Meet Our Staff | Outdoor ATV Adventures with QuadMan

Written By Lynn ‘Quad Man’ Blamires

Being a flatlander, born and raised in Oklahoma, you might wonder what qualifies me to be an ATV writer. Well, as I was growing up my family made annual trips to Utah to visit family. My dad was raised in Kaysville, joined the army out of high school, and was stationed at Camp Gruber in Oklahoma where he met my mom.

Those annual trips assured me of two or three nights each year of camping in the mountains. I went to BYU and met my wife from Kaysville and when I had the chance to settle in the mountains of Utah, I jumped at it. The way I figured was that once I had spent time in the mountains, I knew I would never be happy living with the prairie dogs again.

I started riding ATVs in 1992 and bought my first machine in ’93. I had narrowed the choices down to two machines – the Honda Foreman 300 and the Suzuki King Quad 300. Being a bells and whistles kind of guy, I choose the Suzuki.

After my purchase, I fell into the same situation everyone with their first ATV faces. Other than riding in circles around my house, I didn’t know where to ride. It took a long time for the grass to grow back in that track.

The solution came on two fronts – I joined an ATV riding club and I attended my first ATV jamboree. Joining a club puts you in contact with people who know where to ride and jamborees give experience with specific trail systems.

The first thing I learned is that the leader is the only one with a clean face. Now that is what I am talking about – this dirty brown face was going to learn the trails so he could lead the rides.

I love to ride and write. I submitted articles to Dirt Wheels magazine. They published three of them which opened up the opportunity to be published locally. I have been writing articles now for over 15 years.

I look forward to sharing my ATV articles in the Outdoor Section of “My Local Utah.” My email address will always be at the end of every article. I welcome emails and I answer all of them. I love to hear about your favorite trails, the machines you ride, and about your experiences on the trail.

Utah is a mecca to ATV riders all over the country. We have more jamborees than any other state to showcase our amazing trail systems. The Hatfield and McCoy trail system back east was modeled after the Paiute ATV Trail system in Central Utah. Our state offers some 75,000 miles of OHV trail. I haven’t ridden all of them, but I guess I will die trying.

The Paiute Trails are some of my favorite. While the system offers plenty of camping opportunities, I prefer to ride into town, pull up to a motel, take a hot shower, eat a hot meal, and sleep in a comfortable bed. I don’t have to pack a lot of equipment and extra gas because all those amenities are available on the trail. I had my longest ride in a day on the Paiute back in 2006. Six of us rode 273 miles in one day on that system.

The picturesque town of Marysvale is in the heart of the Paiute system. While they are a quiet little town of 400 people in the winter, the town fairly bustles with ATV activity in the summer. Ninety-five percent of the motel occupancy is from ATV traffic.

Another favorite riding area is the San Rafael Swell. The swell is bursting with fascinating history, not only prehistoric, but ancient Indian and pioneer history as well.

I also enjoy the Arapeen trails between Manti and Ferron. It is a well-kept secret that there are 53 fishing holes mapped out with GPS coordinates on the Arapeen system. Some of these are only accessible by ATV.

I enjoy the narrow ATV trails available in Utah, but I also like the wider UTV trails I ride with my family. I have a 2019 Polaris Ace 570, a 2014 Polaris Ace 325, a 2013 Kawasaki Teryx4 LE, a 2013 Polaris XP Touring 850 (two-up).