06/03/2026
Sand Rock RidgeRiders Tour Enterprise Trails
By Todd Skeen, Club Reporter
May 15 was a beautiful spring day at Enterprise Lake, warm and without a cloud in the sky, as the Sand Rock RidgRriders met for another great ride.
There were about eight trailers of members who camped there, with the rest of the members driving in from local motels.
There was a short briefing, then 23 machines took off on Colie Flat Trail (Trail # 30003), and headed west six miles, then to the south at the small town of Motogua, then east to Goldstrike Road. We went on to the Goldstrike Mine, where we ate lunch at the open pit mine. You could see the drill marks on the rock walls of the mine. There was quartz everywhere, and you know what they say, "where there's quartz, there's gold". But nobody found any gold. At least nobody would say that they found some.
The terrain was mostly sagebrush and juniper trees, but we did climb into some pine trees.
We then headed north on Dagger Flat Road (30006), and on to Veyo Shoal Creek Road, and back to Enterprise Lake. The ride was about 85 miles, no problems and the group moved along smartly.
Back at the campsite the club was treated to hot dogs, yes the big nice ones! Chips and some other potluck items as well. Nobody went away hungry.
Saturday morning it was cooler and a bit cloudy, with a chance of rain. The number of machines dropped to 16 at the lake, but we would pick up three more at the town of Modena, an old railroad town. Some members chose to trailer their machines to this point.
Stan Christensen had his truck and trailer loaded with gas cans, to "top off" the machines.
Most riders chose to ride from the Lake. The ride to Madena was through a sagebrush flat, about 30 miles. The wind was mostly in our favor, blowing the dust off of the trail so we could really move fast.
From here we went north on Hamlin Valley Road until we came to Hamlin Valley. From there we went west to Stateline, a large mining community back in the day. It burned down in a fire, but there were still some buildings standing. We continued north and started to see wild horses. At first they were in small groups of six to ten animals, then herds of up to twenty! I would guess we saw a total of seventy to one hundred horses.
We left the dirt roads and started on to some trials that were a bit more technical (fun). Suddenly the machines stopped moving. one machine had a transmission failure.
I mean the bottom of the trans was blown open and it would not move!
As usual, the club teamed up and MacGyvered the machine so it would roll, but the riders would have to suffer the indignity of being towed back to camp. The fix took two hours. It seemed like everyone was involved in the repair, so I can't name names, but thanks to all who helped.
We left the machine temporarily on the Hamlin Valley Road, then went north to Eagle Valley Road, then west to a memorial for two air tanker pilots. They were dropping fire retardant and crashed into a hill.
As I paused to read what was written on the memorial, a soft, gentle rain started to fall.
We decided to call this lunch. The rain ceased, but the wind blew a little colder, and the clouds got darker. We were chased by rain all the way back to Modena. Sometimes it caught up with us and we got a little wet, but not bad.
We followed the same route back to the crippled machine, hooked it up and towed it south on Hamlin Valley Road back to Madena. Once there we loaded it up on a trailer, and doubled up riders, where needed for the ride back to Enterprise Lake.
This ride was about 95 miles with one incident. Thanks to the club, it was but a small bump in the road.
Thanks to Shane Rushton for guiding and getting me the details to write this report.