Welcome to KSL Outdoors, I’m Adam Eakle. Hey we’ve got a fun show for you tonight we are headed out riding with our good friends from Utah State Parks and we brought Jumping J.C. To show us where to go. What are we doing? I don’t know I am just going on some trail on a OHV trail. I don’t even know what OHV means! No I do, and I’m very excited. I’m not much of an atv rider but it’s going to be a great show.
Leading the charge today, Kevin Arrington.
Well welcome to Sevier County. We are here at the Freemont Indian state park and we are going up what’s called the Max Reed trail. It’s a great little trail, 50 inches wide as you get up to the top and we’ll go to the silver king mine, we’ll drop into the Kimberly ghost town. We’ll see some wonderful sights and a lot of history. Do I need to worry about rattlesnakes. I didn’t bring any rattlesnake boots. No, we’ll take care of those on the way. Jon there’s a snake in your boot. Yeah! (laughs)
Max Reed is a former Forest Service employee who did a lot obviously for the trail system. When he retired they re-named this section of the trail after him. It’s a beautiful section of trail, gets us to the top of the mountain where we’ll get some of the mining history of the area, it’s a lot of fun.
The Max Reid Trail is about eleven to twelve miles long and can be made into a loop ride. It begins just off of i-70 at an elevation around six thousand feet. From there it rises through stands of juniper trees and eventually into thick pines and aspens at just over ten thousand feet. The vistas and views are spectacular, and the chance to see wildlife is pretty good especially in the early mornings or evenings. The Max Reid trail connects to Paiute atv trail system.
(Kevin Arrington, Travel & Tourism Dir. Sevier County) Paiute has about 1500 miles of trail and road. By the time you add in some of the access route and other trails in the area, there are almost 2000 miles of playground.
What we find is the Paiute trail is kind of Sevier County Disneyland. It’s the destination, folks from all over the country will come and enjoy the Paiute trail and some of the other things we have going on in the county. The county also includes places like Fish Lake, Big Rock Candy Mountain, Freemont Indian State Park, so there is lots to see and do.
The Paiute, Gooseberry, and Arapeen trail systems are known to atv enthusiast across the world. In fact, the Paiute atv trail system has been called one of the top five trails in the country. Some say, it’s even the best.
The entire system brings in between 6 and 8 million dollars to the local communities in the summer. In 2014, the Forest Service with counters on trails throughout the system, found that about 100,000 people came out and rode the trail last year. It’s fascinating because you can be out here just about any day and not run into to many folks, when you’ve got a couple of thousand miles of trail to work with, it’s not to busy but there are a lot of folks that enjoy it.
The trail system, the Piute as well as the gooseberry trail, they both access numerous towns and you can ride your atv right into town. So if you wanted to stay four or five days out on the trail. You could ride from one town, maybe Richfield, spend the day on the trail and end up at Big Rock Candy Mountain, spend the night and another day and over into Beaver. You could just be all over Central Utah and not having to worry about going back and trailer up and getting back to your hotel.
The Max Reid trail is a bit steep in some areas, most intermediate skilled riders can handle it just fine, even first time riders should be ok.
(Jon Carter, DJ 103.5 The Arrow) A lot of people that listen to you Jon, they know that you fish and you hunt. But do you get out on a four wheeler much? You know I’m not much of a four wheeler but this has been great. The guys from the DNR they’ve been awesome. This has been such a trip.
(Jon) I’m doing it again. Yeah you think your kids could do some of this riding? Absolutely. It was a cake ride I mean if I can do it, I mean anybody can do it.
Add comment