However you get to the top, Live Like Lisa begins by dropping straight down the mountainside. This track is steep and deep, descending viciously fast down 2,100 vertical feet. You'll rarely get a chance to get off the brakes as tight turns funnel into steep rock features. There is one wide-open section in the middle where the route follows a doubletrack road grade before peeling back off onto singletrack, but that's an anomaly.

The myriad of rock features range from rugged rock gardens to steep chutes, rock rolls, rock slab faces, and mandatory hucks. In many places, you'll see alternate line options, allowing you to choose between a single black diamond or a double black diamond feature.

Compounding the trail's difficulty is the sometimes loose, sliding dirt and scree that can clog up the chutes, making for loose, rowdy conditions. Especially in the summer, expect to do a bunch of sliding around, but please: don't skid your tires and dig trenches into the trail. Ride smoothly and in control as much as possible.

As mentioned, there are many optional features on this trail which are definitely worthy of a double black diamond rating. But the trail's general steepness and technicality lead some people to give the entire ride a double black diamond rating. However, others (including some of the trail signs) only rate this as a single black diamond. In the grand scheme of mountain biking, I'm grading this as a "Severe" trail, with plenty of optional features and lines that exceed this rating, blasting into "Extreme" territory. This ride is what you make of it!

After finishing the descent, you'll have a few miles of mellow pedaling along the river to get back to the trailhead. This section of trail can sometimes get overgrown, but it's usually passable (unless the river is in flood stage).