Recreation

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Mountain bikers who ride McCall experience a terrain that is anything but boring, from forest service roads to single track trails right outside your door. Brundage Mountain and Tamarack Resort both have lift served mountain biking trails as well. All of these things caused Sunset Magazine to rate the McCall area as one of the best in the West.

Popular trails include the Huckleberry Trail in Ponderosa State Park, Loon Lake Trail and Twenty Mile Lakes Trail. The Loon Lake Trail is an all day adventure and is rated from intermediate to advanced while the Twenty mile Lakes Trail along the Upper Payette Lake has a little something for everyone.

Road biking in the McCall area offers varying scenery and terrain and little traffic to contend with. Our favorite scenic tours are Warren Wagon Road to the Summit, Farm to Market and West Mountain Road. The 85.7 mile Weiser River Trail is the longest non-motorized, multiple use rails to trail in Idaho, starting in Weiser and running to Rubicon, just south of New Meadows.

Our favorite ride: The 16 mile Payette Lake Loop-good road biking all the way around except at the north end which has an easy riding good dirt road. Along the loop there are several spots to pull off for short breaks, including North Beach. A good side trip on this journey is a ride down Lick Creek Road on the east side to check out the Creek and Little Payette Lake.

The Valley County Pathways is a citizen driven project formed to develop a network of valley-wide pathways in Long Valley and there is now a county approved master plan that creates a blueprint for a 100 mile pathway system to connect the communities of McCall, Donnelly, Lake Fork, Roseberry and Cascade, complete a pathway around Payette Lake and establish a corridor around Lake Cascade.

Check McCall area retailers for locally authored publications - "Mountain Biking in McCall" by Stephen Stuebner and Roger Phillips is one of the best.