Forest City Bike Trails

With snow possible in the high country, we decided to follow our son-in-law's interest in some exciting new bike trails around Forest City. 



Lunch view

Turns out Frank had explored these trails before so he sent us a GPS trace even though he couldn't join us.  As we drove up Ridge Road towards Pike, Forest City, and Alleghany from Highway 49, we narrowly missed hitting a bear who was slowly sauntering across the road.  Not a lot to be afraid of up there.  No cars, no people.  We drove into Alleghany, pop. 12, by mistake and saw twice as many vehicles as the purported population.  The roads petered out and we realized our mistake so turned around and headed back up the road to Mountain House and Pliocene Ridge roads.  From there we stayed on top of the ridge to the "Big Tree Parking Lot".  The tree was not huge but did stand out as being by itself. 

We noticed 3 single track bike trails taking off so we were where we wanted to be.  To the left was "Ridge Runner", middle trail was Sandusky, and the one on the right was the Truckee Ditch Trail.  Our plan was to follow the one on the right until the place that was marked by Frank on our trace, and then head cross-country down to the Sandusky trail and return to the parking lot. 



different life stages

The going was easy enough, following the contours of the steep terrain with the usual big curves back and forth typical of bike trails.  Besides that, there were some moguls here and there to add fun for the bikers but they felt pretty silly to us.  It was a well-built trail wending it's way through dry forest.  "Nothing technical," as bikers like to say.  It took quite a while before we got an outlook but we were so turned around by then that we whisked out compasses and drove a stick into the ground to look at it's shadow to see which way was north.  We were looking south when we thought we were looking north.  In the distance we could see clouds dropping rain on some distant place but it was sunny with only a few clouds where we were. 



bike bridge

bike bridge

The cross-country section wasn't hard once we realized where a use trail seemed to be.  It was only slightly steeper than what we had experienced so far. Between the end of the trail (where a mine had been) and the Sandusky trail was a bit steep so we let ourselves down using small tree trunks.  Quickly we had a groomed trail back with carefully piled slash from the trail making.  There were quite a few piles surrounded by some clearing.  We arrived shortly at the piece de resistance:  a stone bike/hike bridge over what is now a dry Oregon Creek.  It was beautifully made with some biker challenges around as well.  Having seen the video, we knew that the rock for the bridge was procured from slabs high up the mountain.  They had been wrapped in plastic and let down the steep mountain sides during the winter.  Very impressive.



Big Tree Parking Lot

Realizing we were still far from the parking lot, we high-tailed it back on the Sandusky for about another hour.  We had hiked over 9 miles with an elevation gain of about 1500 feet. 



Beautiful Forest City

We decided to explore Forest City  which is off Mountain House Road.  With the fall foliage in the maples and dogwood, we were totally charmed.  What used to be a population of 1400 people, was now 40 but once again, we saw no one around.   There appeared to be a dusty museum and many artifacts from mining days lying around the area.  There was even a working steam-driven stamp mill.  There must be some time during the year when you can see (or hear) it in operation.


Forest City






Fire station being held up by heavy chain



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