Paradise Royale Mountain Bike Trail System

Fifteen minutes up King Peak Road from Shelter Cove usually puts you above the fog. That's the practical case for Paradise Royale: a gray, socked-in coastal morning at sea level is often a blue-sky ride on the ridge, on about 25 miles of purpose-built singletrack in the King Range uplands.

BLM's own figures don't quite reconcile. The flagship Paradise Royale Loop runs roughly 13 miles, the Pacific Rim Trail adds another 9, and the system total is published variously as 24 and 25 miles across three BLM sources. About 25 miles is the honest number. Trails range from beginner flow to advanced, with 2,229 feet of elevation gain published for the system.

Tolkan Campground is the base. Nine sites, four for tents and five for trailers, at $15 a night, first come first served, with vault toilets, fire rings, picnic tables, bear-proof trash cans and wheelchair-accessible sites. It doubles as the trailhead for the loop and hosts the Tolkan Terrain Park, whose three quarter-mile route options run from beginner to black diamond. There's no potable water — not at Tolkan, not at the day-use trailhead, nowhere on the mountain.

Class 1 e-bikes are explicitly allowed on this system, which BLM defines as pedal-assist only. This is also the only legal singletrack for bikes anywhere in the King Range. The Lost Coast Trail runs through designated wilderness and is closed to anything mechanized.

King Peak Road is unpaved with potholes and storm berms throughout, and BLM recommends high clearance and 4WD. Don't take RVs or trailers north of Tolkan. Ride the first two miles slowly; that stretch runs past private property and BLM asks visitors to be neighborly about it.