Located in Island Park is the Black Canyon riding area. This trail follows the old railroad bed for part of the trail, and then follows forest service roads for the last half. The destination of the ride is the town of West Yellowstone. I bumped into a couple of forest service people when we got into the Montana side. They checked our stickers to make sure we were legal, and were very friendly and had good info for the area. The said that, unoffically, they don't mind if you ride your ATVs in West Yellowstone as long as you don't drive down the main roads, but use the back alley roads. I suppose you could still get a ticket, though. Anyway, the ride was very enjoyable and had lots of great scenery. A lot of it was in the deep forest and made for a very intersting ride.

To get to the trailhead, head down US 20 to Island Park. Drive almost to Macks Inn until you see a sign that say "Big Springs" and turn right on South Big Springs Loop Road (84).

Drive just shy of 3 miles and you will see where the trail crosses the road. It is a big open area with plenty of places to pull off and unload.

From here we headed northeast along the trail. It was a Saturday and there were a lot of people in the area, so be on the lookout. After you head down the trail for about 10 miles, the railroad track bed runs out and you ride the rest of the way to West Yellowstone on forest service roads. We actually never made it to West Yellowstone on this particular trip. We got to within about 2 miles and ran into a rain storm with lots of lightning. My boy kind of freaked out so we turned around and got out of there. We will have to go back and finish the ride, but we still had a lot of fun.

Photos