This weekend as a whole was pretty fun, but yesterday was sure boring as hell. On Saturday, we hauled our mountain bikes up to Kenilworth in my Subaru and Mike’s Nissan, then we rode the bikes back down to Price on the back roads. I usually take this trek at least once each year, but I always ride from Price to Kenilworth and back, all on the dirt roads. Kenilworth is about 2000 feet higher than Price in elevation, so the ride back was almost all downhill, and it’s only about a 5 mile ride. When we got back to Price, Jaysen drove me and Mike back up to get our vehicles.
I’ve been looking around on TerraServer a lot lately, and there’s this canyon (called Cordingly Canyon) just east of Kenilworth that I’ve always been interested in, but I didn’t know where it went. It turns out that it leads to Indian Canyon, just northeast of Helper. I’ve been part-way up the canyon near Kenilworth, but the road is too rough even for most 4X4s, so I’ve never been able to go very far. For some reason, I’m now obsessed with mountain biking up this canyon, over the mountains, and down through Mathis Canyon into Indian Canyon.
I spent a lot of time yesterday creating a map of the area [1.9MB JPEG] from the satellite photos on TerraServer, and I think I’ve got everything planned out. I’ll have somebody follow me up Indian Canyon, where I’ll park my truck, then I’ll have them drop me and my bike off near the canyon in Kenilworth. I figure it’s about 9 miles through some extremely rough and steep terrain, so it will probably take all day. Jaysen said he’d go with me, and maybe Mike would want to go to (and maybe Ty? :). I would seriously need to bring a handgun with me, because there are mountain lions and bears up there, and I doubt any humans have been through there for a long time. Parts of the road don’t even exist on the 1972 topo map of the area, but they’re there on the ’98 satellite images, so either it simply wasn’t mapped (which is very unlikely), or the road was built since 1972.
On my way home from work last Thursday, I took a detour through Indian Canyon to check out the other side of this trail, but it was gated off. The last time I was near the Kenilworth side of the trail, it was gated off too, but I didn’t see any “No Trespassing” signs at either place, so I assume it’s not private property. If I’m gonna do this thing, I either need to do it pretty soon before the weather gets too hot, or I’ll have to wait ’til Fall when it starts to cool off some. I’d rather do it sooner, but it’s just going to take a lot of planning, and I don’t think I have time to do it all before summer really sets in.