ATV Roundup

Dining on dust at Bandanna Ranch

Story and photos By Mark L. Reece

Once you get onto Airport Road, take a hard left, up to the trail marked "Rough," around the bend at Mill Hollow, wind down toward Right Fork, back up again along "Grass," then retreat back to the barn for lunch.

Warning: navigation failing, bearing instrumentation not responding. Yeah, you’d get lost, too, with that kind of direction. What about that map? Forget about it. Good thing we were on ATVs and someone knew we were out there. And while staying on the trail was strictly enforced, it was nice to know we could just turn the machines around on the single-track dirt trail and head back where we had just stirred some serious dust.

One of the objectives at Bandanna Ranch was the scavenger hunt and seemed simple enough: find five well-marked little treasure boxes on thousands of acres of private land along the Wasatch-Duchesne county lines bordering the Uinta National Forest north of Fruitland.

The popular recreational property retreat–sandwiched between the sparkling high-mountain reservoirs of Currant Creek and Red Creek–was our playground. Three rigged-out Bombardier 650 all-terrain four-wheeled vehicles were our toys for the day. The daily special on the menu: dirt, with a side order of dust, and lots of it. Second helpings provided.

My white T-shirt (yeah, wear white, Einstein) still hasn’t come clean, despite multiple washings and laundry soap commercial claims. Red, brown, cinnamon, moreno–whatever the color combinations, it was wicked.

So were the machines, which were provided by Action Motor Sports out of Heber, about 40 minutes west from where the four-wheeler treasure hunt was taking place. Pat Ford, his family and others organized the event, dubbed the first annual Bandanna Ranch ATV Roundup. Nearly 60 machines and occupants (with two per ATV, at times) came to play in the late June sun, the majority of whom were landowners from the Strawberry Valley recreational property association.

"This is a great turnout," Ford said, directing ATVs from the staging area to the barn where we would later return for hamburgers following the morning challenge. "It’s great to be able to do something like this for the folks who own land here."

Altruism aside, part of the exercise was also to enlighten cabin, trailer and other structure owners–and potential buyers–as to just how much land they could play on at the ranch, be it by foot, four-wheeling ATV, motorcycle, mountain bike or snowmobile, weather permitting.

Like Jeff and Sandie Coffman, West Jordan, who own a five-acre lot that gets a lot of use on weekends and vacations.

"This is a great idea," Sandie said as we caught our breath near the top of Raspberry Knoll, a gorgeous turnaround point up the Grass route lined with fantastic stands of quakies and the occasional spruce. "What a beautiful spot."

Sandie decided she would still speak to us again even after we got her lost the first hour of so of the pursuit. Took a wrong turn here, couldn’t decide who wanted to lead there, and our group of four ended up somewhere on the northeast 40 near the foothills of the Uintas. Oh well.

After some direction from other owners not participating in the roundup, we ended up back up on track, followed some three- and four-wheeled maniacs to one of the magic boxes and proceed to cheat: a fellow ATVer gave us some extra "treasure" he collected as we unabashedly asked where the other box was located. GPS coordinates would be appreciated.

That’s how we ended up in the canyon and on the knoll. Locating the last box and ingesting more dirt than one reasonably should, we stormed back in to base to find early arrivals plastering their machines and themselves with mud as they romped through makeshift barrow bogs.

We declined the invitation to join, I think largely because our collective wardrobes contained enough earthen material to brick a small adobe building. Hey, at least the burgers didn’t taste like mud pies.