Colorado Utah Trip – Pipe Dream and 9 Mile Canyon

Our last day of riding was on the short and sweet Pipe Dream trail just South of Moab. Really fun, fast trail that is really well built with great use of flat rocks!

We then left Moab and headed to 9 Mile Canyon to go on a little hike with Kevin Foote. After riding for 8 days in a row in the hot hot sun a nice hike sounded good!

7.3km, 163m Climbing, 345m Descending South to North

Moab – Pipedream at EveryTrail

Video of Pipedream

 

9 Mile Canyon

We then drove almost 2 hours back towards Salt Lake City on Hwy6 away from the heat of Moab to the cool temps of 9 Mile Canyon. This area sits at 2000m, Moab is 1400m and was quite a bit hotter.

Just South of Price along Hwy 6 off Wellington is 9 Mile Canyon. Its actually 40 miles long and a home to the Fremont from 700AD to 1200AD. Freemont culture disappeared or was assimilated into the Ute, Paiute or Shishone culture following this. The American Calvary built the current road in 1886 as the main thoroughfare to Uintah Basin before the newer highways were built. It is now classified as a Scenic Byway.

Natural Gas industry is very active in the area necessitating upgrading the road.

You can freely drive down this road and look at the Petroglyphs and Pictographs of the Freemonts, as well as more modern Native, American Calvary and contemporary art.

We camped at 9 Mile Ranch at mile 21.7 which has running water, showers and flush toilets. It is the main amenity in the area. Its a nice campground and worth staying at to visit the area. $10.00 a night.

Good overview brochure of the area.

From here we drove down and checked out the sites based on this Self Guided tour. Might be an idea to write down the actual miles on this sheet to make it easier to navigate.

BLM Self Guided tour of Archaelogical sites.

Campground at 9 Mile Ranch

You just hike up to the Rock Art

Nobody really knows what the art means. But there are a lot of animals with big penises and well as people. Dotted arrays seem common as do herds of animals, snakes and other animals.

Our guess is this is what the ancients did before TV and Facebook and they must have had some good drugs for inspiration as well!

We did a little hike…

They actually made small indentations in the rock to create the Petroglyphs

Back at camp we eat dinner!

Thanks Kevin! Great hike!

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