ROUTE DESC: Colorado BDR > rerouted to Hanksville Utah due to bad weather (3” of rain at 14,000 feet is more likely to be snow)
RECAP/SUMMARY:
Capital Reef, Goblin Valley, Cathedral valley, Henry Mountain, Poison Creek, Burr trail, Hells Backbone bridge. Highway 12 from Bolder Ut to Hanksville.
Photos:
We decided to re-route to Hanksville UT the night before we left for Colorado. Each time we looked at the weather it got worse. I joked, STOP checking the weather cuz its getting worse. We lost about $330 in housing in Colorado, but Wes found a sweet airbnb 7 miles west of Hanksville. So we loaded up and headed to Hanksville. Wednesday morning.
Tuesday night I spend 2 hours looking at maps and brainstorming in a google doc. Wednesday morning I woke up at 4am and spend another 2 hours making plans. I took primary-navigator day1 and it was the same route I did with my daughter on a jeep tour. Wednesday night, we got there early enough and once Wes/Dan got there, we did a quick ride to Factory Butte and Moonscape overlook as the sun was going down.
Jeremiah came all the way from West Virginia and came way early to get acclimated to the higher elevation.
LINK TO VIDEO:
Thursday we did Cathedral Valley, which was about 106 miles w/o blacktop. We stopped at all the attractions and took lots of breaks. I got to fly my drone a bunch. I have done this on a motorcycle in 2017, 2019 and in a jeep May 2024 so I was very familiar with it.
The temple of the Sun, moon and stars was cool along with Glass Mountain. We went to the sinkhole too. Because of the recent rain, there was very little sand. There was lots of tractors working on the washes. Looked like major water damage to the road.
Thursday night I fixed my flat tire on my T7. With the 150mm wide tire, chain guide and break pad “fun”, I was very worn out after replacing it in the dark. Someone pinched the spare tube with a tire spoon and so I got to pull it off again. Finally something that taxed my energy. I noticed the flat tire Thursday morning so I pumped it up as much as I could and zip’d back and got my Ktm 500. Jeremiah got very worn out on the ride and had lots of close calls with the sand so finally he tried the ktm 500 and it was 100x easier in the sand. The 2021 T7 was false neutraling a lot and I noticed the shifter disconnected. So I put all the parts in the bag and put it in 2nd gear and road it out. At the very end was a fun river crossing so I put it in 1st and went through the water. Good thing Wes put a 6” big rock right were we wanted to go.
So I fixed the shifter, which required to put the bike on a toolbox because the center stand needed to be relaxed. I had to take off the foot peg mount in order to re-thread the shifter from the inside. Took about 1 hour, I did this before we went to dinner.
Friday Wes was the primary navigator and we went up Henry Mountain. The fun windy road out there was fun on the big bike. I failed to give Logan the GPX file and he got going on the wrong fork up Henry Mountain. I thought he had gone ahead and I kept radioing him to come back so we could drone. I left my drone and went back down the west side of the mountain and his radio was clearer so I knew he was on that side. We finally meetup and went back to the top and launched the drone for some cool pics/video. We took a very long break at a campground with concrete picknick tables and a gov-outhouse.
Jeremiah and I took the easy way back to the blacktop and then had 15-20 miles of fast blacktop back to dinner. I was tempted to go to Hite overlook, but the plan was to meet at Stan’s burger joint in Hanksville, so that is what we did. Total about 95 miles.
We went and played at swingarm city and Logan tried Dan’s 450 and loved it. He did tons of wheelies and we got them on drone video. So Saturday/Sunday, Logan road my ktm 500 and loved it. He did really good on all the rides, including poison wash where Jer and I turned around and went to Hite overlook on Saturday.
Saturday we planned to go to Goblin Valley via the mud creek way. I thought with the recent rains it would be impassable and I was right. Wed night we saw a dirt biker that told us too much mud to pass and we had hoped it had dried out enough. The road was still filled with mud. So we went back and took a 2 hour break and then jumped in the truck and headed to Goblin Valley. Wes went to visit his friends doing a “family camp ride”.
Sunday we went south on the NEW Nottom road until we got to a campground and the 3 small bikes unloaded from the trailer and we headed to the Burr trail. We had lunch at the grill. I got a lamb burger and icecream. It was two small scoops and just like costco ice cream. Logan got a cheese burger. It was over $50 dollars…and not that great.
We gassed up and Jer and I went to Hells Backbone bridge and then headed the long route back. We got back about 5:20pm and loaded the two T7s up and got all ready and Logan wasn’t back so we got all we could packed into the truck and about the time we were ready, he showed up and changed and we headed home. I drove for 1-1.5 hour and once we got to I15 Jer drove all the way home and I slept….or tried to sleep. With Logan behind me there was not much room to recline.
I’m glad we planned an easy going ride so Logan would have a good experience and it turned out Jer was in a lot of pain and got worn out quickly, even with lots of breaks he went home very sore and very worn out. If we had gone to Colorado where the trails are much harder, I think he would not have been able to complete all 4 days of riding.
I’m sad I didn’t do Telluride trails for the 3rd year in a row, but it was worth it to give Logan and Jerimiah a good experience.
RATING THIS TRAIL: 1 of 3
DATE: Sept 23-29th, 2026
SCREENSHOT OF ROUTE:
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