Trail Wanderlust
I have added a page to the site for the Orosco Ridge and Boden Canyon Loop near Ramona. This is 14.2 mile loop that includes about 2,200 feet of total climbing.
An old road/truck trail turned singletrack through a meadow in Boden Canyon.
Mother Nature is doing good stuff to the Lower Santa Ysabel Truck Trail.
This old road in Boden Canyon has turned into some singletrack goodness. Check it out!
Sunday I did an MTB ride-along with San Dieguito River Park Senior Ranger Dave Hekel. After my recent Coast-to-Crest Trail trip I had some questions about the park and tagging along on his Sunday patrol was an easy what to chit-chat about the park and get in a ride. I ride Lake Hodges quite often as of late. It is right on the way home so it is in the routine post-work ride rotation. I have seen lots of critters out here on these trails. Deer, snakes, coyotes, rabbits and all kinds of birds. On this ride I ended up with a critter encounter of completely different sort.
While riding the “high road” single track on the north side we came across an obviously distressed little coyote pup stumbling across the trail like a drunken sailor. After a quick look around the hillside to see if mom was anywhere nearby, I scooped this critter up. It was tiny and whopped and did not resist in the slightest to me picking it up. A quick scan showed that this female pup was not injured but had pretty big tick in one ear. Dave went up the canyon to see if there was an unattended den but could not find anything. We guessed that this little gal had been away from momma for a least a full day or two.
Talk about camouflage. Look how the coat is a spot on match to the hillside in the background. While Ranger Dave made phone calls I gave her some water. I took the top off of my water bottle and turned it upside down and used it as a small bowl. She drank quite a bit of water and it seemed to help as after about 5 minutes she would have a spat of being squirmy. I’m thinking instincts were telling her to get away. I found that if you held her close to my chest she would stay calm. (Much better than the one-handed holds for posing her for the camera)
(Whooped but still a cutie)
While Ranger Dave was getting all of the arrangements made quite a few riders came by so the this pup because the star of trailside show and tell session.
(Check out how long those claws are for its size)
Soon the rangers had a plan. I rode/walked the rest of upper singletrack with this pup nuzzled up between one hand and my chest to a meet up spot with another ranger with a truck. While Dave and I waited for the other ranger to arrive the pup feel asleep in my hands. There was a point when we wondered if she had “checked out” but then I could feel her chest going in and out so things were good. Once the other rangers arrived we handed off the pup to them and they were off to a nearby wildlife recovery facility.
After that we went off to finish out the rest of the patrol. We did encounter a rattlesnake on the trail and I did a slight bump stop into the back of Dave. Normally seeing a rattlesnake is kind of a big deal but considering that this was the 14th rattler I have seen this year (I typically only see 2-4 a year) along with the coyote pup just a little while ago, this rattler sighting was kind of ho hum. It was a beautiful day but after the coyote pup and the rattler then return trip back the ranger office was uneventful. This was a most excellent day to be out on a bike and reinforced to me that your next life enriching event could be right around the next bend in the trail.
I added the Mule Hill and San Pasqual Valley trails located near Escondido to the site. You may also hear these trails referred to as Raptor Ridge as that is the top of the climb. While this is for the most part a non-technical trail, the farmland scenery not typically associated with San Diego it offers is worth a look-see.
I did my first bike packing trip this weekend. A group of six of us set off to do the Coast to Crest trail leaving from Julian with the plan to end with our tires in the ocean on Del Mar’s Dog Beach. The Coast to Crest trail is a long way from completed and our route is basically follows the general corridor of where the trail should someday follow as best as we could follow it.
We pedaled out on Main Street/Farmers Rd for about 2.5 miles out to the start of the trail at Volcan Mountain Wilderness Preserve. Full disclaimer here, we did not climb all the way up to the top of the mountain as it is a steep out and back on double-track. The top Volcan Mountain is the “Crest” of the trail. From the Volcan Mountain Preseve we zipped down the paved Famers Road to the Santa Ysabel Open Space Preserve East.
It has been quite some time since I had ridden out here. I had nearly forgotten just how pretty it is out here.
The first climb was rather steep and all of the bikepacking gear quickly found myself out of clicks on my shifters.
The crew taking a break (Left to Right: Kevin, Carl, Greg, Chad and Ken) at our highest point along the trip. We did quite a bit of descent and a few short bit of steep climbing before we came out at the lower staging area of the preserve.
There is a massive section of trail that is not built from here. Our path from here was a quite bit on Highway 79 north and then a good long chunk of pavement climbing on Mesa Grande Road.
From there we left the pavement for some dirt road riding on Black Canyon Road. This was my first time on this section of the road. It was really awesome that this thing just seemed to descend forever. (Carl is in the photo above)
When we did reach of the bottom of the road, we turned onto the San Ysabel Truck Trail which is familiar dirt to me as it is part of the Black Mountain (Ramona) Loop near Ramona. This is part of the official Coast To Crest trail. There was some work to be done here as we worked over the south slope of Black Mountain before we had a very zippy descent down into Pamo Valley. We then pedaled south on Pamo Valley Road (mostly dirt road) before hooking up with Forest Service Road FS12504.
We chased down a spot to setup camp for the evening. We did a touch under 35 miles for day one. Tasty sprits seems to find there way into most of our packs. Since every ounce counts we felt it wise to lighten our load for tomorrow as much as possible 🙂 All of my gear worked pretty much as expected and there were certainly some lessons learned. I slept really well that night and awoke to the sounds of turkeys gobbling in the distance. Not long after that a lone gunshot rang out that reminded me it is turkey season. I did not hear any more turkeys after that.
I had under estimated my fuel requirements for my alcohol stove but I did have just enough to get a couple cups of coffee made to go with breakfast. Coffee just tastes better outside. We leisurely broke camp and were back on the trail. Forest Service Rd 12504 is referred to as the Lower San Ysabel Truck Trail by the San Dieguito River Park. After just a bit of climbing, we were treated to a very mild grade descent. Carl and Kevin are pictured above heading down a particularly nice covered stretch of the truck trail.
Kevin was doing this ride on his rigid single speed and was just killing it. He also had a killer ultra-light setup. The Lower Santa Ysabel truck trail took us down to the Orasco/Gueito Truck Trail. This truck trail is not part of the official Coast to Crest trail at his point. We did take this truck trail up to Highway 78. We had to cruise down the highway for a couple of quick downhill miles where we hooked with some farm roads along the orange groves.
These farm roads took to the Bandy Canyon trailhead of the San Pasqual Valley trail that is part of the Coast to Crest trail. The trail goes along the edge of orange groves, sod and dairy farms in the valley before it starts climbing.
Climbing up to Raptor Ridge was a good bit of work with the gear on the bike. After that we were back into the routine home turf of Lake Hodges and we made quick work to the Farmers Market and the gas stations near the I-15 trailhead for some resupply. Nichol joined us through the Lake Hodges segment. (I think see liked this ride as the pace was slower than our normal outing speed).
Nichol turned back at the dam while we continued on down the Del Dios Gorge and onto the Santa Fe Valley trail
There was some climbing bits to be done including a sizable set of switch backs. Once we got to the top of the switchbacks we were once again off of the official Coast To Crest trail. We ended up dropping into the Lusardi Creek area via some singletrack and then working our way up to where the Santa Luz Loop starts. From here we had to do a five mile stretch of pavement along San Dieguito Road and El Camino Real to connect to the next segment of the Coast to Crest trail.
The final segment is along the San Dieguito Lagoon and passes by the Del Mar Fairgrounds
Chad along the boardwalk. We would cross the Jimmy Durante Blvd bridge and follow the Del Mar River down to Dog Beach
Ahhh Bike Tires in the Pacific and the finish of 43.5 miles for day 2 for a total of 78.2 miles
We were able to squeeze out another 1.1 miles to Pizza Port Solana Beach for some yummy pizza and tasty beers! A mighty fine weekend to be on a bike.
UPDATE (April 22nd, 2105): I have added a page to the site detailing this route with maps, GPS files and additional blabbery. Coast to Crest Trail
I had a pretty good bit of mountain biking over the last handful of days.
I made a return trip to Mount Woodson on Thursday to reacquaint myself with the other trails on/near the mountain that I did not get to the week before. I took the Fry-Koengle trail up to the summit and then took the Old Fry-Koengle trail on the way down. There has been a bit of trail sanitization going on parts of this trail but the trail is still plenty interesting. I only did a dozen miles but there was plenty of climbing done.
On Saturday, Nichol, Francisco and I did a ride out at Lake Hodges and then some. After doing the north side stuff, we continued past the dam down into Del Dios Gorge and then onto the Santa Fe Valley trail eventually over to the Lusardi Creek.
We did a small lollipop of trails in this area before heading back in earnest. We ended up doing right at 30 miles which was a new mileage benchmark for both Nichol and Francisco.
On the cruise back we came upon this fella (or gal – I can’t tell, and I not looking any closer to figure out either). I was pretty stoked that this snake posed so nicely for the camera while there was some good light to work with. This was rattler #11 for the year. (The following day I would encounter #12 that was quite uninterested in hanging out for a photo op)
Saturday I meet Bill up in Idyllwild to ride “The Hub” trails (currently called Alvin Meadows on my site). This place really rocks and there has been quite a bit of new trails out in this area.
I passed so many new junctions that I’m going to have bump this place up in trail rotation get all the new stuff figured out. I’m always amazed how you can feel like you being putting in huge miles out here and then you look at your mileage gizmo and you have done less than half of what you thought you did. One thing is for certain, the quads were barking on the last climb back to the truck. We definitely earned our tasty post-ride beverages!
It has been quite a few moons since I had ridden Mt Woodson so I decided to get back out there this week. I started out at Lake Poway and took the trails around the lake to the bottom of the Mt Woodson Trail. My exceptionally light and spry hardtail had a flat tire when I grab it to head out the door, so I grabbed my long-legged All-Mountain Intense UZZI rig instead. The heft of this rig, the above average temperature and the grade of climb had me getting workout in mighty early on. I was calling myself all kinds of bad names on the climb. I got a short reprieve as I neared the junction of the Warren Canyon trail.
I took the Warren Canyon trail. The west end of the trail is in mighty rough shape with severe ruts. The western end has always been kind of an absurd up and down affair, but the ruts take it to a new level. Reviewing my map and GPS data for this trail you climb 933 feet and descend 789 feet over the course of 2.36 miles. So why ride this trail?
Well I like this trail because it is a path less traveled with a much more outback feel to it. (It could use some more travel and bit of maintenance)
About halfway through the Warren Canyon trail there is a large tree that has fallen over the trail. There is a break through limbs but you will have to walk/scramble through at this point.
A cool little section of the trail near the east end of the trail just before the hike-a-bike up to Highway 67. Once I got up to Hwy 67, I pedaled about 1.4 miles into Ramona to get onto the access road to the summit of Black Mountain.
The access road climb is about 1.65 miles long and gains 1160 feet to top out at 2,894 feet. (Although I believe you have to climb up on a boulder to get to that elevation). There are some pretty views from up here. The highest point pictured above is Cuyamaca Peak. Yeah, the ONNNLY reason I stopped on this climb was to take some pictures to share. My camera was acting up so I had to stop a few times to get the shot I was looking for. 🙂
After a break at the summit, I started down the Mt Woodson trail proper. There was a bit of marine layer moving in from the west which made for some interesting light
The ride down along the ridgeline to the west was plenty of fun with some technical spots. The trail eventually turns to the south and starts loosing elevation in a hurry. There are a plethora of very tight switchbacks to contend with at this point. These clearly were made with hikers in mind which makes them exceptional interesting for mountainbikers. I was no longer wanking about having my big heavy bike at his point as it was helping out with steep and tight technical switchbacks. I wish I could say that I cleaned all of the switchbacks but that was simply not the case. I cleaned better than half of them. A good portion of the remainder I would need to gain some trials type skills like lofting the rear wheel around and pivoting in place. What was left after that is simply not executing on my part. (aka wussing out!) Once back at the junction of Warren Canyon trail, the return trip was a bombfest. When I got back down to the lake, I had cashed out 2,000 feet of elevation in 2.92 miles. Today’s ride was real beater with 3,160 feet of climbing in just 11.66 miles, but yeah what goes up, must go down. I certainly paid to play on this day. BEER:30!
So I have been gathering up the gear needed to do some bikepacking later on this year. I just recently got all of the “stuff” together and wanted to take it out for a ride before committing to an overnight trip. This was mainly gear around making sure everything was strapped in the right way and see if I had some fitment issues. I also wanted to see how the biked handle with all this stuff on it.
The test grounds was the Laguna Mountains. We did a loop starting from Redtail Roost. Right out of the gate it was easy to tell that there was quite a bit of additional weight to deal with. My normally very flickable 24lb hardtail required a lot more input on the climbs and of course some additional effort to move up the hill. I however was not much different effort wise that lugging around my all-mountain Intense Uzzi. I did have a few strapping adjustments to make but the starting setup was pretty close. Once we turned downhill it was really apparent that the bike now carried a lot more of its own momentum. I felt like I was riding the bike instead of the bike being an extension of myself. After dropping the Redtail Roost singletrack we climb Aqua Dulce fireroad to the top of the Los Gatos singletrack. This is where I discovered something that added to the fun of Los Gatos. With the additional weight over the front wheel, the bike really gripped well through the bermed turns. There were some giggles heard in the ravine after at least one well-railed berm.
Once we came out on the meadow, we took the Big Laguna Trail clockwise around the meadow past Water of the World and Big Laguna Lake. While both are still stupidly low, the water levels were higher than they were this past fall. Once we got to the top of the meadow we took the connector over to Pine Pines and the upper Noble Canyon trailhead. We took the first mile or so of the Noble Canyon trail. (The new rerouted section has bedded in nicely). We then took the cutover trail back (Need to add this to my maps) Big Laguna meadow. From there continued on around the meadow until we peeled off to take the Aqua Dulce connector trail and then peeled off again onto the Redtail Roost connector where we climbed on the Escondido Ravine fireroad until we picked up another singletrack to take us back over to the Redtail Roost trail. It was great day to be out on the bike and I’m pretty happy with how my first ride with the bikepacking gear went.
This past weekend Nichol and I rode a modified version of the Cuyamaca Grand Loop. It is very much looking like spring up in the Cuyamaca Mountains with lots of greenery, blooming plants and wildflowers.
We started off from the East Mesa staging and rode the singletrack up to the park headquarters and then took the Green Valley Fireroad north. Instead of climing Soapstone grade. We took the Upper Green Valley singletrack north and climbed out of Cuyamaca State Park and into the Anza Borrego Desert State Park to the La Cima trail.
You are certainly not in the desert at this point but the cool thing about the topology here is that in less that four miles the Cuyamaca Mountains drop nearly 3,000 feet into the desert proper. We topped out on the La Cima trail at about 4,880 feet.
We rode the La Cima trail west to the California Riding and Hiking Trail (CRHT) where we the turned south. This section of the CRHT is really sweet with some great views of the grassland of the Lake Cuyamaca Basin area. This section of the CRHT is about 2.5 miles long and about halfway through this section you leave Anza Borrego State Park and cross back into Cuyamaca State Park. The trail connects back up with Soapstone Grade fireroad at the top of the grade and we continued along the Grand Loop rout to the east. In years past the state park had the California Riding and Hiking Trail closed to bikes in virtually all sections that were singletrack. They have sense changed there mindset (Thanks to some tireless advocacy work by SDMBA!) and many more sections of the CRHT are now open in the park. Instead of taking the pavement from Soapstone Grade Road out to Hwy 79 (I think the pavement is called Stonewall Creek Road??), We took the CRHT singletrack.
The CRHT uses sections of the Minshall, Los Vaqueros and Vern Whitaker trails. These are some nice sections of singletrack. They do undulate a handful of times that is going to add your day’s effort but I put the cardio costs well worth it to enjoy these trails. The CRHT comes out less than 50 yards south of the where the pavement meets up with Hwy 79. There is also a junction with the northern end of the Cold Stream Trail. The original plan was to turn right and continue along the Grand Loop route and do Milk Ranch Road and maybe a climb up Middle Peak. Considering how cool the last section of the CRHT was and the open to bike signs for the next section across the highway, we opted to continue along the CRHT.
We immediately noticed that next section saw far less travel that across the highway. Most of the users are obviously following the road to the north or the Cold Stream trail to the south. I dig riding on trails that are sometimes defined by matted down grass. There was also some rocky technical bits that added some nice character to the trail. At the Azalea Glen trail junction the CRHT become make off-limits to bikes. This was disappointing and turn west to ride the Azalea Glenn Loop trail which is open to bikes. This lead us to the Paseo Picaho Campground. We wanted to get up on the Azalea Fire Road and Fern Flat Fire Road to close off the Grand Loop but we now had to cover quite of elevation over a shorter distance. A grunting we would up Lookout Road.
Once we made it up to Fern Flat fire road we turn south and enjoy some mighty long stretches of downhill cruising that took us back down to the West Side single track near the start of the ride. All together it was 22.1 miles with 3,190 feet of climbing so we definitely earned the post-ride beers and BBQ and Alpine Beer Company.
This weekend I got up at O-damn early and I traveled up to the Los Angeles area to catch up with an old friend. What better way to catch up on things than during a bike ride. After swinging by his place we continued northward to spend some time on the Golden Eagle Trail. What a nice chunk of trail.
The lower portion of the trail was scorched by a wildfire in the last couple of years but the recovery process is well underway. The climb was a good punch to the cardio system. The two McDonalds sausage biscuits that I had just recently polished off for breakfast and were now sitting like a couple of bricks in my gut also helped with the challenge. I should know better by now, clearly I’m a slow learner.
Sausage sweats aside, once we got a little further up on Liebre Mountain we cleared the burn area and things got back to how I remembered them. (Both for my stomach and the trail!) There are some seriously nice ribbons on dirt on this mountain with incredible flow across both grassy hillsides and through forests of oak trees.
Now Bill and I have done many a road trip together over the years and somewhere along the way, Bill got me sucked into the pursuit of tasty bourbons and scotch. So in addition to enjoying some awesome single track on the mountain we both brought some spirit samples from the home cabinets to share. I’m pretty sure bourdon taste better outdoors and adds a little something to the flavor of a Clif Bar 
After tooling around on the Liebre Mountain ridgelines the descent down the Golden Eagle trail was quite a rip. It was the awesome kind of situation where all your sensory systems are fully engaged to help produce the required muscle/body action and your brain seems to shift from conscious controlling to supervising. That wonderful state of being fully in the moment. While I did not notice it on the climb, the fire damage near the bottom had made the usable trail’s usable tread even narrower than normal in spots which required some high speed precision in spots. It was a great day to be on a bike.
I’ll be tweaking the route description on my page in the coming days to reflect my latest understanding of the place.
I have hit up several different places over the last week.
I started the week off with meeting some new and old friends for a spin through Sycamore Canyon and then some. There will be some updates on my site in the coming weeks for this area. Biggest takeaway for now is to stay east of the watershed running down the middle of the canyon as the Marines are patrolling their land that is on the west side of the seasonal creek. Instead of parking at the dirt lot near Mast and Medina, park at “Hole in the Fence”. Google Map 9100-9140 Birchcrest Blvd, Santee, CA 92071 and park near there. This is a neighborhood so remember to be a good visitor in their hood. Be quiet and don’t thump your system. Trail starts through the hole in the fence at the end of Birchcrest. Exploration is good for the soul!
I have been refreshing my knowledge of the Black Mountain area in preparation for a webpage update and there were a couple of back corner trails that I had not been on in a long time. So an after work ride was in order here. I kinda had lost an appreciation for how much climbing you can get in out here. Often times when I’m researching an area I put together a route that allows me to cover the most trails and trails I have not been on it a while. This latest research route I did was 14 miles and included 2,900 feet of climbing. No wonder muscles and joints were wanking the next day!
I came across the fellow while out on the trail. Literally! I came across him. When I realized that this big fellow was a snake I was way to close to stop and not prepared to bunny hop over him. Boy was he pissed!
Nichol had been out of town for a while so Saturday we took a welcome back cruise on familiar ground out at Lake Hodges. It was unseasonably warm but as far as I’m concerned there is no time like the present to start getting acclimated to the hot weather. Ahhh, the kind of problems we have to deal with in San Diego.
