Mountain Biking Painted Rock in Tahoe

It’s been roughly a month since I launched the Tahoe 20 mountain bike project. If you missed my previous post where I announced the project, the synopsis is that I am attempting to complete a list of 20 iconic mountain bike rides before winter. At the time of announcing the project, there were 20 weeks until December, so the timing seemed serendipitous. Now that we are a month into the project, I’ve completed about 1/2 of the rides, and I’ve determined some of them deserve a full review on this blog and my youtube channel. To kick this off, let’s take a look at the Painted Rock route that I completed a couple of weeks ago.

Painted Rock Route Stats

#	Ride Name	Location	Difficulty	Distance	Type	Vertical	TrailForks Link
1	Painted Rock	Tahoe City	Difficult	14 miles	Out & Back with loop	+2,340 ft/ -2,340 ft	Palisades to Painted Rock

Takeaways & Lessons Learned

1. An alternate route would have made this ride more fun

The route we chose was a beast. I knew going into the ride that the climb up Western States and the Wallternate were going to be a challenge. It’s a relentless semi-techy climb and we did it in the middle of the day heat. But believe it or not, that isn’t what did me in. What turned this route from challenging to suffering was the portion of the ride after OTB. Viewing the trail on the map, I assumed it would be a simple bit of climbing and then go into a nice decent. In reality, the trail that followed OTB was a never-ending ride that climbed and decented at such a cadence that you could never really get in a good flow.

Most people who do this ride exit out on the Deer Creek trail. The problem with Deer Creek is that it exits you onto private property and not being familiar with the trail, I didn’t feel comfortable trying to find the connector to the road in someone’s backyard. However, next time I’ll either go with someone who can show me how to do this or simply skip OTB and do this route as an out-and-back to the Painted Rock viewpoint.

2. Insufficient water makes everything hard

I know, I know, this is obvious, right? Well sometimes the simplest things are hardest to learn. Josh and I simply underestimated the amount of water and calories we needed for this ride and didn’t realize it until we were over halfway into the route. In total we had 2 liters of water between the 2 of us and I think 3-3.5 would have been better.

3. Type 2 fun gets more fun as time passes

The idea of type 2 fun is something outdoor sports enthusiasts are very familiar with. If you’ve never been introduced to “type 2” fun, it essentially is an activity that is considered “fun” after it’s complete vs. something “fun” in the moment (type 1 fun). As the days pass from completing this ride, I find myself forgetting how miserable this ride was and wondering if I wasn’t being a bit dramatic when I called it a suffferfest. Maybe it wasn’t all that bad after all? But who knows, maybe I’ve just crashed too many times this summer.

Overall thoughts on this Ride

Would I do it again? Sure, why not? But maybe not again this summer. And definitely with more water!

Watch the Full Ride Preview on YouTube

Gear Used on this Ride

Disclosure: I only recommend products I would use myself and all opinions expressed here are my own. This post may contain affiliate links and I may earn a small commission when you click the link at no additional cost to you. 

1. MTB Shorts: Fox Racing
2. MTB Jersey: Fox Racing
3. MTB Helmet: Fox Racing
4. MTB Pads: Fox Racing
5. MTB Gloves:
6. MTB Shoes: Five tens
7. Insta360 Camera with FREE selfie stick
8. FidLock Waterbottle

Have you ridden to Painted Rock? What do you think of this ride?