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| PC Kustin |
December 9 2025
This ride was a condensed version of my "Bolivia" overnighter which has been in the backlog for several years. I think I captured all the best of the overnighter and maybe more in this shorter day trip version although I'm not sure sure how I missed the connector over to Fencemaker Pass road from Kitten Sprgs rd. I think it would have been a better connection.
Leaving the parking spot near the Oxbow geothermal plant, we initially climbed up a trackless canyon to roughly the site of the old nickel mining camp of Bolivia.
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| Oxbow geothermal plant. |
This section was super cool and we spent most of the time in the stream bed.
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| PC Kurstin |
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| We even ran into a small cascading waterfall. |
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| Looking down canyon from the top. |
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| PC Kurstin |
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| PC Kurstin |
Signs of the old mining activity were plentiful on reaching the town site.
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| PC Kurstin |
From there we climbed a north branch of Cottonwood Canyon to a ridge top and dropped Kitten Springs road down the west side of the range. Cutting across to the north on a power line service road which I normally avoid, proved why I normally avoid them. Typical of these types of roads, a sea of drops straight down into gulch's and then straight up the other side led us eventually over to Fencemaker Pass road. An easy climb up to the pass and Kurstin mentioned "it's only another 800 vertical to the radio towers." I politely declined. After all we already had over 4000ft in our legs still had 23 miles to go.
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| Top of climb one. |
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| Kitten Spgs area. PC Kurstin |
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| Topping out Fencemaker Pass. PC Kurstin |
The route then dropped a super steep and pretty gnarly old ATV track for 2000 ft before finally mellowing out and leading over to Seven Devils Hot Springs, aka Sou Springs.
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| PC Kurstin |
Checking out the area I discovered a fumerole like hole straight down into the pits of hell. I wondered how many animal skeletons lay at the bottom.
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| PC Kurstin |
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| Steaming fumarole like hole. |
Leaving the springs we made our way over to Dixie Valley road for the flat 13 mile spin back to our parked vehicles just outside the geothermal plant. Darkness caught us for the last couple of miles or so but we had both brought bike lights and of course headlamps. Comically, we tried to meet up for dinner in Fallon but there are 2 restaurants with the same name. So you can guess what happened. We had both already ordered food by the time we figured it out. "Oh well see ya next time."
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| Steam rising in the distance from the geothermal plant where we were parked. |
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| PC Kurstin |
I was pretty stoked on this route and consider it one of the best day rides I have done. I suspect it would be improved by using the connector off Kitten Springs road instead of the utility road and I would certainly use that if I ever do this route again.
Stats:
Bike setups:
Doug - Binary Gordita rigid fat bike running 27.5x4" tires on carbon I45 rims. Kurstin - Custom Meriwether long tail rigid fat bike running 26x4" meat on I90 rims.
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