me and some folks are taking a week trip to tahoe area in a couple weeks. we are starting off in bishop area to hit standard rock creek (and a remote white mountain 6k rocky fireroad drop) and then hit the usual toads, downieville, northstar. i've been researching and looking for other potential trails between mammoth and tahoe that are large verticle technical descents, anyone know of any? thanks.
lesser known tahoe area trails?
- Thread starter dft
- Start date
There aren't any. Seriously. I live in Tahoe and work in Mammoth and Bridgeport pretty frequently and brother, I've searched. There are some fun all day tour type rides in the sweetwater mountains just north of Bridgeport but it's a commitment to get there. The singletrack riding worth doing doesn't really happen until you get just south of Tahoe. At least from what I've found.dft said:
Speaking of the white mountains, are you heading down silver canyon by any chance? That's the Kamikaze before there was a Kamikaze. I've never done it but it's on the to do list next month. My girlfriend and I are going down there to check out the bristlecones.
i've done silver canyon about 5 times, a fun ultra fast 6k descent.
we are actually doing black canyon, better than silver canyon, narrow canyon, some rocky, cool stuff. if you know any trails south of the lake, i would appreciate it. something to judge what i like is toads (you can climb it and the descent is great, rocky, technical). thanks
we are actually doing black canyon, better than silver canyon, narrow canyon, some rocky, cool stuff. if you know any trails south of the lake, i would appreciate it. something to judge what i like is toads (you can climb it and the descent is great, rocky, technical). thanks
EVERYBODY loves toads. Have you ever ridden horsethief canyon, willow creek or the rim trail where it goes by armstrong pass? Those are just south of the ridge where toads starts. They're all really fun kind of long rides. Check out a topo map and you'll see where I'm talking about.dft said:
When are you guys going to be in Mammoth? I might want to check out black canyon with you.
i know of a few, horse canyon near kirkwood, you can ride from highway 88 to 50 on mostly single track, ive done a parallel ride on jeep-trails, there's the chinese downhill or something of that sort, a good downhill near incline village, and a few others. Overall the tahoe area can be very dissapointing for mountain biking, there's great stuff there, but given the size of the area and size of the mountains, you'd think that there'd be a LOT more...
There is a lot more than you probably know about. :devil:Jm_ said:
This is my 4th summer here and I STILL haven't ridden everthing that I know about. And there are at least a dozen legal trails that have been built just since I moved here. I ride after work at least 4 days a week usually trying to check out stuff I haven't ridden and the only other area I've been to that even comes close to the density of singletrack is pisgah in North Carolina. When I moved here I was only planning on being here a year but literally stayed because of the xc riding. It is anything but "disappointing". I think you need to pay a visit again.Jm_ said:well...more legal trails, but I know of quite a few more legal trails than I mentioned above. I lived there for quite a while
I don't know what you're talking about...if you know what you're doing, there's so much riding here, it's insane. Can you name someplace else that has more riding?Jm_ said:
DFT, have you ever done Stanford Rock? It's on the west shore, a killer climb, but you get an outrageous descent out of it.
well, your riding season is about half of what mine is currently, and I lived along highway 50 in between sac and tahoe, in an area where there SHOULD have been decent trails, but there was literally nothing. I love the riding in tahoe, but being buried by 10 feet of snow half the year isn't exactly my idea of "riding" 
I like skiing, but I've been living without huge amounts of snow for a while now, and I've gotten used to riding all winter.
I like skiing, but I've been living without huge amounts of snow for a while now, and I've gotten used to riding all winter.
Great you winJm_ said:well, your riding season is about half of what mine is currently, and I lived along highway 50 in between sac and tahoe, in an area where there SHOULD have been decent trails, but there was literally nothing. I love the riding in tahoe, but being buried by 10 feet of snow half the year isn't exactly my idea of "riding"
I ride my bike EVERY WEEKEND during the winter in Reno. Dirtjumps, Downhill and cross country. And yeah placerville sucks for riding but it's hardly Tahoe now is it? You have no idea how much is really up here. If you did there's no way in hell you could possibly complain about a lack of trails. You go anywhere around the lake and you're never more than half a mile from singletrack. And when that's under snow, all you have to do is drive less than an hour to drop below snow level. But we weren't talking about winter, or the riding season (which is still greater than 6 months) we were talking about numbers of trails. Come up for a week and I guarantee I'll show you a trail every day that you never knew existed.
then to go on and say...kidwoo said:
i know why this is done, but it is still funny.....kidwoo said:
I think you missed what I was referring to in my first post. He asked if there were any trails BETWEEN mammoth and tahoe. That's where I said there weren't...........until you actually get to the tahoe area.WestCoastHucker said:
Read it again, I think you just misunderstood me.
1)not much SOUTH of tahoe
2)loads of trails IN the tahoe area
I'm not trying to deter folks from riding in tahoe. Most (not all
)of the stuff is on maps anyway.
ummm.... oops, that's what i get for only reading the first line............kidwoo said:
i just saw the "There aren't any. Seriously..." and then just skipped over the rest...
Yeah I get tired of listening to myself toooooooooozzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzWestCoastHucker said:
huh? what?
i agree w/ kidwoo. other than fireroads and the well-known stuff, i haven't hit the mother load in the mammoth/bridgeport area.
however the tahoe region has some hella cool stuff. and if you know when to hit it, the stuff on the e shore melts out surprisingly early.
down lower in the p-ville area i haven't found much, however.
however the tahoe region has some hella cool stuff. and if you know when to hit it, the stuff on the e shore melts out surprisingly early.
down lower in the p-ville area i haven't found much, however.
All I can say is "Jackie Chan"
Fun ass freeride trail.
Fun ass freeride trail.
dft said:
Try looking harder in p-ville... LOTS of DJ's, Slalom and a couple good dh trails...frorider said:
cool glad there's stuff in p-ville these days. it's been a while since i've tried riding down there i guess. local shop guys were pretty clueless (and i don't mean in that hiding-the-goods kind of way). any recommendations on a shop w/ some actual trail knowledge?
hope you aren't counting that mile long trail in pollock as a "good dh trail"...Yeti DHer said:
It's a nice peice of work for those that made it, but it's got about 400 feet of drop at the most, and is way short. I don't want to offend anyone that worked on it (you or jared), and I respect the work that you've done, we have a DH course here that I've put my time in on. There's definitely a lot of work involved, a lot more than one thinks at first when they think about building/expanding/clearing/fixing a trail. But in the big scheme, it's nothing compared to what's around auburn or other places.
There's a tiny bit of single track around placerville, overall it's pretty lame...got to drive at least an hour to get to "real" single track, and going up highway 50 is fruitless untill you get to tahoe. There's literally nothing in the crystal basin. There ain't much (a tiny bit) on the south side of 50 either.
The Pollock Pines area is beautifull, but as far as mountain biking it might as well be the middle of the desert, it just doesn't have much. There's been talk of putting in a downieville-esque descent along the river...
If you want to get some nice off-the-beaten path descents, go to the Rock Creek OHV area, there's some cool stuff there that's miles long and a good deal of fun. It's out of the beaten path, but I've had some good rides up there and there's some real tech stuff if you know where to look. It's been to long for me so I don't know where it is, but it's a lot less known than auburn, but still has some major descents.
There's also hell-hole resevior (I think that's the right one) that is beyond the rock creek OHV area, way far out on Wentworth Springs road. It climbs up at least 2500 vertical if I can remember correctly, and is pretty fun. Definitely off the beaten path again, but when you live around placerville, it doesn't matter where you go, it's going to take a while to get to good mtbing.
I kept my other posts in this thread short and fairly vague. I kind of take some of these things for granted since I lived there for most of my life. From the mid 90s to just a couple years ago I explored and rode tons of trails around placerville. I got topo maps and planned rides to go up and explore stuff. I didn't get totally done exporing, but I did enough to know what's really around Placerville. I rode last year from higway 50 at strawberry to highway 88 at kirkwood on some jeep roads, and mapped out a singletrack way to come back (but was solo so I wasn't feeling great about going back on unfamilier trails in the wilderness). It was a pretty good descent on the way back, technically shuttlable too. I know of many other areas, some I simply rode and do not deem them even worth talking about, others are ok but are often more effort than they are worth, but in the big picture, it's pretty desolate and you have to do serious driving to get to any good trails from hangtown.
I'm glad to be out of placerville. I like the area, the scenery (not the ever-worsening traffic). I like being able to go to northstar, although from placerville it takes around 3 hours. Up highway 50 is just relatively dead for mountain biking though, untill you get to tahoe. I don't want to knock where I grew up too much, but it's just a huge dead area compared to many other parts of california. I'm not going to go off on how my perception is clouded based on where I am living now, so I'll just say that I have exponentially better options where I am in arizona. Trying not to go into details to start a state-fight
Golden Spoke bike shop is the best. Jared and ryan are 2 of the resident dher's who know their stuff.frorider said: