Tamarancho in July
Last week I took a trip up to Fairfax to ride in the incredible anomaly that is Camp Tamarancho.
Where else can you find a sign like this?
The first time I visited the park and came across this sign, I imagined it to be some kinda Br’er Rabbit psychology: park officials, figuring all mountain bikers for scofflaws, tell us to stay on the singletrack and assume we’ll instead “poach” the fire roads. Well, I discovered early on in my visits to the park that my outlandish assumption was wrong: they really do want mountain bikers to stay on the singletrack. This is true even as you ascend Iron Springs fire road into the park - when you see Alchemist Trail jut off to the left, that’s your cue to leave the fire road; it’s not made entirely obvious by the signage, but they don’t want you on the fire road beyond that point.
Here’s another sign you don’t see all that often:
Camp Tamarancho is one of the great pay-to-play parks in the Bay Area. It’s $5/day to ride, and you can also purchase annual passes. The loop plus the Alchemist out-and-back gives you 8.5 miles of technical singletrack, with many switchbacks, a few rocky sections (one of which I’ve never cleared), and a few sections that precariously skirt ravines. It’s fun in either direction, but first-timers are best off taking it clockwise.
