Back from Utah 2014

Another year (vacation) finished. Great month off. Stayed up in the LaSal mts for the first 2.5 weeks. 1st ride was in the La sals to see if the Can Am was going to hold up this year. Took off from the front door of the cabin and made a bee line to the BFE area. No I did not attempt everything in that area but it was beautiful. Made my way to some trails on the south side of the mountain range. 2 track rocky, perfect ride.
Next day headed to Greasewood Canyon. My personal opinion, it wasn’t worth my day. It lacked the scenery in my opinion. Rocky a little technical but otherwise lackluster. Next day was over to Boxcar Bridge. I was prepared for a pretty non eventful ride for a while so I wasn’t discourage to start out. Got off the gravel road and made my way on the 2 track, ok now I was thinking that this was going to get more scenic and technical, nope. I got to a point in the trail where as I have read “to go right would be taking my machine and body to the brink of disaster” Well considering on what I had ridden for the last hour, I was up for a peek at death. This section was absolutely beautiful. Narrow canyons, overlooks, just a great ride. I could tell by my GPS map that the technical stuff was coming. Yep got to it. Not sure what I had read was by true jeep or atv people. Maybe a guy out there in an old pickup had a bad experience. Certainly not a deal breaker, and if I had missed this section and found out later how great it was, I would have been upset. BTW it is marked difficult on the trail markers and it was to a point but nothing more than Paiute #33 maybe not even that difficult. Next day I was heading to the Utah / Colorado border near I-70. Been there once before but by the time we got to the fun stuff, my daughter and I had ridden over 150 miles and were ready for some Moab brewery burgers. This time I was going to hit the fun stuff by myself all day long. Well by 1pm the Can Am started acting up and I kept doing surgery on it until 3pm and headed back to the truck. Great rocky technical trails in that area but you have to look for them. Next day after thinking I fixed the Can Am I headed to Dome Plateau. Just after getting into the more technical sections, the air suspension blew out and I was bottoming out over every little thing. Back to the truck. Next day Jerry rigged that back together with the help of some great guys in Moab. Headed to Hanksville for 2 days. 1st day was out on the Poison Springs Wash. Wow, that was beautiful. Nothing technical at all but a peaceful scenic ride. The next day I was going to explore just North of Hanksville, south of the Little White Horse. Huh, that turned into a day of frustration. I was following the routes describe from this website. http://capitolreef.org/trails-search.html. In particular the Planets to the Past. Don’t do unless your blood pressure is low and you need it to go higher. The trail off of HWY 24 is barely visible after a couple of miles. The next 8 are ok at best then 10 miles in you get to a boulder choke that rivals boulders the size of my truck. I turned around and decided to head back out and start from the trail head on HWY 12. Sure enough 9 miles in the trail disappears. I search on foot for an hour trying to figure out where it went. 3pm now so I headed back. I will try that again just because it beat me and I just can’t have that. The next 2 days were spent fixing the Can Am again. Now it’s time for the family to fly in and exploring new trails and real technical stuff had to be put to rest. My daughter and I ran the Black Dragon Wash route that I think I posted earlier, she really enjoyed it and since my Son and Wife weren’t with us she wanted to try the harder route I rode. What a trooper. I knew she was getting tired but she isn’t a quitter. Last day in Moab, yep I rode to Marysvale. Had my Wife drop me off near Archview RV Park. This was the day after all the floods near Moab. It made the route to Green River interesting. I would say 60% of the route I had taken before so I added in some trails I hadn’t gone on before. When I got through the Swell I went into the Gooseberry system on Forest road 141 and hooked up with Black 14. Thought that this would be rougher than it was. Hit a great stretch of 50 inch black trails on the east side of Fishlake Forest heading down into Koosharem. Not over the top but kept your mind from wondering. To be honest after filling up with fuel in Koosharem I don’t remember the names of the trails/ roads I was on until I hit the Paiute 02. Been on them many times but I wasn’t looking at the GPS or markers, I just knew where I was and how to get to where I was going. 301 miles 15.5 hrs. No trouble with the Can Am that day except sore rear which wouldn’t have happened if I rode the old Grizzly. 1st day out in Marysvale my daughter and I hit Barney. Not rough at all this time. We had a bit of an incident on the way down trail 78 into Monroe. THIS WAS MY FAULT. Ran over a rattlesnake and was looking at it as I was going over it. I did not see my daughter, who was in front of me, stop and take a picture of it. Hit her going around 20mph, pushed the Grizzly right over on her. She’s face down with 700lbs upside down on top of her. They say you can do anything with adrenaline. I threw that Grizzly off her like it was a Hot Wheels car. Bumps and bruises but she was ok. Damaged a CV joint on the Grizzly and the Can Am had a bent frame but drivable. Couldn’t find parts for the Grizzly so we rented a RZR for a few days from the place across from Tugs. Must have been a sign from Above. The Can Am is now gone and I’m waiting for the new 900 50 inch RZR to arrive to the dealer. My name is 1st on his list. Never in my life did I think I would join the SxS crowd but I was impressed and it was the 1st time my wife has told me to speed up instead “slow down”. Over all, put 2100 miles on different machines I was forced to ride. But thank goodness I’ll never throw my leg over another Can Am. Track logs will be available to anyone who wants them as soon as I unpack and find my GPS’s.

EPIC!   

 

Recognize lot's of places names.

Great Reading Material for sure!

You have any picture links ?

flipper wrote:

301 miles 15.5 hrs.

You da man Flipper  

Great reading! I remember riding on a DBL Black Diamond trail on the Paiute. We had been cruising mostly tame ( beautiful, scenic, awesome...) trails. So a few of the manly men decided to take a peek at death, just like you. And just like you, we saw no difference in trail difficulty. But hey, we still hoisted our britches up while telling our women folk what a harrowing ride we had endured on that DBL (not single) Black Diamond.

Thanks for sharing your report. Glad everyone survived, and that you have a new machine on the way! Hoping you are able to post some pics of your adventure.