Here is the first video from my August vacation. A bit of playtime on Mount Elden in Flagstaff. August is monsoon season and getting out early was part of the plan. You can see just how quickly things can change during a ride. I managed to get on quite a few new to me trails on this outing with the star of the outing being the Full Sail trail. Hats off to the builders who made this amazing flow trail that ends at the top of the Schultz Creek trail. The Broadside trail which is a dedicated for the climb back up to the top of Full Sail is awesome a great add to the expanding network of trails on the mountain. The advocates and builders out here have been doing a bang up job!
Author: MTBBill
Summer Vacation Recap
Work has been a lot of well, work for well over a year. As such my vacation days had piled up to the point to I either had to use them or start losing them. Well I am not gonna have anything thing to do with that so I took the month of August off. I spent a week in Flagstaff, AZ. Then a week near Taos, NM. After that I moved to the Denver CO area. I finished off the last week in Fishlake Utah.
I will get around to posting stuff from spots along the way but here are a few photo snippets.
None of the pictures or video footage I have do these places justice. Which is okay if they spark an interest in experiencing them for yourself.
Sugarloaf Trail near Big Bear
Most conversations about the Sugarloaf trail among those adventurous enough to give it a go eventually have a component of is the juice worth the squeeze. You can’t shuttle it and it is a bunch of work to get up to the summit that will include some hike-a-bike. There is good easier riding all over the area so this trail does not see a lot of MTB action.
One of the reasons I like the trail is a its raw nature. It’s not a gnarly big rock chunkfest but something between micro-chunk and a blanket of scree almost always on a grade. Oh yeah, you also at 9,000 plus feet for most of your outing.
On this outing I did the short option of starting at Horseshoe Meadows and doing it as an out-and-back. If you really want to do something cool add the Wildhorse trail into the mix. For an epic adventure leave a vehicle at the bottom of the Mill Creek Road by the Santa Ana River and when you get to the bottom of the Wildhorse trail coast down HWY 38 for three miles and pick up the Santa Ana River Trail and take it back to your vehicle.
BIG BANG!
I thought I had lots a grip of footage from my August 2023 MTB vacation. Turns out I outsmarted myself and found my backup right where I had left it. I will get through most of that footage at some point. While in Flagstaff, I checked out a new to me trail (The trail is a newish legal trail) called Big Bang. I enjoy Flagstaff scene a great deal and this trail most likely is going to into the routine rotation.
Dupont State Forest – NC
I recently went back to North Carolina to spend a bit of time with my parents. I carved out some time at the backend of the visit to get up in the mountains and play some MTB. Dupont State Forest did not disappoint
The Cowboy Trails
So I have recently pushed out a couple of videos on the Cowboy Trails of Las Vegas. The first one was from the “Vintage” Vault of 2006 and the second one was from a ride from about a month ago. I have ridden the Cowboy trails a handful of times between the recording of these two videos and I had finally gotten through the three main down hills routes off of the ridge. I suppose you could do some laps out here and do more than one downhill in an outing but for me I have usually had my fill after one. There is a lot of MTB per mile out here.
For the downhills:
- Boneshaker: Oh man this is a fun descent that will test your skills. There are some nice drops and other technical features that will keep you on your toes. This was featured in my vintage video of my first visit here.
- Bomb Voyage: I consider this the most technically demanding route and has some squirrel moves coupled with some exposure. It feels the scariest.
- Bob Gnarly: I heard this trail described as “90s Downhill Tech”. For those of you that are not of that vintage I would call it “On the Ground Tech”, It is often tight, twisty and narrow. Not bermy bike-park vanilla flow stuff. I consider this the easiest of the three descents but not easy.
Rock Garden: This is not only the list. While you could ride down it, the main traffic it sees is the the equestrian tourism traffic which I find the trails to typically be chewed up and riddled with horse poo.
No matter which route you take if you like rocky desert tech you should have a good time out here. If you need a bike, both the Trek and Giant stores in town typically have rental bike available.
Condor Peak Awesomeness!
We start off with, I am once again slacking a bit on BLOG posts. I will try to catch up at some point, but for today I have to talk about the Condor Peak Trail in the northern bits of the San Gabriel mountains. I first rode this trail in in 2007 and thought it was a fantastic trail. I was quite saddened in 2009 when the station fire tore that area and the trail up. After thousands of volunteer hours put in by the dedicated folks of the Lowelifes Respectable Citizens’ Club the trail was officially reopened back in July.
Those folks did an amazing job of rebuilding that trail. It is in fantastic shape and they did not sacrifice any of the narrow twisty exposed nature of trail which make it such treasure to a single track connoisseur .
My buddy Bill and I revisited a point-to-point ride we did that included a 12 mile climb up Mendenhall Ridge and a connection over to the top of the Condor Peak Trail. Condor Peak can also been done as an out and back, but I don’t like the idea of trying to climb some of those narrow exposed sections when you are momentum deprived. No matter what method you take to get to the top of Condor Peak you are going to put in some work.
More Vintage Videos
I have gotten a couple more of my videos cut over to a more modern video format.
Gatos Ravine Video
I am a frequent flyer to the Mount Laguna Area. Here is a clip of one of my recent runs down that trail.
Santa Margarita River Trail
A while back I revisited the Santa Margarita River Trail and shot some video.
The placed has changed a bit with the primary thing being some “improvements” to the south side that has “tamed” some of the trails a little and made them slightly wider. To the east of the preserve the Red Mountain and “Hills Loop” I used to describe have been cutoff due to an property acquisition by an environmental group. There is still plenty to see out here and while summer is not the best time to be out here it was still a nice outing on the bike.