Goat Trail-Rancho Mirage, Ca.

This past weekend, Priscilla and I had the privileged to head out to Rancho Mirage (near Palm Springs) for a Marriage Retreat that our church hosted. Since this was a weekend-long event, Priscilla and I decided to bring our bikes and see what the California Desert had to offer.

Our weapons of choice, the KHS XC Team (Priscilla), and the KHS Flagstaff, a Full Suspension 29er.

I did some Googling for local trails in Rancho Mirage and found one called Goat Trail. From what I read this place has tons to offer. Great climbs, fire roads, whoopdee doos, single track and I even read that there’s a downhill trail there. Since we really didn’t know which trails to take, we took the main fire road up which took us up some really steep parts. So steep that even Priscilla had to dismount and walk her bike a few steps.

The climbing was pretty tough for me, and it was evident by the amount of times that I was dry heaving. We get to a flatter section of the trail and from there there are tons of single track we could take. Not quite sure where to go, we tried a few of them to see where they would lead to. Luckily this trail was pretty user friendly, basically if you thin you got lost, all you had to do is ride your bike towards the city, and you’re back in civilization. The view from the top was really nice. You can see the whole valley and I can only imagine that this place would be so much prettier in the winter where the mountains would be covered in snow.

We spent a little over an hour at Goat Trail, but it was clear to us that a person could literally spend up to 5 hours just riding and playing on the trail. I had to get one of these dorky pics, you know, the bike above the head shots, why? Cuz, I’m a winner!