The Water's Way Out

Dogs Off-leash

E-Bikes Allowed

Features Commonly Bikepacked · Views

Sand! If the Behind the Rocks Road is unpleasantly sandy, you'll want to skip this trail. It's not so much a great ride as a way to use your bike to get to a cool place. This trail, like many in the area, is best after recent rain, or in the winter when the ground is frozen hard and the OHVs are absent. Fat and e-bikes are also a good call.

Be sure to stay on the trail, and be sensitive if you decide to walk around and explore a little—unexpectedly, given the range cows and OHVs that frequent the area, there is a startling amount of very healthy cryptobiotic crust out here. So do your part to protect it!

If you are rain that falls Behind The Rocks, you'll drag a winding line along the flat, sandy valley until you begin to bite into the sandstone bedrock and carve your way down to Kane Creek. By the time you débouche, you'll have gouged quite a deep canyon (two, in fact). This area is a real treat, and well-protected from over-use by the fear of sand.

This route makes a lovely short sunset jaunt if you are camped in the area, or a pleasant detour from Behind the Rocks Road.

From the trailhead, it's a short walk along the wash to view a drop into a cottonwood forest and large plunge pool 30' below. Sadly, the cows have figured out how to work their way into the pool from downstream, so the water gets nasty after they arrive in the fall.

Once you're back from sight-seeing at the drop, the ride follows a sandy 4x4 track paralleling this deepening main wash until dead-ending at a rather surprisingly grand overview of the two canyons, as well as the Fins, Prostitute Butte and the sunset. It also makes a great dog walk/ride.

At a bit before 1-mile, a spur road breaks off to the left and climbs up onto a parallel shelf below the upper cliff band. There's a rock ledge that deters most vehicles. Unfortunately, even if bikes were allowed off-trail, you'll find a section of 4th Class climbing on dangerous, crumbly rock out at the end that prevents you from linking the two terraces into a loop.

But there's good bikepacker camping on both roads (probably too small for most vehicles), and it's fun to hike out and explore the steep slickrock and overlooks found at the end of the two spurs. With a rope, harness and ascenders—and the know-how to use them—you can continue exploring down the two canyons all the way to Kane Creek, too. There are no permanent anchors and there's no trail. A beaver lives in the main canyon and has dropped lots of trees that block the drainage bottom...it would be insanely painful to drag a bike along, even if it were legal!

Take care to camp on bedrock or previously trampled areas, and otherwise leave no trace in this remarkably unspoiled, off-the-beaten-track place. And please try to clean up after the jacka$$es who sometimes leave nasty, trash-filled fire rings on the sandstone rim.