Mountain Bike Bill, The Dirt on the Dirt

Tag: Santa Ana River Trail

Hitting up the SART

It was mighty nice to get back up in the mountains near Big Bear again.    Outside of the my recent ride in Flagstaff, it has been months since I had been out for a decent ride.  This was just what the doctor ordered.

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Ali, Bill and I started off on the Sugarloaf Trail and I was quickly reminded that the main muscle that I had been working out as of late has been my beer drinking arm.    9,000 feet of elevation and loose semi-chunky climbing soon found me gasping on the side of the trail barely able to see let alone breath.    That kind of punishment was exactly what I needed.   I had been a bad bad lard ass and I deserved to be punished.    While it was not that far, it seemed like a long way before we hooked up  with the loose chunky Sugarloaf connector down to the Wildhorse Trail.

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Ali rolling through the ferns at the upper end of the Wildhorse trail.

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Looking down along a part of the Santa Ana River watershed area from the Wildhorse trail.

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Bill zipping by

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Ali cruising through

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Besides a bit of Where’s Waldo action, you can see a good bit of the impact of last year’s Lake Fire that came through the area.    After finishing off the Wildhorse trail we did a bit of road cruising to the South Fork campground and hooked up with the Santa Ana River Trail for some more single track goodness.   The SART was in just about as good of a shape as I can remember for this time of year.

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Clowning around on the SART.

As usual good post-ride refreshments, grub and general shat talking ensued at the bottom.   A great day to be out in the dirt!

Santa Margarita Trail

It had been about five years since I had last been on the Santa Margarita River Trail.  This trail systems was a victim of the 2007 wildfires in San Diego County but has made a remarkable recovery.

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There had been quite a bit of rain in the previous days before I did this ride.   This place has quite a bit of sand and the previous rains had the sand nicely packed.   The flora had also quickly responded to the moisture and where flush with color.

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There were some spots of dramatic change since the fires.  After the fires a lot of the retaining vegetation was destroyed .  When heavy rains swelled the river the following river mother nature grabbed a sizable chunk of the bank.  In the picture above, the trail is now right on the edge of the back when it used to be 10-20 feet away from the waters edge.

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I love some of the variety you get out here.  The natural rock chicanes here make for some sporty flat land bike handling.

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Then there are these flowing smooth single track sections under the trees that just make you grin. It is a great time of year to get out there so I you have not been out here before it is worth checking out if you live here in the county and looking to check out some new turf.

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.