Highway 108 — long a biking, hiking, camping, fishing gem in the high Sierra — just became more with addition of lift-served mountain biking and slopeside disc golf to the venerable Dodge Ridge Resort just a few miles above Pinecrest Lake.

As a 27-year National Ski Patroller at Dodge Ridge (now an alumni), I’ve long been touring up Highway 108, to the Pinecrest area and Sonora Pass. In 1852, 75 pioneers in 13-mule-drawn wagons departed from Ohio and Indiana, headed west to California’s gold and promise of a better life, blazing the rugged Sonora Pass route.

Today, it’s one of the highest passes in the state, and the area just west of the pass is a summer and fall mecca for fisherman, hikers, bikers and admirers of the high Sierra.