Was thinking about this yesterday, on a long pull. I have “dirt privilege”, in the parlance of our times. I am able to walk out of my front door and get into some good rides. This isn’t a “brag” on my part, I am curious to hear about you folks front porch rides. What I mean by front porch is what are you folks getting into walking out of your front door?
I live in a far northern California town called Redding. It is at the north end of the Sacramento valley at the foot of the Cascade and Siskiyou mountains. It is the second sunniest city in the nation and has a very mild climate though it is very hot in the summers. It is surrounded by public lands administered by the US Forest Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, etc.
At any rate, I can walk out of my front door and ride a [100 mile loop](https://www.strava.com/activities/10266247892#comments) that is 65 miles singletrack, 10 miles class III gravel, 15 miles class I MUP and 11 miles road. Of those 11 miles of road only two are of “actual roads” and not in neighborhoods connecting trail systems, the rest are all on public lands. Alternatively, I have some gravel century options that are 60 miles class III & IV gravel, 20 (ish) miles road, and 20 miles class I MUP: [variant 1](https://www.strava.com/activities/10156013556), [variant 2](https://www.strava.com/activities/10236958350).
Please share your front porch rides. I do some traveling and really love riding to the trailhead.
by NorCal_Hoosier
5 Comments
I mean from the neighborhoods in Boise’s foothills you can access trails that lead to forest service roads and from there you are hooked into a network of dirt roads that could take you to Stanley or Ketchum, or even as far as Canada.
I ride 4 miles on suburban roads and paved rail trail to the Corner Canyon network of trails in south eastern Salt Late County, Utah. About 1500 ft vertical to the saddle with lots of route choices, super twisting single track and double track gravel. Easy to get 20 miles off road up here. Exposed with sagebrush on the south facing slopes, and heavy cottonwoods and some pine on the northern side. Rock gardens to flow. You can drop over the top into the Alpine/Lehi side and find many miles more of high desert alpine and route back on the road if you don’t want to climb it again.
I can ride out my front door and ride on and around north table and south table mountain. Or ride north and do a ~40 mile route through a former EPA Superfund site, Rocky Flats..
Northwest Arkansas. Similar story.
I have a 3 mile climb that gains about 1200 feet up a dead end road to get out of the valley I live in that leads to either singletrack or gated gravel in a state forest. That state forest borders the Gifford Pinchot national forest. I ride from home 99% of the time and can easily do 100 with 10-12k of climbing without much planning and see only a handful of cars. A ton single track can be linked together as well, pretty easy to do all day MTB rides. Lots of places to filter water but virtually no infrastructure like stores or cell service so I ride with a InReach almost every ride. Tons of bike packing routes use the same trails and routes I ride all the time. It’s pretty damn ideal if you like rough chunky gravel and getting out there.