Utah Utopia [Dirt]

Since we enjoyed Utah so much in 2009 and we saw so many opportunities for dirt riding while we were in the Canyonlands area we thought let’s take a dirt trip there. We knew we would be riding in Ouray again in 2011, so we thought we could pick up some bikes, keep them, and ride them for two years then sell them afterwards. So, we shopped for bikes that would function well in both areas. We researched Utah extensively and concluded that the bikes needed here would work well in Ouray. The bike needed to be a little more dirt than street. We narrowed the search down to the Suzuki DRZ 400. Steve led this project, and delivered with two great bikes. The only downside was the DRZ did not have a very big gas tank. This would not impact the Ouray trip, but for Utah it would require some creativity. As I began to route the daily trips I realized we would be short on gas on several days. This would require us to drive to selected spots at night to hide gas tanks that would allow us to fill our tanks during the day. This was not a terrible inconvenience but not optimal. In the end it was a fantastic trip and far more challenging than we had envisioned. Frequently we were challenged to get through the route we had planned. Every day was great and we really only touched a relatively small portion of the trial system in the Moab area. Steve had picked up a Zumo GPS unit the year before that we put to great use in 2009, but we didn’t think we would be able to use it to the same extent for the dirt, but to our surprise the software allowed us to route everything we needed. I should also point out that we relied heavily on the book ATV Trails Guide by Charles A. Wells. This book really gave us the foundation on where to begin our routing and I would highly recommend picking up a copy. Let me take you through what we did.