ATV Adventures: Riding the Logandale Trails – first ride of the season
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- Riding the sandy Logandale Trails.
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- Negotiating one of the tricky, slick rock sections on the Logandale Trails.
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- A view from the top of the canyons where the trail ended.
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- Lynn Blamires
Warm riding weather wasn’t coming to me and I was tired of waiting for it. So, I decided to go find it.
We packed up our RZR and headed south. We found it in Logandale, Nevada. It wasn’t just good riding weather — it was a perfect 68 degrees.
The Logandale Trails are fun to explore without a lot of destination points. Riding the red rock canyons on sandy trails is what this riding area is about. The canyon walls are a maze of arches and windows that make each turn into another canyon a new discovery.
I described the trails as sandy. They are, except when they are not. Slick rock is also a feature of the Logandale Trails. You can find a selection from mild to wild in this trail system.
It has been nine years since we visited these trails. In 2015, when I was there, we found a route from Logandale to Overton. It was fun to have lunch there and return.
I was interested in the improvements made to this riding area. A new staging area has been made and the old one now has a vault toilet.
We were with our friends Terry and Michelle Maxfield, and our purpose was to explore these beautiful canyons. We brought my lunchbox oven and when we chose to stop for lunch, we found a shady spot near a canyon wall and enjoyed a gourmet lunch of lettuce wraps and Girl Scout cookies. Well, and other stuff, but those items are what stuck out to me.
As a leader, I am supposed to know where I am going, but as with most of my riding buddies, they expect me to get lost. In keeping with that tradition, Terry and Michelle kept asking me if we were lost yet. One of the reasons they were asking was because of one trail we took.
Like most riders I know, we don’t like dead-end trails unless they go to a particular point of interest. Often, they can be avoided because the trail is faint and not well used. This one looked well-traveled and again, like most riders, when we see a trail, we want to know where it goes. That trait has led me to more than one dead-end.
This trail led out of the canyon up to a ridge and down the other side. We then climbed another ridge, and then another one, and another one — they were all a challenge. A fun challenge, but still a challenge, and one that led my wife, Gayle, to say, “This isn’t the way I remember the Logandale Trails.”
Finally, we climbed another one, and then the trail ended. The point had sheer, steep drops on three sides. We weren’t lost. We could see the trails far below, but we had to go back the way we came.
Once we saw everything we needed to see below, we looked up. What an incredible view. This is where we could see the beautiful red rock canyons in a new perspective. The sun brought out the bright red colors of the canyon in contrast to the blue-grey mountains behind. No other point we came to during our ride had a view as amazing as this one.
So, this trail had a point of interest and it was worth the trip. Well, don’t ask Gayle. There was one little fun patch where she made me stop to let her out because she didn’t want to die — I obviously didn’t die.
The orange hue of the red rock fooled us the first time we came. We found these beautiful blue rocks strewn along the canyon floor. The contrast between the red-orange sand and these blue rocks was remarkable. We hadn’t seen any rocks like these before, so we took one home to place in a flower garden.
When we got home, we were excited to place this beautiful blue rock. I took the rock out of the truck and we both just stared at it. It wasn’t blue at all. It was dull and grey. We had taken it out of its environment and it wasn’t blue any more. There is a Sunday School lesson here somewhere, but I haven’t quite figured it out. We saw the blue rocks this time, but we didn’t fall for it again.
We headed back to the trucks after a great ride. When you go, take plenty of water, keep the rubber side down and don’t be fooled by the blue rocks.
Contact Lynn R. Blamires at quadmanone@gmail.com.