On ~5 October, Mike, Scott and I departed the Wasatch front at around 6:30pm en route to Circleville where we'd overnight at Butch Cassidy's Hideout Cafe' and Motel. While the Motel is quite comfy, we actually prefer to eat at the Circleville Cafe' down the street.
Our plan was to awaken Saturday morning, hit the Cafe' at 8am for a great breakfast, then ride up/over Rocky Ford en route to Antimony. What we had failed to realize was that this was the last weekend for the Elk Hunt. Hunters were easily every 100 feet along the trail down into Antimony.
Well, up Rocky Ford we went. That trail has not aged well and had several sections off-camber and ready to fall into the waterfall below.
Though it seemed as if a trailcat went half-way up, it was totally clear that hardly a machine had crossed atop the waterfall and gone further ahead. Once we passed the waterfall, we came upon two trees down across the trail. The first, we could move easily enough, but the second was too large to cut with a hand-saw and too heavy to pull aside with the winch. Up/over it we went.
Down into Antimony we went. We enjoyed great burgers/fries at the Merc, then departed back up the mountain via the PST73 switchbacks, following the Paiute 01 all the way toward Barney Lake.
After stopping to rest a bit, we went up the mountain and were surprised to find that the USFS had rerouted a mile or so of the trail at the top. We saw evidence of a hastily blocked former trail:
The ride down was uneventful, but it was a great sun-filled day, despite some cool temps.
A few videos from the climb up/down Barney Lake:
Part 1:
Part 2:
Our full route; about 126 miles total:
Garmin GPSr Tracks of the route:
