With all of the destruction that has happened in the Penasquitos Canyon area over the last decade due to land development coupled with the various land management agencies waking up with from decades of management slumber the whole area is kind of a land management circus show. The only groups that are making out in this deal are the developers and the folks making a living off protecting Fairy Shrimp (I’m still looking for a good recipe BTW)
My Los Penasquitos Canyon page has been absurdly out of date ever since the development started. I have decided to finally update the page so I have been riding out here as of late to refresh my GPS data and try to figure out the best legal way to ride out in this area that is not completely mudane and boring. It is fairly tough as the mountain bikers have very little in the way of legal quality trails. It seems the only things that are not endangered out here are no biking signs. (Just for the record that trail in the picture above is not single track, it is more like a baby stroller trail, ATV trail, etc…) You can get in some good riding with a quality outdoor experience but you are going to have illegally share with the hikers and the equestrians and blow by closed signs.
The Camino Ruiz trail is the nearly lone exception to legal boredom of highway wide fire roads in the canyon offered to mountain bikers. This is a nice chunk of single track.
Ok, ranting aside, the warm weather streak we have been having in February has both plants and critters getting confused. Flower are blooming and the everything is nice and green.
Chasing the sun greenery
It is pretty early for the snakes to be coming out already. This is a rather healthy looking whip snake.
It was in evening time so he was mighty sluggish and very easy to handle. He seemed more than happy to leech some heat off of me before getting anxious to head off.
Last weekend at the San Clemente Singletracks I saw my first rattlesnake of the season but he was uncooperative for the camera. I saw my second rattler of the year at Penasquitos Canyon this week and this fella was more amiable to getting his picture taken. The guys are going to be sucking when the weather shifts back to typical temperatures soon.