- Distance: 48.1 Miles (77.41 km)
- Rating: 2-C, Mostly really gentle, fun sweeping corners. The road surface is good, not great, but not bad either. Ratings Explained »
- Travel: Either direction for best results
- Start: Panguitch, Utah
- End: Parowan, Utah
- Fuel: Available on both ends and near Panguitch Lake
- Along the Way: Near the top, take the turnoff to Cedar Breaks
- Highlights: Panguitch Lake is quite pretty. Brian Head ski area was one of the first to open its trails to Mountain Bikes.
- Advisories: The road is super high in elevation, so even in the middle of summer, amidst the convection-oven summer heat, it can get blasted cold and have severe weather up top.
Summary
Panguitch, which is Paiute for "Big Fish", is most famous for a brief scene in the Jodie Foster film Contact when the terrorist who destroys the first traveling machine films his suicide note in Panguitch. Rumor has it the films producer got a speeding ticket in Panguitch and didn't appreciate his treatment by local traffic police.
Leaving Panguitch, you start out climbing steeply away from the valley floor. The road doesn't look all that promising as you basically are riding through scrubby brush, but after just a few miles the road gets a little more sweepy and scrubby brush is replaced by scrubby trees and eventually pines and quaking aspen.
The road is, overall, not very technical but a very rewarding and enjoyable road nonetheless. The changes in terrain and vegetation from one side to the other is almost as dramatic as the temperature changes.
Near the top, just before the Brian Head ski resort, be sure to turn south and check out Cedar Breaks National Monument.
UT-143 is also combined with Cedar Breaks (UT-148) and UT-14 to make riding loops to fit most any travelers overall direction of travel, and its infinitely better than the bland UT-89.
Do you have a better photograph of this Road?
If you do, email us your photograph and if we use it, you could win the Ultimate Collectors Edition of Faster, Faster and Faster and The Doctor, the Tornado and The Kentucky Kid a $40 value that has the Directors Cut of all three movies, remastered in 5.1 digital surround sound! More than seven hours of content!
Email photos to contest at canyonchasers.net with the name of the road in the subject line. (Or just click on that link and we'll fill in the subject line for you.)
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.