Mountain Biking - Biking Zion National Park

A friend of mine, and I want to plan a bike/camp trip to Zion National Park.

Has anyone spent time riding trails in this area? I've read a few short articles in the past few years about hiking parts of Zion, but have never looked into biking the park.

If this plan materializes, and we end up making the trip, plan on reading a write-up, and checking out some sweet pics.

-nate

NPS's Zion website says mountain biking is not allowed on trails within the Park- however there is good mountain biking in surrounding areas.

Zion is spectacular, but no biking on the trails. Close by zion is Hurricane, Utah, with super excellent biking there, ride gooseberry mesa. if you go to zion, definitely hike the narrows, and if you have the knowledge and equipment, do Subway, of course.

There is no off-road biking in the park, and if you ride on the roads, make sure you pull off if a shuttle is behind you. They're not allowed to pass, and the passengers (and drivers) get pretty grumpy if they have to crawl along behind bicyclists who are oblivious. While the biking in the park isn't good, the hiking is spectacular! I took a bike tour there last spring, starting in St. George. I was on a touring bike so I stuck to the roads, but I spent three days camping in the park and took a wonderful hike each day.

Gooseberry Mesa is becoming very famous. I haven't ridden it, but I'm going back this spring - car camping this time so I can bring my mountain bike. I'm going to try it. Another place I want to ride is through the old ghost town by Rockville. All I know is you cross the bridge over the river by the park in Rockville and you'll be on an old dirt road that goes right by the ghost town.

Adventure Cycling has a route call the Utah Cliff Route. It starts and ends in St. George and takes you off-road a lot. Another ride that's part of this loop takes you from the Navajo Lake area north of the park, through back country and ends at the main road, just outside the east entrance.

While it is somewhat disheartening to hear that trail riding in the park is closed, I'm sure we'll do some hiking as well.

Pablo...I did some research on canyoneering the Subway. Dude. I'm used to simple sport climbing outdoors here in CA. If we end up bringing a few light pieces of climbing gear out to Zion, we're DEFINITELY going to do Subway. Thanks for the recommendation.

Big Toe - I've done a bit of reading on Gooseberry Mesa...looks like fun. We'll be Tacoma camping, and we're bringing the bikes for sure. I'm interested in exploring this ghost town as well. I always end up talking to people wherever we ride/explore, so I'm sure they'll have some good ideas as well.

Thanks for input guys. Here are a few links I've found...

http://www.climb-utah.com/Zion/subway.htm

http://www.trails.com/activity.aspx?area=10411

http://www.bikingzion.com/

+1 on Gooseberry. Be sure to visit Bryce Canyon as well. Those are two unique and incredible sights. The Grand Staircase is huge and has big MTBing opportunities.

http://www.nps.gov/brca/naturescience/grandstaircase.htm

Get to some Narrows and hike those on dry cloudless days.