We woke up on day 2 of our Utah weekend to find that it had rained most of the night. After consulting with the folks at Over The Edge in Hurricane, we changes our ride plans for the day to kept from mucking up the trails. We went out to the Quail Overlook Trail System which is beside the Quail Creek Reservoir. Colloquially this place is known as the Boy Scout trails due to a nearby Boy Scout camp.
Oh my this place put down some techno-spank right out of the gate that included tight rocky single track with plenty of “power” moves.
The trail system primarily includes four loops on three sawtooth escarpments.
The builders have done a super job of laying out the system to maximize the use of a rather small chunk of land.
This place is advertised as an expert level trail system and I can’t argue with rating, but I will clarify it. This is a “slow-tech” wheels-on-the-ground playground. There is not a lot flow here and it is not a bad thing, its part of the character of that place that just seems to pack “It” into the miles.
I particularly enjoyed the combination moves. Things like a rocky climbs with ledge moves coming out tight switch backs. There were plenty sections where you seem to be continually in a state of using body English.
The most northern loop called Adventure Scout was by far the most technical of the bunch out there. We ran into one of the primary builders of this trail system (Quentin – – Awesome Job Quentin!!) and he described a couple of sections as best ridden “Balls over Brains”. It is interesting to note that not following that advice could have you literally going “Balls over Brains” into some very unforgiving terrain. There is a lot of effort per mile designed into this this place. We only did a little over six miles and it felt like we had done twice that. I really dug the combination of power moves and the bit of mental “checkers” required to clean the stuff out here.
As we enjoyed a tasty smuggled in San Diego microbrew over lunch, we decided that we had enough gas in the leg tanks for an afternoon session.
We hit up The Zen Trail which is right on the outskirts of St George. I had heard lots of good stuff about this trail and it has always been on the To-Do List but have never gotten to it.
Things opened up with a climb and soon we were near the edge of the mesa.
There is about a total of 1,100 feet of climbing on this route. We could see ominous clouds slowly moving our way.
The variety of this trail is quite awesome. Rock crawling, sweet single track, vista, there are lots of goodies out here.
When we got to the top of the mesa we had some great views of Green Valley below. We could also see the rain a coming! Shortly after the picture above, the rain caught us and the camera remained holstered in my pack. The descent was exceptional with a combination of sweet single track and with some slick rock. There were also a few undulations along the way that put a little sting in the legs at this point in the day’s overall effort. We also missed a turn and found ourselves on double track. After a bit of uphill backtracking we hooked back up on the single track that lead us back to the trailhead.
Just as we were getting back to the truck the rain stopped and the sun broke out. Ahhh rainbows and microbrews from heaven. We were living well!
