Sallee Key

Highland climbing trail hand-finished by its namesake, Kim Sallee

Sallee Key went in with the 2020 Highland expansion and carries the name of Kim Sallee, who hand-finished the tread after the machine work was done. It’s the climbing half of a matched pair — nine-tenths of a mile gaining about 250 feet, with barely any descending to interrupt the rhythm. The grade stays steady enough that strong kids clean it. Along the way the junipers open to some of the best scenery in the Highland zone: red sandstone cliffs standing over a green meadow valley, and long sightlines toward the ridges across the river. In fall the surrounding oak brush turns yellow and the dirt goes dark and tacky, which is when the whole Highland area rides its best.

Use it as the way up, then descend Sallee Key Flow — that’s the pairing the two trails were built for, and it makes a tidy Highland lap on its own. It also stacks into bigger rides as the connector that gets you to the upper trails without a road grind. Expect smooth, hand-tuned tread with occasional embedded rock, and yield to climbers if you do come down it.

Winter is a bigger part of this trail’s life than the mileage suggests — fat bikes pack the north-facing tread on into the cold months, and one snowy shot caught mountain-lion prints beside the trail with a hand held up for scale. Midsummer, tall yellow sweet clover lines the tread, and the sunset overlook laps are the local reward. A lone red boulder sits beside the trail as a marker.

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