- Distance: 48.7 Miles (78.38 km)
- Rating: 1-B, More scenic than challenging, but there are a few moderately technical corners near the top Ratings Explained »
- Travel: Either direction for best results
- Start: Kamas, Utah
- End: Beaver Creek Gas Station
- Fuel: Kamas or Beaver Creek Gas Station
- Along the Way: Dick's Diner in Kamas has awesome burgers and Ice Cream. Fantastic Fishing and great campgrounds line the southern half of the road. The Boy Scouts almost burned down the entire mountain in 2002.
- Highlights: Mirror Lake Highway is the highest paved road in Utah, reaching 10,715 ft. The scenery becomes more and more amazing the higher you climb. When you reach Bald Mountain Pass it looks less like Utah and more like the Alps or Canadian Rockies. This is a great road for the sightseer or the rider looking for a relaxed afternoon ride. A wonderfully rewarding road for newer or less experienced riders.
- Advisories: Weekend traffic can get heavy, particularly during holiday weekends. The southern side is moderately patrolled by Sheriff and Forest Service Law Enforcement.
Summary
While most mountains in North America run north to south, the Uinta Mountain Range runs east to west, so this road is a much more gradual and gentle introduction to a high-mountain pass because it climbs up gradual slopes instead of navigating a narrow canyon. As a result the road was built to the frugal civil engineers standards where the shortest distance is a straight line.
Leaving Kamas, Utah you are immediately immersed into a remote setting. The road offers a plethora of gradual and gentle corners that work their way up the side of the mountain past the cutest Forest Service campgrounds you've ever seen. As the road nears Bald Mountain Pass you'll pass dozens of small, pristine lakes and enjoy a handful of endlessly sweeping corners that spiral you the steepest terrain of the ride. You'll find yourself surrounded by sparse gray fields of lichen splotched rock. The only tree's you'll see are the ones down below. Crossing the highest point, the corners relax and you are left on a gradual downhill grade that offers only a smattering of calm corners. Stop at Beaver Creek Gas station for a rest before heading back, or continue on to Evanston, Wyoming 30 miles farther down the road.
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Rate This Road
Have you ridden this road? How would you rate it? With one star meaning you thought this was a super-lame road with very little value, to five stars meaning that you felt like this was the mother of all roads - a road by which other roads should be judged.
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Ratings Explained
The CanyonChasers road rating is two parts. The first part, numbers 1 through 5, describe how technical the road is, with number 1 being a gently sweeping road and number five being very technical with challenging corners. The second part of the rating is a letter, A, B, C, D and F. The letter describes the quality of the road surface with A being perfect, pristine smooth and F being degraded, bumpy and crumbly. Rolling joints, tar-stips or "gummy worms" will drop the road one letter grade.
This road information is for planning and recreational purposes only. You may find that construction projects, traffic, or other events may cause road conditions to differ from the CanyonChasers ratings. Ratings may not be applicable to all riders, all bikes and all skill levels.