Trailmaster

Meet Hall of Fame nominee Don Taylor, the man who helped put Deer Valley mountain biking on the map

For Don Taylor, growing up in Moab meant buzzing around the desert racing motorcycles. It also meant being at the epicenter of dirt biking. “When the dirt bike rage hit and mining started, a bunch of new people moved to Moab,” says Don. “We wanted to show people our great trails.” So, he became a member of the Moab Dirtbike Club that painted the lines on the Slickrock Trail in 1970. The group went on to ride the White Rim Trail, Poison Spider, and Porcupine Rim. They also built a motocross track in the Blue Hills area and ran a motocross race there as part of the state race series. “I rode motorcycles and wanted to go fast,” he laughs. “When Robin Groff and his brother Bill decided to open Rim Cyclery and sell bikes, I thought it was a crazy idea at the time.” Now, those dirt bike trails are known around the world, and Don is famous for helping build them. 

He always preferred the speed of a motorcycle and raced all over the West in his youth. In 1974, he was in a motocross race in Twin Falls, Idaho, when Evel Knievel tried to jump the Snake River Canyon. “He was unsuccessful,” says Don. “But it was quite an event for a kid from a small town.”

After a dusty childhood, he moved to Salt Lake City and attended the University of Utah. There, he discovered the thrill of powder. “I figured skiing was great cross training for racing motorcycles,” he says. He took to it naturally and worked on the ski patrol at Park West for years before moving to Deer Valley Ski Resort and working as director of ski patrol from 1982 to 2000. “It was so fun in Park City in those days,” he remembers. “The ski industry was booming. We skied on long, straight skis, and that was tricky in powder. So that meant locals could ski powder for days and knew all the stashes. But once powder skis were invented, that all changed.”

Don was one of the original pioneers in the mountain bike movement, and his appetite for challenging trails translated from snow to dirt. During the 1980s, he started the mountain bike operation using chairlifts at Deer Valley. He designed and built Naildriver, Aspen Slalom, and Twist and Shout. The trails were an overnight success. So, it was relatively easy for him to convince Deer Valley to host a World Cup Mountain Bike race and five NORBA National Mountain Bike races during the 1990s. “The World Cup and the national races put Park City on the map in terms of a mountain biking and summer destination resort town,” Don says. “When I first lived in Park City, many restaurants closed down after ski season. Getting that mountain bike operation going helped transform Deer Valley into a year-round resort.”

Team Big Bear, the group that put on the national races, heard of all he had done in Moab, Park City, and Deer Valley and nominated him for the Mountain Biker Hall of Fame in the 1990s, to recognize the significant contributions he’s made to the mountain bike community in Utah. “I was never voted in, but it was an honor to be nominated,” he shares. 

During the same time, the Mountain Trails Foundation opened in Park City, and he became a charter member. “I helped build the trails connecting to Deer Valley,” says Don. “We worked on Mid Mountain trail, Glenwild, Flying Dog, and a lot of the trails around Deer Crest.” He also worked as the general manager at Deer Crest and designed and built its mountain bike trail system, notably Spin Cycle, Snow Top, and Pipeline. “We rebuilt Spin Cycle and even found another old washer to replace the original one that got covered in the construction of the Deer Crest community,” he adds.

Don, his wife, Tracy, and their three children moved to Midway, where he got involved with Friends of Wasatch Mountain State Park. “We started the Wasatch Trails Alliance in 2011 in the Heber Valley,” he says. “We built a lot of trails right off the bat.” He was a founding member of the Wasatch Trails Alliance and board president for three years; it eventually morphed into Wasatch Trails Foundation.  

Chances are, if you’ve been on a trail in the area, Don had a hand in it. He’s built numerous backcountry trails in the Wasatch Mountain State Park, including several in the Dutch Canyon area: The Barrel, Flatline, the lower part of Wasatch Over Wasatch (WOW), and Phosphate. He also designed and built Ross Creek Trails, as well as the Perimeter Trail Extension to the marina in Jordanelle State Park. 

Don has served as a member of multiple boards and committees, including the Park City Mountain Resort (PCMR) Epic Wasatch Back Recreation program, and as chairman of the Utah State Outdoor Recreation Initiative (UORI) ranking committee, the Heber Valley Corridor EIS Local Government Committee, and the Heber Envision 2050 Committee. Since the inception of Heber City Park’s Open Space, Trails, and Trees (POSTT), he has been an advisory committee member and, for the past six years, Mountainlands Association of Governments (MAG)’s Wasatch Region Trail Planner. He’s also worked with city and county staff to review more than 200 developments’ trail plans. 

Currently, he’s working as a MAG liaison with Consor Engineering for the feasibility study, EIS, surveying, and engineering for the future Heber Valley Railroad Rail with Trail and is chairman of the Wasatch County Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee. 

So, it’s no surprise he earned the Heber Mayor Award for MAG Trail Coordinator from 2020–2026. “In 2015, we started a project to put in a paved trail system along the Heber Valley railroad that goes from Vivian Park in Provo Canyon to Soldier Hollow, to the depot in Heber and around Deer Creek reservoir,” he says. “We got some funding two years ago from the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT), but we’ve been held up with government red tape. We’re hoping to start construction on it any day now.” The vision of this trail network is to make a big loop from Provo to Heber Valley to Park City to Salt Lake City, and eventually Ogden. “Hopefully this section will get installed in the next couple of years,” he says. “It’s a 10-million-dollar project that will be huge for our community.”

Don has devoted his entire life to making it easier for people to explore nature. “It’s been an honor to be part of the trails community in both Park City and Heber,” he shares. “I’ve loved getting out and riding a trail and knowing I had a hand in building, designing, or getting the funding for it.” 

He hopes to retire soon and spend more time with his grandkids in the desert. “I still ride a lot, and I’m still active. There are lots of volunteer trail maintenance days,” he says. “I don’t know where I found the time to work.”