Israel Canyon, the gravel climb into the Lake Mountains

At Jacobs Ranch Israel Canyon Trailhead Park, 260 West Weatherby Drive, on the western edge of the city. The park has three amenities and no more: open grass, park benches and a parking lot. It keeps the standard city park hours of 6am to 10pm, and there is no restroom, no drinking water and no interpretive sign. Past the park the pavement ends and Israel Canyon Road begins climbing as gravel toward the ridge.

The route people log runs about 9.1 miles out and back with something close to 2,800 feet of climbing, from the trailhead park up to the communication towers on the Lake Mountains ridge. It is a road rather than a footpath, gravel and dirt the whole way, shared with vehicles, motorcycles and bicycles. There are loose rocky pitches within the first mile above the first gate, which is where most vehicles that are going to turn around decide to.

For driving it, four wheel or all wheel drive with reasonable clearance is the sensible minimum, and plenty of people walk or ride it instead for exactly that reason. The surface is gravel and dirt from the moment the pavement stops, the grade is consistent, and the loose rocky sections start early. In winter, snow and mud make it a different proposition again: there is no posted seasonal gate date, so the honest position is that it is open all year and usable for part of it.

The Bureau of Land Management's Salt Lake Field Office, with parcels held by the state trust lands administration mixed through it. The change from city ground to federal ground happens within a minute of leaving the parking lot and is not signed the way a national forest boundary would be. The Bureau lists mountain biking, hiking, petroglyph viewing, off highway vehicle riding and sightseeing for this range, with a fourteen day stay limit for anybody camping.

Outside the closure, yes; inside it, no. In 2018 the Bureau of Land Management made permanent a target shooting closure of 2,004 acres in the eastern Lake Mountains, replacing temporary closures that had stood since 2012, for public safety and to protect Native American petroglyphs. Counting the state trust parcels inside it, roughly 3,500 acres are closed in all. Shooting stays legal on the surrounding public land, and Utah County runs a developed public range off Soldier Pass Road on 160 acres conveyed for the purpose.

No, and there is none anywhere above it either. The park at the bottom has open grass, park benches and a parking lot, which means no drinking fountain and no restroom, and the federal ground above it has no facilities of any kind. Everything you need goes up with you. On a summer afternoon at this exposure, with pinyon and juniper giving only patchy shade, that is the single most important thing to know before you go.

The Bureau of Land Management lists petroglyph viewing among the activities on this range, and protecting Native American rock art is one of the two reasons it gives for the target shooting closure over part of the eastern Lake Mountains. Exact spots are left off on purpose. Rock art on public land is protected, it is damaged by handling and by chalk and by casual contact, and the right thing to do is to look, photograph from a distance and touch nothing.

The road does continue over the range and down the far side into the next valley, but the sensible turnaround for anyone starting in Saratoga Springs is the ridge. The southern approach and the climb to the towers from that direction belong to Eagle Mountain on the other side of the range, and describing somebody else's access road from a distance is how visitors end up on the wrong track. Plan the crossing from that end, from the current Bureau map and local conditions.

It is a real ride rather than a spin, and the Bureau lists mountain biking as one of the activities on this range. What you are riding is a gravel service road with a consistent grade and about 2,800 feet of climbing to the ridge, shared with vehicles that move faster than the gradient suggests, with the loose rocky sections concentrated in the first mile above the gate. Carry all your water, start early in summer, and treat the descent as the part where the shared surface actually matters.