits we rode.

Also worth noting that I have re-encoded the 2009 video I did out here. This video is hosted on Vimeo as the music has issues on YouTube.

Navajo Lake & VRRT

The Navajo Lake Loop is an extremely picturesque trail around the lake that has a wonderful mix of aspens, pines, open meadows as well as a bit of old lava flows. I did about 3/4ths of the loop on before heading out on the Navajo Peak section of the Virgin River Rim Trail. Here is my Trailforks Ridelog for that day. Please note this loop includes an out and back to Cascade Falls as well as a longer firer road loop back to where I was camped. I did not include the Cascade Falls trail stuff in this video as it really did not “fit”. One thing is for certain, this was a very pretty outing out of the bike.

Blowhard Trail Video

Here is some footage from the Blowhard trail near Brian Head Utah. This rounds out the big three shuttle run out of Brian Head resort area in Utah. The Blowhard Trail starts at 10,660 feet just south of Cedar Breaks National Monument and drops 3,700 feet over the course 7.7 miles and ends on Hwy 14 near Cedar City. The upper portion is the steepest and most technical with grades upwards of 22% in spots. It is much steeper than it looks in the video. Things mellow a bit in the middle section and below with even some short bits of climbing. Those short sections aside, throughout this trails is speed is easily gained and much more difficult to restrain. This is a fantastic trail and this will not be my time riding this trail.

Poison Spider and The Portal

One more video knocked off the remaster to-do list. The Portal Trail in Moab will most likely reset your scale for exposure and how the risk vs reward variables are computed in your head. The steeper than it looks moniker certainly applies here. I did some software stabilization but it still in the old-school shaky cam category. Here are some more thoughts on this trail as well as some pictures from that day. You can find stuff from the entire 2008 road trip here.

The second song used this video, Mad Life, by Dishwalla had some special meaning for me from that day. This video was shot in May of 2008 and back in the March, I had an OTB crash on the Goat Camp Trail that left me with about 40 stitches in my lip and mouth that really did a number on my mental game for riding technical trails. During the first three days of this trip I was starting to get the mojo back and the during the descent of the Portal trail the “I’m Back” switch was flipped on as that song started playing in my head. These lyrics in particular.

See the pain and beauty all around

See it try so hard to take me down

Hold me up into the sun and watch me burn and watch me heal

“The Mad Life” Dishwalla

Bunker Creek Video

I’m still churning my way through the summer vacation footage. This latest installment is from the Bunker Creek trail.

The Bunker Creek trail is one of the three big descents out of Brian Head Utah, Starting from Brian Head Peak you will do 11.6 miles of single track that will take you from 11,075 feet down to 8,490 feet. A wildfire in 2017 devastated this area and much of the trail, but by 2018 it was rebuilt and in 2019 the single track was extended at the bottom.

Here is the route I did that includes rolling down into Panguitch Lake to hit up some tasty grub at the Burger Barn. This is also the typical shuttle pickup spot if you use one of the Brian Head shuttle service such as George’s Ski and Bike.