We didn’t mean to ride this far, it just happened. Well, it was almost 50 miles. 48.3 miles with 3,551′ of climbing that topped out at around 9400′ There’s a story.
We started off on a nice gravel road that then turned onto more of a rough doubletrack which then deteriorated even further when we reached a gate. There was a sign off to the left on a tree that said No Trespassing, UTE Tribe property. We hemmed and hawed and tried to figure out if the sign meant we weren’t allowed on the road at all, or just not on the land to the left of the road. We decided it must mean just the land to the left since the sign wasn’t directly on the gate in front of us. Wrong. A couple miles back into the forest we came to another gate across the road. This time the sign was in the middle of the gate warning NO TRESPASSING. Thinking we must have crossed back onto public land and were now lawful, we went through the gate and continued. Wrong again. Just up the road we came to another gate with no signs. Sigh. What to do? On our map it just showed it was a county road so we went through the gate and continued up the hill. The next gate we came to was open as a car came through and as I rode through and looked back, I could see Private Property signs all over the fence, along with “Smile, you’re on camera”. Holy hell.
We decided to cut our losses with winding through some of these back roads and hit the pavement down to Haycamp Mesa forest access. This is where our ride got extended to 48.3 miles. Haycamp Mesa is a great gravel road into the forest. It was a steady climb from mile 12.5 to 32. The road is never very steep, just constant. Once up on the mesa, the aspen forests thickened and then we reached the pine forests. A series of turns onto some rougher roads, more climbing, and we were in known territory. We completed our loop with an almost 10 mile descent back to the start. The highlight of the descent was me almost hitting a baby bear!
Despite the setbacks at the beginning, this ride turned into something awesome. None of the roads are very well used so hardly any cars passed us. We did see some razors, quads, and motos before our last descent but that’s it. It’s hard to beat a day riding in the warm sunshine on back gravel roads through forests. In the photo gallery you can see the delicate little yellow flowers that blanketed the forest. I think the flower is a trout lily.
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