I’m not exactly sure what the opposite of Las Vegas is. Maybe it’s the bare walls of a pious nun’s dormitory. Or a homemade pie cooling on a neighbor’s doorstep. But it might also be the sleepy Nevada town of Caliente — population 840.
We’re only 150 miles north of the Strip’s brittle glamour, but we might as well be on the other side of the moon. Need a bed? Try the Shady Motel. Need a meal? Try the Side Track cafe. Need much of anything else? Maybe keep driving.
Unless you love riding mountain bikes in the desert.
That’s why we’re here. Photographer John Shafer and I are holed up in Caliente because, despite its small size and sleepy atmosphere, Caliente has a surprise up its sleeve for riders — over 60 miles of serious singletrack trails.
From small town to MTB mecca
Christine Harrington is a force to be reckoned with. When she and her husband, John, started riding around these hills way back in 2013, they saw the potential for a major trail system — but these things take time, persuasion, and money. It didn’t hurt that John was working for Lincoln County BLM at the time, and a series of meetings between IMBA, Lincoln County, the BLM, and other stakeholders finally persuaded the city, and ground was broken in 2018.
Now over 60 miles of trails have been designed and built — some by IMBA, some by Sierra Trail Works, and some by volunteers. There’s a small but perfectly formed pump track and skills park in town, too, as well as an annual festival. If you were transforming your small town into as much of a riding mecca as you possibly could, you could do a lot worse than what’s been achieved here.
Nolan Avery, as well as being the genial owner of the Shady Motel and a very nice man, is also serving as our guide on our one-day sampler of the trails here. As a former motocross rider, ATV nut, and general enthusiast for all kinds of desert fun, Nolan’s a ripper — his eMTB is chomping at the bit to get going as fast as possible, and I’m sorry we have to keep stopping for photos. Christine — who now organizes the annual MTB festival — has also chosen to join us.
But the handful of images you see here barely do the landscape justice. This is, in the best possible way, the middle of nowhere. Scrub dots the rusty, jagged rock faces, small cacti lie in wait for the unwary ankle, and there’s a remnant of mist burning off the peaks as we jump out of the shuttle truck and make our way to the start of Upper Ella, a black diamond downhill trail that’s easily shuttled up the road from town.
Ella Mountain Trail
Upper Ella is a pretty raw trail — not because it hasn’t been built well, but because raw material is all they have. It’s not a trail with some rocks — it IS rock, top to bottom. Some of it’s small and jagged, and wants to chew on your tires like a hungry dog. Some of it’s huge and sheer, and towers above you as you shred. And some of it’s sloped, grippy, and begs to be launched off with undisguised glee.
Upper Ella is a blast. It’s technical — these little rocks require concentration, precise wheel placement, and a lot of trust in your suspension — but not so chunky as to stop the flow. There’s an embarrassment of line choices on offer: a jib off the slab here, a hop over a boulder line there, and the whoop factor is high. The trail offers up over a thousand feet of descending over seven miles, with every inch of it worthy of serious concentration, not to mention a view of the desolate desert beauty all around. If you were to ride Upper Ella to the main Ella Mountain Trail, it would yield a 22-mile descent with over 3,000 feet of elevation loss.
Rocky Top and Boar’s Head
After a quick break for snacks, water, and to wave farewell to Christine (her real job is dragging her reluctantly back to Las Vegas), we set off to the other side of the valley to hit Rocky Top. This blue trail is a short two-mile circular loop that can be accessed in a variety of ways — via a black connector trail from the Ella side or up the nearby access road. It’s way less technical than Ella, but it’s mostly flat, and an excellent way to see a huge amount of the local landscape and have a good time while you’re doing it. The geology here means even a blue trail rider needs to keep their wits about them while navigating the narrow chutes. Rock hops and the constant need to shift weight and body position make this super fun.
It’s also an excellent warm-up for Boar’s Head, the blue descending trail that unfortunately marks the end of our day — unfortunate because we’ve just dipped our toe in the waters of what’s on offer. Boar’s Head is much flowier — a mile of fast, adrenaline-filled descending, with all that rock flying past, under or around our tires as quickly as we can navigate it. In stony desert environments, this kind of speed can be hard to come by — the constant up and down of Sedona or Moab never gives you enough room to get above 10mph, but on Boar’s Head, we’re flying — screeching to a dusty crawl for tricky corners, then blasting back up to full speed for the chattering rock gardens and smooth shelves between them.
They have built it — you should come.
If there’s one thing missing from this extensive, exciting, and extremely scenic trail system, it’s probably you. A small rural town like this doesn’t always have enough local riders, builders, or advocates to keep their trails in the spotlight, but that’s a shame. Caliente is right on Route 93 and easily reached from Las Vegas, Hurricane, and Cedar City. If you’re riding Southern Nevada or the nearby Western Utah trails for a week and you don’t spend at least a day here, you’d be missing out. My sense is that they’re just a few hundred visiting riders short of a bike shop, an enduro race, and a jaw-dropping shreddit from a local sponsored athlete.
So do the right thing — get your bike on the rack, make sure to bring your pads, and get on over here. You won’t be disappointed.
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