Your Go-To Trail

By Jay Bartlett

There’s this trail…

There’s this trail that is just the best! It rides flowy with just the right amount of technical to keep it interesting, and it’s always a joy ride. Where is this trail? Sorry, I can’t tell you. You will just have to find it for yourself.

I’m sure most mountain bikers know this trail well. They have probably ridden it hundreds of times. In fact, you may have just ridden it, or maybe you’re going to ride it tomorrow after work.

Still want to know the name of this great, all-around happymaking trail? You already know it because it’s yours! The reason you’d have to find it for yourself is that it’s your go-to trail! You know the one—the one that you can always count on when you need your mountain bike fix.

A go-to trail can be anything it needs to be, really. Most are probably close to home so that you can sneak in a quick ride when time permits or close to work for a lunchtime or post-work rally on some beautiful, flowy, twisty singletrack. (Shouldn’t there be a law that allows free time to ride your bike? Just sayin’.)

Go-to trails can be easy and ridden just for fun—because it’s Saturday afternoon and the chores that absolutely had to be done are done, and you’re a little burned out anyway, but a nice ride would put you right. There’s nothing wrong with that, although some go-tos are there to get the maximum out of your effort. Let’s say you’re training for an event or a multi-ride-day vacation. Your go-to might be a tough climb followed by enough tricky rock sections to get the old heart and legs pumping hard. A go-to can be any type of trail, and there are no rules that say you can’t have several go-tos, depending on your needs at the time.

Go-tos don’t necessarily have to be close by, though. Sometimes, when life gets to be a little too much or you’re caught in the doldrums, a distant trail About the Author can be just the reset your brain requires. Mountain bike veteran, There is a sweet, twenty-mile loop in the Mag Seven trail system in Moab amateur filmmaker, and lover of long rides, Jay Bartlett has been riding trails in Southern (a fair drive from St. George) that gets Utah for over thirty years. me longing for it pretty much yearly. It’s Jay has over a decade of a loop that not only works me in that splendid way that leaves me tired, very experience as a bike mechanic at St. George’s oldest bike shop, Bicycles Unlimited.satisfied, and feeling accomplished but is so overwhelmingly beautiful that my brain (and attitude) has no choice but to relax. No doubt, if I ever move to Moab, this trail will become a more frequent go-to!

There’s this trail. You know the one. The one that makes you work and makes you sweat. It’s the one that makes you smile. It’s right over there. You’ve ridden it maybe hundreds of times. You know its corners, its climbs, its drops like the back of your hand, but still you’re stoked to do it again. And even if you’re not that stoked at the start, you’re always glad you did it at the end. It’s your go-to, and it’s probably high time you gave it another visit!