Alpha Beta

Flowy Highland on-ramp out to the far trails

Alpha Beta is the trail that gets you out there — a mile of fast, machine-built tread linking the near side of the Highland area to the trails deeper in the network. The numbers are friendly: about 110 feet up and 220 down, so it rides quick in the outbound direction without ever feeling like a climb. The wide, smooth trail traverses above a green drainage thick with pinion, juniper, and fir, swinging along the hillside edge with enough grade changes to keep you pumping. It’s a 2020 Highland-expansion build, and the shaping shows it.

Think of it as the on-ramp for Highland loops. Ride it outbound to reach Dante’s Peak, Sallee Key Flow, and the rest of the far hubs; the return gains about 220 feet over the mile, gentle enough to spin home without dreading it. Intermediate riders can carry real speed through the grade changes, and newer riders can simply roll it — nothing technical is waiting out there to surprise anyone.

In summer the buffed red tread runs through dense green Gambel-oak corridors — a leafy tunnel — going yellow with rabbitbrush and dry grass late in the season. It’s active mule-deer winter range, and it rides year-round, snow included. Fair warning: it’s not uniformly wide and smooth. A few stretches pinch to narrow singletrack where oak and serviceberry crowd in.

More on this trail: View on MTB Project → (original description contributed by community members on MTB Project)