USFS National Forest System Trails · Tahoe National Forest · California · Updated June 2026
Donkey Town / El Burro (USFS trail 16E86) is a 3.6 mi trail in Tahoe National Forest, California. Mountain bikes are designated as allowed year-round, with no Class 1 e-bike designation on record.
Can I bike Donkey Town / El Burro?
| Use | Status | Season on record |
|---|---|---|
| Mountain bike | Allowed | year-round |
| Class 1 e-bike (pedal-assist, 20 mph) | Restricted | — |
| Class 2 e-bike (throttle, 20 mph) | Restricted | — |
| Class 3 e-bike (pedal-assist, 28 mph) | Restricted | — |
Zooming out: across Tahoe National Forest, 30% of rideable trail miles are open to mountain bikes — a Bike Access Grade of C.
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About this trail
Donkey Town / El Burro (USFS trail 16E86) is a 3.6 mi trail in Tahoe National Forest, California. This profile summarizes what the official US Forest Service trail record says about riding it: how long the trail is, what it's built on, how steep the route grades out, and which forms of bike use the agency has designated. Underfoot, the trail is recorded as native material. Based on slope, this is a Easy trail (grade band 5-8%); that reflects gentle gradient and is not the same as a technical MTB difficulty rating. Mountain bikes are allowed, open year-round in the data. No e-bike class (1, 2 or 3) is designated on this trail in the USFS data, so treat it as a non-motorized route unless a posted order says otherwise. The route is mapped as USFS Trail Class 3 on the agency's 1-to-5 development scale, where 1 is the most primitive, minimally maintained tread and 5 is the most developed. Because conditions, closures, and local orders change between data refreshes, confirm the current status with the managing ranger district before you ride.
Frequently asked questions
- Can you mountain bike on Donkey Town / El Burro?
- Yes. Mountain bikes are designated as allowed on Donkey Town / El Burro in Tahoe National Forest, year-round, per USFS data.
- Are e-bikes allowed on Donkey Town / El Burro?
- No e-bike class (1, 2 or 3) is designated on Donkey Town / El Burro in the USFS data.
- How long is Donkey Town / El Burro?
- Donkey Town / El Burro measures about 3.6 mi in total, summed across its mapped National Forest System segments.
- What is the surface of Donkey Town / El Burro?
- USFS data records the tread surface of Donkey Town / El Burro as native material.
- How difficult is Donkey Town / El Burro?
- Its grade-based difficulty is Easy (grade band 5-8%), derived from USFS slope data. This reflects steepness, not technical mountain-bike difficulty.
How we read this data
Grade-based difficulty above is the USFS grade (route steepness), not a technical mountain-bike rating — a gentle-grade trail can still be rocky or technical, and vice versa. Bike and e-bike status come verbatim from the USFS managed-use fields for this trail; we never infer access we can't cite. See our methodology for how the dataset is built and what each field means.
Where it is
Approximate location of Tahoe National Forest (USFS trail geometry isn't mapped).
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