Brian Head Bike Park

The Brian Head Bike Park is a series of trails served by the Giant Steps ski lift. The lift takes you to a bench just below Brian Head Peak. From here, you can take your pick of 16 miles of trails. The trails are about 3-4 miles in length from lift-top to base.

View north from the Timberline Trail. Trails in the Bike Park tend to be fairly open and straight. Photos by Bruce Argyle, July 28, 2001.
Trails are easy to intermediate in technical difficulty. Although the Park rates "Timberline" as Advanced and "Z" as Expert, I found these routes to be relatively cushy. If your idea of downhilling is the adrenaline rush that comes from riding to the edge of disaster, you'll find the bike park trails to be distressingly safe and sane.

View up the slopes from the ski lift.

UtahMountainBiking.com is your source for bike trail info, repair instructions, feature articles, first aid, fitness, and goodies.
The descents spend a fair amount of time traversing across the ski slopes. Trails tend to run fairly straight, then turn and go straight again. Compared to the twisting in-the-trees descents of the ski resorts at Sundance and Deer Valley, the Brian Head Bike Park is pretty tame. It's a good place for beginning bikers to cut their teeth on downhill, or for a group of mixed-ability bikers to spend a few hours on the same mountain.

Twisting runs in the trees are short and rare. Most of the downhill is fairly straight traverses on ski slopes.
You don't have to purchase a lift pass to use the Bike Park's trails. You can shuttle yourself to the Brian Head Peak Trail, and take different routes through the park, or you can suck it up and grind up the hill to "earn your vertical."

View up, looking at the summit of Brian Head Peak. The peak is formed of volcanic rock from eruptions of the past few million years.

Getting there: Turn off I-15 in Parowan, and head up the canyon to Brian Head on U-143. Pass a ski lift on your right, then watch for the next ski lift on your left. Park in front of the Giant Steps lodge and head up to the third floor bike shop.

For a one-page (on the trail) guide designed for printing, click here.

For lodging in the Brian Head - Cedar Breaks area, as well as travel guides and information on other activities, may we suggest:
Brian Head Resort:  http://www.brianhead.com/   http://www.go-utah.com/Brian-Head 
Cedar Breaks:  http://www.nps.gov/cebr/   http://www.utah.com/nationalsites/cedar_breaks.htm 
 Cedar City area BLM info:  http://www.ut.blm.gov/cedarcity_fo/ 
Dixie National Forest site:  http://www.fs.fed.us/r4/dixie/recreation/ 
Navajo Lake Camping:  http://www.utahoutdooractivities.com/navajolake.html 
Utah National Forest Camping and Picnic sites:  http://www.fs.fed.us/r4/maps/brochures/camp_picnick_utah.pdf
Bryce Canyon National Park:  http://www.nps.gov/brca  http://www.bryce.canyon.national-park.com/ 
Zion National Park:  http://www.nps.gov/zion/    http://www.zion.national-park.com/   http://www.zioncanyon.com/ 
St. George info:  http://www.utah.com/stgeorge/   http://www.go-utah.com/St-George 

[Go to UtahMountainBiking.com's Trails Options Page]
Copyright 2002 Mad Scientist Software Inc