July 6th, 2022 – Welcome to Summer in the Eastern Sierra, the best riding this time of year is early morning in the Bishop area and all day long up in the higher elevations.

Unless you’re riding in the Mammoth Mountain Bike Park we always recommend you ride during the morning hours. Bring extra water and don’t leave food in your car when you go off for a ride, the bears can break in and ruin your day. 

The Mammoth Mountain Bike Park is open to the top, try the easy way down via off the top or the more extreme route on Skid Marks.

You can take that later trail and ride all the way down to Little Eagle Lodge, a nice 3100-foot vertical drop. From Eagle just do the short ride up Kelly Rd and ride back to the Village and you catch the Mountain Bike Shuttle back to Main Lodge.

It’s been cool and breezy in the bike park, perfect for long cross-country rides. Try this lap out of the Main Lodge, take Downtown to Gopher Trail to Paper Route to Manzanita to Upper Paper Route to Uptown, and back to Main Lodge. I did this ride the other day and it was great.

Should be a great week in the park remember that 16 and 2 only run Fridays into Sundays.  Here is a link to the trail status page.

Other areas to Mountain Bike right now:

In Mammoth Lakes, both Mountain View to Minaret Vista and the Knolls Loop by Shady Rest Park are open and in great shape.

Mammoth Rock Trail is a great family ride to try out, but do watch for others as this is a shared-use trail. Lots of bikers, hikers, and horses coming both up and down this trail.

Trails and service roads out in the Inyo Forest are also all open, however, watch out for sections of sandy road on some of those forest service bike routes. I would be riding a wide tubeless tire with low pressure in these conditions for sure.

Lower Rock Creek Canyon is sweet right now, but it will be hot by mid-day. Ride early if you can and watch for downhill bikers, hikers, fisher people, and dogs. I saw three of those combos last Friday on that trail.

Chipmunk Canyon in Bishop I ride here a couple of times a week in the Summer with a 7:30 AM start. By 9:30 AM the sun is very hot in that area so you want to ride early or forget it.

Sand Canyon from Upper Rock Creek Lake is a 4000-foot vertical fun run on a mix of old service roads and single-track trails. This one is open and ready for those looking for a long adventure.