Trail Manager: Bear Yuba Land Trust Preserve Trail | Contact info@bylt.org / (530) 272-5994
Length: 2.35 miles one way
Altitude Change: 750′
Trail Surface: Natural Earth
Rules: Foot, bike, and equestrian users only. Dogs on leash. No motorized vehicles. Stay on trails. No smoking. No littering.
Trailhead: From Nevada City, take Highway 49 towards Camptonville, turn left on Marysville Road and cross over the Bullards Bar Dam. Rice’s Crossing Preserve is located 1.3 miles from the dam. Park in the turnout on the left, across from the quarry by the large white sign above the meadow. The trailhead begins at the large rock boulders next to the white sign, look for a Yuba Rim Trail sign at the bottom of the hill at the edge of the meadow.
Trail Facts: The Rice’s Crossing property comprises 2,706 acres spanning both sides of the Middle and North Yuba Rivers and their confluence, and bounded by New Bullard’s Bar Reservoir to the North and Army Corps of Engineers area and the South Yuba River State Park on the south. BYLT’s management of the property will improve and permanently protect the region’s biodiversity, watershed health, and habitat for a range of resident, migratory, threatened and endangered species. The project will re-establish wildlife corridors and restore an important mid-elevation transition zone of the Yuba River and to facilitate future habitat restoration efforts for salmon and native trout.
Opened officially to the public in 2015, this trail offers views of snow-capped peaks, views of the confluence of the Middle Yuba River and North Yuba River, and a moderately challenging hike. The views along the ridge are fantastic and you can see the rock quarry used to build Bullards Bar in the 1960s and Saddleback Mountain and Fir Cap to the Northeast. Volunteers devoted more than 200 hours building the trail with help from CALFIRE Washington Ridge crews and a young enthusiastic team from Americorps. The Land Trust worked with federal agencies like Bureau of Land Management, Tahoe National Forest and Plumas National Forest. The trail incorporates old logging skid roads. The area we know today as Rice’s Crossing Preserve was always a place of significance for the Nisenan people. Native plant species like red bud, tan oak, honeysuckle, madrone, Ceanothus, Douglas fir, ponderosa pine and dogwood line the trail’s edge. Always hike with a buddy on the Yuba Rim Trail. This is wild country alive with mountain lions, bears and rattlesnakes. Lots of poison oak.
Trail sponsored by Yuba Water Agency since 2022.
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