Take me to your Liter: Las Cruces Dirt

After the long 300+ mile drive south to Cruces, we secured a sweet suite at the world famous Sands Motor Lodge (Indian owned as we had hoped). After getting the hairy eyeball from our partially evolved motel neighbor, whose room was full of empty "Bud" cans, we made our way to SST, northwest of town.

Directions here: http://trails.mtbr.com/cat/united-states-trails/trails-new-mexico/trail/PRD_169179_4565crx.aspx

Perfect winter day for shorts and t-shirts (welcome after a month of slogging through the snow and ice up north).

The directions are pretty much right on, off of Rocky Acres, just take the first dirt road that sweeps left, go up a quarter mile or so and stop where the road gets too hairball. Look for the piles of bullet shells. You've arrived. Unload and ride up the hill to the west and locate the small water tanks - stay left of that and you'll soon see the trail heading off to the right.

The SST is a pretty tough trail that does not get much use. Although Dave and I determined that even though it's very technical - it's all ridable (Hans Ray would have no probelms) . Some fun rocky stuff to mess around on and other sections that are just plain loose as hell and not fun to mess around on. The trail is about 6 miles one way but probably only about 1.5 miles as the crow flies from start to finish. The trail ends at a jeep road that will zip you back to the parking lot if happy hour is looming - otherwise do it as an out and back. It's damn twisty and obviously built for mountain biking but takes a huge amount of concentration just to clean it all without running into a giant piles of cactus. It's probably a good idea to run tire liners or Stans. I didn't have either and was lucky to limp in with two slow leaks by the end of the ride. Dave was running Stans and had no problems. The cactus are brutal since they hang over the trail and are impossible to avoid. Fill an extra with bottle with plasma because I guarantee you will be losing blood after an hour.