Trail Wanderlust
I realized I did not have any action shots of NASCAR in my Rancho La Costa Trail Review that I recently publish.
So I hooked up with of La Costa’s usual suspects, Mudd and Dennis, for some action shots today.
Grippy front tire
A little rock garden play
S-turn
More S-turn
-Bill
Today my boys and I joined nearly 40 other volunteers to open the new Vista Del Mar trail and deconstruct/rehab and old unsustainable trail at the Rancho La Costa Preserve in Carlsbad.
Markus, Patrick and Jesssica from the Center for Natural Land Managment did an excellent job of showing us how to do the rehabilitation work as well as making sure there snacks and water available throughout the event. The picture abovie is of Jessica showing us how to plant the young plants and install an irrigation supplement. These things are really cool. They are a big glob of gel that is mostly water. We buried a couple of these gels with each plant and over the course of a month or so bacteria in the soil will slowly eat away the gel and release the water suspended in the gel in the soil.
The event was sponsored by SDMBA, Spyoptics, Prana, El Camino Bike, Swami’s Bike Club and Squadra and my what a schwagfest they put on. They made sure that even if you did not win something in the raffle, you still went home with something. Very cool!
After the trailwork and raffle, we went out and tested out the trails. This was the first time here for my boys and they had a hoot. The rock wall technical feature was a major hit. Just before you get to it there is a really cool sign pointing you to either the easy or the hard route. This feature got throughly tested by both the young and the not-so young going in both directions. The really cool thing about the easy route is that it does not look so easy because it is made of rock, but in fact it is not much more difficult than a mound of dirt. It gives newer riders the reward of doing something harder without the actual risk of something harder. Jake (My eight year old son) rode it his first time up and giggled afterwards. Will (My 12-year son) wanted to take on the hard line. I was in catch mode, but it was not needed and he cleaned it on the second attempt.
A Big Hats off to Rich Julien from the San Diego Mountain Bike Association and Markus, Patrick and Jessica from the Center for Natural Land Management for working together to make the Vista Del Mar trail happen.
Check out my Trail Work page for all of the pictures from the event along with a few more words.
-Bill
P.S. I should have a page on this trail system in the next couple of weeks.
Yesterday was my first day back on the bike and it went alright. The ride was to be mostly a show and tell with Rich concerning a La Costa to Elfin Forest connector that I would like to get legalized and improved upon. I currently have BOTH of my geared bikes out-of-commission with frame cracks which meant I had to bust out the single speed. The hills that are required on the ride today are not exactly single-speed friendly. Now for a borderline clyde who has been off the bike for a couple of weeks it was downright hostile. I put on my recently “Pushed” fork on the singlespeed and gave it a go. I have to say that I am thoroughly impressed with the work Push did on this fork. It felt better than it has ever felt. I wanted plush, I got plush. I wanted the Terrorlogic gone….Poof..Done! The blowoff threshold on the new RLC damper was even better than the one on my other fork. When the threshold is dialed why down and the fork is locked, it operates like the terralogic was supposed to work. Mainly no harsh transitions when going from locked to unlocked. Being that I was on a singlespeed I cranked up the threshold pretty good since I spent a good deal of my climbing time out of the saddle. Money well spent in my book.
(Note: Fork is pre-push in this pic)
Rich and I made good use of the time getting a good close look at the lay of the land and getting a better idea of exactly where we want things to go. Part of that meant a good chunk of bushwhacking up a pretty steep slope or two. I did not think my legs got too exfoliated at the time, but the hot after-ride shower throughly convinced me otherwise.
If we can get this connector approved, it would make for a good day’s worth of riding in North County. I won’t use the word epic, but it comes to mind. We are going to discuss the connector idea more thoroughly with the most of the principals during or after the trail day this Saturday at La Costa. It is way freaking early in the process, and there are lots of potential landmines out there, but I’m excited about the idea. Here is some additional information of the Trail Day as well some of the on-going concerns and talk about the areas.
-Bill