 |
More Hoes More Hoes is a four-mile advanced technical singletrack that climbs to a mesa top overlooking US-40 west of Vernal. To reach More Hoes, you need to ride a bit of the Got Milk trail and return via Retail Sale. The minimum ride is 7.3 miles. With Retail Sale as an optional return, the ride becomes 12.1 miles. Bruce rolls over a rise early in the ride. Photos May 26, 2010 by Jake Weber, Gene Poncelet, Steve Winters, and Bruce. |
|
The actual More Hoes trail has only 350 feet of absolute elevation change, but up-and-down riding will add up to 800 vertical feet of climbing. There are some grunt climbs, loose corners (both uphill and down), and a few tricky spots. This makes More Hoes a ride for experts. Steve cruises away from the junction with Got Milk. Soon desert cruising will turn to technical riding. |
|
|
|
The ride starts on the Milk and Cookies loop, which is also the Retail Sale loop. The trail is one-way -- counterclockwise. At the fork where Retail Sale splits off (mile 1.3) keep straight (right). Pass the faint More Pimps that forks sharply on the right 50 feet later, and continue to the westbound Got Milk singletrack on the right 100 feet past the fork. Bruce finishes off a stair-step descent with a ledge drop. |
|
At mile 1.5, More Hoes forks off of Got Milk on your left. The trail will wander around, up and down. At about mile 2.5, the trail gets serious about climbing up the mesa. After a brutal 1/2 mile, you're on the mesa top. Joel Quinn drops down a tight spot between the boulders as Bruce looks for the photo above. |
|
|
|
The trail skirts the edge of the mesa, looking down at US-40 underneath, then turning south along the drop-off. The mesa ends in a narrow ridgeline. This is a fun spot, although the round (and often loose) boulders add to the challenge. The up-and-down riding will soon give way to a grunt climb to the top of the mesa. |
|
At the far south end, the trail drops sharply down. Now you understand why this is a one-way loop. A few more ups-and-downs, and you rejoin Retail Sale, just 1/10th mile from the fork where you veered off. The mesa has views in all directions.
|
|
|
|
After More Hoes, Retail Sale will seem positively tame. Follow it eastbound. Pass the Fire Sale merging trail at mile 6.2. At 6.9, you can either fork left to go back to the trailhead, or continue another five miles on Retail Sale for a longer ride. At the south end of the mesa, the trail threads along the top of a sharp ridge before plunging down. |
|
Riding notes, shorter More Hoes loop: After the first big plunge, the descent gets more fun. |
|
|
|
(More Hoes, ride notes continued...) An interesting trail section near the
end, |
| Getting there: While driving toward Vernal on US-40, pass mile marker 138, then turn right on the narrow paved McCoy Flats road (unmarked, N40 23.427 W109 35.752). If you miss McCoy Flats road, go to the viewpoint overlooking Vernal and backtrack exactly 2 miles, then turn left into the road. Drive 3 miles to a corral on the left and park there. The trail starts directly across the paved road from the corral. At the doubletrack, veer right onto singletrack trail. Camping: BLM land, primitive camping allowed. No developed
sites. |
|
| Riding resources for this trail: Single-page riding guide GPS track files (right-click and "Save as..."): Garmin GPX Large-format area topo map (220K): View map Lodging, camping, shops: Links to Vernal area resources |
[Go to Trails Index Page] |
