Travel: Mountain UTVing Calgary

Mountain UTVing in Calgary

What? Yes! I know it’s a bit odd, or perhaps out of character for us, yet this is what we did on Tuesday, September 4. For Bryce’s birthday I put together a little scavenger hunt and the end prize was a day of UTVing in Ghost (a public land use area outside of Calgary).

First – it took me about 6 hours of research to find a place to rent a decent UTV, find an area where we could legally ride, and find a location with all-terrain trails. That’s the reason for this post – to hopefully help out another non-utver or a newbie looking for a place to ride.

Alberta is full of Public Land Use Zones (I had no idea!) and you can ride UTVs, horses, and even camp there for free. Here is the Government site.

The site above has a lot of info and is a little tricky to navigate. If you want the quick map to where we rode – by Ghost River – then download here: GhostPLUZMap-May2018

Where to Rent

I could only find a handful of places that rented UTVs and in the end we selected All Season Rental Adventures out of Calgary. Here are just a few things to be aware of, if you’re renting.

Large damage deposit – our’s was $4500 – on top of the rental
Only third party liability insurance
All Season holds the damage deposit for up to 72 hours
You need to clean the UTV before returning it

Those few things would have been awesome to know before hand. When we rented the person told us the UTV was brand new, the last renters had totalled the pervious one (basically, they bought a wrecked machine). Ya, that sounds like a great investment! Also, Cochrane, which is on your way back to Calgary from Ghost, has 2 places you can bay wash your UTV. Worked out well.

Trails to Ride

Okay – this is where we started our ride: South Ghost 4×4 Staging Area.

If you check out the Ghost Map, we rode the following trails:

47 – 13, 13 – 7, 7 – 3, 3 – 1, 1 – 4 – then we did it in reverse (total time, about 2 hours)
47 – 45, 45 – 49, 49 – 51, 51 – 53, 53 – 95 – then in reverse (total time, about 2.5 hours)
We played a lot (just racing back and forth) south of 45 and between 53 – 95

Okay – time for the adventure!

This is the brand new Polaris RZR 900. We got it up to about 105 KM/Hour. I say about because we stopped looking at the speedometer past 90 KM/Hour and concentrated on the terrain instead. We for sure broke 100. It feels so fast, like really really fast.

This is Bryce, all smiles, in the staging area. We are ready!

I got to drive, too.

Funny note – there is a handle bar (you can see it above) on the passenger side which reminders me of bar you’d see on a rollercoaster. When we picked up the machine I laughed to myself, thinking – who needs that? Well, let me tell you – you’ll fly out if you don’t hang on (yes, they have seatbelts).

Funny Story

Another funny story? I was nervous about getting mud and debris in my eyes so I brought an old pair of Bryce’s ski googles. After about 8.4 seconds of riding I was screaming “there’s dirt in my eyes – I can’t see!” Bryce, without goggles, was like “no, Ali – there’s no sand or dirt.” He slowed down and I wiped my eyes. Good to go. Peddle to the floor.

“Stop – stop!” “Seriously?” “Yes – I can’t see!” So, we got out of the UTV after having been in it for 1.4 minutes at this point, and I took off my goggles and my helmet. My face looked like it was seasoned with pepper. Clumps and clumps of disintegrated foam from the ski goggles were all over my face and in my eyes! Yuck.

Bryce couldn’t stop laughing on the inside, yet held it together long enough for me to wash my face with one of our water bottles. Needless to say, I was fine without the ski goggles, which, by the way, are in the trash at the Cochrane bay wash.

Here’s a photo of an unimpressed Ali. Bryce wanted to take a photo of the mud on my face – I, having gone through the goggle incident, was now hypersensitive to anything on my face.