It sounds a little crazy but isn’t it true that sometimes one of the last places we choose to discover and explore are riding spots closest to where we live?
The Dirt Toys Magazine office is close to the Big Hole Mountains in eastern Idaho but we admit we haven’t explored too much of those mountains on ATVs or side-by-sides. We have ridden in the Big Holes fairly often on snowmobile but the dirt side is another story.
The Big Hole Mountains are basically an island of mountains in eastern Idaho, rising up between Ririe and Rexburg on the west and Teton Valley to the east. They are not Idaho’s biggest mountains but there are lots of trails to ride both summer and winter.
We set out to change that this summer by exploring more of what the mountains have to offer. In the past two weeks we’ve dialed up hundreds of miles in the Big Holes. Most recently we rode to Red Butte and out to Castle Lake in Thousand Springs Valley and rode on both sides of Relay Ridge.
We got a Targhee-Caribou National Forest summer travel map and started mapping out routes and places we wanted to ride. Leaning Fir is an absolute favorite trail as is the trail down to Packsaddle Lake and also Trail 508 from where it leaves Trail 207 and winds down to Trail 235 on the east side of the Big Holes as you make your way in and out of Teton Valley.
Here are a few shots from those two rides.
