The Home Stretch: Lower Hermosa

This trail is a part of the Levis Mounds trail system.  

While not actually the absolute last trail before returning to the trailhead, if you're riding my recommended cross country loop, Lower Hermosa signals the home stretch as you come into the finish.

Over 10 miles of delicious singletrack has already passed under the tires; maybe even more than that.  No matter how tired you may be, when you reach Lower Hermosa it is time to drop the hammer!  It is time to dig deep inside yourself to lay out every last ounce of strength to up the MPH as high as possible... because this trail deserves it!

Lower Hermosa is comprised of big, sweeping turns that go back and forth across a shallow valley on mostly flat ground.  The trail is smooth as butter, and the flow is there, just begging to be hammered! While Lower Hermosa would be enjoyable as a gentle cruise, the trail shows its true colors, namely FLOW and SPEED, when you lay it all out on the line!

Check out the video below, and just try to imagine what a rush it is to ride!



Yes, Lower Hermosa is the king of flow. You gotta get out there and ride it!

New Addition
Back in the pre 2008 era, the only section of ski trail that you would ever absolutely have to ride at Levis was from the end of Lower Hermosa over towards Swamp Cut and Lower Glen.  After an epic 10+ mile XC loop without having to back track or ride anything wider than 24" once, it felt like an injustice to be forced out onto the wide ski trail.  Recently, that has been rectified by an extension off of the end of Lower Hermosa.

The reason there hadn't been a trail through that area until recently was due to the very swampy nature of the topography on either side of the ski trail.  In order to successfully get a piece of singletrack through that area, the trail builders had to construct a couple of very interesting bridges, and had to tightly twist the trail in places to keep it high and dry.

While it definitely took a good bit of work to build, the trail is well worth it, and completes the full singletrack loop with this finishing touch of trail!