San Diego – Page 13 – The Ramblings of MTBBill

Getting to know Crestridge

Last I made two trips out Crestridge Ecological Reserve area to check out the trails. This place has been on my get to know list for years now but I keep finding myself going just a little further down the road to Anderson Truck Trail and other trail goodness. I found lots of fire roads and single tracks out here of varying quality along with plenty of elevation change. Putting a good hurting on your legs and lungs is most certainly an option out here. Getting in some flowing trails smiles can certainly be on the docket as well.

Flynn Springs Trail in the east end of the area.

Some single track bits in the east end.

There are plenty of fire roads in the area as well as some single track. The trail pictured above was in what I was call the west end and it was a nice contouring trail up and over a saddle.

Sweet little spot.

I have climbed uglier fire roads.

I’m going to add this area to my site in the near future after GPS out a few more corners of this place so stay tuned.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

There is no MTBing in Bahrain!

I spent the tail end of July and most of August working in Bahrain. For those who have never heard of the place it is an island in the Persian Gulf east of Saudi Arabia. The maximum elevation is maybe 100 feet and pretty much everything is sand so the mountain biking opportunities are mighty freaking limited. Of course a Surly Moonlander would help a little in that department. Hmmm I wonder if I could get one with some S&S couplings on the frame?

Even with a bike, I would have a hard time getting motivated to get out in the heat and ride. Everyday it was over 100 by 10AM. Several days in particular it was 108 with 74% humidity.

I did manage to get out and grab some sights while I was over there including the Grand Mosque

I took a tour of the Al-Fateh Grand Mosque on one of their “open houses” for non-Muslims. [aka Infidel Outreach Day :-)] Work involved a lot going back and forth between an office and the outside. After a few weeks of the cycling in and out of the heat and AC I came down with some chest and sinus crud that required some antibiotics to knock down. The project I’m working has several phases to it so I was able to come home for a couple of weeks in between one of the phases.

I was still not completely over the crud when I got home so I refrained getting back on the bike and potentially backsliding with the crud. My girlfriend and I did make a trip up to Palomar mountain for a bit of mild hiking. It was really nice to see some greenery in mild temps.

One of the locals we saw along the trail.

By this past Friday I was feeling well again so a dawn patrol ride out at Mission Trail Regional Park was in order. There was some weather moving through the area which made some cool rainbows. I had ridden on the west side of the park in quite sometime. So I hit up the Jackson, the Rim trail, S-turns and the Soycott trails. I had not checked out North Fortuna from the north slope so I looped back around and when up North Fortuna from the north slope. I had my long-legged bike so it was overwhelming a hike-a-bike in that direction but would be a very techy ride on the descent.

After getting up to the North Fortuna peak, I descended the south slope to the saddle and then continued on up to South Fortuna. It had also been a long time since I had taken the South Fortuna staircase. I knew there were many spots were you had to pick and choose your battles but there were quite a few more than I remembered from my last go at this trail. I want to say that the techy sections were in worse shape than before, but it is more likely that my skills and/or nerves have slackened up some.

Either way it was great to be back on the bike and again. I’m heading back to Bahrain tomorrow and I’m not looking forward to another stint of being off the bike. Work can be so pesky sometimes!

Sweetwater and Rockhouse

For those of you who have every been on some of Hoser’s Bonita rides leaving from Donny’s Café you know there are 5o,000 ways plus to put together some serious miles out in this area.

You also know that trying to give by turn-by-turn directions for some of these routes would be pretty damn difficult.

In the past I have just always tagged along behind other folk’s wheel and just enjoyed the various route without really caring where on how I was getting where.

Lately I have been putting in some solo miles in an effort to calibrate my own compass out in this area.

The Rockhouse area has been the latest section of stomping around and figuring out.

I have been traveling trails and adding new bits with every visit. There is lots of good stuff out here

Here are a few pictures from the area from the various rides so far.

Where The Hell Have You Been?

Where The Hell Have You Been? I have gotten that question a couple of times as of late. Yep I have been slacking on the posting stuff of my Blog.

I have been getting in some quality Hockey Dad time in with my youngest son on most weekends as he is playing on two In-Line hockey teams. One recreational league team out of Kit Carson Park in Escondido and a tournament team (The San Diego Stingrays). This works out to practice and games commitments of four days a week.

With both teams practicing out of Escondido I have been getting in quite a bit of riding in at Lake Hodges and the surrounding area as of late. Besides the stuff already on my site I have managed to find some cool stuff here and there like this patch of woods between Lake Hodges and Poway.

I have also managed to find some complete crap as well. This tripe located in the city of Poway is simply insulting. They dumped 4-6″ of gravel beside a stupidly steep road and called it a trail. The unprofessional asses that did this debacle did not even bother to compact the gravel down. This thing is so F’d up that had to put signs up ever 50 feet to try and convince people that it is a trail. City of Poway—This is not a F$%^ing Trail! If you would care to improve your trail building knowledge why don’t you spend an afternoon on the playground at Chaparral Elementary School. Pay attention to the six year olds with the Tonka trucks, they get it more than your “trail builders” do!

Enough about city governments wasting money, I managed to catch a baseball game with my girlfriend. The Padres even managed to win on the night we went.

Of course San Diego is arguably a Craft Beer Mecca so there has been plenty of outings to check out what the latest awesome offerings are from the over 71 (and growing) microbreweries in the county.

Recognizing that mountain biking is a preexisting condition with me my, girlfriend he has gotten onboard with the program and is coming up to speed quite nicely.

I have also managed to get in some dirt time at La Costa here and there. If for nothing else than to check out some advertising dollars well spent on the Copper Canyon Bridges.

My work schedule as of late has been conducive to grabbing some after work mileage out in South Bay. I have ridden out here numerous times and there are lots of trails to push the pedals around on. In the past I have nearly always been with somebody showing me around through the maze of canyons with interconnections through parking lots, culverts, streets and backyards. It has been kind of fun trying to use the “Swartz” on solo efforts to retrace some of my previously guided steps. More to follow as I continue to get semi-lost with that ongoing effort.

So as far as where the hell have a been? I’ve been around on my bike….

Snooping around South Poway

This past Friday, I went and checked out a loop in South Poway that I had heard about that contained a mix of city approved/created trails and social trails. I really did not have much in the way of expectations when I set out on this semi-urban adventure.

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The first chunks of “trails” that I went on were what I typcially expect when I hear of a municipality in San Diego county being involved with creating “Trails”. Dirt sidewalks and bullshit existing dirt roads trying to be passed off as “trails” which provide little in the way of a quality natural outdoor experience. After six or so miles of the this homgenized lowest common demominator tripe things picked up as I went further along on this loop.

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Here is a bit of an official new city of Poway trail that is a nice singletrack. Clearly somebody gets it in the city as it provides a nice natural outdoor experience, its sustainable and it is narrow to minimize the enviromental impact.

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The next section of trails I was on roughly followed the route of the planned eastern end of the South Poway trail.

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According to the current city trail map the eastern end is still just planned. I sure hope the intent is to use this trail pictured above as the eastern end of the of the South Poway trail because the trail above it is just an awesome chunk of cross country singletrack that had great flow and contoured well.

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Once I got onto the “built” western portion of the South Poway trail, I was once again back onto the crappy “THIS IS NOT A F#$^^NG TRAIL” dirt road junk. Note in the picture above only about half the width of the road being passed off as trail is in the picture. It is a wide barren strip of non-native gravel that is an enviromental blight that the city probably spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to “create”. Everytime I have pulled the string on the “who designed this” question, it seems to typically point back to some trail standard the governing agency has that was written by people who have a background in civil engineering (aka building roads) vice either an enviromental or forestry background (aka protecting and managing natural resources). People (or contracted companies by the city) then blindly follow these antiquated standards to build these low quality, expensive hunks of crap.

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This little gem (which I think is not an offical trail), was probably built by volunteers and did not cost the city a dime. Its enviromental impact is a mere fraction of the offical dirt road tripe that scours along the ridgeline above it. The rest of the route I did during the day was a mix of both the offical junk “trails” and a fair amount of well done social trails. Overall the awesomeness of the singletracks outweighed the retardness of the dirt/gravel road abortions (referred to as “trails” by the city) that had to be dealt with. I did about 15 miles total that day. I will be doing some more exploring out here.

Views from Anderson

Last week I was able to get in a mid-week ride out at Anderson Truck Trail. I arrived quite a bit earlier than Steve today so I decided to do the climb solo and check out a few things on my way up.

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Spring is just downright awesome and it was quite green out. Being solo there was no pressure to keep moving so I stopped here and there to take pictures and snoop around.

The first stop was just after the brook/creek crossing. This is normally dry during the summer but there has been plenty of water moving through it as of late. I could here the sound of water going over rocks uphil of the crossing so I did some scrambling to find a nice looking micro-waterfall.

Plenty of flowers in bloom to see along the climb up.

The greenage on the hillsides around El Captain Reservor was really pretty.

I meet up with Steve and Evan up near the top. With this being the first week of coming off of daylight saving time, it seemed like lots of folks were taking advantage of the longer daylight and coming out for a ride. We saw lots of folks out on the trail.

There was a handful of “Young Bucks” that were just killing it out on the trail and making it look easy.

It was not enough for them to make it look easy they we were working on maximizing there style points. Most of the guys grew up riding and jumping BMX so they were completely comfortable in the air. Makes me wish I had done that when I was a kid. I think it is just best to learn those skills we when you are young enough to have no sense of how hurt you can get and heal quicker. The final three miles of smiles was awesome and a beer at Alpine Beer Company afterwords while doing the post-ride debrief was a nice end to a longer day.

Lake Hodges – Benardo Mountain

On Sunday Jake had hockey practice over at Kit Carson park in Escondido so I took the opportunity to get in some pedal time out at Lake Hodges.

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I stuck to the North Side trails on this outing.

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Updating the Lake Hodges pages on my website has been on my to-do list for quite some. Now that there is a pedistrian and bike bridge connecting the north and south side of the lake there are more ride options in the area on a single outing. Additionally, a few years ago I got a letter from some of the land owners and the western end of the easement road (known as the high road) that did not want anyone using the easement rsload for recreation and asked that I take down that information from my site. Well obviously I’m a busy guy and have not be able to get to that yet. It looks like it maybe all figured out by now since new signage has gone up. Of course that new signage has made things as clear as mud. Take a look at the picture above. The easement road sign says “No Trespassing” yet they installed a people tunstill beside the gate. New signs were put up telling you it is okay to hike and bike to the right, but no trespassing to the left. Looking at the sign above at the far western end of the easement road one would think it is okay to go through the gate and ride off to the right vice on the easement road that goes to the left. That is not the case at all. What the signs are trying to convey is that when you are on the easement road, everything uphill of the road is private property and everything downhill (towards the lake) is part of the park. This is also not entirely correct as the private property owners land typically goes some number of feet/yards downhill of the road. The park has put up private property signs at the bottom of the trails that connect the lower trails to the upper easement road. I find it odd that some of the land owners don’t want people on the eastern end of the easement road, yet nearly all of them have gates onto the easement road from their backyard. Presumably so they can use the easement road to get into the park. Hmmm so it is okay for those land owners to get onto the little sliver of the easement road they own and then trespass on their various neighbors property and then enter the park through unauthorized trails but it is not okay for the public to do so. Hmmmm, the best advice I can give is to do your best to make sense of the various “non-truth” signs you see and make your own judgement calls. Following the predominate and fresh foot and bike tracks is probably a safe bet.

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The Benardo Mountain trail has no controversy involved with it. It just a nice trail that will work you over on the climb up to the peak. There are some tough grade sections and some technical bits as well that will test both skill and fitness. There was some nice purple blooms going off on the climb.

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The view of the bridge connecting the North side to the South side from the peak.

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Snow on the mountains to the east.

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After Bernardo Mountain I rode out towards the dam until it was time to turn around and get back to the rink. I made it back just as Jake was get off the rink so two sweaty Porter Boys to funk of the truck on the drive back to Casa Del Bill.

Florida Canyon in Balboa Park

So I was tube locked for most of the day on Wednesday, but an appointment near Balboa Park gave me about an hour and half to squeeze in a quick ride in Florida Canyon. Florida Canyon is part of Balboa Park and the canyon has trails on both sides of Florida Drive which goes down the middle of the canyon. I have only ridden here once before about 13 years ago. Besides that there is not much mileage out here I had forgotten my other aversion to this place. I was obvisously overdue for a refresher.

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While this place is very short on miles, the fact that it is bascally in downtown gives it huge bonus points. The place is pretty and has enough ups, downs and turns to keep a beginner excited.

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Most of the trails are about sidewalk wide and while being solidly in the none technical category they do have some character here and there. These trails are much better than the homogenized decomposed granite sidewalks that are so prevalent among most of the city and county created pathways/roads that they try to pass off as “trails”.

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There are some more narrower singletracks here and there. The picture above is of one of the trails on the east side of the canyon. Now I am routinely prone to taking the trail less traveled to try and figure out an area’s trail system and today was one of those days. While over on the east side of the canyon just south of Morley Field (highlighted in yellow below) I spotted a few exceptionally narrow looking trails that seemed to not see much action so I flicked the handlebars and headed off down the second one I came across. Turns out I was quite wrong about the whole not seeing much action assessment. Less than 40 feet down the trail I hear somebody coughing off in the bushes in a manner that seems like they are trying to get someones attention. I thought it wierd but kept on rolling. Around the next corner I see some things that well (a) Ought to happen behind closed doors (b) Joe Public should not have to see in a public park (c) Just can’t be unseen! Everybody (Straight, Gay, Trannies, Furries, etc…) has to get their freak on but come on! I should have to type in some keystrokes like C: <INSERT> ### into my computer to see some shit like that on an idle Wednesday afternoon. I was certainly motivated get out of this section of “social ” trails at this point so I give some extra gusto to the pedals. These little trails seemed more like a maze and this point and two turns later I encounter a very stylishly dressed man in surprising uncomfortable looking shoes strolling along this little trail towards me. (Don’t ask me why I noticed the shoes, I just did okay. I have been paying more attention to peoples shoes ever since I saw Shawshank Redemption. We should all be slightly suspicious of people wearing inappropriate shoes.) He was a cordial fellow who wanted to chat while I figured out how to get around him with the minium of greetings exchanged. The guy seemed to pick up on the fact that Homee don’t play that pretty quickly and I was soon on my way again. A handful of seconds later I popped back onto the main trail to notice another well dressed fellow reading a book while sitting on a log seat and another guy just sort of standing around. Weird!

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I then remembered why I had not been back over here in over a decade. Morley Field is a “Cruising” spot for gay guys looking to hook up for casual sex in the bushes. To each his own but the Public Service Announcement for this trail system is

“Stay on the Designated Trails in Florida Canyon”

Once I was back the main trail and checking out the rest of the trails I could not help but chuckle as dinner plans for the evening had already been made with my girlfriend.

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We had dinner at Hilcrest Brewing Company where they not only have good food but good beers as well. Their pizzas are awesome and we had a tough time deciding between the “BBQueer Chicken” or the “Meatpacker”. The Meatpacker won the coin toss and it went well my girlfriends “Hoppy Endings” IPA and my “Pearl Necklace” Pale Ale. It was a very memorable bike ride with plenty of laughs and snickers afterwards.

Mission Trails Northeast (Spring/Oak)

I grabbed an after work ride on Tuesday out at “Mission Trails Northeast” aka Spring and Oak Canyon.

SpringOakCanyon-05MAR13-13 f it.

While there was some weather starting to roll in but there it was plenty nice out on the trails I was cruising on.

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It has been awhile since I had last been here and there was a lot more out here than I previously remembered. The plants were blooming which made for some pretty sights while grinding climbs and grinning on descents.

This entire area was burned out in 2003 so it was nice to see the continuing regrowth and the colors of spring out here.

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There were far worse things to do after work on just about any given Tuesday.