The Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship (SBTS) has been building multi-use singletrack on Mt. Hough since 2015, and they’re nearing completion of the epic decade-long project. The final top-to-bottom shuttle run, the Tollgate Trail, has just opened to the public. The latest route to be unveiled spans 10 miles and drops over 3,500 vertical feet.
This continuous shuttle run — the third top-to-bottom route on the mountain — was just completed in August as SBTS put the finishing touches on the Upper Tollgate segment, a 3.7-mile trail section that drops over 1,100 vertical feet. Upper Tollgate connects to Middle and Lower Tollgate, eventually dumping out at the base of the mountain near the train tracks.
What is the new Tollgate trail like?
The trails on Mt. Hough are all multi-use and shared with motos, which means that e-bikes are allowed. Consequently, due to the multi-directional nature of the trails, the trails on Mt. Hough aren’t considered to be true downhill mountain bike trails — but Tollgate is a bit of an exception.
“It’s got some more mountain bike-specific features —some rock rolls, really using the contours of the land. It’s really super fun,” said Nicole Formosa, Marketing and Communications Manager for SBTS. “It’s a lot more playful for a mountain biker, whereas the Hough trail is really flowy and fast.”
The features and undulations make Tollgate more engaging than the classic Mt. Hough trail, but it still only earns an intermediate difficulty rating, like most trails on the mountain. The mountain only has a couple of black diamond segments on the Indian Falls Ridge and the Acorn Grotto descent, which opened earlier this year. Tollgate falls in between Indian Falls Ridge and Mt. Hough in terms of difficulty, as it still has “some tech sections, some rocky sections, [and] some of those big rock rolls.”
Shimano’s Trail Born Fund helped get Upper Tollgate built
In 2024, Shimano pledged an “unprecedented” $10 million to help build mountain bike trails, and the SBTS was one of the first grant recipients. They received $75,000 from Shimano and dedicated most of those funds to building Upper Tollgate. And work is still ongoing: SBTS plans to add more rock line options and complete a road-to-trail conversion on the middle section, featuring berms and large rollers, using Trail Born funds to make the route even more entertaining for mountain bikers.
In addition, “a lot of the funding on Mt. Hough is California OHV dollars, and that’s why it is multi-use,” Formosa clarified.
Commercial shuttles are readily available
As construction on Hough accelerated, Yuba Expeditions moved its base of operations from Downieville to Quincy. They now provide commercial shuttles on Mt. Hough, and as the renown of these trails has grown, the shuttle business (which is a part of SBTS) has gotten “much busier,” according to Formosa.
Yuba Expeditions moved from Downieville to Quincy in 2022, and from 2022 to 2024, shuttle bookings remained flat at 2,800 per year. However, 2025 is trending upward. As of August, Yuba has had 2,156 shuttles booked, up from 1,314 at the same time last year, putting them on track to exceed their previous highwater mark. This year, there have been “many more sold-out shuttles than in the past, and there’s just a lot more options,” added Formosa.
Riders can book a standard shuttle drop with Yuba Expeditions for $40, or if you’re feeling really ambitious, you can “double down” and book two drops in one day for $80.
I asked Formosa if it was possible to run shuttle laps all day, and she clarified that “these aren’t DH shuttle laps where you’re down in 20 minutes,” saying “it’s still a big ride, especially if you do Indian Falls Ridge.”
“Mt. Hough is big. It’s rugged,” Formosa added. “You’re out there for several hours, even if you do a shuttle drop. You’re not really going to do more than two in a day, most likely, because you’re still doing big rides out there.” On top of that, it takes about an hour to get to the top, even in a shuttle van.
However, if you want to try to squeeze more runs out of a single day, or you want to venture further afield to trails like Mills Peak, Yuba offers private shuttle bookings for $1,400 per day for a full van, running from 9am to 5pm.
Finally, for a more competitive way to sample the trails, consider signing up for the Mt. Hough Enduro, a blind enduro format race with 2-5 stages, depending on the race category. The enduro will be held during the Mountains to Meadows Enduro Fest weekend, September 12-14, 2025.
This epic project is finally complete
Once SBTS wraps up the final mile of remaining singletrack on the mountain this fall, the epic Mt. Hough project will be complete. SBTS has built almost 80 miles of singletrack that didn’t exist a decade ago, creating a new world-class mountain bike destination entirely from scratch.
With three epic top-to-bottom shuttle runs, plus innumerable connections and route variants, if you haven’t been to Mt. Hough yet, you’d better put it on your list ASAP!
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