Day Five - Devil's Canyon/Hunt Mountain
Not wanting to risk treading on Indian grounds again, and also not wanting to ride another 75+ miles on asphalt we decided to take an unorthodox approach to Tuesday. We loaded up the bikes the night before and headed to Devil's Canyon on Tuesday morning. Once again we were disappointed when we found out the trail to an awesome overlook we identified was now all paved. We drove to the overlook with bikes in tow, and viewed the overlook from the wonderfully paved overlook area complete with full restroom facilities. Although we were disappointed to not have ridden here it was still worth the look. Breathtaking and as good a view as most we have seen. After hanging out there for a half an hour or so we decided to go back up the mountain and ride the South side of US14A. We pulled off on Hunt Mountain, parked the truck, unloaded the bikes, and began our ride. We started at just over 9,000 feet and only climbed a few hundred feet over 15 miles before we stopped for a break to look around. It very much seemed as if we were on top of the world, not much above us, and only far off views in the distance. We veered off Hunt Mountain Rd onto Cedar Creek Road and stopped on a ridge at 9700 feet. We viewed the area, took some pics and returned back to Hunt Mountain Rd and down to US14 headed south. We turned left on FR277 and headed due east from US14. We wound our way down to Battle Creek Rd where we had planned to climb the hills south of US14 as it turned due west. We couldn't find the road we were looking for despite our best efforts. The trail was still nice and although only medium difficulty it was fun. We found another little trail just west of where US14 turned due west and rode way up into the hills. The trail didn't seem to go anywhere so we turned around. Faced with the uncertainty of finding a trail west of Shell Falls we decided to head back to Hunt Mountain. We stopped a couple of times in different locations along the way back, checking out several different little trails and basically just knocking around. Finally, we rode down one last trail that had a sign for sunset mesa. As it turned out this was the trail that would have led us down to the area west of the falls we were looking for early on. We didn't realize it until after the fact but we were on the right road! Anyway we rode back to the truck, loaded up and went back to the motel. All-in all a good day of riding.
