Brian Head

Most of you have heard of Brian Head as a great place to ski and in the summer, mountain bike. The area is very beautiful and is surrounded by tons of trees. Just in the last few years the resort added new ski lifts to make the park more easily explorable where you can go from the beginner side of the mountain to the more advanced side without getting on the bus. In the summer it is also a great place to play frisbee golf or just hike with the colorful flowers all over the hill and nice mountain air. You can also continue up the main highway to the backside of the mountain and take a dirt road up to the top to see the amazing view from the lookout. It is a great place to visit year around and has access to so many places including some of the oldest pine trees in the world known as the bristle-cone pines and making up the twisted forest. If you want to fin rocks it is also a great place to visit. When you follow the main highway toward the lookout, your first stops should be at each of the road cuts, in them you can find some very nice agate that will polish up really nice. When you are done searching here continue up to the lookout and about halfway up the dirt road you will find washes that house some really nice multicolored agate. Most of them are a brown and black tiger stripe but there are many other colors as well. In my rock hounding book, which is on my amazon carousel, you can read a story about this site were there were visitors from England who came to this site to collect as much agate as they could take home because there was such a large market for it back home. Brian Head is a great place to explore and if you have the time I would highly recommend it. To get there just get on highway 143 in Parowan, Utah and follow it up the mountain.