West of Moab, the Poison Spider Trail is a 10 mile network of doubletrack and slickrock with some sandy steep climbs that is open to dirt biking. Poison Spider Mesa forms one of the cliff features that is part of the Moab landscape northwest of town. The mesa is bordered on the east by Moab Valley and on the south by the Colorado River.
The offroad motorcycle trail climbs to the rim along with the sloping rock layers. The first few miles of trail must be retraced, but most of the travel time will be spent on a loop that reaches the rim. It has deservedly become of the most popular trails because it has great scenery and because the jeeping is just challenging enough to be fun without quite being a vehicle buster. After some switchbacks that traffic is making rougher and a fairly flat stretch, a sandy canyon leads to some switchbacks about 2 miles into the trail. There are steep slickrock climbs, one sand hill may be difficult to climb.
Most ride this as an out and back to the long sandy stretch since the trail beyond that leads back down to SR279 gets extremely technical.
To reach the trailhead from Moab, head north on US191 for 1.5 miles to SR279 (aka Potash Road). Turn left heading southwest on SR279 for 6 miles and look for the trailhead on the right, just past the rock climbing zone.
Overall, Poison Spider ORV Trail is the 2nd most popular dirt bike trail of all 68 dirt biking rides in Utah.
