Save the date: McCall Mountain Bike Festival coming up Aug. 27-28; 5 classic McCall rides

Latest smoke map from NASA 

Jug Mountain Ranch will be hosting the first high school mountain bike
race of the season on Saturday, the 27th. 500 riders are expected. 

Beautiful scene from Ponderosa State Park 

Along the Huckleberry Trail on west side of the peninsula

Huck surveys the scene at Osprey Point in Ponderosa Park 

Jim Giuffre on 20 Mile Trail 

Steve on 20 Mile Trail 

Bear Grass on the way to Loon Lake 

Always a happy day at Loon Lake 

Hi all,

It sure is nice to see a more moderate weather forecast for temperatures in the 80s next week (highs of 70s in the mountains) and hopefully less-smoky skies with some wind to blow the valley clear. Many thanks to the firefighters working hard on the 81,450-acre Pioneer Fire.

The great folks at the Central Idaho Mountain Biking Association (CIMBA) are hosting another Mountain Bike Festival in McCall on Aug. 27-28, so I'm giving folks a week's notice to plan to visit the McCall area for a wonderful weekend of biking! Bring your SUPs or preferred watercraft and double-dip!

CIMBA is serving up group rides on Saturday and Sunday, bike demos during the weekend, and BBQ, beer and music on Saturday night! Free shuttles will be running Sunday for riding the Goose Creek Loop, a challenging 14-mile ride. Meet at Depot Park at 9:30 a.m. Sunday to sign waivers and load bikes. Rigs leave at 10 a.m. JMR is hosting the first Idaho high school mountain bike race of the season on Saturday, the 27th called the Jug Jamboree. They are expecting 500 racers to participate.

On Saturday, group rides include the Payette Rim Trail, an awesome ride close to town, East Fork of Lake Fork Trail, an excellent ride in a higher-elevation setting, a 10-mile ride on McCall Pathways and the North Valley Trail south of McCall with yours truly, and $25 discounted lift tickets for mountain biking at Brundage Mountain. On Sunday, there's the Goose Creek ride mentioned above and a group ride at Bear Basin, the premier place to take kids mountain biking in McCall. Fun for all abilities! Please watch the CIMBA web site and Facebook page for more details.

In the meantime, I'll recommend some classic McCall-area rides that people would enjoy, no matter what. As we move into September, fall weather is fabulous for riding these trails. My guide, Mountain Biking in McCall, has 40 rides in the Valley County area, including all of these rides.

• New Huckleberry Loop at Ponderosa State Park - This is my favorite before-dinner ride when I get to McCall late afternoon. It takes a little over an hour to loop around the peninsula of Ponderosa State Park on lakeshore trails on the east and west sides of the park. If you haven't tried this loop yet, you've got to do it! Start at the junction of the Pilgrim Cove Road and the park boundary. Be aware that the trail has rocks and roots as you go along, and some steep uphill and downhill pitches, so there are some challenging sections for those just learning how to ride singletrack. It's good practice, however. Rocks and roots are part of the trail experience just about everywhere in the Payette National Forest.
• Bear Basin Trails - Easiest mountain trails close to McCall for kids and families. Fun for adults too! The main trailhead is west of McCall near the top of the hill on the right-hand side on Idaho 55 before you get to the Little Ski Hill. There's a trail map at the trailhead. And most of the trails are well-marked. There are fewer rocks and roots on the Bear Basin trails than the Huckleberry Trail. 
• 20 Mile Trail out and back - This is a fun singletrack that slowly descends the 20 Mile Creek drainage in the first few miles and then gets steeper and more technical as you climb toward Duck Lake and Lick Creek Summit. Ride up 20 Mile trail as long as you want, turn around and return to the trailhead. Upper Payette Lake is located across the road for a quick dip. 
• Loon Lake Loop - This is a super-fun beautiful ride that I love to do whenever I have a little more time. The Loon Lake short loop, starting from the Chinook Campground trailhead, past Burgdorf Hot Springs, on the forest road to Secesh Meadows and Warren, is 10 miles long. Rated strong intermediate. Takes 2-4 hours, depending on riding speed and how long you hang out at Loon Lake for lunch. There are technical rock and root features on the trails in places. 
• Bear Basin - Brundage Lookout - Elk Trail - #488 Loop - This is a longer ride, 18 miles, rated advanced. The ride features over 2,500 feet of gain to climb the Bear Basin Road up to Brundage Lookout, then down Elk Trail to a point near the bottom of Brundage, and then you go left on Growler and climb up to a shoulder of the ski mountain where Forest Road #488 takes off for 4.5 miles back to Bear Basin Road. To start, I usually park at the buck fence on Bear Basin Road next to the east trailhead for Bear Basin Trails. 

All of these rides are fantastic! And there's many more to choose from! Be sure to attend the McCall Mountain Bike Festival to meet new people, learn about local trails from the locals, and enjoy a fun BBQ and party Saturday night!
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Bogus Basin Hill Climb is Saturday. Are you ready?
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Because of damage from the Pioneer Fire, Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation officials are expecting that public access to the six yurts in the Idaho City Park n' Ski Area complex northeast of Idaho City will be closed in the winter of 2016-17. The Whistling Pines yurt was destroyed by the fire, several outhouses have burned, and some of the canvas coverings on the other yurts were damaged as well. See story by Chadd Cripe in the Statesman for more detail. Refunds are being issued thru Aug. 30, and it sounds like IDPR will not be taking any reservations this winter because of the uncertainty of the situation.
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Boise rally for three-time Olympic gold medalist Kristin Armstrong is set for 1 p.m. on Sunday at Municipal Park. Should be fun! So great to see Kristin excel in her last Olympics ... she's GOLD all the way.
- SS

Try out the new trails at Jug Mountain Ranch, Ponderosa Park in McCall

Jug Mountain Ranch has true freeride trails! 

JMR has tons of sweet singletrack trails ... 

Click to enlarge 

Ask about the shuttle service! 

Harper's Hollow Trail 

Here's Steve enjoying the JMR trail system ...  

Hi all,

I went up to McCall last weekend to do some maintenance at our cozy cabin in McCall, and also to participate in the CIMBA-SWIMBA Spring Fling trail-work day last Saturday at Jug Mountain Ranch.

They had an awesome turnout of at least 50 people, many of them from Valley County, and the various trail crews accomplished a ton of work! Our group worked on tread, upslope and downslope shaping on the newly cut-in North Elk Trail. We rode the trails in the mid-afternoon (they're a bit lumpy but they'll be great once they're burned in), and then came back to the JMR Clubhouse for beers and a barbecue. Great time had by all!

For this week's tip, I highly recommend visiting Jug Mountain Ranch, just south of McCall east of Lake Fork, for a great hiking or biking experience with the family or friends. I'm sure a lot of Treasure Valley folks are heading to McCall now that the kids are out of school. The JMR trail system has been enhanced repeatedly in recent years with the assistance of CIMBA volunteers to the point where the densely forested mountains are laced with many sinewy singletracks between Upper Jug Reservoir and the Clubhouse trailhead.

In the early editions of my guide, Mountain Biking in McCall, I detailed a lower loop and an upper loop. That was in the mid-1990s and later. Nowadays, there are multiple trails to enjoy between Upper Jug Reservoir and the Clubhouse, including the Vandelay Trail, Harper's Hollow, Rolling Rock, Stitches Freeride Trail, Double Shot Freeride Trail, North Elk, South Elk and more. JMR has nice signs marking the various trails, and it has large trail maps at big junctions. This is all a HUGE improvement! Thanks to JMR owner David Carey and CIMBA for all of the stellar work! It's impressive!

It's especially fun to ride the area with locals who really know the trail system. So if you can attend one of the CIMBA work/ride days in the future, that'd be a bonus.  

In the meantime, here's a couple of loops that I'd recommend:

•   Ride #1 - From the Clubhouse, take South Elk, a fun and moderate singletrack on a cool tour of the lower JMR foothills to the South Boundary Road. Turn right and climb South Boundary Road, a two-track dirt road, to the Reservoir Junction. Ride over to the reservoir and do the Dam Loop. Enjoy the views. Take Vandelay, a really fun twisty singletrack, downhill over to Harper's Hollow Trail and take that singeltrack back to North Elk and return to the Clubhouse.   
• Ride #2 - Ride Mainline uphill to the Landing. Ride uphill on Vandelay to the Reservoir, take the Dam Loop over to the north, and pick up a downhill trail that takes you back to the Landing. Take Rolling Rock and North Elk back to the trailhead. 
• Ride #3 - Try out the Freeride Trails if you're so inclined ... they're really the only true freeride trails in the McCall area. Check 'em out and you be the judge.  

New trails also are getting cut-in at Ponderosa State Park! There's a new singletrack trail along the east shoreline of the peninsula that connects to the Huckleberry hiking and biking trail, and there's another singletrack that takes off from the main beach area and goes north through the huge ponderosa pines to the road to Osprey Point. You pop out on the road just short of the very top. We also rode a new trail that went from the beginning of the new Huck Jr. trail out so the south boundary of the park.

Here's a map of our tracks ...

The thing I love about the new trails at Ponderosa Park is that the trail system there has been pretty static for quite some time. They have lots of land to work with to provide more trails for the public to enjoy. Thanks to IDPR for making this happen!
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Other noteworthy things going on this weekend:

• Big water blowout in Riggins on Saturday. Tons of white-knuckle fun in big whitewater on the mighty Salmon River. 
• Weiser River Trail Bike Ride on Saturday - Ride the most fun and scenic part of the trail, the upper 28 miles from New Meadows to Council. The ride is mostly downhill. 

Have fun! 

- SS