General MTB – Page 25 – The Ramblings of MTBBill

The Return of Alpine Action

So after a summer hiatus from the Wednesday stoke rides in Alpine, it time to play in the rocks again. It still is amazing how after spending sometime away from this place, the rocks and moves look much bigger and intimidating than the I last time I rode them. It was good and hot but I have certainly ridden in must nastier heat so overall it was not bad.

On the climb up we took a break and help Steve figure out some of the features on his new camera, a pretty trick little Canon S95 (I think).

Steve, was out on his latest Clown Bike. Steve thought it would be cool to climb a good portion of the trail we normally only come down on. While it was interesting it was large Cup of Pain.

This Jones rig has a massive 3.8 tire up front mounted to a mega-wide 26″ rim. Paired in the rear is a 29er wheel with what looks like a “punnie” 2.6 tire. The normal tired 29er with the clown tire 26er makes for pretty much equal ground to axle heights front and rear.

We swapped bikes a couple time during the ride and you can’t help but laugh out loud within 10 seconds pedaling this thing. Surprisingly this is a good riding bike, and you feel like you are steering a monster truck around when you look down at the massive front end. Steve was airing the thing which he made look easy and giving me a good chance to find some new perspective to some of the features with my still pretty new ultra wide angle lens.

Jeff Jones has recommended to land nose first with this bike and Steve proved that to be sound. I never got a landing shot but that tire has something like 10psi in the front and you can see and hear the tire squishing on the landing.

More Steve Air Time. After the ride it was time for some Mananas grub and a Cervaza

Rare shot of of Aqua sans helmet. On the way back from Alpine an old high school buddy that I had not seen in over 20 years was in town for the night so we hooked up for a couple brews and some long overdue catching up. It was good day both on and off the bike.

Goodies in the Mail

“Dad, why did you ship an empty box back to the states?” That was the question my kid asked me shortly after I got home. I was stoked already.

So look what was in my garage when I got back from Japan. A carbon fiber hardtail frame. Stupidly light and downright sexy.

I have not decided if this is going built this up to replace my single speed or if it may become my geared XC rig. If it come in as light as I think it is going to it could see some travel action as it and the bike box’s combined weight may be under the threshold for the airlines overweight charge.

More to follow.

A Little Land of the Rising Sun Action

After spending a few days in Seattle finishing up some work, I headed out to Japan to spend a week scoping out a project for next year. As always I was hoping to squeak in a ride if time permitted. I rented a mountain bike for the duration of my visit to serve as my primary means of daily transportation and potentially some recreation as well. The weather was forecast to be pretty much icky for the week with Wednesday being partly sunny. Wednesday came around and partly sunny was indeed the case with a full serving of windy and brisk to boot. I was able to open my afternoon enough to get in some “Off-Site Strategic Planning” accomplished on the bike. While I still have some places to explore in this area on my list from previous visits, I would not have time for that with the shorter days October. I had a handful of miles to ride on the streets to get to Zushi City where I would pick up the first part of the afternoon’s dirt adventure. I had nearly forgotten just how culturally interesting in can be riding on the streets over here. Narrow sidewalks, mom and pop businesses, scooters whizzing by, Japanese School Girl Uniforms, lots of people out walking and peddling, etc… It is just an intersting scene.

On one section of road with a bit of a climb in it I came across a new sign that was not there in June of last year. I can’t read this sign but I know what it means. And I like it. The Japanese have a knack for iconing things so that just about anybody can figure things out. Rider Up!

Once I made it over the Sengen Trails which is commonly referred to by us Engrish folk as Duck Pond since the trail starts at a small pond that typically has ducks in it. What a bunch creative Gaijins we are . The trail starts with a heiniouly steep hike-a-bike up to a ridge that typcially requires you to shoulder the bike. With the rain the day before I knew this was going to be a fun section with plenty of slick clay. It was about this time I thought about the fact I had never taken the trail around this little pond. So I decided to delay my hike-a-bike fun and go around the pond. I was fairly stoked to find that at the end the pond was a little boardwalk that was quite fun on the bike. It was just tight enough to be interesting and combined with the really brisk air and the thought of falling into the shallow mucky end of this pond made this section downright fun. I had to do it a couple of times in both directions. This was a pretty cool 5 minute detour and added some newness the ride right out of the gate. The Hike-A-Bike up to the ridge was every bit of clay treachery I expected, but I was soon rolling along the ridgetops.

After climbing along the trails I made it up to the top of Sengen Hill (or Peak – can’t remember ) there was some nice views of the mountains in the Hakone National Park in the distance, but it tooks some effort to see as mother nature is reclaiming the clearing in a hurry. As is often the case, Mt Fuji was hiding behind distant clouds. From here it was time to head down and I took one of my favorite routes down through the Tennin trail system before popping out on another street.

After a short bit of road interconnecting I got onto a series of trails that headed westward towards Kamakura. There are some really good trails that are quite popular with hikers. Many of the trails are hundreds of years old with some of the more direct routes between the temples being over a thousand years old.

There are several sections along the route where the trail cuts through the top of the ridge via a slot or notch. Sometimes the notches are 20-30 feet deep. I orginally thought that this was a result of the trail being “cut” by some machinery or tools sometime in the past. The slots in the ridge were actually created from the countless footsteps of people who have walked these trails for hundreds of years. Feet, time and errosion have cut through the ridge tops. After riding and climbing along these ridges the exit was like most of the trails in the mountains around here, Hike-A-Bike up and White Knucklers on the way down. The wet conditions earlier in the week made the descent quite challenging to ride and not much easier to walk. There was a least a couple of clay samples taken.

Once I dropped off the ridgelines down into Kamakura I worked my way along the streets back to Yokosuka and my hotel. Later on that evening I met some old friends for dinner to catch up on thngs and to fawn over their new baby girl. It was good times on pretty much all facets of the day.

The Opening Week in Washington

Last week was really busy. While work was plenty busy, I did have enough time to get out and about on some trails. After starting the week out by finding out with my bike being stolen, I was able to get my hands on a rental hardtail on Tuesday. Wednesday after work I hit up Banner Forest. I had hiked a small slice of this area in December of 2008 but this was the first time on the bike. This places is a lot of fun. Lots of the twists and turns and quick up and downs on nearly all singletrack. Quite the fun XC playground.

Wednesday was supposed to be a quick afternoon ride at Green Mountain near Bremerton. The trail was billed as well marked out-up and back-down. Just a few miles into the climb I spied and sweet looking narrow singletrack heading off to the west and someone had made a wooden arrow on the ground pointing to it. For those that know me, know what happened next. Yes I took the sweet looking singletrack that was not on my map. This was indeed a really awesome singletrack saw much less traffic the the one I started on. This trail lead to another and another and the next thing I know I was much futher out than I had planned on being. I had to dust off some orienteering skills that I had not had to use so thoroughly in quite sometime. When all said an done my 12-14 miles afternoon spin ended being a stout 21 miler that ended in the waning moments of the day.

Saturday it was raining the Seattle-Tacoma area so I headed inland to the east of Mt Rainer to ride the Ranger Creek and Palisades trail. The 20 miles of pure singletrack did not disappoint. I am going to get back here when the sun is out.

Sunday I headed out to the Olympic Pennisula for a ride that is considered a Washington Classic/Epic. The Lower Dungeness to Gold Creek Trail loop. For much of the ride I was in the clouds which made the fantastic singletracks take on a primordial rainforest feel. The cloud ride in thick old growth woods was sometimes spooky and I often found myself whistling so as not to surpise any critters further up the foodchain.

I’ll get some proper ride reports put together when I get some downtime, but for now it will just be the samplers.

Celebrating the End of the Day

There is nothing like a little celebration and the end of an awesome day. It is great to reflect on day well spent with family and friends. One of my favorites is when there is a bit of great mountain biking in the mix as well. I have been really fortunate to have lots of those days. Today the celebration was for different reasons.

The day started off like some of my other work trips that have had some awesome mountainbiking through in as well. Asunrise communter flight to LAX to catch a connector. The connector in this case was Seattle and I have plans for a good bit of riding during my month long stay up here. Once we got about the marine layer I was treated to pretty pictureque scene below.

One of the other guys I will be working with on this project was going to drive up versus fly. He has plans for some post-work vacation/roadtrip. He offered to drive my bike up so I was more than happy not have tear in down, put in the bike box and lug it around the airports. Shortly after getting off the plane in LAX and into the terminal things started turning for the worse. I got a phone call from by work bud. My Intense 6.6 had been stolen off the back of his truck. Somebody in Kelso WA cut the fairly beefy cable lock and took off with my cherished rig. I did have a long enough of a layover that all the phone calls were taken care of with the Kelso Police Department as well as make a few points online about the event. Needless to say I was good and bummed.

My Baby when she was new (The shock has seens been replaced with a Cane Creek Double Barrel coil shock) The setup of this bike is fairly unique and considering that “Works” translucent paint allows the unique weldmarks to show through, the underlying marks on this paint is a vittual fingerprint for this bike.

Hopefully this along with frame serial number will help it recovery. I don’t expect I’ll see the bike again.

Needless to say that I was not in a good mood when I got on the flight to Seattle. I was however fairly comfortable in seat 5C. Short BEFORE take off, the little five or so year old “princess” in row 8 started screaming crying and wailing. It was freaking blood curdling and I could see the tightening shoulders and clinched jaws of everyone within my view. Mom made good effort to try and calm the little princess down….for all of about five freaking minutes, then she just became pretty oblivious to her little freaking scream box urchin. We were given the okay to use the portable electronics you should have seen the mad scramble everyone was making to fire that those things up to try and drowned out that the baby terrorist cell. The scramble was enough that the flight attendant actually smile and had to hold back some snickers. Even with the music pumping you could still here the screaming. Now I know the difference between a kid in pain and a kid being a pain. There was not ear ache, no upset stomach, this kid was just an urchin. Come on Mom, do something, NyQuil, Sleeping Pills, Pillow across the face, sock in the mouth, something! The descent was pure torture once we had to turn off our electronic mufflers. I was fit to be tied when I got off the plane, luckily I have a couple hours of driving to do and was able to chillax a little.

Because of the length of my stay here I was able grab a condo rental for the same price as a hotel stay. I was pretty freaking stoked with the accommodations and location. It was well into the afternoon by the time I was finally able to set down and relax for good with a tasty Pacific Northwest cold one. Somedays you celebrate a day well spent, today I was simply celebrating the END of this day. The good news about this Monday is there are a lot of people out there who had something truly tragic happen today and I was not one of them. Thanks everyone who acknowledged the bummage of my day and offered encouragement and help. You guys Rock!

San Marcos – Its not a F$%)ing Trail!

Tripe (noun)

Lining of the stomach of a ruminant (especially a bovine) used as food.
A slang term synonymous with rubbish, in the sense of something of little value, or nonsense.
(see also San Elijo Trails)

Definition #2 particularlythe “something of little value” is the theme of this rant.

So for the last week or so I have been investigating some of trails not to far from my hood. The San Elijo Hills area. I was not expecting much and I was quite underwhelmed. More than just underwhelmed, I was pissed at what the developer was allowed to get away with calling trails.

The Gardens View Tripe – Are you f$%^ing kidding me! When two trucks can pass one another on it, it is not a trail. It is a dirt road.

I laughed out loud at this sign. “Give Life A Chance”. What the sign from the San Elijo Hills Development Company should say is “YOU need to give life a chance, because WE have already bulldozed all the habitat in this area”

Take a look at the crap they have on their website. 18 miles of trails. There is less than one mile of trail in this development. There are over 17 miles of Dirt Sidewalk Pathway Tripe throughout this development. Try a little truth in advertising.

The Double Peak Tripe. The “trail” is the dirt sidewalk on the side of the pavement and then starts up the hill. Where is the natural outdoor experience here? You have either pavement or a cement gutter on one side and a wooden rail fence to keep from even contacting nature on the other. Most of this climb is compacted and absolutely smooth decomposed granite. It is a nearly sterile outdoor experience where you never escape development. I have been on treadmills that were only slightly less interesting. If you can drive a Ferrari or a Prius on it, it is not a trail, it is TRIPE!

Do I even need to say it, “It is not a F$%^ing Trail! TRIPE, TRIPE, TRIPE! This is part of the 18 miles that San Elijo is selling as an attraction.

The Lake San Marcos Tripe. PAVED! I will not buy any blabage about American Disabilites Act Access with this “trail”. What this picture does not show is how stupidly steep this thing is. There is no Rascal, Humaround or any other battery powered mobility chair that is going to get up this thing. The city has a formula for how many miles of trail the community should have for its size and population. The mileage of this tripe counts towards meeting that trail requirement. What does that mean? It could mean less funding for real trails in the future because the city already has its mileage.

This is part of the “Make A Wish Trail”. I sure did make a wish. I wish there were more trails like this in the area. This IS a trail. Part of it looks to be pre-developement but portions of it are obviously newer.

This is the “Secret Trail” aka Trail 90. While it is fairly short this is good stuff that not only offers a high quality outdoor experience it is substainually less impacting on existing habitat. This is the best legal and sanctioned trail out here. It is also a legacy trail from before the develeopment started.

Okay so maybe I’m being rash and a trail snob but this is some of the worst stuff I have seen in an urban area interfacing to open space in San Diego County yet. The dirt pathways have their place down between the homes, but running this crap all the way up into the open space is just dumb. It does not meet the needs of the users who would venture up that far and it needlessly destroyed even more habitat by making the “trails” three to five times wider than they need to be. Arrrrrrrgh, What a nearly complete failure on the part of those charged with the oversight of this development. I’m not sure if this failure is due to incompetence, ignorance, or just a simple lack of caring but it certainly did occur.

You can download a map of all this Tripe here and go see for yourself. While it is a good workout it is not a high quality outdoor experience. If you disagree, you need to start looking for some new places to ride as you are missing out on the good stuff elsewhere in the county.

A Week of Meadows, Lakes and Peaks

I had an exceptional week on the bike. There was plenty of work, family and riding which did not leave much time for the keyboard. So here are a few pics from the week. For the mid-week stoke, I met Steve, Eric and Todd for some fun in the Laguna Mountains on the Big Laguna Trail and surrounding area. I forgot my camera at home so these pictures are courtesy of my fellow riders.

Some log riding on the Los Gatos Trail

Some playing was done on the rocks.

Not your average dry and dusty SoCal trail. We had an exceptionally good ride and clocked in around 17-18 miles of good alpine meadow goodness.

Friday, I got in a lunch time quickie at La Costa which is always a good place to get in some short but quality mileage. No Pics

Sunday, I finally got around to doing a ride that I had been curious about for a number of years. The Highpoint Truck Trail that goes up the north side of Palomar Mountain. My bud Clayton, with whom I first rode with in Japan in 2004, just moved back to San Diego so he was up for a ride. I was surprised to see him show you for this ride with his singlespeed. While I be putting up a page on the site in the coming weeks, the quick numbers on this ride are it is a 12 miles long climb that gains 4,400 feet up to the Highpoint Lookout Tower. Needless to say, Clayton earned major climbage points today as a one-geared wonder.

Grunt, Grunt, Groan, Groan

Killer Views from the top.

I see the observatory rather often from the various SoCal highpoints I ride to as a small white dot, This time it was a wee-bit closer.

The Highpoint Lookout Tower, elevation 6,118 feet. I’m sure there are worse ways to spend a workday.

When it was time to turn the wheels around we enjoyed cashing out the gravity points we had earned. Some people hate fireroads, but 12 miles of downhill with some sketchy turns is pretty freaking fun. It was a good way to finish off the weekend, Bring on Monday!

A Big Bear Loop with Da Boyz

So this weekend the family spent a couple of days in Big Bear at my brother-in-law’s cabin. I brought along the bikes just in case we could carve some time out for some fun in the dirt.

Turns out we did grab some time one morning so the boys and I headed for the lazy boy chairs at Snow Summit for lift to the top of the mountain.

This was my first time doing the lift assisted riding on the mountain as well. I have done stuff in the area and on the back side of the mountain but had never taken any of the stuff into town. From the top of the lift we took 2N10 west along the ridgeline for a few miles and then took the short singletrack out to the Grand Viewpoint.

While I think the views from here are pretty cool (been here once before), the boys were like, “Yeah Yeah Yeah, is it time to go downhill yet?”

Lucky for them it was time to point the bikes down the hill. After a quick bit of backtracking to 2N10, we took the Pine Knot Trail (1E01) down the hill. We had discussed doing the traditional Grandview Point Loop that used the fireroad 2N08 to go down the mountain and the Towne Trail to cut back over to the Snow Summit parking lot. Taking the Pine Knot trail would have us needing to ride an additional three miles back through town. In a rare moment of sibling concurrence the boys asked “who would want to go down a fireroad? Let’s take the singletrack!” (Ahhhh, I was so proud, some of my parenting has been getting through. 🙂 ) After this point we did not see much of Will except for regroups. We wanted to blaze ahead and I wanted to keep Jake within earshot.

Jake is gettting quite a bit faster. On a couple of occasions when I zipped ahead to get setup for a shot of him coming by I was surprised how quickly he caught up. I was also surprised at how long it took me to catch back up to him after I put the camera away and got back on the bike. He is working that hardtail really well.

Once down at the bottom at the Glen Aspen Picnic area we worked our way down on the streets to Highway 18 and cruised back through town. To add a little more trail to the return leg, after going through the village, we hung a right on Knickerbocker Street and after a short bit we hung a left onto 2N08 and back onto the dirt. There was some steep fireroad climbing to be done for a bit and it wiped the smiles of the boys’ face. It was good for them. I don’t want them to get used to the whole chair-lift lizard thing. All was better once we got up to where the Town Trail comes off of 2N08 and contours it way back to the Snow Summit parking lot. The boys had a good time and I was glad to get some quality time out on the dirt with them. We celebrated we some post-ride sodas.

Playing in the Big Bear Back Country

Sunday I ventured up to the Big Bear area with Bill O’Neil for a bit of back country goodness. The person who first turned me onto this route asked that I not give out the names so I’m honoring that. Other than having to spend some quality time with the topographic maps there is no reason why you can’t go out and discover this ride for yourself.

We would ride/hike a series of trails over several peaks with some fantastic views. I had worn my SIDI biking shoes which was not the best choice for the adventure today. I have a couple sets of MTB shoes that have more rubber in the sole which would be much more hike-a-bike friendly than todays selection.

The terrain in this area is fairly energy sapping. Squared off rocks that slip and slide underneath your wheels makes for interesting descents where finesse of the controls and the nerve to let the bike make it’s own small line adjustments are a must to keep the rubber side down. This stuff also puts a little extra calf burn on you in the hike-a-bike sections. We did plenty of this in the higher elevations. Along one of these section I was surprised to see both a solo rider as well as two other riders (Actually at that time they were hike-a-bikers) later on. It was the first time in 3 years that I have seen anyone other than some hikers and the a couple of mounted forest service rangers.

For me the long stretches of hike-a-bike were well worth it for the views and the techy descents.

Of course what goes up must come down. We eventually did a bit of road interconnect before hopping onto a classic Southern California trail.

We took a break at a campground near the final trailhead to refill our Camelbaks and to grab some snacks. The campground was closed for maintenance but the water was still on so we chilled at one of the campsite benches. Within minutes of our arrival the little guy who runs campsite #1 came over, introduced himself and attempted to persuade us to kick him a little something for looking after the place.

Now, I know your not supposed to feed these guys but he was certainly a veteran of the campground gig. Not to mention he was so damn cute!

The final trail was in pretty good shape and it was a blast as always. The creeks were flowing well and the one pictured above got me pretty good. I picked a bad line through the creek and found the deepest part of the crossing and a sizable rock. Combined with my less that stellar effort I executed an endo to a perfect 5-point landing in the creek. That was Brisk Baby! There were no other unplanned dismounts for the rest of the ride and by the end of the day we had put in about 28 miles and a lot of smiles.

One Flying Dog and a Finicky Bitch

The thermometer in my truck read 89 degrees when I pulled into the Anderson Truck Trail parking area yesterday afternoon. It was my first return to Anderson Truck Trail in a long time (October of last year). I should have known better. I forget how many times I have been out here in the heat and just gotten pummeled by it. As least I would not be alone. Almost everytime I have done something idiotic out here it has been with Steve. Steve has a way of bringing out people’s inner idiot. (For some, it’s not so inner) Steve is an Idiotic Whisperer if you will.

We both knew it was going to be a brain boil on the climb as we had both done the climb in even hotter weather. What we both needed was “I’m with Stupid” jerseys. Steve further added some beatdown potential to his ride by bringing out his custom Wolfhound singlespeed. This bike is a thing of beauty build to Steve’s exacting specs. The climb was indeed a brain boil as expected. There are a couple segments of the climb that are known to have “Dead Air” where the afternoon sun hits you from the left while heat is radiated from the rocks on your right and there is no breeze to move the air around. It is like you are in a brick oven and your head is the pizza. That was not a surprise as we knew it was coming. What was surprising was how the lines had changed over winter. In the past I knew all the turns and bumps like the back of my hand and basically had the descent wired. That was not the case now as the lines changed enough that I would have to recourt this mistress on the descent. I tried to make as many mental notes as possible of the new conditions.

I came into the day thinking about hitting a jump I had not pulled the trigger on before, the Halloween Drop. Throughout the climb I was visualizing my takeoff and landing. Short of any last minute mental flatters, it was going to happen today. Despite the heat, we climbed fairly well. It was not my fastest climb by a longshot but I have lagged much more in the past. I was mentally prepared for the Halloween Drop by the time we took a break at the top. Before long it was time to turn the bike’s downhill. Some new lines had sprung up since my last visit that I was up for trying.

A little bit of rock wall ride.

Steve navigating the Wolfhound onto the rocks

Part II of the new section was a gnarly bit of rocks. Steeper than it looks and a bit tricky even on the full suspension rig.

Steve did some good rock surgery on the Wolfhound

Steve on “The Diving Board” letting the dog fly

I had not even thought about doing the Diving Board. I have done this a bunch of times in the past. My thoughts had been on the Halloween Drop. I passed on the jump but later while grabbing the shot of Steve doing the jump, he went into went Idiot Whisperer mode and the next thing I know I’m doing the jump. I did not stick the landing. I was way too overconfident and as far as I can tell I had my weight too far back on the landing which allowed the front wheel to slip out on the off-camber landing and I did a nice little thump and slide on the hardpacked decomposed granite. Ouch! I had managed to exfolilate a nice patch of skin my left thigh and whack the meaty part of my right palm. I always find it interesting how you can take the top layer of skin off of your body and the clothes between you and the ground remains intact. These were pretty minor in the scheme of things but it was still somewhat painful. (Glad I had protection on my other bits.) Anderson can be a finicky bitch who does not take kindly to you staying away too long and courting too many other ladies. She gave me a nice little bitch slapping.

So my little spill messed with my mental game enough that I decided to keep the tires on the ground. Anderson has plenty of on-the-ground technical goodness so I was still not getting off easy and I hit all the rest of my usual stuff.

The Flying Dog – aka Wolfhound

I was not the only one who had been visualizing a Halloween Drop launch, Steve had been mentally stewing over this with the Wolfhound. Steve said this was not going to be a multiple run in thing. One run in only, the trigger was going to be pulled or the anchor was going to be thrown out. Steve pulled the trigger, landed like a cat and yelled and giggled for the next five minutes. We are pretty sure this is the first time someone has hit this on a hardtail.

A different angle of the 911 roll. I was digging the moon rising.

On our way over to the final descent, to add insult to injury, some kind of flying insect went into my mouth and as I was spitting it out the thing bit/stung me on my lip. It was not as full on painful as a regular bee sting but my lip immediately was tingling and I felt some puffing up starting. Yes Anderson can be a finicky bitch that does not take kindly to being ignored for months and then thinking you can just show back up and make lots of heat in the sheets.

For the final descent I had learned my lesson, court the lady, stoke her through curves and let her tell me how fast you can go. It was a blissful descent with lots of newness from all the changed lines. The tradional post-ride burritos followed. I’m sure I will have some interesting technicolor body artwork develop off the next few days but it was not a bad Wednesday at all.