Hurricane is a town most visitors experience as a stoplight. It is the place you pass through on State Route 9 between I-15 and Zion, you notice a gas station and a couple of places to eat, and you keep driving.
That is a mistake, at least if you ride. Hurricane sits almost exactly in the middle of the best concentration of off-road riding in Southern Utah, and nearly everything worth pointing a bike at is within about half an hour of town.
We are based just south of there, in Apple Valley, which is how we know.
What is actually within reach
Sand Hollow — about 15 minutes. The headline. Red dunes on one side, slickrock on the other, a reservoir in the middle, and terrain that ranges from gentle to genuinely serious. It is a legitimately world-class riding area and it is a fifteen-minute drive from the middle of an unremarkable town.
Warner Valley — about 25 minutes. Wide-open desert with long sightlines and forgiving ground. This is where we send people who have never ridden, and it is underrated by everyone who is not a beginner. Dinosaur trackways out there too, if you want a reason to stop.
Toquerville Falls — about 30 minutes. A rocky, technical two-track that ends at an actual waterfall in the desert. The trail is the point as much as the destination; it is rougher than its length suggests and it is a genuinely memorable ride.
Hurricane Cliffs — on the edge of town. The escarpment above Hurricane has a network of trails with the sort of valley views that make people stop and take a photo they will look at again.
Gooseberry Mesa — about 35 minutes. Technical slickrock riding on a mesa top. Better known to mountain bikers, and it rewards patience and line choice rather than throttle.
Zion National Park — about 30 minutes. Not for riding — there is no off-road riding inside the park, and anyone telling you otherwise is wrong. But it means a rest day between riding days needs no driving, which matters more than it sounds on a four-day trip.
Almost nowhere else in the West puts that much variety inside a half-hour radius of a town with hotels and a grocery store.
A note on the word "motorcycle"
People search for motorcycle rental in Hurricane meaning two different things, and it is worth being clear which one we are.
We rent off-road machines — dirt bikes and electric dirt bikes, for trails and desert, not registered for highway use. If what you want is a street bike to ride the scenic route through Zion and up to Bryce, that is a different rental and we are not it; you would want a road-bike outfit in St. George or Las Vegas.
If what you want is to get off the pavement and into the country that makes this area famous, that is exactly what we do. Worth sorting out before you book either way, because the two get conflated constantly and the disappointment is avoidable.
Basing here for a few days
Hurricane and neighbouring La Verkin have the practical infrastructure — lodging, fuel, food, a grocery store — without St. George prices or Springdale crowds. St. George is twenty-five minutes west if you want more choice; Springdale is twenty minutes east if you want to be at Zion's gate.
A sensible three-day shape for a first visit:
- Day one: Warner Valley. Open ground, find your feet, work out what everyone in the group can actually do.
- Day two: Sand Hollow, now that you know. Sand and slickrock with some idea of what you are doing.
- Day three: Toquerville Falls, or Zion on foot if the group is sore — and by day three, the group is sore.
Come between October and April. Summer here is its own problem, and the honest advice is to ride at dawn or come another month.
Why this matters for renting
The upshot of all that geography is that you do not need to haul a bike far. Renting near the riding rather than near the interstate saves an hour of towing at each end of every day, which over a three-day trip is most of a riding session.
We are ten minutes south of Hurricane. If you are staying in town, that is closer than the trailhead.