The trail takes you around the north side of the Uinta mountain range and then back across the southern plateaus. It covers a lot of ground and has many possibilities for camping and hotels along the way. We started at the top of Timber Lakes (east of Heber City). But you could start anywhere along the trail, or even down by Chicken Creek and Strawberry Resevoir. A highlight of the trail is cross the Flaming Gorge dam. Another highlight is a quick side trip to the 3-corners of Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah.
The trail is approximately 444 miles long. We’d guesstimate it’s 75% dirt and the rest asphalt. The dirt portions range from smooth graded gravel, to rocky sections. A jeep could do the trail, but portions would be slow going compared to a SXS. Because of so much asphalt, only street-license vehicles should attempt this. The asphalt is unavoidable around Mirror Lake Highway and the cities along the southern route. Another area that makes this route challenging is abiding by the laws of the Uintah & Ouray tribes that prohibit street-legal SXS vehicles on their triable land. Most of the land up against the southern Uintas is tribal; hence why the route was more south across the BLM and oil fields of Duchesne County.
We covered the trail in 2 days in our SXS (we keep moving, and the days are long!). We experience a couple of random failures on our machines that provided some challenges. One machine wouldn’t start and had to be towed close to Vernal, before we were able to jump the starter solenoid and get it running again. The other machine suffered a failed carrier bearing (over 12,000 miles later!) that put an end to our adventure just shy of the finish.