Trails – Page 29 – The Ramblings of MTBBill

Shaking down the UZZI

So I got my brand spanking new UZZI out for a shakedown ride recently. The orginal plan was hit up Iron Mountain and Ellie Lane but with early moring rain, the plan shifted to Anderson Truck Trail in Alpine.

The boys at BikeBling did a mighty fine job with the mechanicals as it was shifting flawless right of of the gate and even under tension. (A feat which I often miss the mark on a bit requiring lots of trailside tinkering on the first ride) I was bit leary about going to the 10 speed drivetrain as I like the idea of having only one drive train type to worry about (9 speed). Between mine and the kid’s bike it good to have some commonality on the logistics side of the house. Well it did not take long into the climb to notice the marvels of the 36-tooth cog in the back. I’m sold on it already and I did not even have to try out the 22-36 granny ring setup yet.

My last two longer legged bikes had Fox 36 TALAS (160) airsrung forks up front and I really liked being able to adjust the travel down to make long or steep climbs easier to deal with. This bike has the Fox 36 Vanilla (180) coil sprung fork without the travel adjustment. It will take a bit of getting used on some of the climbing bits with this longer slacker frontend as a bit more body positioning is going to be required a steeper bits. It was so freaking nice to have a VPP suspended bike back under the saddle. This bike climbed exceptionally well for it weight without any of the dreaded energy sapping “bob”.

When it was time to turn the bike down the hill that was when this bike really came alive. The bike is so stinking plush and it only took a few rock rolls and drops to get sold on the coil fork.

I stuck to only the small air bits while getting acquintted with how this bike handles. This bike is pretty confidence inspiring so I got a feeling I’m going to get myself into trouble with this rig at some point. It’s gonna be great!

The trail overall was in about as good as shape as it ever gets so it was an absolutely great day to be out testing a new bike.

My the time it was time to head back down the main run, I had a pretty good opening day feel for the bike and I had one heck of fun descent back down the hill. There was some hooping and hollering on the way down. A mighty fine shakedown run with the new rig.

Views Off The Bike From The “Away From Home Office”

So I have wrapped up my work project in Everett Washington. It took a bit longer than expected and I’m glad to be back home. I did get in some tasty miles of singletrack during my stay but between the work, weather and a nasty bit of crud I had for a while, I did not get my dirt fix as often as I would have liked. So why do we ride our bikes? Geez there will be just about as many answers to that question as there are folks who decide to through a leg over a bike in the first place. I believe that is part of what mountainbiking so special in the first place. One pursuit with countless permutations of living life and generally having a good time.

One of those “answers” for me is seeing beautiful scenery and the occasional critter or two. I was extremely fortunate to score a pretty awesome place to stay during my visit. It was a quint little beach house on Possession Sound that simply was fantastic from an experience standpoint. It made coming home from the “office” everyday seem like a mini-vacation. When the weather was cooperating there was some incredible views to be had right from the dinner table and deck. By the end of the first week I had adopted a routine getting up a couple hours earlier than I really need to just to enjoy the views and a few relaxing cups of coffee before starting my day. In the evening the place just begged you to crack open a bottle of one of the Pacific Northwest’s tasty microbrews. The views were often a daily dose of “answers” if you will.

Whales…..Yes I said whales. Whales were a common sight right out the front windows. A few gray whales liked to come into the shallows and feed on whatever tasty critters where on the bottom here. They would swim sideways and use their tails to stir up the bottom and then spin around and scoop up and filter out all of the tasty snacks.

They would work down the shoreline and eventually head back out to deeper water and off to the wherever the next buffet spot was located.

They made plenty of noise with all of their activity and sometimes the sounds be the first thing that would draw my attention their “visit”. Seeing these majestic critters was certainly a life enriching experience.

The tidal shift is pretty dramatic in this area. The lines of “puddles” you see in the photo above are the divots created by the whales when they are feeding at high tide. They are typically 6-8 feet long each.

It was quite a trip to walk out onto the beach at low tide and meander around where the whales were at less than 24 hours ago.

Even when there were no critters close by, the views were often of the quality that many us pedal for miles to seek out.

I kept my camera nearby all the time as you never knew what was going to pop up on the beach at any moment. This pair of otters were in hurry to get their take-out order home before it got warm.

So while I did not get in as many miles as I would have liked on this trip, I got of wealth of “answers” that I typically only find along quite singletrack of the backcountry.

Fort Ebey and Kettles Park

The weather reports were calling for clear skies and a warm day (that would be above 50 by Seattle standards this time of year) on Saturday. In the coastal Pacific Northwest one should pay attention for such musings from the weather folks.

Saturday morning was indeed amazingly great looking and I wasted little time in getting packed up and headed out. The destination today was Fort Ebey State Park combined with the adjacent Kettles Park. After some nice scenery from the ferry over to Whidbey Island and a pretty ride through the countryside I parked at one of the trailheads at Kettles Park. The plan was to ride some of the trails westwardly through Kettles Park over into Fort Ebey State Park. I would try to do all of the Fort Ebey stuff and then work my way back through the rest of Kettles Park on the way back. The trails of Kettles were mostly buff goodness with a combination of quick flowliness and tight twisty stuff that required a bit of shoulder tucking here and there to avoid the trees.

The fun singletrack continued after crossing into Fort Ebey State Park. I intentionally tried to stitch together the most serendipitous route possible to get onto as many trails as I could without too many loop backs. The trails I took as I worked my way up to the west coast of the island and the Fort’s old gun battery were Grade A forested goodness that were a real cross country pleasure.

Fort Ebey’s original purpose was to serve as gun battery defending Puget Sound during WWII. Construction began in 1942 and the two gun batteries were placed in service in 1943. In 1965 Fort Ebey started being converted to a state park. Today visitors can walk through the bunkers and the foundation for the turrets now make a nice bench in which to enjoy the views.

The most popular and iconic trails here is the Bluff Trail. Its proximity to the edge of the bluff and stunning views offered of the Strait of Juan De Fuca and the Olympic Peninsula on clear days is truly an incredible thing to experience. Unfortunately bicycles are not longer allowed on most of the trail. There are a couple of sections to the south of the battery that are still open to bikes and they should not be missed.

I rode the open sections of the Bluff Trail in both directions just to get the full experience.

At the south end of the park is the Cedar Hollow loop which also offers more of the killer views. It is well worth some of the grunt work involved to get to the views.

After I got done looping in all the Fort Ebey trails I made my way back into Kettles Park and enjoyed some really nice singletrack through the forest. I was feeling pretty pooped at this point, but the temperature had climbed to 68 degrees so it was pretty easy to keep on going despite complaining legs. I pretty much rode all the trails of Kettles which brought the mileage up to a little over 20 miles before I called it a day. A day that I call simply awesome! Expect more information on this place the site in the coming weeks.

A return to the dirt in Anacortes

After a week full of mostly rain, chilly breezes and general ickiness, the skys started to clear up a bit on Saturday afternoon and by sunset I was optimistic for a bike ride the following day.

The Whistle Lake area of the Anacortes Community Forest Lands was the destination. I had ridden here a couple of times in 2009 and I was really looking forward to getting back onto the flowling singletrack goodness of this place.

This was my first time back on the bike since the truck accident three and a half weeks ago and boy could I feel it. The opening climb was steep and there was much more huffing and puffing than I had expected. It was a quite brisk 47 degrees for pretty much the entire ride and the cool air felt really good. While we SoCal weather weenies consider that cold, after a week of typically Seattle area weather, this was no where close to bad. There is something about being out in nature of a trail that meanders through the forest is good chicken soup for the soul. I am especially fond of the series of trails going around the lake with its numerous twists and turns coupled with short up and downs. The trails on the north side of the lake is often perched well above the lake and sometimes is downright near-cliff like just off the trail.

I did pretty close to the route I did in 2009 and by the time I was done I was pretty spent and my legs were complaining. Obviously way too many tasty beers and no miles on the legs were issue. I was nearly finished with my ride with the sun came out for good and the day was getting downright awesome. I had plenty of time left in my day and I did not feel like leaving the trails just yet.

There is a also a series of trails in the Heart Lake area where I had parked. I just had to go out and get some more time in the dirt even though I was “done”. I liken it to having a yummy Thanksgiving dinner. You are plenty stuffed already but you just have to have that extra slice of pie to finish things off. So I headed off to do a loop around Heart Lake. I ended up worked over and sore over the “extra slice of pie” but it was well worth it.

Less than a mile from Heart Lake is Mount Erie and there is an access road up to the top as well some viewpoints. The views were quite amazing.

It was certainly a great day to be out on a bike and a particularly good day to be getting back on the saddle.

Basecamp Puget Sound, Washington

I started this week with a shift of basecamp up up to the Pacific Northwest on the east side of Puget Sound for a work project for the next five weeks.

This is certainly not the most optimal time of year for riding in the Seattle area and the descent down into area look like I expected to.

Luckily all the luggage made it (not always the case).

With the slow economy and the it being the off-season coupled with the length of my stay and some crafty negoitating skills I was able to score a sweet beachfront rental.

Bald eagles are frequently see from the dinner table and it pretty easy just set back and watch the sound. During this few days I have seen Bald Eagles, Otters, and Whales.

Good stuff to see from the deck.

The view from Day Two. I should be able to work under these conditions 🙂 This was the last sunny, dry and generally non-icky day of the trip so far.

The steed is ready to go and there is some ridinging my future. Either the weather will get better or I am going to start sacking up and deal with the ick.

More to follow……

Palm Canyon

Last Sunday the weatherman was calling for rain in the San Diego and Los Angles area. It sounded like a good time to hit up the Palm Canyon Epic out near Palm Springs. The group for this ride dwindled at the last minute and it ended up with Steve and I coming in from San Diego and John coming over from Burbank. Smaller is generally better on this ride as you cover a lot of ground that has a reputation for being unforgiving to bikes and riders alike.

After leaving a vehicle in Palm Springs we drove up to pretty much to the base of Santa Rosa Mountain to start the 30 mile adventure for the day. We started from the traditional Palm Canyon trailhead vice the more commonly used Pinyon Flats trailhead. I love the first section of the Palm Canyon trail with it’s ribbon then singletrack etched into steep sidehills. Sorry for no pictures of the section, there was way too much grinnage to stop and pull out the camera.

Here is shot taken shortly after finishing off the first section. Any questions?

There was lots of greenage out along the the trail

The Indian Portero Trail option was taken

John riding a pretty interesting section of rock

Steve and his camera case racing through the rocks. The camera case won that heat.

Plenty of water running through here. It was snow yesterday so you can bet it was mighty cold.

As a matter of fact I can assure it was mighty cold!

More water filled wash crossing fun.

There was some time allocated for a bit of playing on the rocks.

John ferreting out a line.

The 3-mile Dry Wash climb was in pretty descent shape but it was still a freaking beater.

Once we got up the wash and headed over to Mike Dunn’s Desert Oasis (AKA the dozer) Steve felt the need for some dozer hucking. File this under Stupid Human Tricks.

After a short bit of singletrack climbing it was time to head down in earnest on the Hahn Trail. OMG OMFG LOL insert you favorite texting shorthand here that expresses singletrack bliss. The Hahn Trail is an amazing trail, narrow, fast and etched into the mountainside.

I selfishily keep my camera in the pack but Steve bit the bullet and got a shot of John and I rolling on Hahn. Way Good Stuff.

After the massive grinfest of the Hahn descent we took a series of trails that got us to the Wild Horse trail which would drop us into the Goat Trails of Palm Springs which was the final segment of the route. The legs were feeling plenty worked at this point.

The final section of the Wildhorse trail is steep with some tight switchback which are always a lot fun to try and clean. After Wildhorse we mostly used “The Swartz” to connect together a series of singletracks back down to my truck. We have a few flats over the day and one broken chain but made pretty good time. It always seems like such an accomplishment to finish this ride with plenty of daylight left. There were some tasty beverages and grub consumed afterwards over conversations about all that goes into to making this an epic ride. The parts beats the body, the parts beats the bike and the continual string of parts that nutures the soul. Once again it was a wonderful day to be on a bike out with Mother Nature.

Iron Mountain and Ellie Lane

I had been needing a little Iron in my diet so a ride out at Iron Mountain near Poway was in order. This place is pretty popular with the hikers so if you are going to ride out here you need to plan to be real patient and mind your trail etiquite as you will certainly have plenty of interactions. That is one of the reasons why it is best to do this ride on a weekday. It has been some time since I was last out here and I was quite shocked to see some of the maintenance that was done to the lower half of the Iron Mountain trail. There were lots of sections were most of the rocks has been either removed from the trail or buried in decomposed granite. While it may make the trail smoother in the near term I think it will cause more erosion problems in the long-term than it will fix. There were some sections that had been needlessly widened and debrushed to the point where they may never recover as the vegitation that stabilized the soil has been removed.

Luckily the upper half of the Iron Mountain trails has not been touched (yet) so the iconic rocks and technical features of this trail are still intact. The trail can be quite exhausting on the way up and on more than one occasion I had to stop and catch my brest breath. I felt like a boob for not being able to clean some of the sections that I have handled in the past.

After a nice break at the top it was time to play on the way back down. The chunk of this trail is always a challenge and we sessioned our way back down the trail.

Steve working an interesting line.

One of numerous gnarly switchbacks.

Steve taking a roller

After the Iron Mountain trail we hooked up with the Ellie Lane trail. I had nearly forgotten how much of a grunter it is get get up up the first saddle where the downhill chunk-o-rama starts.

Once over the first saddle on Ellie Lane there was some high quality chunk to tackle on the way down.

Steve taking on an interesting line. After the first chunky descent were would have two more grunt/hike-a-bike sections before the final technical descent of the day. By the time we got down I was feeling pretty worked over but stoked to have got in some solid technical riding.

From there we had some mellow cruising to loop back over to the trailhead where….

the marvels of modern MTB frame designs could be really appreciated. This Santa Cruz frame features a built-in bottle opener!

El Capitan Open Space Preserve

Last Sunday and this Wednesday I spent some time exploring the El Capitan Open Space Preserve located near Lakeside. El Cajon Mountain is the extremely promient granite mountain on the preserve you can’t miss if you are driving into El Cajon from the west. And if you have ever ridden Anderson Truck Trail it is mountain on the other side of the reservoir. I can’t count how many times I have said I wanted to get up on that mountain and snoop around. I finally got around to doing just that.

So for the first go around on Sunday, I checked out this area on a whim. I literally left my house in the morning and did not know where I was going to go ride. I did not feel like driving forever and I did not feel like the usual stuff. After remembering how many times I had commented on “What’s on that hill?” I started pulling up maps on my phone and headed towards Lakeside and ultimately the staging area for the El Capitan Open Space Preserve off of Wildcat Canyon Road.

I knew I was in for some climbing, and it started right out of the gate. After climbing about half a mile on dirt streets I came to the trailhead proper and keep going on a sorta wide singletrack up from there. The going was steep in spots but I soon came out to a saddle and junction with an old mining road. I could see lots of ups ahead and some of it looked steep.

All along the route there were wildflowers here and there making an appearance.

It became pretty clear early on that there was a lot more climbing to be done than the simple bottom to top elevation would lead you to believe. There was a lot of “UP three” and “DOWN one (sometimes two)” action going on. One of the mental bummers of this was that you could see that you were just going to have to pay back the elevation real soon. While most of the climbs were workable (hello granny gear) there was some heinous pitches that required the foot gear.

I was amazed how much water was up here on the mountain, little brooks and the sounds of running water were often heard along the route. One week ago to the day, there was snow of this mountain.

One of the things that had been intriguing me about this mountain was all the huge slabs and rocks that could be seen from afar. On this first outing when I got up to what I thought was the main ridgeline with the bulk of the climb behind me, I started snooping out lines and playing on some of the rocks.

I ultimately wanted get on the east end of the mountain to be be able to look down at El Capitan Reservoir and across to Anderson Truck Trail. After checking out an off-shoot trail I saw I still had a long way to go to get there and no trail heading directly in that direction.

Also in this area I came across an old mine that was pretty cool looking. It had three opening that only went back about 20 feet before stopping. I don’t know if this was its as-left state or wither the shafts were later plugged but it was an interesting bit of history carved into the rocks.

Beyond the mine site the old mining road turned downhill in a big way. I followed it for a ways and it looked like it was going off of the ridge and towards the Barona Indian Reservation area. I did not have good cell coverage here and I could not pull up any kind of aerial or map views of the area. I thought about continuing on but the thought of slogging back up in the other direction or having to ride way around on the roads did not sound appealing at this point in the day’s effort. So I chocked it up to thats what I get for not preparing enough for this exploration and decided not continue downward from there. I started heading back and played on some rocks here and there on the way. At the bottom of some of the descents, my rotors had that dark blue hot look and the smell of burning pads filled the air near the bike.

Fast forward to Wednesday and armed with some new information, I repeated the Sunday ride but pressed beyhond the sadddle at the old mine and commited to loosing a good chunk of elevation, knowing that I was just going to have to gain it back. The descent had some pretty gnarly steep bits.

(The “Much Steeper Than It Looks” moniker applies here)

I know I did not lose as much elevation as I thought, but knowing that you have to come back up this stuff later in the ride makes the terrain seem much steeper and each foot of descent seems like it is going to be 18″ of gain going the other way. Just as Google Earth had shown the old mining road soon turned aburptly back towards the ridgeline and started going uphill in a semi-heinous manner.

Part way up this climb there is an old jeep along the route that was pretty cool to check out. Not sure of the era, but it seemed way old.

The rocks and natural features along the route were also pretty interesting but I did not spend anytime exploring these as it was later in the day and I had some uphill ground to cover still. To compound things, the signs at the trailhead said the gate is locked at 5PM which seems a little crazy. (Why not something reasonable like “sunset”)

I soon got up to a junction where if I would continue straight to get out to the point I was looking to get to. Going off to the right would take me to a viewpoint on a secondary peak, and to the left was a foot trail that would take me up to the main peak. There were still no views of the reservoir at this point. The old trail out the point straight ahead was quite overgrown, way rutted and downhill from were I was at so I opted to forgo going that way. I spent some time working my way up the foot trail towards the main peak but once it started becoming mostly a rock scramble I decided to turn around as I did not want to test the 5PM gate policy.

After turning around I enjoyed a sizable bit of tricky descending before getting back into the granny and foot gear. I had plenty of UPs to do on the way back but I was ultimately loosing elevation. I made back with 15 minutes to spare before the gate was scheduled to be closed. I was pretty good and pooped. While I had only covered 11.5 miles I had climbed 3,491 feet. I think I am going to go back out there maybe once more on a weekend just to fully see the rest of the place, but I don’t know how much more beyond that I will spend out here as it is ultimately a high price to pay to play kind of place.

Yet More Alpine Wendesday Fun

Another Wednesday and another day to go play in Alpine.

Climb Climb Climb

The winter storm over the weekend through a nice dusting of snow on the mountains. There was snow all the way down to ATT on Sunday, but I had retreated up the hill by Wednesday.

A little airtime

There was much discussion about how I look way too serious and tense when getting air or in the technical bits.

So some funny faced air-time was in order! I did actually feel more relaxed on those moves while trying to make a funny face. Wither it actually helped or not who knows, but it was cheap comedy either way.

I started thinking about the 911 roll today. I could not pull the trigger but gave it a few run-ins. Stay Tuned.

Oh Yeah, there was some Squirrel Hucking added into the mix today as well. (No dead squirrels were further harmed in the making of this blog post)

Wednesday Stoke in Alpine

Time for another round of Wednesday fun in Alpine. The weather was starting to roll in but most of the time sky was full of white puffy clouds with a pretty blue backdrop.

I had not been here since the big batch of rain we had a while back and it was pretty astonished to see all the little changes momma-nature had done to the place. Of course the the trail elves has been out making “shoes” so to say.

Historically I have had a bad habit of riding this place in the middle of the summer and stewing my brain in the process. I have ridden this place quite a bit over these cooler months and it was quite nice to do the climb in reasonable conditions. Maybe I am not as retarded as I thought (ask me again in August!) Once at the top it was time to play in some chunk. Steve up near the top.

Me getting started.

This bump-a-bump line gave me some troubles today. It took me three tries and a little skin exfoliation to get it done today.

More playing on the rocks.

The Big Black Fatty coming in for a landing.

The trails elves had tweaked this kicker since my last time here and the thing really pops up now. I carrried nearly all the way over the rock tranny to a rather harsh landing. Yeah for forgiving suspension.

The descent down the main trail was pretty awesome as the dirt has just right moisture in it be both velcro-ish and stupidly fast. The dirt was way too good to stop and take pics. Another great day on a bike.