Early this morning, prior to stuffing 10 pounds of turkey and 50 beers
down my cakehole, Josh and I met in North San Fernando Valley and
dropped into Devil's Slide Trail. We'd ridden it last weekend after
G-Spot, but that trail beat us up so bad we could only fake it on
Devil's Slide. This time we cleaned the whole enchilada, which follows
a mile long, 30 foot wide ribbon of rock that thins to dirt in several
sections and plunges through dozens of ledge drops and swooping,
water-worn bowls. The pure rock sections resemble a whitewater river in
mineral form, with standing waves, boils, troughs, eddies and polished
sink holes.
The riding is deceptively tricky, owing to all the back angled "waves"
in the rock, and the fact that most lines dead end in chasms, fissures
that lock your tire fast, or weird, tiered staircases where the tiers
are radically back tilted. Picking the right line involves sneaking
glances far ahead then darting your eyes back to your tire. When the
trail steepens up, if you roll too fast you can't pick or hold a line
and can only hope you can run out the UPD, which is inevitable. Go too
slow and you can't tractor over the "waves."
The hardest part was trying to figure out which technique to use and
where to use it. To keep the run going for 100 or so yards requires
transitioning between quasi muni trials riding for the bowls and ledge
sections and then into rolling and "skinny" riding down rock ribs
interspersed with tractoring over all those waves. For a trail that
was not all that steep, we found it strenuous and lung busting.
Devil's Slide is a different kind of riding than we're used to, and we
kept finding ourselves saying, "That don't look bad," only to get
bucked off because of those back-tilted waves, or because we got locked
into a dead end line. Toward the bottom we started putting longer
pieces together, and after a few more runs down the Devil's Slide, I
trust we'll have it down..
I'm continually amazed with the variety of Muni trails, and how much
different one is from the other so far as techniques required. Wild
aggression on Devil's Slide will get you nothing more than a faceplant
on the rocks. It's all agility, quick adaptation and fitness.
And man, was it hot out there!
Josh will post some pics later today.
JL
--
vivalargo
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