The 2024 season marked several significant milestones for the Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship Pro Trail Crews, including officially passing 200 miles of new trail built in the Lost Sierra, making significant headway toward linking the communities of Quincy and Taylorsville via singletrack and expanding our trail building footprint into western Nevada and south toward Truckee.
In total, trail crews constructed 21.78 miles of new trail in 2024, bringing SBTS’ grand total to 216.38 since it formed as a nonprofit organization in 2003. Last year was another big one for trail maintenance, with crews keeping more than 310 miles of trail running smoothly in the Plumas, Lassen and Tahoe National Forests for all trail users to enjoy. Volunteers chipped in as well—771 volunteers contributing 4,914 hours to the cause in 2024, worth $174,741 in grant match value.
SBTS continued to staff three Pro Trail crews in 2024—one based in Quincy and focused on Mount Hough trail work, one in Downieville and a third in Portola/Graeagle—with a total of 11 full-time crew members between April and October. In the summer months, the Youth Crew added to the effort, with two paid crews of six members, each working five-week hitches in June and July. In total, SBTS employed 45 people in 2024.
With 2024 included, here are the total statistics since 2003:
216
Miles of new trail construction
2,869
Miles of trails maintained
9,587
Volunteers
135,966
Volunteer hours
4,100,000
Dollars Match Value from Volunteer Hours
Shovels in the Dirt
Last year’s new miles were built in the Plumas and Tahoe National Forests, in partnership with the leadership in those forests.
In the Plumas, crews built 7.41 miles of new trail on Mount Hough in Quincy, which is nearing completion of Phase 2 of a multi-year development project that will eventually result in a 78-mile motorized singletrack network. This year, crews built 3.2 miles of the temporarily named Trail #2, which will eventually link Quincy off the back of Mount Hough into Taylorsville. That trail is now nearly complete, with 1.06 of the 7.23 miles to go to link into Taylorsville. When completed, trail users will be able to ride or hike Lower Taylor Creek on the front side of Hough over the mountain into Taylorsville on 13 miles of continuous singletrack.
Elsewhere on Hough, crews made significant headway on Trail #8, which will eventually link Indian Falls Ridge to Mount Hough Trail, creating another top-to-bottom route from the 7,232-foot summit of Hough. They built 2.86 miles of Trail #8 last year, leaving .61 to go. They also built a half-mile on Trail #10, the eventual link between Trail #8 and the bottom of the Mount Hough Trail, and 1.29 miles on Upper Tollgate. Once that trail is complete, there will be a third top-to-bottom route off of Hough. Also in 2024, the Hough crew finished the final mile of the 3.2-mile Lower Indian Falls Ridge trail, which creates a more rugged, less traveled option off of the summit of Hough, down to Quarry Road. SEE MAP
On the Beckwourth Peak trail in Portola, also in the Plumas National Forest, crews checked off another half-mile of building, leaving less than a mile to go to close the 13.5-mile lollipop loop from Portola City Park. This project has been challenged by difficult work—the majority of the half-mile constructed in 2024 was done by benching through solid volcanic bedrock without proper blasting, which meant we relied on our Magnum buster and a hydraulic hammer on the mini excavator to complete it. Also, the 3,000-acre Gold Complex fire in July put this project on hold for two months while the forest was closed (SEE MAP). When it is finished, the trail will wrap around the base of Beckwourth Peak at 6,000 feet, completing a project that dates back to 2009, when the route was first identified, and which has thus far been funded through a combination of government grants and SBTS fundraisers. With the help of volunteers, SBTS also revived the non-motorized 6.5-mile Buzzards Roost Trail, a historic mining trail on the Feather River district of the Plumas National Forest, completing a new 1.5-mile section connecting the trail to Quincy LaPorte Road and a new trailhead. SEE MAP
In the Tahoe National Forest, partnerships with contractors Johnson Trails and Steve Wentz of Momentum Trail Concepts resulted in 7.2 miles of new trail in 2024—2 miles on Boca Ridge and 5.2 on Verdi Ridge. Truckee-based trailbuilder Erik Johnson machine-built on Verdi Ridge, a project funded by Sierra Nevada Conservancy in partnership with the Truckee Ranger District of the Tahoe National Forest and the Washoe Tribe that will total 15 miles once it’s finished. Once finished, it will connect to 14 miles of singletrack already constructed by SBTS and TNF on Boca Ridge to make up the East Zone Connectivity Project, linking Truckee to Verdi, Sierraville and Loyalton. We made great progress on Boca Ridge in 2024, thanks to a big assist from volunteers from Patagonia’s Reno distribution center and the Truckee Dirt Riders who joined us on multiple trail days to work on Boca Ridge.
On the maintenance side, crews kept up 159.2 miles in the Plumas National Forest, largely on the Mount Hough trail network, which has required significant continued post-fire restoration work, after much of the mountain burned in the 2021 Dixie Fire. This largely consists of logging out downed trees that were damaged in the fire, rotted and fell on their own. On three trails alone, Keddie, Mount Hough Trail and Indian Falls Ridge, crews did a combined 17 rounds of logout, clearing 700 downed trees. In total, SBTS cleared 1,154 down trees and removed 150 hazardous trees throughout 45 miles of the Mount Hough Trail network, for a total of 510 work hours.
Other maintenance work on Hough included rebuilding turns, building new drain dips and armored creek crossings, clearing drains, tread repair, smoothing braking bumps.
On the Tahoe National Forest, the Downieville Trail Crew maintained another 145.4 miles of trails, including completing a three-week maintenance project with the Pacific Crest Trail Association on a section of the Pacific Crest Trail about 4 miles from Packer Saddle. That work entailed filling gabion baskets then using them to construct a retaining wall to reinforce the trail. Each basket required the crew to dig out 2 yards of material, which they then sorted through to find rocks big enough to stay in the basket. The basket was then filled with those rocks and an armored face for added sturdiness. The Downieville crew also carried out regular annual maintenance on the Downieville Trail Network, including First, Second and Third Divide Trails, Big Boulder, Pauley Creek and Butcher Ranch up on the Sierra Crest, Lavezzola, Downie River, Cal-Ida, Halls Ranch, Fiddle Creek Ridge, Canyon Creek, Fir Cap, Red Ant, Heliport, Empire Creek, Red Oak, Craycroft and Gibraltar.
Youth Crew Recap
The SBTS Youth Crew once again played a pivotal role in SBTS’ summer maintenance projects. In 2024, two paid crews of 12 local Plumas County teens, 14-17 years old, each worked in five-week hitches. The crew built a half-mile of new trail on Mount Hough’s Upper Tollgate and maintained 20.5 miles of trail, including 2.2 miles of the Haskell Peak Trail in Graeagle, 6.2 miles of the North Yuba Trail in Downieville and several trails in the Lakes Basin. You can find a full summary of their work, including revenue and expenses, and a week-by-week breakdown of their work here.
