WASHINGTON COUNTY, Utah — Twenty-thousand acres of off-road paradise sprawl just 10 miles east of St. George.
“To me, Sand Mountain is nothing less than precious," said Kevin Keller, the chairman and CEO of the Utah Public Lands Alliance. "My son is disabled. The way he can get out here is in the seat of my Jeep. The last time my stepfather drove a vehicle was on a trail on this mountain before his vision got so bad, he couldn't drive anymore. These are the kind of memories that this place makes.”
Recently, the golden sands have been littered with trash. The thrilling landscape is attracting new riders who are unfamiliar with the terrain.
“There's a little bit of a divide between side-by-side community, dirt bike community, 4x4 community, and for us to be successful and keeping trails open, I believe we all have to come together," said Loren Campbell, the president of UPLA.
This Friday and Saturday, UPLA brought together dozens of volunteers with the Desert Roads and Trails Society, St. George Jeepers and Ride Utah to clean up and improve the accessibility of the land.
“We're installing signs that are directional signs, just like you'd have at a street corner, that show the trail intersection so people can find their way better and then also specifically to name the obstacles," said Campbell.
Sand Mountain is one of the few places in Utah that is an "Open OHV" area, which means riders can go anywhere they want here; if they see an area that could be a trail, they can just make their own.
“There are not places like this in the world," said Katelynn Boren, a competitor in World Extreme Rock Crawling. "It is such a unique area. You want people to explore it and just really experience what southern Utah is all about.”
The Bureau of Land Management relies on the passion of these people, said Luke Hutchinson, an outdoor recreation planner for the BLM's St. George field office.
“We don't always have the resources and time to get some work done, and these groups come together to help us manage the land," he said. "They get the community engaged.”
Knowing that most people in the U.S. don’t have access to public lands, shared stewardship is something these Utahns treasure.
“It's not government land," said Keller. "It's my land. It's your land. And we need to treat it as such.”
