Old Highway 89 (East Pasture Loop #0886)

Dogs Unknown

E-Bikes Allowed

The trail is open to cars and motos, but you hardly ever see them here.

ATTENTION! There's an informal shooting range on the Russell Valley Road, at the south end of this trail. If you are coming from the south, it's best to stop and ask any shooters to give you 3-5 minutes to pass the danger section behind the hillside: slugs regularly fly over the embankment and sizzle by overhead or hit the road (if you look, you'll see them lying around). Needless to say, you don't want to get hit by one, so don't linger around on the first 1/4-mile or so of the trail!

If you are coming from the north, it's best to cross the highway and use the Old Fibreboard Road #010 for this stretch. Or take your chances if it's early on a weekday: the shooters usually show up in the afternoons after work (especially in late summer before hunting season), or on weekends and holidays. And you can hear them long before you are in range.

If you are headed north out of Truckee, you've got some hill-climbing to do. This trail leaves the Russell Valley Road (886) shortly after passing the logging and aggregate operations at Hobart Mills. There are some feral apple trees near the gravel piles on the west side of the road if it's late summer and you want a snack.

If you see vehicles or hear shooting at the informal range at the intersection where the trail leaves the road, stop and ask them to wait for you to pass (see "Need to Know" section!).

This trail is the old highway, so you'll be riding on ancient pavement that gets worse the farther you go. But this is by far the easiest and most pleasant way to pass north through this area: busy HWY-89 lacks shoulders and has many logging, livestock, and hay trucks, and the parallel Old Fibreboard Road #010 is hot and dusty, with occasional OHVs or trucks (it's fine for going south and downhill, but unpleasant going north and uphill). This Old Highway trail even has some shade, unless you ride it at high noon in the summer.

You cross under a power line, and by the end of the trail, the pavement is entirely shattered, eventually ending at a wash. You can cross the wash and climb over the guardrail to reach the highway. Or, just before you reach the wash look for a faint singletrack that goes up the right (northeast) embankment and continues north, paralleling Hwy-89 (this trail is called FedEx).