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downieville norcal
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Posted by: velosapiens---------------------

with my job temporarily (i hope) in limbo, i zipped up to downieville, in the northern sierra thursday and friday. I've done a fair amount of mountain biking there, but this was my first time dirt-biking there. let me say one thing... only a fool would ride those trails alone. so naturally, i rode alone both days, since everyone i know still has a job.

i started the first day by leaving right from town and heading up first divide trail. all fine and only a little scary until i got to the section where the trail is 6" wide on pretty much a cliff face and there's a tree hanging out over the trail. i had to hug the tree with my right hand , lean the bike way out, and feather the clutch to just idle around until my bars would clear.

continued up 3rd divide, then butcher ranch, then back around big boulder trail, with a sighting of a pretty good size brown bear (300 lb range?) and more 6" wide trails with steep dropoffs) down to the bottom, then up red oak trail. pretty good snowdrifts at the top, but i managed to push/ride/flail through. unfortunately, chimney rock trail was blocked off by massive drifts with no safe way around, so i turned around and headed down craycroft ridge instead. holy cow! what a view.

friday i did lavezzola trail all the way to the top (more narrow exposed hillside bits, and 2' deep stream crossings, and another bear in the trail (a little one this time). that trail freaked me out a little too much to go back down it alone, so i looped around with about 15 miles of pavement, fought up the gold lake ohv trail and through 2 miles of intermittent drifts on gold ridge (even managed to trip backing up out of a drift and get pinned under my bike for a bit), and then down the butcher ranch/3rd divide trail (the famous "downieville downhill" to mountain bikers).

then, after 170 miles of dirtbiking in 1 1/2 days, i hopped on my mountain bike for a brutal 30 mile ride, featuring almost 3 hrs of climbing followed by 1:15 of rocky twisty descending on butcher ranch and 2nd divide. i was glad i didn't do 2nd divide on the scooter alone, i woulda been scared silly.

so today i'm tired, but already planning another trip back to downieville in 2 weeks. i can sum up the riding in the area with these words: narrow, rocky, spectacular.

as a sidenote, in 200 miles of riding over 2 days, i came across 4 humans on the trails.

-sparkymarky

p.s. if you have time to ride in norcal in the next few weeks, and need a partner, drop me a line marklweaver@hotmail.com

Posted by: fremontguy---------------------

Sounds like fun, I think

I stayed with the safe and sane trails of Middlecreek Sunday. Good 100 mile ride, temps not to hot.

Posted by: NVR FNSH---------------------

Quote:

Originally posted by fremontguy
Sounds like fun, I think I stayed with the safe and sane trails of Middlecreek Sunday. Good 100 mile ride, temps not to hot.

Maybe you stayed safe.... My foot kinda hurts

I think I figured out what happened. The toe of my boot is pushed/dented up & back. I think I hit the basketball sized rock in the middle of the trail. I'm guessing I subconciously avoided hitting the rock with the wheels by passing to it's right and happened to be coming down in the suspension travel - with my left foot right in front of it. Toes went up/back. Driving home in my manual transmission equiped truck was rather, umm, painful.

Can't wait to do it again.

Velosaipens - Think you'll be up for Downieville mid/late July or early August?

Brian

Posted by: velosapiens---------------------

i was planning to head back up there in a couple weeks, maybe the july 12,13, 14 time-frame. not sure if i'll be working during the week by then again. it would be cool to meet up and ride.

mw

Posted by: fremontguy---------------------

Downieville is pretty cool. Rode the Lavezzola trail up around Gold lake down the Divide trails last week. Saw maybe 4 patchs of snow up by Pacific Crest trail.

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downieville norcal

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