View Full Version : Overnight biking trips this summer?
live2ride
03-29-2006, 08:42 PM
Is anyone intersted in going on some overnight biking trips to Ben lomond, muellers, Logan etc. Bike in and camp out the night? I am getting geared up right now and was wondering if anyone wants to join me? If so where would you want to go?
Also has anyone biked into anywhere and camped out on top of a mountain?
Sombeech
03-29-2006, 09:29 PM
That mueller one wouldn't be bad. I guess we'd camp out at the flats? That would be pretty cool.
Can you bike ben lomond? I've wondered about that.
live2ride
03-30-2006, 08:23 AM
That mueller one wouldn't be bad. I guess we'd camp out at the flats? That would be pretty cool.
Can you bike ben lomond? I've wondered about that.
I bike ben lomond twice a month in the summer, you have to walk your bike up the last steep switchbacks, but you can camp right before you hit the last part of the mountain.
cachehiker
03-30-2006, 08:25 AM
This isn't mountain biking but I'm not about to try it on my racing bike either. We've got a multi-day tour planned for the July 24th weekend, most likely from Logan to Lava. I doubt the ride will be fully supported so I'll likely be packing ~30 lbs. on my Double Cross with 36 spoke, trail worthy rims.
Ben Lomond sounds like a good time and it's close too. Are you going up the road from the Mantua side, the singletrack from North Ogden Canyon, or from the Ogden Valley?
There are also spots to camp near Danish Pass in between Frankin Basin and Egan Basin. The "Highline Trail" (I know there are several "Highline Trails" in Utah) takes off in a northerly direction to the Bloomington Lakes and to the south as well. I've only hiked the northern one and never been on the southern one although I know it's rideable.
live2ride
03-30-2006, 08:28 AM
I always go up from the north ogden divide, (ogden side) if you come from the other sided there is a camp ground, but I would love to camp up top, with the amount of snow this year it will take a while for it to clear unless it warms up pretty fast, I plan on riding it before june to at least see how the trail is and what is open, I am game for going anywhere and have been dying to pack my stuff and camp out and ride!!
live2ride
03-30-2006, 08:29 AM
This isn't mountain biking but I'm not about to try it on my racing bike either. We've got a multi-day tour planned for the July 24th weekend, most likely from Logan to Lava. I doubt the ride will be fully supported so I'll likely be packing ~30 lbs. on my Double Cross with 36 spoke, trail worthy rims.
Ben Lomond sounds like a good time and it's close too. Are you going up the road from the Mantua side, the singletrack from North Ogden Canyon, or from the Ogden Valley?
There are also spots to camp near Danish Pass in between Frankin Basin and Egan Basin. The "Highline Trail" (I know there are several "Highline Trails" in Utah) takes off in a northerly direction to the Bloomington Lakes and to the south as well. I've only hiked the northern one and never been on the southern one although I know it's rideable.
What about some good logan trails to camp out on? Jardine, steel hollow, is there some places to camp out up there??
cachehiker
03-30-2006, 09:35 AM
What about some good logan trails to camp out on? Jardine, steel hollow, is there some places to camp out up there??
There are a few decent places to camp down low on the Jardine trail, but the better places to camp up high are all in the wilderness area. The trail is also so short I wouldn't consider it the best place for an overnighter.
I would hesitate to ride Steel Hollow with a load. I pack light but riding anything that steep while feeling top heavy or pulling a trailer isn't something I like to do. There is also the flies associated with lots of horses and cattle up there around Old Ephraim's grave.
Danish pass is an easy dirt road ride in, drop the load, set up camp, ride some singletrack without the gear on the second day, break camp, and ride out the other side on the third day. There's ATV traffic, but it's high enough the insects are less likely to present much of a problem.
I think Peter Sinks could also be done from Stump Hollow, and I'll bet there are some camping spots up Porcupine Creek. You might be able to ride over the top to the ghost town La Plata from there.
I think riding up the left hand fork of Blacksmith and camping would be a lot like Steel Hollow. There's also some ridgeline riding near Weston but very little singletrack and I don't know about campsites.
If you wanted to do an earlier trip around Ben Lomond, you could always try taking the trail that forks to the right and heads down to North Fork once you're 3/4 the way up the trail to BLP. Either make a loop out of it or have a shuttle car waiting. You could camp in that flat area where the trail forks.
live2ride
03-31-2006, 08:42 AM
If you wanted to do an earlier trip around Ben Lomond, you could always try taking the trail that forks to the right and heads down to North Fork once you're 3/4 the way up the trail to BLP. Either make a loop out of it or have a shuttle car waiting. You could camp in that flat area where the trail forks.
That is a good area to camp, I have seen people camp there and that is probably where I will end up sleeping.
DickHead
03-31-2006, 01:17 PM
I might be up for something a little more remote. I'd also be into some overnight road bike trips.
How do you mountain bike with an overnight pack on? Do you bring filters and stoves and all that?
My husband did the Telluride to Moab hut to hut trip, but they didn't need to bring everything on their backs. The huts provided food at the end of the day and stoves.
Up in Logan, the Highline trail (not in wilderness) would be awesome. You could start on the Bear Lake side and go up St. Charles Canyon or Bloomington Canyon. Or drive from Logan Canyon up Beaver Creek road past the border and start near Danish pass. That would be very epic.
DickHead
04-03-2006, 03:27 PM
I was thinking if I can do any of these rides I'll be looking for a BOB trailer to rent. Otherwise, I imagine one could use rear panniers and a pack, right?
Check this trail out:
http://www.utahmountainbiking.com/trails/wolverine.htm
I've driven up to Lily lake before, though.
I'm not all that interested in doing any of the nearby stuff, but defintely am into something up in the Uintas or whatnot.
live2ride
04-03-2006, 03:41 PM
That looks like a pretty good place to go, i would be down for trying that one out, i would guess that trail would be snowy untill june at least? And that is if the mirror lake hwy is even open.
Here's the current state of the skyline trail to BL. I hiked up nearly a mile. There's a 500 ft stretch of trail that's completely clear once you get out of the forest. After that the trail is covered in snow again while the rest of this side of the mountain seems clear of snow untill you hit the ridge. Most of the forested area is still under about 1-2 ft of snow.
live2ride
04-20-2006, 06:56 AM
Nice job, of course BL is tanked with snow and hopefully it will get out of the winter mode soon and stop snowing so it can at least start to melt down. I plan on riding BL in late May or ASAP. Thanks for the trail conditions update, that saves me being dissapointed on a trip.
The trail is 99% clear of snow up to the section on the ridge where the pine forest starts, and it's not too muddy, and the mud that is there is pretty solid to walk on. It might be rideable in a couple days. The melting snow has made the erosion on the lower sections of trail even worse. Something needs to be done to stop it from getting worse, but I don't know of any good options that will still keep it (easily) rideable for dirt & mtn bikes, and there's too much soil that's just washed away to fill in the V shaped groove that's developed. Scraping down the sides a bit to make it more U shaped would benefit everyone that uses the trail, but even that would be a waste of time if methods aren't put into place to control sediment flow from the trail and divert water off the trail. Just a personal rant.
Anyone heard of Bailey Cabin Spring? It's showing up in my topo software, and it's just off the trail right around where the trail splits and one goes to BL and the other heads to North Fork Park. It would be awesome if this were a running spring we could use to refill water so we didn't have to carry so much on hikes & rides up there, especially for an overnighter. And hopefully it's nothing like the "springs" I found in Arizona last month: http://www.mikepearce.us/superstitions/img_1134.jpg?xy=350 Yeah, we filtered & iodined that sludge. I've had good luck with springs in Utah, so I was surprised that's what they did down there.
live2ride
05-01-2006, 09:12 PM
Awesome, looks like it will be rideable soon, I will be going up there to check it out in about a week. Great update, like I said before... Thank you very much for the pics of the trail. Oh yeah, how much snow was still up on top, are we still talking in feet?
Sombeech
05-01-2006, 10:28 PM
And hopefully it's nothing like the "springs" I found in Arizona last month: http://www.mikepearce.us/superstitions/img_1134.jpg?xy=350 Yeah, we filtered & iodined that sludge.
:roflol:
http://www.mikepearce.us/superstitions/img_1134.jpg
There were even little fishies in that trough too :2thumbs:
I don't know how deep the snow is, but it'll be there for a while. It was solid enough to walk on and not fall through, so it's pretty dense.
I rode up it today. That always kicks my ass. 2.75 miles in 1:30. Way slow. The snow after that is now slushy, so it should be disappearing in the next couple weeks. It receded about 30 feet since last week.
It didn't look much different up there on Thursday. Maybe with the warm weather this week the trail will emerge.
Have you been up there yet live2ride?
live2ride
05-16-2006, 10:41 AM
Haven't been up there yet this year? I need to get up there soon. I think I am going to head to Muellers tonight to ride, from what I can tell it is snow free all the way to rudy's flat, at least it is rideable because people have been riding it and posting the GPS on Motionbased.com
Got up there again tonight, the hot weather has been doing wonders. A side of the mountain I glissaded down on Monday is pretty much gone. I made it up to the highest southern point on the ridge that overlooks North Ogden and got a good pic that shows most of the trail up to the final climb of BL. The forested section might be the last to clear up. While you can see the ground from the fringes of that area, the snow is still really deep in places through there. Once that's gone though, the rest of the trail up to the final climb should be clear.
accadacca
05-18-2006, 08:08 AM
Did someone already mention the elevation of these pictures? I may run up to Bear Lake this weekend and I am bringing my dirt bike. Where is the snow line???
The top one is 7200, and the bottom one is 8200. I looked at Naomi & Bridger Peaks, and it looks like there's only snow on about the top 500 ft -- from the West side, the East side will obviously have more.
I went up last night and the trail is all clear except for a couple very short sections in the pine forest, and then just past Chilly Peak (at mile 5 on the nose) there's still a significant amount of snow on the trail, but you can take the faint side trail that goes up and around it, or if the snow is pretty solid and not slick, just go over it. Everything after that should be clear till you hit the final stretch to the summit.
TreeHugger
06-20-2006, 08:45 AM
We did a three day/two night bike/camp trip in North Carolina one year - I'm here to tell ya it's really hard to ride with a large pack on!! WEll, leastways, it was for me - very tippy!!! WE ended up in a super sweet spot, set up camp and rode for a few days as that as our base, it was way cool!
Do you remember what size packs you used and how much they weighed?
TreeHugger
06-20-2006, 10:45 AM
LOL - they were LARGE. I tried to scan a photo to link up but cant figure out how! 4800 c/in. backpack. We had tons of stuff with us!
Yeah, that would make for an interesting ride with that big of a pack. I used to do grocery shopping in college on my bike with my 5500 cubic inch pack, so I know what you're talking about. If we do do this trip, everything I take will have to fit in a large daypack, and since only two meals will be involved, everything else won't take up much space, especially if they're both meals you don't have to cook -- unless you're sharing a stove & canister with others in which case it wouldn't be a big deal.
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