Steve's Mountain Bike Page
Turlock, California

Downieville Downhill, Via Pauley Creek

July 23, 2003

I've been wanting to do the Downieville Downhill ever since I heard about it but I didn't have anybody to ride with until I met Dennis a few weeks ago. Immediately after our first ride at Wilder Ranch 10 days ago we began the planning. It was everything we had expected and more. I'm just a cross country aerobic cyclist at heart but it's nice to be scared to death and tax yourself to your limits once in a while. The heart of our ride was the Downieville Downhill via Pauley Creek. Don't let the phrase "downhill" fool you. Although we descended about 4,500 feet in 22 miles, there seemed to be as much uphill as down, at least the way we went. Roger has a pretty good description of the Pauley Creek trail (ride #37) and we mostly followed his directions. However, instead of dropping down from the 7,150 ft. Packer Saddle shuttle drop off point, we pedaled up several hundred more feet before starting down. The first part of the downhill was a bit discouraging because it was steep, old rutted doubletrack with massive amounts of large rocks (babyheads). My arms and nerves were shot after just a few miles and I began to wonder what we got ourselves into. Fortunately, however, we made it through to "smoother" trails a little farther down. There were indeed huge drops, massive downhill switchbacks, lots of rocks, and fairly long gently sloping downhills. I did a fair amount of walking down the steepest sections. Dennis tried and made virtually everything the trail threw at him. He has quite the technical skills and balance. Either I have to practice on the downhill switchbacks at New Melones (GH), or not do these types of trails. The knees were sore most of the trip, probably more from downhill walking than the biking. Roger suggested taking the Third rather than Second Divide trail at the bottom because the Second is "technical and exposed". However, since we drove all that way, we wanted to get our money's worth. We took the more technical Second Divide trail. Although it had many long expanses of rolling downhills through beautiful forests, it was indeed highly technical and exposed along the river canyon. There was plenty of discouraging hike a bike there. After that you have a choice of taking a fire road back to town or doing the First Divide trail. Again, wanting to get our money's worth, we took the First Divide trail. In my opinion the First Divide was the highlight of the trip! It is rolling, semi-technical, hard packed, rocky, twisty singletrack, mostly along narrow cliffs above a roaring river. I call it semi-technical only because it is on some pretty narrow high cliffs. There were perhaps only two short places you had to haul your bike over. The weather was perfect, perhaps 75 - 80 degrees, most of the trail was in deep shaded forests, and the many views along deep canyons above roaring rivers made it quite an enjoyable ride. Amazingly, there were no falls. I, however, scraped my already cut up left thigh (from my recent New Melones (GH)) along the side of a rock early on and it bothered me quite a bit the rest of the trip. Be sure to visit Dennis' site for his comments, still photos and detailed trail descriptions. Here is the route map. 

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