Top 5 Moab Mountain Bike Trails

March 8, 2015

By Joshua Doucette

Choos­ing the top five trails in Moab is a bit like choos­ing your favorite song. It all depends on what kind of mood you’re in, your ener­gy lev­el or how your day’s been. Maybe you want to blow off some steam, grab your plush all-moun­tain steed and thrash your way down the gnarli­est thing you can find, or maybe you want to break a sweat, get on your hard­tail and thrash your way up the gnarli­est thing you can find. Maybe you want to put on that Flume song that’s in all those new bike videos and find a flow that seems to join you and your bike with the trail beneath you, or maybe you want to ride for miles and miles and loose your­self in the land­scape that sur­rounds you as the hours slip away.

The fact is, a decade ago, it wouldn’t have been so hard to choose those top five. There were only a hand­ful of trails that weren’t most­ly com­posed of jeep roads back then. These days how­ev­er, the trail build­ing spree has made it real­ly, real­ly hard to pick the best, top 5 trails. Now, it’s more like you can pick the top trail in any num­ber of cat­e­gories: the most fun ‘Trail” ride, the most tech­ni­cal “All Moun­tain” ride, the most lung-crush­ing “XC” ride, etc. In addi­tion to this, Moab is now real­ly a clus­ter of indi­vid­ual areas, each com­posed of numer­ous trail seg­ments and each hav­ing it’s own par­tic­u­lar style and feel. So, on any giv­en ride, you will prob­a­bly ride half a dozen dif­fer­ent trails.

That being said, there are some def­i­nite indi­vid­ual trail seg­ments that can be con­sid­ered the out­right best in their own cat­e­gories. Here are the top 5 trail seg­ments that, in my mind, make up for the best rid­ing in the Moab area and should def­i­nite­ly be on your list when stop­ping by for a vis­it. And hey, if you want me to take you for a ride, join us on one of our Utah Rides! 

THE 5 BEST MOUNTAIN BIKE TRAILS IN MOAB, UTAH

5. GETAWAY

This trail seg­ment at the Mag­nif­i­cent 7 trail sys­tem is the one where you want to queue up your playlist with all the songs that get you into that intense but relaxed mind­set where you can just flow through the ter­rain. The trail isn’t easy. It’s prob­a­bly in the mod­er­ate range of tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ty, but it’s got just the right amount of down­hill pitch to keep you going with min­i­mal ped­al­ing while being just tech­ni­cal enough to keep you from gain­ing too much speed. The result is a trail that is both tech­ni­cal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly engag­ing while also being in some way relaxing.

4. CAPTAIN AHAB

I think you may have heard of this one. If you haven’t, you’ve got to check it out (https://vimeo.com/63329681). This trail is prob­a­bly, at this point, the crown­ing jew­el of new Moab trail build­ing. Built by local rid­ers to be unapolo­get­i­cal­ly tech­ni­cal, it is the epit­o­me of Moab’s ver­sion of “All Moun­tain” rid­ing. With numer­ous manda­to­ry drops and steep tech­ni­cal descents, often with lit­tle warn­ing, this trail keeps you on your toes. And in between the heart pound­ing thrills are some great flowy descents. In addi­tion, there are myr­i­ad side options for addi­tion­al tech­ni­cal chal­lenges (we’re talk­ing large drops and tri­als style bike han­dling) that I’m still dis­cov­er­ing after rid­ing the trail for over a year.

3. ALASKA

Much like its name­sake, Alas­ka is the most north­ern trail at the most north­ern trail net­work, Klondike Bluffs. And like I men­tioned pre­vi­ous­ly, the trails you choose to get to, and return from this par­tic­u­lar trail seg­ment can make the over­all ride an all day endurance “trail ride” or a fair­ly quick “all moun­tain” style romp. But the thing that real­ly makes this trail shine (in addi­tion to the amaz­ing rid­ing) is the loca­tion. It begins by wind­ing its way along a ridge that over­looks Arch­es Nation­al Park’s Salt Val­ley and the sand­stone fins beyond. Lets just say it’s spec­tac­u­lar. That’s not the end of the trail though; as you leave the ridge you begin to descend a sand­stone ramp that boasts some of the best slick­rock rid­ing in Moab. Check it out: https://vimeo.com/98273317

2. BULL RUN

Back we go to the Mag­nif­i­cent 7 trail sys­tem. This trail is con­sid­ered to be the “top” of the trail sys­tem. It’s the trail that starts at the upper most park­ing area/trailhead and thus the trail most peo­ple will ride first at the area. And it doesn’t dis­ap­point. It’s anoth­er “all moun­tain” style trail descend­ing about 1000 feet over 4.7 miles. Don’t be fooled into think­ing it’s just a down­hill cruise though; this trail is phys­i­cal. You’ll be sweat­ing as it makes you work to main­tain your speed and to han­dle its many chal­leng­ing slick­rock obsta­cles. Luck­i­ly for your legs, this is anoth­er trail where you’ll prob­a­bly want to stop on numer­ous occa­sions to ogle down at the beau­ti­ful Bull Canyon as you ride along (and some­times eeri­ly close to) its edge.

1. UPPER PORCUPINE SINGLETRACK(UPS)/LOWER PORCUPINE SINGLETRACK (LPS)

These two seg­ments are what I con­sid­er the mid­dle third of the Whole Enchi­la­da, and I lump them togeth­er because, well, why would you ever ride just one of them? Then again, most peo­ple would make the sim­i­lar argu­ment, “why would you just ride UPS/LPS?” And, well, they’d be right, too. But we’re talk­ing sin­gle trail seg­ments here, not entire “rides”, ok?
The sim­ple fact of the mat­ter is that these two trail seg­ments are prob­a­bly two of the most epic trails in the coun­try. You’re rid­ing along the edge (the very  edge) of a 200-foot cliff look­ing down into Cas­tle Val­ley, one of the most scenic val­leys in all of canyon coun­try, and did I men­tion the rid­ing is amaz­ing? You’ve got super-fun slick­rock roller-coast­er areas amongst open Pon­derosa Pine for­est, tight and fast swoopy turns in amongst the pinyon/juniper wood­lands, and all with small to medi­um sized tech­ni­cal drops through­out. It just doesn’t get much better.

So there you have it. In my hum­ble opin­ion, five of the best trails Moab has to offer. Yet by no means the final say. You’ll just have to come and make up your own mind.

ARE WE OFF THE MARK? HAVE WE MISSED YOUR FAVORITE TRAIL? LET US KNOW IN THE COMMENTS BELOW!