# Cycling

Source page: https://carsonriverresorts.com/explore/cycling

Four passes · The Death Ride starts down the road

Alpine County has 1,204 people and four mountain passes. One rider counted fifteen cars on a weekday morning up Ebbetts — about one every two miles. This is road country, and it comes with two absences worth knowing before you load the car: almost no shoulder anywhere, and no bike shop. The one exception is Monitor's east climb — wider pavement, not a marked lane.

## The county is the reason

Alpine County had **1,204 people** at the last census — the least populous
county in California — and **96% of it is federally owned**, the highest
share of any county in the state. That is the whole explanation for the
riding. There is nobody here to put on the road.

A cyclist writing up Ebbetts counted **about fifteen vehicles on a weekday
morning ride** — one car every two miles. And two nationally known events,
the Death Ride and the Alta Alpina 8 Pass Challenge, both start within a few
miles of this property.

## Four climbs, and the first one starts down the road

**Monitor Pass, west side — 8.2 miles, about 2,650 feet, roughly 6%.** The
climb begins at the Highway 4 junction a few miles south of us, and it is
**the Death Ride's opening climb.** One climb database ranks it among the ten
most epic in California and third in the Tahoe region. **No shoulder.**

**Monitor Pass, east side — about 9.5 miles at 6.5%.** Up out of the high
desert from Highway 395, with big switchbacks and the steepest ground near
the county line. This is the one climb with a rideable shoulder: wider
pavement most of the way up, though never a marked bike lane. We drove it in
September 2026 to settle that, because the published sources disagree. By
that same database's difficulty index it is **the hardest climb in the
region** — harder than the west side of its own pass.

**Ebbetts Pass, east — about 11.4 miles, roughly 2,950 feet.** The average
of 4.9% is a lie told by arithmetic: **the first 5.5 miles are gentle at
about 3%, and the second half is where it lives**, frequently in double
digits, with a maximum around 15%. **Strava's own editorial names Ebbetts one
of the five classic road climbs in California.**

The descent is the dangerous part, and three sources say so independently:
blind hairpins that steepen at the apex, no guard rails, near-vertical
drop-offs. On Death Ride day the organizers **paint warnings on the road
surface for descending riders — "slow", "slower", "slowest"** — ahead of the
worst corners.

**Carson Pass, east — about 14.3 miles at 3.8%**, with the last three miles
doing most of the work. Read the warning that comes with it: this is Highway
88, a through route between Reno and northern California, and the reviewer
who rated it added that it carries **big rigs at highway speeds** and a
headwind for the full fourteen miles. One rider's verdict: he would not
recommend it except on Death Ride day, when it is closed to cars.

**Luther Pass — about 8.3 miles at 4.7%** from the same base as Carson, the
first 5.6 of them on that same busy Highway 88 before turning onto 89. It is
also, per the same database, the most efficient and safest way to ride from
here to South Lake Tahoe.

## The Death Ride, as it runs today

The route changed for the 2021 edition — **announced before the Tamarack
Fire, not because of it.** Carson Pass was dropped for traffic and Pacific
Grade added. That edition was then cancelled by the fire the evening before,
and the new route was first actually ridden in July 2022.

**Today: 103 miles, more than 14,000 feet of climbing, and both sides of
Monitor, Ebbetts and Pacific Grade** — which the ride counts as its five
Hors Catégorie passes. The figure worth ignoring is the **129 miles** still
carried by Wikipedia and a good many tourism sites: that is the pre-2021
course. The organizers' own
[route page](https://deathride.com/route) has the current one.

**The 46th runs Saturday 10 July 2027.** On ride morning Caltrans closes
Highway 89 from Markleeville to the Highway 4 junction from 5am to noon, and
Highway 4 over Ebbetts to Lake Alpine until 4pm — **which means the road
outside this property is closed course.** The ride's own lodging page lists
us and says the resort "is located on the Death Ride route."

## The Alta Alpina 8 Pass Challenge

The other one is run by the
[Alta Alpina Cycling Club](https://altaalpina.org), the road and mountain
club for Tahoe, Carson Valley, Carson City and Markleeville, and they call it
**the world's toughest double century.** On the evidence it is hard to argue:
**198 miles and 20,300 feet of climbing in one day**, out of Turtle Rock Park
and back, on the last Saturday in June.

**Eight passes, in the order they come:** Kingsbury Grade (Daggett Pass) from
the east, Luther Pass from the south, Carson Pass from the east, Blue Lakes
Road, Ebbetts from the east, Ebbetts from the west, Monitor from the west,
Monitor from the east. Four of those eight are the climbs described further
up this page, and the two Monitor ascents finish at the junction a few miles
from our gate.

**Entry is capped at 400 riders** and closes when it fills. Cut-off times are
enforced at points around the course — the club publishes a timing chart, and
it is worth reading before you enter rather than after. There are stocked rest
stops through the day and a meal back at Turtle Rock at the end.

⚠️ **For 2026 the club ran the 8 Pass only** — the Metric, Century, 5 Pass and
7 Pass options were not held that year. If you were counting on a shorter
distance, check the
[event's own page](https://www.altaalpina.org/challenge/8pass.html) before you
plan around it.

The club's [accommodations list](https://www.altaalpina.org/challenge/travel.html)
includes this resort, and describes us as "right on the Alta Alpina challenge
course" — which, given that the route climbs Monitor twice from the junction
down the road, is simply accurate.

## When you can ride at all

**Monitor and Ebbetts both close behind gates for winter, and they do not
open together.** Since 2010 Monitor has reopened between the first week of
April and the first week of May; Ebbetts between mid-April and the end of
June. **In eight of the last ten seasons Monitor opened weeks before
Ebbetts.**

Caltrans decides, and it re-closed all three passes at least once after
opening them in spring 2026. "Opens in May" is a pattern, never a promise.
QuickMap has live status.

Two more things worth knowing before you load the car: **Highway 4 over
Ebbetts has a 23-mile stretch with no center line**, narrow enough that
traffic tends to sit in the middle of it. And **there is no bike shop in this
county on this side of the passes.** The nearest is at Bear Valley, over
Ebbetts, unreachable from here for half the year. Bring spares, a spare tire,
and a plan for a mechanical.

## And if you want dirt

Not much, and the reason is legal rather than geographic.
**Bicycles are prohibited in designated wilderness** — 36 CFR 261.18(b) names
them explicitly — and that covers most of the county, including the entire
East Fork corridor upstream of here that looks so rideable on a map.

What is legal and good: the **Charity Valley Trail**, 6.7 miles, which the
Forest Service lists as open to mountain bikes, and its **Burnside Lake
connector**. Best ridden downhill, west to east, from Blue Lakes Road.

For gravel: **Burnside Lake Road** and **Wolf Creek Road**, both dirt, both
seasonal. And for real singletrack, the honest answer is South Lake Tahoe,
45 minutes north.

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Carson River Resort · 12399 Highway 89, Markleeville, CA 96120 · (530) 694-2229 · store open 8am to 6pm, every day.
Machine-readable facts, units and policies: https://carsonriverresorts.com/api/agent/index.json