Powder Mountain Race Loop

This was my 2nd attempt to ride the race loop. The first time I forgot my GPS & the coordinates for the turnoffs from the double track to single track. I don't know if they still use this trail for racing, but if they do, it doesn't look like it's been raced on lately. You can get directions there & the coordinates from utahmountainbiking.com. Some of the singletrack sections are a lot of fun to ride. Others look like they haven't seen a bike in more than a year (probably because riders couldn't find the trails). On portions of this trail you'll get really close to nature as the trail gets swallowed up by overhanging trees & plants. It's at those times that all you see is your line through the plants and you hope there isn't a large rock in the way that you can't see. Other parts of the singletrack are plagued with the after effects of burrowing rodents. At other times you'll stop & wonder where the trail goes. In the end though, it's a fun ride, and now that I know where all the turnoffs are I can have a little more fun & ride through it faster. Only the first turnoff onto singletrack is marked with a cairn. The singletrack is also marked with small pink flags (welll, they used to be pink at one time), so if you haven't run over one in a while, you're probably off the trail. The directions on utahm..b...com are fairly accurate, only things I'd clarify are that at 4.2, the DT does not become ST, you have to turn off on a singletrack trail. If you see a ski sign for Combome Canyon, you went too far. I went about 3/4 of a mile past the ski sign before turning back and added another 400 ft of climbing to my ride. 2nd clarification, at mile 4.9 at the lift house, go around it to the north & down the hill (this isn't on my map, I went to the south of the lift house, but managed to get back on a little down the road) It'll look like you're just going to drop all the way down to the nether regions of the resort, but there's a road off to the left that you hop on that will take you back up to the lodge. 3rd clarification -- that single track you have to find off the parking lot is really an old entrance to the parking lot. If you want to do this ride, I suggest finding someone that knows the route. The first time up we didn't see a single piece of singletrack, mainly because we didn't know where we specifically needed to look at each invisible intersection. The singletrack intersections look even fainter than game trails.

Not including my jaunt way off the beaten path, the actual trail is something like 5.75 miles & 850 ft elevation climbed throughout.