Issue link: http://trailridermagazine.uberflip.com/i/110132
UTAH���S WILD AND WOOLY ���PIUTE TRAIL��� By: Dave Rosenstein I arose just after sunrise and headed over to my neighbor���s house, Dr. Russell Olsen, who lived next door in Cedar City, Utah. We had been planning to ride a portion of Utah���s Piute Trail System in central Utah for a couple of years now and this morning we were going to make our plans a reality. The Piute Trail was founded in the 1860���s and was developed to service the mining and timber enterprises that sprung up at the time. The main products were gold and then Uranium. Eventually, the main Piute Trail was developed into a 260 mile loop with an additional 900 miles of side service trails that lead to the small towns in the area and cross connecting trails that lead to a multitude of sites to see. Today, the main Piute Trail Loop is a dirt highway through mountain passes, ridges and valleys with side trails of Jeep roads, Quad roads and single track trails. The trails run through and across four mountain areas, the Tushar, Pahvant, Gooseberry and Monroe ranges and goes from about 4,500 feet to over 12,000 feet in elevation. As this is high country traveling so the best time to ride there is late May though early October, depending on the amount of precipitation and snow deposited by the previous winter. We were going to start in the town of Beaver Utah on the west side of the system, head north to Salina, stay overnight and then loop back to Beaver via the eastern and southern routes. This was a 300 mile plus, two day ride. We stuffed our bikes, February 2013 47