We left Price relatively late in the afternoon yesterday and hauled the ATVs up to Kenilworth to do some riding in the area. I would’ve rather gone in the morning but Traci had to go to church, though now I’m glad we went when we did–more on that later. Here’s a link to some pictures from yesterday.
We parked just off the pavement near the big curve in the highway where it enters Kenilworth and started unloading the ATVs. During the few minutes that it took me to unload both machines, we saw a few other people riding past on ATVs, one of which turned out to be a guy who lives just up the street from me whom I’d never met before. He stopped to chat, and while I didn’t recognize him, he knew who I was–he probably just recognized the truck since it’s always parked in front of my house.
After unloading and getting all geared up (helmets, gloves, etc.), we started up the road in Bull Hollow. We tried that road several weeks ago but got stopped by some deep snow, but yesterday the road was clear. Our first stop was at some old mining equipment that appeared to be three huge motor housings that had been stripped of everything but the outer metal casings. I’m assuming that they were either for ventilation fans or for pulling tram cars, but so much of the area has been reclaimed that it’s difficult to tell what it used to look like. We had only been stopped for a minute or two when a large group of ATVs came up the trail behind us. We were parked in the middle of the road because we didn’t expect company, so we had to move our machines off to the side. A few minutes after that group passed, a couple of other people came riding up the road, and that sort of set the pace for the rest of the day–we saw a lot of people in the area all evening long, which was quite a surprise. I didn’t realize the area was so popular.
We tried riding to the end of the road in Bull Hollow, some boulders had fallen in the middle of the road and I wasn’t confident that I could ride around them without damaging my ATV, so we parked and hiked the remaining 1/4-mile to the end. There were some old concrete foundations and sandstone block walls, but I couldn’t tell what they used to be a part of. The upper part of the canyon is closed off on three sides by some enormous and scenic cliffs, and it would be fun to go back to hike around some more.
After Bull Hollow we rode over to Cordingly Canyon, which is the next canyon to the east. I had wanted to try riding up a road that was visible in Google Earth that leads to the Aberdeen Mine, but I didn’t see any sign of a road branching off the Cordingly Canyon road. Traci had already ridden ahead of me and out of sight, so I decided to make a stop there on our way back to hike around and look for the road.
In Cordingly Canyon, the road has been improved since the last time I was there. Fire crews bulldozed the road last July to fight a wildfire, and where you could only ride an ATV before, now you can drive an SUV or truck. We saw a lot of snow under the heavy cover of pine trees along the road, and even drove through a couple of small snow drifts across the road. Right where the trail gets steep and starts switching back up the mountainside to the top of the Book Cliffs, there was a gate that hadn’t been there at the beginning of last year. Since it was getting late and we couldn’t go any farther, we started back for the truck. I did stop again briefly where I thought the Aberdeen Mine road should have been, and I hiked up the hillside and came across what looked like a wash or gully. However, it followed the curvature of the mountainside so closely instead of running downhill, and it certainly appears to be a road in the aerial photo, so perhaps the tram grade has just been reclaimed by nature.
Back at the truck, I had loaded both ATVs and was beginning to tie them down, when the strangest thing happened. Let me start this off with a little backstory. In the last month I’ve been to Kenilworth three times with Traci and the kids (and once without them), which is normally about as many times as I go there in a whole year. Each time we were there, I always had some story to tell them about growing up there–I’d point out a canyon and tell them how I’d ridden my bicycle up there with a friend, or show them the house I used to live in, or tell them about the time I climbed the mountain above town, etc. Most of the stories involved my best friend at the time, Daniel, who I haven’t seen since we were kids. So, as I was tying down the ATVs, it was a shock to see Daniel come down the road on a 3-wheeler. We both immediately recognized each other, and he hit the brakes and pulled off the road next to me. He had his son with him, so his son and my two boys played while we caught up. It was kind of a surreal experience, hanging out in my hometown with my childhood best friend. We talked until the sun was almost down, for probably almost two hours, but he had to get back home to Salt Lake and Traci and I needed to get the kids home for some dinner. The timing couldn’t have been more right for our chance encounter, but we exchanged phone numbers and hopefully we’ll keep in touch.