Archive for category: Rides

Coming home from Sea Otter we stopped in Winnemucca for the night.   The next morning a quick Google search for MTB trails in central Nevada led us to the Bloody Shins area right outside town.

Gotta say it was a real treat to find some great MTB specific trails out where we expected none.  It’s fun, swoopy and fast.  Even the “green” singletrack trails are a blast.

We started out at the trailhead on the east side of town – just past the high school.  From there we worked a generally counter clockwise loop hitting the Snake, Lizard and Afterthought trails while gaining elevation toward the back of the system.  Afterthought is a great trail to climb – skinny, turny and designed so that there are a lot of breaks in the climb.  Really nice work in trail design.  The “intermediate” loop takes you out to the Lost Forest area where there were a ton of other unmarked singletrack trails crossing.  Wished we had more time to explore around more.

Oh yeah, I love finding rusty shot-up cars in the desert – that’s another reason I loved this ride so much!  It’s worth a stop if you’re traveling through on I-80.

So, I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time now.  We have friends who have raced the CTR and there have been mixed reviews as to how the ride is.

It’s hard.  The experience is awesome.  I was sort of expecting hundreds of miles of trail like there is around Buffalo Creek or around Durango.  Those parts of the trail are so fun on a bicycle.  Other parts are not fun at all – unless hours of hike-a-bike are your thing.

We took our time, didn’t ride at night and waited for our stuff to dry out each morning. We got rained on almost every night, chased off a high ridge by lightning and had more than a couple mechanicals.