After a 5.5-mile mountain bike ride in the snow yesterday, I still wanted to get outside today for a little hike. I needed to stay close to home, and so I chose to hike to Wildcat Canyon where there’s an old road I’ve been wanting to check out. The north side of the road appears to have a definite end at the base of the Book Cliffs (I’d imagine it was constructed to do some coal prospecting or mining in that area), but the south end fades out as it gets closer to Consumers Road. That probably explains why the road doesn’t appear to have been traveled in a long time–it’s basically landlocked. I drove on a different road as close as I could using the truck, then hiked cross-country until I picked up the old road a little more than a mile from where I started hiking. From there the road climbed in elevation and cut through a couple of cliff bands, then leveled out as it rounded the east end of Bull Point. After that, unfortunately, the road followed the north side of the mountain where the snow was much deeper. I tried pressing on for a short while, but the snow and the shade of the mountain made it colder than I could handle. I reluctantly turned around about three quarters of a mile from the end of the road. It was still a worthwhile venture–I got about 4.3 miles of hiking out of it–but I’ll have to return during warm weather and give it another try, probably combined with a hike to the top of Bull Point.

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GPS Tracklog and Photo Waypoints (Google Earth .KMZ Format)

GPS Tracklog and Photo Waypoints (Google Maps)