I made my way to the Lost Coast area and setup camp for some biking tomorrow.
To the Lost Coast
Bear Creek
Yesterday I started a roadtrip that is going to taking me Washington state for a month of work. Instead of flying up I’m taking a handful of vacation days and driving myself up. I am going to some camping, mountain biking and scenic driving on my way up. My first day was a fairly short drive as I went up to Kernville in the afternoon to met up with Jeff Sherman and Bill O’Neil for and even catching up on life.
The following morning we headed up north. After dropping off a vehicle in Camp Nelson, we made our way back up to the Ponderosa/Quaking Aspens area for the start of the climb.
The climb up the Summit was substantial and downright burly steep in spots.
Once on Bear Creek the elevation shedding starting in hurry. Technical in many spots, rippingly flowy often, it was good stuff. The highlight was dropping down through a grove of Giant Sequoias.
Below the grove the trail flora transitioned to oak trees and trail became a bit more flowing with enough grade to be a rip fest
We enjoyed a tasty beer at the bottom. I had the luxury of not having to do the shuttle return back up the mountain so I drove down into the San Joaquin valley and made my way north. A great opening act for this roadtrip.
Hodges Dawn Patrol
It has been pretty hot as of late so a dawn patrol ride was in order. Lake Hodges was the place.
My sweetie joined me on this ride as well. We pretty must did the north side trails as an out and back.
It is definitely summer with pretty much all the vegetation in dry hot weather mode. There was some surprises. The cacti for example has just recently flowered which I expected that would have happened much earlier in the year.
Wildhorse – SART
Bill and I did a ride on the Wildhorse trail near Big Bear and connected it up with the Santa Ana River trail. We typically do this as a point-to-point ride. This logistics of this takes over an hour at both due to the length and the long high clearance road you need to drive to get to the top.
We mixed things up on this ride and met up the evening before and left a vehicle at the bottom and camped at the top.
Since we were camping just for the night we both went pretty minimalist on the camping gear. One area we did not skimp on is the refreshments.
The next morning we came up with a novel idea. We need to start setting an alarm clock to tell us to go to bed. We had stayed up into the wee hours of the night having tasty spirits and trying to solve all manner of the world’s mountain biking problems. (The world has plenty of working on that pesky hunger thing)
Neither one of use were exactly moving quickly in the morning, but we still managed to get rolling earlier than if we had not camped.
Wildhorse did not disappoint and the SART was in good shape. Surprisingly we made really good time on the SART portion. I think we were afraid the wheels were going to fall of the bus of our hangovers so we should keeping movung while we were good.
A little hair if the dog at the bottom and all was well. It was a great day to be out on a bike.
Back in the Saddle
I have been off the bike for quite a chunk of time with lots of competing interests taking up my time. I have a slew of home projects, a long overdue visit from my parents, some difficult work in town as well as some work travel.
It was not bad, just not mountain biking. I worked in Hawaii for a month which included having my wife out for a week.
I did not doing any mountainbiking in Hawaii on this trip but I did do quite a bit of hiking.
It was however quite nice to get back to San Diego and hit up some hometown dirt again.
What is not to like about this kind of trail action.
Spaceballs!
Here are some pictures of some playtime with Steve and Rodney on a trail in Santee known as Spaceballs. Don’t go looking for it on official maps.
Spaceballs!
Spring in San Marcos
There is still some spring left out one of my local rides here in North County.
Friends in Town
I was stoked to have a couple of my Colorado buds roll into town. In addtion giving them a place to shack up and bourbons to sample we got in some riding.
We had some rain to deal with o. The second day so we went out to Anderson Truck Trail
The skys looked ominous as we were driving out to the but the there was a large patches of blue sky to the southwest which was where the wind was coming from so I felt pretty good about our chances. Things looked good early on.
The skys turned pretty quickly and before we knew it we had hail bouncing off our heads. Now we have a bike ride!
Pretty much by the time we got to the top of the trail the hail and light rain was over and we were back in some sunshine. Time to go back down.
I was so stoked to be to return some hospitality back in Kevin and Greg direction.
Back in the Lagunas
I spent most of January working in Jacksonville, Florida. Below is a picture from the commute out to the jobsite that seemed out in the sticks.
Once back in town it was time up one my old reliable trails, the Lguna Mountains.
The skys were super clear and we could see Point Loma and the downtown skyline some 40 miles away as a crow files.
We did not do a particularly good job of chasing the sun and pretty much finish the last minutes of the day. There are worse things to be bad at.
New Trail Dog?
We interrupt our normally scheduled prgramming to show off the new fur baby. Meet Sprocket the Irish Terrier. Let the house mayhem begin!
