ATV Adventures: An OHV adventure high in the Manti La-Sal’s
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- Arriving at the campground at 12-mile Flat.
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- Coming through a wall of aspen on the Arapeen Trails.
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- Negotiating one of the many mud pits on the Arapeen Trails.
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- Lynn Blamires
Earlier this year, my nephew called asking for a sample of what I have been writing about. He wanted a real ATV adventure for himself and his family. I liked the idea.
We set a date and started planning. He has four children – three boys and a girl. I have a four-seat Kawasaki Teryx4 LE that took care of half of them. He rented the same Kawasaki model for enough seats to fit the rest. James, his oldest, is 17, so I brought my single-seat Polaris Ace for him to drive. We had ourselves a convoy.
We chose Ephraim as a base of operations. That sounds so official. We settled in at the Willow Creek Inn and went out for Mexican food. We had two rooms and four beds so they played rock-paper-scissors to see who had to sleep in the same room with the aunt and the uncle. That got funny.
The Arapeen trailhead is in town so we didn’t have to trailer. After breakfast the next morning, we headed up Ephraim Canyon. The Arapeen is a beautiful trail system.
The canyon road is easy riding and I wanted the new drivers to get used to their machines. We turned south on Willow Creek Road. This is a good way to get between Ephriam and Manti without driving on the highway. It is also a pleasant trail to ride.
Making a loop, we turned back toward Ephraim Canyon Road. This took us to the Lake Hill Campground where we took a break. They have vault toilets.
Joining the canyon road, we rode up on top and turned south on Skyline Drive. It is like being on top of the world. This road goes from Highway 6 in Spanish Fork Canyon to I-70 near Salina and there is a 58-mile stretch that stays above 10,000 feet in elevation. You are on top of everything.
We passed Snow Lake and Jet Fox Reservoir on the way south. We looked down on Duck Fork Reservoir and Ferron Reservoir before riding down into the 12-mile Flat Campground where we stopped for lunch. I have clown horns on all my machines, and Edison – their youngest – couldn’t quit honking them.
We rode back on the Skyline and turned down Ephraim Canyon Road. We turned off this road onto #42, the Left-Hand Fork Trail. This is a real 4×4 road. After crossing a fork of Cottonwood Creek, we came to a big mudhole. It took locking into four-wheel drive to negotiate this hole, but a 12-ton service truck did not do so well. The crew was using a come-a-long to pull it out. It didn’t look promising.
We came out of Ephraim Canyon on New Canyon Road and made it back to town. Then it was pizza, rock-paper-scissors and lights out.
The next day we were back on New Canyon Road. We took off onto #45. This was another real 4×4 trail with steep sections and tight narrow trails. It brought us back to New Canyon Road where we took #42 again, the trail where we left the service truck stuck in the mud.
They must have figured it out because the truck was gone. The mudhole was still there, so we had to negotiate that once again. However, as we approached Ephraim Canyon Road, I could see what appeared to be huge white boulders in the trail. I didn’t remember any big rocks in the road the day before.
As we came closer, we realized it was a sheep camp and the sheep were bedded down on the trail. We approached cautiously to avoid causing panic among them. They slowly moved off the trail, but one little sheep was sound asleep in the middle of the trail and wasn’t moving. I had my passenger guide me around it. It didn’t wake up until we were almost past it. We had one more mudhole to negotiate and then we were over the top and on our way down to Joe’s Valley Reservoir.
We enjoyed lunch in the campground and then headed back up the mountain. We stopped at Grassy Lake to watch the fish. They were jumping like crazy.
Leaving the jumping fish, we worked through a logging operation and climbed the Clay Bench. This brought us back to Skyline Road where we made our way back to town, finishing our second day.
If you decide to go, take plenty of water, keep the rubber side down and have your own ATV Adventure.
Contact Lynn R. Blamires at quadmanone@gmail.com.
