By Jay Burke — Summer is in full swing, and so are the trail crews in Park City. Without all of these local organizations and trail teams, Park City would be hard pressed to maintain its IMBA designated, Gold-Level Ride Center status! Thanks to these committed organizations including Snyderville Basin Special Recreation District (Basin Rec.), Park City Municipal Corp., Local Resorts, and many private landowners, the area continues to develop into one of the best riding destinations in the country.
All trails are free of snow and deadfall now, so get out and spread your wings – try a new trail you’ve never ridden. Many of the primary trails, like Mid-Mountain Trail from Silver Lake at Deer Valley over to Park City Mountain Resort, or the Armstrong trail heading up to the center section of Mid-Mountain Trail get very busy on the weekends. Mountain Trails Foundation challenges trail users this summer to ride a trail you’ve never been on before- shouldn’t be hard with 400 miles of trails in the area!
While planning your next ride, you can use a few different trail map tools available. Of course there is the printed map, which is available at most of the local bike and outdoor retail shops or you can use the interactive map on our website, mountain trails.org (Click interactive map). The system is feature rich with the ability to create and share routes with friends or even export as a gpx file for use with GPS systems.
If you are coming up to Park City for a road ride MTF is now producing a Road Bike Map, with a magnified view of the greater Summit County riding area (Heber, Mirror Lake, Coalville, etc), as well as details of Park City roadways and paths. The map is setup to serve advanced cyclists, casual recreational riders, and visitors to Park City. Utilizing this map, cyclists should be able to easily find safe routes out of Park City proper leading to areas of the county where nice loop rides can be made.
Lastly, while visiting the trails of Park City we encourage you to ride with a smile on your face, say hello to fellow trail users and make sure that you yield to users on foot! Ride with a bell. If you don’t have one, hit one of the major bike shops and ask them for a “bells-on-trails” bell, provided by one of our great partners (Free of charge), backcountry.com. Once you have a bell, slow down on blind corners (while going up or down), and make sure to announce your presence. In general, be safe out there and have fun.
See you in Park City!
