Description

The La Caceria trails are home to some of the best shredding on the flanks of Chimborazo! La Caceria 1—located further to the south—begins with fast downhill surfing through soft sand volcanic sand dunes.

It's rare to find true, legal "freeride" mountain biking, but this is it! You can carve beautiful turns down this wide-open sand slope, with impressive views of the mountain behind.

Be sure to enjoy this section because it can go by so quickly! Lower down, the trail drops out of the sand into the paramo landscape and eventually into a lusher climate zone as it descends into a valley lower down the mountainside.

Here, the quality of the trail improves dramatically, with some true benchcut singletrack clinging to the steep mountainsides. In the middle, the trail drops into steep turns through deeply-eroded trenches that can become very slick when wet (which happens a lot in Ecuador).

After popping out of the trenches and onto the exposed mountainside, the trail gets progressively slipperier (or looser, if dry), with some seriously exposed sections. Eventually, the trail crosses the river at the bottom of the valley, followed by a climb up the opposite side before one final descent down to the road.

The final section of the descent is very well maintained, offering some fast ripping with chunky rocks for a great finish to this iconic trail! While the trail might look straightforward on the map, sorting out ride logistics and navigating some of Ecuador's trails can prove to be very difficult.

I hired Andrés Chacho López of [Epic Andes Tours](https://www.epicandestours.com/biking) to guide me on this ride and sort out the logistics, and I was very glad I did! From sorting out all the shuttles and drivers to guiding me down windswept screefields with nary a sign of a trail, working with Andrés in Ecuador was 100% the way to go!