Trail Overview
Butcher Ranch is a long trail near Downieville – 6.6 miles long, and is part of the “Downieville Downhill” route from Packer Lake Saddle to Downieville – very popular with mountain bikers. There is a big bridge crossing early on over Pauley Creek. The west half of the trail is shelfy and narrow, with exposed sections as the trail is cut into a shelf high above the creek. It goes past scenic mossy rock walls, and has lots of technical features within the trail, including embedded boulder faces, root ledges, and rocky ravine crossings. It veers away from the shelf and goes through more forested sections that are full of embedded rocks. After the intersection with Pauley, it parallels the Butcher Ranch Creek instead. It ascends up a couple of wide and smooth switchbacks, and comes up to a major rock feature that is a pile of bedrock like a chunky waterfall with multiple lines to choose from, but with big gaps between the layers of rocks. It continues to have frequent rock and root ledges, but less exposure as it veers away from the creek valley and goes through the rolling forested hillsides instead. It gains a lot of elevation in the eastern half as it switchbacks up to the intersection with Sunrise. Overall, this trail gains 2,500 feet of elevation from west to east. This trail is closed 1/1 – 3/31.
Difficulty
This is an intermediate route due to several large rock and root obstacles, and narrow and exposed segments. The obstacles are frequent throughout the entire route, but most of the exposure is on the western half of the route.
