7/21/12 - Mill Canyon Trail Ride (AF Canyon)

 Lower Mill Canyon trail Head parking lot.

 

After the ride at Tibble Fork Reservoir

Lower Mill Canyon Trail Head

Tonight I decided to load the family up in the truck, along with the bike, and head out for a ride.  Konnor and I went camping (just the two of us) last week up above Silver Lake, and we discovered that there are trail heads for riding dirt bikes up near Tibble Fork Reservoir, so I decided to start my exploration of the AF Canyon trails from there. 

This picture shows the view from the Mill Canyon Spring.  It's about 5.5 miles up from the trail head. The ride up trail 040 was amazing.  It was awesome single track through thick pines and aspens.  Tons of tight switch-backs, roots, rocks, creeks, and steep hills.  It's definitely not a beginner trail.  A lot of it is intermediate, but there are a number of spots that are advanced riding while you weave your way up steeps slopes dodging tall rocks and roots, all the while making sure that you don't clip a handle bar on a tree!  It was tons of fun.  Once I got here, I pulled up the pdf map of the trails and noticed that I could catch up with trial 157, and then connect with 041 which would talk me back down to Tibble Fork Reservoir when Karen and the kids would be waiting. 

 Every so often you get signs like this letting you know where are

 Trails 157 and 041 proved to be just a beautiful, and just as fun.  I'd say they are both intermediate trials with elements of advanced sections mixed in.  Ironically, the only pictures I took were when the trial widened out, so you can't see how tight the single track is... you'll have to take my word for it.  All told, the ride ended up being a little over 11 miles and took me about an hour since I stopped to check the map a couple of times.  It was a really fun introduction into this massive trail system.  I know that there are trails that can take you all over the mountain and also up into the Alta/Snowbird area.  I can't wait to check more of this mountain out.

7/13/12 - Konnor and I Camping on Friday the 13th

Even though I knew it was going to rain, I really wanted to get out camping.  Karen had a "cul-de-sac reunion" that she went to with Kaylee and Kase, but Konnor and I went in search of a camp spot up American Fork Canyon.  We didn't have a ton of time to check out different spots, but we ended up about a mile or so above Silver Lake Reservoir.  It rained on us while we were driving up, and the rain continued till a little while after we had the tent set up.  It's a decent camping area that we found.  It's unimproved but it must be a favorite spot for many people because it's quite well used with lots of pull out spots along a creek leading into Silver Lake below.  In the tent, we watched a movie on the iPad after getting back from the "Bear Hunt" that Konnor wanted to go on.  We had donuts for breakfast and had some more fun in the creek hunting for cool rocks.  On the way down the mountain, I found one of the trail heads for riding dirt bikes in the area.  It will be a blast to get back up here for more camping and dirt biking.