Little Park Creek, Inez, and the Dean Stone area

The newest happening for recreation in Missoula is the Mount Dean Stone project. A few years ago, The Nature Conservancy and Five Valleys Land Trust acquired some land in Miller Creek and on the north side of mount Dean Stone, basically in the south hills above Pattee canyon. There is still a gap between the two sides, but the project has opened up quite a bit of new land to explore and some new trail has been built on both sides, most notably the Barmeyer trail.

The other side of Dean Stone, in Miller creek, is where most of the new access has opened up. The map and overview provided by Five Valleys unfortunately doesn't give a complete picture of the roads and routes and property ownership on that side of the project, however, the inez trail, route from there to the top of deer creek, and the route down into little park creek are on trailforks, along with some other roads in the Miller creek area. Taking it a step further, I went and overlaid some land ownership squares into caltopo, which conveniently also has a public land overlay. So you can see what is TNC/5vlt, what is state, what is forest service

https://caltopo.com/m/42T5#

Lost trail not-shuttle fest

Went and did some riding by lost trail pass south of town last weekend. Lost trail is the border between id and mt on highway 93 and also right next to the continental divide. The main trail is called warm springs ridge, it starts behind the ski area at about 7800ft and goes north. It's a pretty remote, cool backcountry ride but with a shuttle almost anyone could ride it. The climbing is fairly minimal, the trail is mostly smooth, and you wind up right near the highway at the end. Every year, lost trail ski area hosts a bike fest and runs shuttles from the end of this trail and back up to the top. In addition to the ridge trail, there are a few others that drop off to the other side. The shuttle fest was last weekend though. Phil had found a route on trailforks and asked me if I wanted to go try it

https://www.trailforks.com/route/mtbm-warm-springs-route-backcountry