Mountain Bike Bill, The Dirt on the Dirt

Category: Travels

The Lake Davis Trail

Note: I did this ride in back in late July. I am making an effort to semi-catch up on the summer adventures

The Lost Sierras area of NorCal is renowned for its killer trails with stunning views. Your average trail out there is typically a blue trail with some black diamond bits here and there. For the occasional rider, novice, beginner or someone just not into technical terrain, most of these trails can be a bit much.

The Lake Davis trail just north of Portola is an awesome green trail that is nearly guaranteed to not get you cross threaded with significant other. The elevation change is minimal and none of the climbs are long.

The view of Lake Davis from the Smith Peak Lookout west of the lake.

The trail is currently 7 miles long along the eastern side of the lake so it a nice 14 mile out-and-back. I’m not a gravel bike guys but looping around the lake on the mostly dirt roads is a thing. It would be incredibly awesome to see the singletrack segments expanded. So much potential out here

There are plenty of views that just don’t suck!
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Here is our ridelog for the day.

Smiling before and after the ride!

Pro Tip for Family/Group Travelers: If other members are your posse are not down for the more technical or big stuff this region is known for or they can’t ride multiple days in a row, this is a great trail to do as your “Rest Day” ride.

The Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship rocks! The Brewing Lair is not be missed. Beers, food trucks and live music nestled on a wooded hill-side…What is not to like about that! (Oh, and dog-friendly!)

The Golden Eagle Trail – Video

The Golden Eagle trail is my outer limit for how far I will go on a day trip for a ride. I did this outing as an overnighter that included some other adventures in the general area. There are some autumn color making a showing which is alway nice to see in SoCal. Oh yeah and miles of nice flowy MTB goodness.

https://www.mountainbikebill.com/GoldenEagle.htm

Mills Peak Video

Here is another video from the Lost Sierras visit back in July. The Mills Peak trail. Doing this trail as loop would be a mofo but my lovely wife drove me to the top! This trail rocks with plenty of character and views. From the bottom of the trail it is an easy spin back into Greagle where tasty grub and beer and be had. It is certainly well worth a go!

Mount Hough – Quincy CA

Back in July and August I spent some time in NorCal, Oregon and Washington doing a combination of biking, hiking as well as taking care of some work work. Part of the adventures were in the Lost Sierras area of NorCal.

Mount Hough which is easily accessible from Quincy has some pretty awesome trails. I was able sample a nice little slice of them while there.

Check it Out!

Thunder Pass Video

During my summer vacation/road trip I spent some time in Colorado. I managed to catch up with my brother from another mother Jerry. Jerry took me out to American Lakes and Thunder Pass trail a fair ways out side of Fort Collins. It was a really cool trail that took us up above tree line to the backside border of Rocky Mountain National Park. The trails, the views and the hanging with an old friend made for a really awesome day.

Mountain Elden Playtime

Here is the first video from my August vacation. A bit of playtime on Mount Elden in Flagstaff. August is monsoon season and getting out early was part of the plan. You can see just how quickly things can change during a ride. I managed to get on quite a few new to me trails on this outing with the star of the outing being the Full Sail trail. Hats off to the builders who made this amazing flow trail that ends at the top of the Schultz Creek trail. The Broadside trail which is a dedicated for the climb back up to the top of Full Sail is awesome a great add to the expanding network of trails on the mountain. The advocates and builders out here have been doing a bang up job!

Summer Vacation Recap

Work has been a lot of well, work for well over a year. As such my vacation days had piled up to the point to I either had to use them or start losing them. Well I am not gonna have anything thing to do with that so I took the month of August off. I spent a week in Flagstaff, AZ. Then a week near Taos, NM. After that I moved to the Denver CO area. I finished off the last week in Fishlake Utah.

I will get around to posting stuff from spots along the way but here are a few photo snippets.

XC Goodness near Rogers Lake near Flagstaff
Sunset Trail on Mount Elden
A campsite that does not such near Tres Rito, NM
Backcountry wanders abound in New Mexico
The South Country Trail (An IMBA Epic) between Angel Fire and Taos did not disappoint.
Sunset at Chatsfield State Park near Littleton CO
A bit of Colorado Springs trail goodness
Some awesome High Country Goodness way out of Fort Collins
The Pelican Trail at Fishlake was some pretty awesome raw untrammeled goodness
The Fishlake trail had some pretty impressive views

None of the pictures or video footage I have do these places justice. Which is okay if they spark an interest in experiencing them for yourself.

BIG BANG!

I thought I had lots a grip of footage from my August 2023 MTB vacation. Turns out I outsmarted myself and found my backup right where I had left it. I will get through most of that footage at some point. While in Flagstaff, I checked out a new to me trail (The trail is a newish legal trail) called Big Bang. I enjoy Flagstaff scene a great deal and this trail most likely is going to into the routine rotation.

The Cowboy Trails

So I have recently pushed out a couple of videos on the Cowboy Trails of Las Vegas. The first one was from the “Vintage” Vault of 2006 and the second one was from a ride from about a month ago. I have ridden the Cowboy trails a handful of times between the recording of these two videos and I had finally gotten through the three main down hills routes off of the ridge. I suppose you could do some laps out here and do more than one downhill in an outing but for me I have usually had my fill after one. There is a lot of MTB per mile out here.

For the downhills:

  • Boneshaker: Oh man this is a fun descent that will test your skills. There are some nice drops and other technical features that will keep you on your toes. This was featured in my vintage video of my first visit here.
  • Bomb Voyage: I consider this the most technically demanding route and has some squirrel moves coupled with some exposure. It feels the scariest.
  • Bob Gnarly: I heard this trail described as “90s Downhill Tech”. For those of you that are not of that vintage I would call it “On the Ground Tech”, It is often tight, twisty and narrow. Not bermy bike-park vanilla flow stuff. I consider this the easiest of the three descents but not easy.
  • Rock Garden: This is not only the list. While you could ride down it, the main traffic it sees is the the equestrian tourism traffic which I find the trails to typically be chewed up and riddled with horse poo.

No matter which route you take if you like rocky desert tech you should have a good time out here. If you need a bike, both the Trek and Giant stores in town typically have rental bike available.

The most recent video features the Bob Gnarly Trail
The vintage video that includes the Kibbles and Bits climb as well as the Boneshaker descent.

Lagunas Camping

The Laguna Mountains are one of my happy places. Nichol and I spent the July 4th holiday weekend (and then some) at the Laguna Meadow campground.

Our Casa on the meadow

We really love this area not only for cool trails right from camp but also for it just being an awesome place to just to chill outdoors. One of the things we like about it during the July 4th weekend is the lack of fireworks. Within hearing distance of our home are several annual fireworks events that pretty much keeps are dogs traumatized for the bulk of the Independence Day evening. Life is just better for our dogs (and us) up here away from the boomage.

At the UCSD observatories with view of the Kitchen Creek area and beyond.

Did I mention trails? I already posted up about checking out Garnet Peak, but I hit most of the stuff in the area over the course of the trip.

Climbing Aqua Dulce enroute to Gatos Ravine.

The nice thing about camping here is that you don’t have to try and hit everything at once. Some trails in the morning. Some in the afternoon. Hell, why not a post-2nd breakfast ride?

  • Chilling and Grillin
  • Check out “Observe A Thing”

Then of course there is hammock time. Yeah we had a great time!

A run down Noble Canyon