Old Spanish Trail Cut-Off

Dogs Unknown

E-Bikes Allowed

Features Views

Running in a wash for a bit more than half its length, there's plenty of sand on this ride. Cattle are in here for part of the winter, too, and their hooves can churn the ground. Fortunately, it's not a super-long stretch to deal with and it really is mostly rideable both ways. Come after recent rains, or when the ground is frozen for the easiest conditions.

You can entertain yourself as you slog along by thinking about how the legendary Old Spanish Trail passed through here on its way to cross the Colorado River outside Moab (Spanish Valley, get it?).

If you should start to get annoyed by the conditions, the ratcheting sound of the semi-truck jake-brakes hammering down the nearby highway will lighten your mood as you remember that you aren't over there right next to them, squeezed between a guardrail and the white line.

There are really only three reasons why you would ride this trail: 1) because you want to see a scenic new place where there's zero chance of running into your ex; 2) to link to other trails; and 3) because you are trying to move through the area without a car and don't want to risk your neck on the shoulder-free Hwy-191. You wouldn't want to come here just for the quality of the riding.

The trail starts from the Black Ridge staging area at about mile marker 113 on Hwy-191 south of Moab. You begin with easy pedaling out the smooth and well-tended Black Ridge gravel road (173) for less than a mile and a half. After an initial short climb is over, you descend quickly to the bottom of the Kane Creek wash. A few yards before you reach the small road bridge across the wash, turn right onto a dirt track that cuts back right and starts following the drainage downstream.

The trail alternates between doubletrack and the actual wash bottom, mostly over sand, grit and cobble. It's generally rideable the whole way in both directions, but conditions are everything, so you may have to walk some. There are a couple of roads breaking off left and up the hill. Though they seductively promise less sand, this confusing mesh of OHV tracks atop the vast plateau don't go anywhere you want to be today; if you follow them, someone will eventually find your bleached skeleton.

In a short while, the trail emerges from the narrow part of the canyon and you'll see Hwy-191 ahead and above you. Continue following the trail/wash as it bends left and parallels the road before crossing under the highway bridge in about 0.75 miles.

At this point, it's probably best to climb up the embankment, chuck your bike over the barbed-wire cow fence, then pedal the now-widened roadway for a couple hundred yards to the highway rest area, or for about a mile to the Kane Creek Canyon Trail / Pipeline trailhead.

Otherwise, the creek starts to consistently hold water a little downstream of the bridge, and the wash narrows to the point that you'll have to stay in the creek bed to continue. If you choose this option, after a tough mile you'll connect to the Kane Creek Canyon Trail, which also runs in the flowing creek for a good distance at the start.

You might also try to drag your bike up and out of the wash over the rip-rap before you get to the bridge, then overland it a couple hundred yards through the rabbitbrush in the highway easement to the rest area, but there is no trail.