Monday, August 10, 2009

Vernal UT - McCoy flats

We had seen an article about Vernal UT in one of the bike magazines earlier this year and decided that it might be nice to include the area on our trip this year. It was an easy stop between Fruita and Park City so here we are. It was only about a 3 hour drive giving us time to check in at the local bike shop. They were incredibly helpful there, selling us a map set for a few bucks and giving us tons of local insite. they have personally done most or all of the work out at McCoy and really take the area personally. The temps were low so we had a window to do a little riding that evening so we headed out the flume trail. It was a trail up a dry wash, not what we envisioned for the area but not a bad ride, lots of grass and tree cover. It followed the wash up till it seem to hit private property then the mellow grade turned sharply up the side of the valley. Once it stated down we took a look at the time and decided the smart decision would be to head back at that point, and we actually did the smart thing. The ride down was lots of fun.
Sunday we headed out to the jewel of Vernal riding, the McCoy flats area. Our plan was to head up Jackalope then take dippity, the top of which is shown below, back to the parking area.

The top was a little loose n rutted but they had just had a multiyear storm/flood the other day. It flattened out a bit where all you had to do was steer, no peddling or braking necessary.



Rather than take the road back we picked up the end of retail sale trail back. We started the whole retail sale trail, bypassing fire sale in hopes of heading to another trail beyond. Due to some poor map reading on both our parts we failled to catch that loop and took retail sale around to slippery when wet, an amazing balloon string trail off retail. It was great desert riding, lots of ups n downs, some drops as shown above. Really lots n lots of good fun. Back around retail sale, through lizard hill and back to the truck, about 21 miles or so of great fun.

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