By Greg Heil, singletracks.com -- While we all love to dream about shredding the best mountain bike destinations in North America, the sad fact is that most of us will only ever get to visit those places…and we have to live somewhere else to pay the bills. So if you can’t spend 365 days per year riding in a world-class MTB destination, your local trails should at least be respectable. That’s why we put together this list of the top 10 North American cities for mountain bikers to call home.

 Salt Lake City, Utah

Pop: 1,124,000

There’s more to Salt Lake City mountain biking than the Wasatch Crest Trail.  While that ride is a classic one, there are others, like the Bonneville Shoreline Trail, that can be accessed right from downtown SLC. The most popular section of the trail starts at Hogle Zoo and goes all the way to City Creek Canyon.  Plus, there are also northern and southern sections of the trail extending as far south as Draper and as far north as Ogden.

The canyons surrounding SLC are filled with trails such as the Pipeline Trail in Millcreek Canyon, Big Spring Hollow down in Provo, and classic rides in between like Mill-D and Desolation Lake in Big Cottonwood Canyon.

If what’s in Salt Lake isn’t enough for you, you can drive 30 minutes up Parley’s Canyon to Park City, where over 400 more miles of singletrack bike trails await.