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#

Butler Creek, Grant Creek, and Snowbowl

For some good gravel/dirt riding with a lot of climbing, butler creek is a good place to check out. While most people think of snowbowl as being up Grant creek, it is actually in the Butler creek drainage, which is the next one over. From Grant Creek, when you turn onto snowbowl road, you climb over a saddle into butler. Snowbowl road climbs the east side of butler creek and ends at the ski area. There is also a road on the other side from Butler creek, and you can make a loop out of the two on a bike. On top of that, you can ride to the top of tv mountain, snowbowl, and point 6 on actual road, and there's some singletrack down the front of the ski hill.

Getting to snowbowl via snowbowl road is pretty straightforward, so I don't think I need to go into much detail. But if you've never been in butler creek it's nice to have a map or gpx track to follow, as there are a couple of junctions up there. The main thing to keep in mind is that you actually want to take Point 6 road when you get there, as that is the actual name of the road that continues to the top of Butler creek (and all the way to Point 6).

The most basic route is to climb to the base of snowbowl via one of the roads, and descend the other

Crystal Creek

Crystal creek road goes from Turah, east of Missoula, to Deer creek. Done as a loop, less than half is on dirt, and there is minimal elevation gain, making this a great easy/beginner route or something you can do quickly after work. Usually I like to go out to Turah on pavement and then back on the dirt, but this can be done any way you want. From Turah on the south side of the interstate, cross the river, and turn right on Crystal Creek road.

Holloman Saddle

The ride over holloman saddle from Clinton to Miller creek is one of the more popular mixed-surface loops in the area. Total distance is about 55 miles with 3000 vertical feet of climbing with about 20 miles on dirt.

Holloman saddle is on what's called the miller divide, or the north end of the sapphire mountains. The sapphires extend south all the way to Chief Joseph pass and idaho and have lots of other roads and trails to explore.

Petty Creek Loop

I've been meaning to post more ride descriptions and routes, and I just rode this a week or so ago so I might as well post about it.

Petty creek goes into the clark fork near Alberton, and there is a bridge, and fishing access where it meets the river. Petty creek road continues 13 miles to the top of a pass, where it becomes Graves creek road and descends down to highway 12 west of Lolo. From Missoula, this creates a loop of 80-90 miles depending on the starting point, and the new path from Lolo to Missoula makes the last section of the ride much more pleasant. The upper part of petty creek all the way to highway 12 is dirt, but this can be done with no problems on a road bike, especially with larger, more durable tires (I have some 27mm vittorias that work well for rides like this).