CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 272 km one-way ride from near Panguitch, about 4 h 39 of riding. It goes by way of Bryce Canyon, Kodachrome Basin, Escalante and Hogsback. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,550 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 42 km this is Utah Scenic Byway 12, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Panguitch is a small, tidy Utah town of about fifteen hundred people on the high plateau, and it is the doorway to one of the great motorcycle roads in the American West. Scenic Byway 12 starts nearby, climbs through Red Canyon with its orange spires and tunnels, and then runs on through Bryce Canyon country, Grand Staircase-Escalante and over Boulder Mountain to Capitol Reef. The name Panguitch comes from a Paiute word usually translated as big fish, and the nearby lake does indeed have good trout.
Read the complete Panguitch write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Panguitch is where the day begins. Next is Bryce Canyon.
Calling Bryce a canyon is generous, since it is really a series of enormous amphitheatres eaten into the edge of the Paunsaugunt Plateau, and what fills them is a forest of stone. The hoodoos, as these spires are called, stand in crowds of orange, pink, and cream, some as tall as a ten-storey building, all of them carved by frost. Water seeps into cracks in the soft limestone, freezes at night, thaws by day, and slowly prises the rock apart. The cycle happens on well over a hundred nights a year, which is why the place looks so unfinished.
Read the complete Bryce Canyon write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bryce Canyon comes up about 41 km into the recorded legs. Next is Kodachrome Basin.
The name is a piece of advertising that turned into geography. In 1948 a National Geographic expedition passed through this corner of southern Utah, struck by the colours of the rock, and named it after Kodachrome, the film that Kodak had made famous. The state later adopted the name for the park, and it has stuck, which tells you something about how intense the reds, pinks, and whites of the cliffs can look in good light.
Read the complete Kodachrome Basin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 83 km into the recorded legs you reach Kodachrome Basin. Next is Escalante.
Escalante is a small town on the edge of nowhere, and it is proud of it. Mormon pioneers settled here in 1875, in a valley at about 1,770 metres, and named it for Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, the Franciscan friar who passed through the region with Spanish explorers in 1776 on a failed attempt to find a route to California. Today it has a few hundred inhabitants, a handful of motels and cafes, and the air of a place that exists mainly to serve those exploring the vast and strange landscape around it.
Read the complete Escalante write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Escalante, about halfway. Next is Hogsback.
The Hogsback is where Highway 12 stops being a road and becomes an experience. Between Escalante and Boulder, the road climbs onto a narrow ridge of Navajo sandstone, with a steep drop on both sides and the canyons of the Escalante River spread far below. For a mile or two there is no verge, no barrier worth the name, and nothing to look at but a lot of air. Nervous riders slow down; confident ones slow down more, because the view is worth it.
Read the complete Hogsback write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hogsback sits at 201 km, about halfway. Next is Boulder Utah.
Boulder is one of those small places whose story is almost better than the scenery, and the scenery is excellent. Tucked beneath the dark flanks of Boulder Mountain in south-central Utah, it was so remote that mail was carried in by mule until the 1940s, which made it the last community in the contiguous United States to get its post that way. The highway that now links it with Escalante, completed only in the mid-1980s, ended its isolation, and the village has absorbed visitors with good grace.
Read the complete Boulder Utah write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Boulder Utah comes up about 197 km into the recorded legs. Next is Capitol Reef.
The name sounds like a Washington joke, but Capitol Reef is real, and so is the long wrinkle in the earth it protects. The Waterpocket Fold is a hundred-mile buckle in the crust, a monocline where the rocks on the west were lifted several thousand feet above those on the east, and then eroded into a maze of cliffs, domes, and canyons. Early travellers called the barrier a reef, like a reef in the sea, and the white domes of Navajo sandstone looked to them like the Capitol building. Hence the name.
Read the complete Capitol Reef write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Capitol Reef closes the day.
Panguitch → Bryce Canyon is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Bryce Canyon → Kodachrome Basin is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Kodachrome Basin → Escalante is 69 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Escalante → Hogsback is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hogsback → Boulder Utah is 19 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Boulder Utah → Capitol Reef is 75 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.