Wasilla trails

​The trail system on the south side of Mt Baldy are in really good shape the past two days. I went out yesterday with a friend of mine and made it to Bench Lake in only 35 minutes. The light snow this winter means that there is not a lot of run off to soften up the trail system above the frozen ground. The mud is only a few inches deep in almost all of the trails that we went on, with the deepest mud only about 8 inches deep. Because the trail was in such good condition, Jeremy Cooper (also from Century 21 and a good friend) and I decided to take a run up some of the trails that were too soft to make it into last fall on our limited schedule. We were not disappointed. We left from the Sitze Road Trailhead and made it all the way to Moose Meadows in only a couple of hours. We had hoped to make it at least half that far in the entire day so I figure we did pretty darn good for ourselves. We would have liked to come across a black bear to put in the freezer, but we were lacking in even seeing any signs. It is probably just a little bit too early still.

This trail system is not for novices. If this is your first time on a four wheeler or side by side, I would highly recommend bringing someone more experienced along with you. It is a great area to build up your experience if you are careful. The entire trail system can be walked out if you end up rolling your machine or get hurt. In our 9 miles of trail, we were never more than few miles from the road if there was an emergency. Some of the more technical portions of the trail can actually be really fun. There are some steep uphills which get pretty slick and some steep downhills which require careful consideration before driving down. 

I don't think that the trails will last in this good of condition for much longer, especially if we get any rain or snow. As the ground thaws out, some of the muddier areas will not have the frozen base and the mud will be deeper. This will make it so that wheelers such as my trusty Sportsman 570 will have a difficult time getting through the entire trail. If you have the opportunity to get through the trail this weekend, it should be a fairly easy ride. Please do a favor to all of the rest of us riders though and stick to the trail system as no one wants to see the hillside be torn up for someone's one time enjoyment. Even better, if you are riding for leisure please bring in some rubber gloves and a garbage bag and if you see rubbish please help clean up the mess that others have inconsiderately left behind. We all benefit from a clean trail system. Thank you in advance and great riding