Butler Maps, Touratech-USA chronicle new 'Utah Backcountry Discovery Route'

Just as I put my ADV motorcycle away for the winter, I learned that a north-south backcountry travel route through the wildlands of Utah is now chronicled in a new map and teaser video.

The recently developed, 871-mile Utah Backcountry Discovery Route (UTBDR) is the third trans-state adventure-motoring route in an anticipated network of linked routes through each Western state.

The new UTBDR includes portions of famous Kokopelli's Trail.

The UTBDR crosses eastern Utah from the Arizona line southwest of Bluff to Bear Lake on the Idaho-Utah line, just west of the Wyoming line. Portions of the route are chronicled in my guide to Utah's adventure roads, Utah Byways.

Butler Motorcycle Maps has just added a map of the UTBDR to its expanding catalog of references available to backroad explorers. Like its other durable, detailed and plastic-coated maps, it retails for $14.95. With a focus on the needs of adventure riders and drivers, I will review this and other Butler MC maps in an upcoming post.

Continental Divide Route travelers see global-warming impacts along the way

Travelers who pass through the northern Rockies on the backroads that comprise the Great Divide Route (a.k.a., Continental Divide Route) can see an ominous effect of global warming: expanses of dead and dying trees, primarily conifers and aspens.


Entire forest ecosystems along Union Pass Road, for example, are being reduced to ghostly tracts of beetle-killed, tinder-dry trees that stand like graveyard headstones.


Global warming is damaging the wildlands we backcountry travelers expend so much time, money and resources to enjoy. Just look closely at the photos in the many CDR or other Rocky Mountain ride reports on Web forums like Adventure Rider. What can we do? I wish I knew; I suppose reconsidering the vehicles we drive would help. But first, we need to be aware of the problem.


To learn more, read this recent story in The New York Times, headlined "With the Deaths of Forests, a Loss of Key Climate Protectors."


Also view the Times' accompanying interactive map, Changing Forests.

Red and gray conifers signal a dying forest on Wyoming's Union Pass.

Study: Global warming impacting prime adventure country of Greater Yellowstone

The negative impacts of global warming are being seen in the vast wildland known as Greater Yellowstone, world-class adventuring country that includes parts of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. A new study has taken a look at what's happening, and what is likely to happen as our children and grandchildren inherit our legacy.


Read about global warming's impact on Greater Yellowstone here.

Montana's Beartooth Plateau, part of Greater Yellowstone.

Yellowstone's historic dirt roads provide glimpse of travel in park's early days

With summer finally arrived in the northern Rockies, I packed up my Kawasaki KLR650 dual-sport motorcycle for four mid-August days of exploring and camping in southwestern Montana. But to get there, I opted to ride through Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, and visit the only dirt roads remaining in the park that are open to the public.

Toyota T-100 on Blacktail Plateau Rd

The first is six-mile, one-way Blacktail Plateau Drive Auto Trail, which, as so many roads do, generally follows the course of an old trail that Native Americans used long ago.  But as the name suggests, this single-lane 2WD high-clearance road climbs gently onto a plateau that offers sweeping vistas into the rugged wilderness of the Absaroka Range.

Digging through primordial past just one reason to explore Utah's House Range

The following tour description is a sample from my guidebook Utah Byways, which I researched in a stock Toyota Land Cruiser and 4Runner. The 65-route guide details backcountry tours suitable to adventure motorcyclists, four-wheelers and SUV-borne travelers. For information about the book, contact Wilderness Press @ 1-800-443-7227. ISBN 978-0-89997-424-4

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Trilobite fossils

NOTE: Don't miss my magazine feature article about digging trilobite fossils in the House Range.

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LOCATION The Great Basin, west of Delta, north of U.S. 6/50 near the Nevada border. Google Map

HIGHLIGHTS These mountains are full of surprises. Marjum and Dome (or Death) Canyons are noted for high, terraced walls and side canyons. The 4,000-foot-plus west side of 9,655-foot Notch Peak [N39°08.590′ W113°24.560′] is famous for its sheer, roughly 2,000-foot cliff. Hikers who climb to the summit are rewarded with a 360-degree panorama at the very brink of the cliff. Near the summit is a large stand of bristlecone pines, among the world’s oldest living things. Sinbad Overlook also provides top-of-the-world views. The gravel road through Marjum Canyon is a relic of the original unpaved U.S. 6/50, replaced by the paved highway in 1950.

Driving a 4Runner to Dome Pass

If you have the time, add the drive up to verdant Amasa Valley, on Sawtooth Mountain. There you will find granite boulders and outcrops, aspen groves, creeks, meadows, and the vista from atop 9,290-foot Pine Peak. The range’s dramatic uptilted west side has canyons worth exploring as well.

Mackay, Idaho: Mo' betta than Moab?

MACKAY, Idaho -- Move over, Moab. This scenic Idaho ranching town -- founded on mining long ago yet rich today in outdoor recreation and small-town charm -- is hot on your wheels.That's the impression I gained during four days of riding adventure motorcycles in the lofty mountains surrounding this yet-to-be-discovered rival to Utah's mecca for dirt-road adventure.

Located on the Big Lost River in Custer County (Google Map), in the shadow of Idaho's Lost River Range -- Idaho's highest -- little Mackay (MAC ee) is accommodating to ADV and dirt-bike riders, ATVs, SUVs, mountain bikes and hikers alike.

So a fellow adventure-motorcycle rider, Dave, and I allocated four days to exploring the region's mountains and valleys via a vast network of dirt roads that rivaled the best of the northern Rockies. We traveled on dual-sport motorcycles ... he on his Honda 650, I on my Kawasaki KLR 650.

ADV Friendly

Wagon Wheel Motel

We unloaded our bikes and checked in at the Wagon Wheel Motel -- convenient, comfortable, reasonably priced and well-kept. After a long day of exploring, we could sit out each evening and gaze at the towering, 12,000-foot-plus Lost River Range just east of town.

Washout fixed, Canyonlands Park reopens famous White Rim Road loop

MOAB, Utah--A big hand to the National Park Service at Canyonlands National Park in Utah, site of the world-famous White Rim Road. A massive washout in August 2010 that I thought could take years to repair is fixed well enough for spring adventuring, although work is expected to continue for some time yet. Go for it!

August '10 washout temporarily closes Canyonlands' famous White Rim loop

From the Canyonlands National Park website:


"On August 19, severe storms caused flash flooding and rock falls that blocked or washed away roads throughout the Canyonlands area. One of the more dramatic washouts occurred on the Mineral Bottom Road switchbacks (see photo), where signifcant portions of the road were obliterated. This damage will affect all groups traveling the White Rim Road or planning river trips that launch or take-out at Mineral Bottom."


Mineral Bottom:

Bridge projects impose temporary 2010 closure on Wyoming's Greys River Road

The Greys River Ranger District of Bridger-Teton National Forest (307-886-5300) has closed the southerly segment of Greys River Road until Oct. 1, 2010. The reason is to replace three bridges.


But you can still make the north-south ride or drive by detouring over Thompson Pass (road 10128) and McDougal Gap (road 10125), which are linked by scenic road 10046 over Bare Pass.

I learned about the closure recently when I rode my KLR 650 from Idaho Falls, Idaho, to Smiths Fork Road southeast of Afton, Wyoming. With Labor Day weekend approaching, I thought I'd pass along that information -- and more.

Canyon Country backroad mishap offers lessons in resourcefulness, awareness

Downtown Moab

NEEDLES DISTRICT, Canyonlands National Park -- The day was full of promise -- until "it" caught up with us.

My wife, Lynn, and I had arrived for a long, early October weekend in Canyonlands National Park's relatively unpeopled yet spectacular Needles District, a long way from touristy Moab. The weather was clear and crisp, the kind that makes October so busy in that mountain biking and four-wheeling mecca.

Our 1990 Toyota 4Runner, a trusted veteran of many forays deep into canyon country, was loaded up with camping gear and food. It would see its 20th birthday -- and 215,000th mile -- amid the Needles' intricately eroded, color-banded sandstone labyrinths, which for millennia were home to Anasazi and other native peoples.

Sunset, Peekaboo Springs

After driving more than 500 miles from our home in Idaho, we'd spent a cold night in a tiny, sandy and exposed commercial campsite ($20) at the privately operated Needles Outpost. It's just outside the Needles entrance station. Now we were ready to revisit the wilds of the Needles. We'd accumulated family memories with our kids here, many years before.

On the dash lay our $30 Canyonlands backcountry-camping permit. It was good for two nights at one of only two remote sites at the Salt Creek Canyon's Peekaboo Springs (Google Earth view). We felt lucky to have the reservation.

Autumn makes up for wet summer of '09

The summer of 2009 will be remembered in southeastern Idaho as a wet one. So when a September dry spell finally arrived with the colors I look forward to, it was time to mount my KLR 650 and ride mountain roads that were new to me.

I packed tools, spare tubes, a hand pump and other items for roadside repairs. I also stowed clothing for inclement weather, a possibility anytime in the northern Rocky Mountains.

Most important, the bike had a new rear tire. Having dealt with flat tires far from help in the past, that inspires confidence, because I often explore alone.

Alternate routes enhance adventuring along the Great Divide Route in Montana

CENTENNIAL VALLEY, Montana -- America's Great Divide Mountain Bike Route is a series of rural backroads from Banff, Alberta, Canada to Antelope Wells, New Mexico that together form a premier route for adventurous bicyclists and, increasingly, motorcyclists.

Following a network of primarily unpaved backways, it traverses some of the most rural regions of the Rocky Mountain West.

At its northern end, it parallels the Continental Divide -- and the Continental Divide Trail for hikers -- as it winds through western Montana, not far from my home in Idaho.

Judging by the number of ride reports by adventure motorcyclists -- ADV riders, they are called -- it seems that more and more backroad travelers are taking the route each year. As an ADV rider and backcountry driver myself, I became curious about the route in the summer of 2009, and decided to have a look.

Crossing the Continental Divide via Montana, Idaho's Centennial Mountains

Red Rock Pass Road

CENTENNIAL VALLEY, Montana -- I long wondered whether there is a route across the Centennial Mountains, a unique east-west-trending Continental Divide range that rises more than 3,000 feet above the valleys that flank it along the Idaho-Montana border.

My goal has been to cross from the Idaho side to connect with Montana's scenic Red Rock Pass Road (in the photo), in Centennial Valley. The valley is the locale of the beautiful Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.

Historic Bannack, Medicine Lodge roads alluring links between Idaho and Montana

Bannack Pass

One of the backcountry routes I enjoy the most is the 19th-century road over Bannack Pass, in the Beaverhead Mountains along the Continental Divide between eastern Idaho and southwestern Montana.

More than a century ago, the old Bannack road linked Montana's territorial capital, today's ghost town at Bannack State Park, with Corinne, Utah, not far from the Transcontinental Railroad.

Stagecoach station

Today, it is a little-traveled single-lane dirt road that combines homestead-era log structures, inspiring northern Rocky Mountain scenery, a gear-soaking stream ford and easy access to a day-long loop.