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!