Ridgecrest, CA has a trail network in the El Paso Mountains right up the road from town. We spent a couple hours checking out the trails. For being a local trail network right in town it has pretty fun trails and climbing up and down to the ridgeline you can rack up the elevation easily. Just the little 11 mile loop had 1500’ of elevation gain.
There are a lot of trails out here and nothing is marked so you either use the Trailforks app or just head out and turn on a different trail whenever you want and hope to make it back to the trailhead eventually. It’s easy to get your bearing by looking for the giant mountains to the west were Grand Sequoia National Forest is. Also, you can see down into Ridgecrest from some sides of the trail system. The trails are fairly easy as far as technicality goes. It’s straight up good old fashioned cross country riding with views. If you’re in the area I’d recommend checking these trails out. They are suitable for trail running and hiking too!
We were in Ridgecrest to see about getting our truck tire fixed. Good news, we made chicken salad out of chicken shit by getting to ride singeltrack. Bad news, the truck tire isn’t fixable. We tore through the entire thing…10 layers and all. So, we have to make a trip to a bigger town that has a Discount Tire to get it warrantied. Roll with the punches.
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