Mountain Bike Bill, The Dirt on the Dirt

Tag: Big Bear Area

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.

The opening climb at around 8,900 feet

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.

This fellow has some age on him

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.

Ferns and trees on Wildhorse

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.

NorCal Peep Tour of the SART

So I know some people who know some people who …….

That is typically the start of a really good bit of story telling.   It ranks right up there with “This is a No-Shitter”.    Of course any story that starts off with either one of those opening lines is to be treated as suspect and the phrases are synonymous with some kind of embellishment disclaimer.      (NOTE TO SELF:  Remind the viewers of my site, that nearly all my website work is done while enjoying tasty west-coast style hop-infused micro-brews that forces me into heavy reliance on the spellcheck function.  With that in mind  the readers should expect the wong word two bee used from thyme too time and possibly a complete would be missing here and there 🙂

So a freind of my mine in Norcal had a friend of his talk to a friend of mine, then that friend and I came up with a plan to take that friend of our friend onto a trail that a mutual friend had shown us some number of years ago.    Yeah I know some people who know some people who….

So after meeting up with Vincent we dropped off a truck down at the lower elevation and made our way up towards the back side of Big Bear.   About an hour later we were doing the final gear checks and  headed off up “a trail”.   The trail started off at 8,700 feet and we would be climbing to just under 9,000 before pointing the forks downhill.   It is was immediatly clear we were not a sea level.  It is pretty awesome how clean, clear and crisp the air feels at this elevation.  Which is a good thing as I was using a lot of it!

We were not long into the ride before it became quite evident that the wet and late winter played havoc in this area as there were plenty of deadfall to deal with.   We made a little roll action here and there and cleared what we could but for the most part we had some flow bustage to deal with when up in the pines.

 So we were already in the “Back 40” so to say, but there was this off-shoot remenant of a trail that Bill and I had been eyeballing for some number of years so we decided to check it out.   Checking it out meant some granny gearage and some hike-a-biking.  The remenant ended up going  where we thought it might and it was soon time to point the bikes back downhill for a quick bit of raw and untramelled excitement.

 

We expected cooler temps up higher but it soon became apparent that some unexpected weather had rolled in and had the entire area covered in clouds.  The good news for us was that as we shedded of the elevation the temps were not climbing like we expected.  We were living good! 

 We got in some great backcountry trail action before having to commit to a bit of dirt and paved road action that would take to the Santa Ana River Trail.

 The SART was in good shape and the lower temps made for some nice riding conditions for this time of year.   I was especially feeling in the zone and was having an incredible time  on all of the sidehill goodness this trail has to offer.  

 Vincent rolling by

 There was quite a bit more water than expected at all of the creek and feeder stream crossing.   

This was the final creek crossing of the day and soon after this it was time for tasty beverages full of tiny bubbles and chit-chat about today’s adventure.  We had barely rolled back to truck when the clouds cleared and the temps quickly climbed into the hot zone.    Like most days on a mountain bike near the middle of nowhere, today did not suck.

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.