I'm not sure who has been worse lately, the NWS or Mother Nature. The
gloom that is usually prevalent in June has coated the LA basin in an
unpermeable foggish haze the last few days and the weather people have
been calling for sunny skies. Maybe they knew where Greg and I were
headed before we even decided to ride there.
Yeah, the gloom was still on as I threaded my way through traffic to
get to La Casa De GT. When I arrived, Greg was giving his 5Spot a
once-over on the porch and his lovely SO invited me in for a cup of
coffee. It settled in nicely on top of my complete breakfast (I-5
style) of a banana and strawberry Pop [censored]. There was a map on the
coffee table and I could not help but wonder what was in store for us,
though I knew it would not be a total death march because they were
going to the Kings game tonight.
Greg offered to drive and since he had been up in that area before, I
didn't have a problem with conceding that at all. It is always nice to
be a passenger when going to a new area because you get to look around
and orient yourself by doing so. Leaving the megalopolis behind sure
takes a while nowdays, but before too long the jeep was meandering
through a nice canyon, filled with oak and sycamore trees.
The end of the drive was at an obvious OHV/4x4 route and parking was
limited to just off of the main road. While preparing to hit the
trail, Greg described the ride and pointed out a few landmarks that
helped further orient me to the area. It didn't take too long to get
going and we began the spin up the Forest Service road. The going
started out a little rocky, but smoothed out to a very nice
singlespeedable climb. Recent rains and a little vehicle traffic had
packed two nice tracks into the road, making conditions about as
perfect as they can get.
The road switched back after a while and then began to climb more
steadily. I decided to start slowly, standing on the pedals and
turning smoothly and slowly up the hill while conversing with Greg.
After a while, some steeper sections popped up in front of us and I
decided to stomp on the pedals a little harder and sprinted ahead.
After a few turns, I encountered the first traffic we saw on the road
in the form of four pickup trucks. The first three seemed to not see
me and sped down the road past me, while the last slowed and moved a
little to the right. After waiting a bit, Greg spun up and related a
similar stary about the trucks and how they chose to pass him.
Continuing the climb, I sprinted a few more times, waiting in some of
the abundant shady spots along the route while Greg kept up a steady
spin. I never had to wait very long and the top only took about an
hour to hit.
The panorama at the top definitely belied the fact that the LA Basin
was socked-in. Greg pointed out a few more terrain features and we
headed across the top towards our singletrack destination. So we're
cruising along and all of a sudden I hear, "Damn!" Greg pulled over,
holding the end of his camelbak hose and the end was missing. We
walked back about fifty yards, looking all over the road and on the
side, but could not find the mouthpiece. As he was looking to fill his
water bottle instead of taking a more of a bath, he called me over.
Apparently the mouthpiece had stuck to him somewhere (I was not about
to ask where) and had fallen at his feet.
The singletrack entrance was a little hidden, but Greg knew where it
was. It started out as the classic California foothill singletrack,
sidehilling through a field of light brown early-Fall grasses. It
didn't last very long though. Sections where the trees were tight and
the sidehill well established were in fantastic shape, however any
grade in the open was subject to motorcycle induced erosion damage. If
you can, imagine a well designed trail that has had several corners and
switchbacks cut and been "rerouted" up/down fall lines where errant
motorcycle users could get away with it. It wasn't unrideable, but was
definitely obnoxious and sad to see the results of obvious abuse. Then
again, the open spots were very few and with the exception of a few
blown out turns, the trail was in rockin good shape.
As soon as the trail tightened up, it became obvious that the motos had
to slow down, whereas we got to speed up. It's funny how it works out
that way and we took full advantage of it. The trail had a tendency to
flow a while, undulating across the contour and then drop for a while.
Some of the drop sections found the trail to be a kind of rut, with
loose babyheads in the tread on bottom and sides up to about 3' high at
times. It was a bit of work on the SS and Greg was definitely enjoying
how his 5Spot was handling it.
Towards the end of the singletrack, the branches of the chapparal
tunnel we had been riding closed-in a lot more and the sound of
branches smacking bike helmets became more frequent. It was like a
high-speed limbo and pedaling a singlespeed up even short pitches with
your chin just about on the handlebars is a bit unnerving. At the end
of the limbo section, I could hear Greg getting battered quite a bit in
a short stretch, so I reined it in a bit and began a series of quick
dodges. I got smacked in the helmet only once but as I was exiting the
gauntlet, a particularly nasty branch tried to give me a terminal
"titty whistle" by trying to rip my right nipple off. It still hurts
as I type this.
The last part of our chosen route was backtracking a couple of miles
and about 1,200 feet back down what we had climbed. It had been a
while since I had bombed a SoCal fire road and decided to lead out.
Knowing that Greg was riding a 5" travel FS with discs, I decided to
try and max out on my speed as much as I could dare to. I reigned it
in on the blind turns some, keeping my ears and eyes open to avoid
ending up as a hood ornament. The wide-open places were fair game
though and I let gravity take me down the road as much as it could.
Luckily, there was no traffic until I arrived at the hairpin turn where
the road levels out. The driver was a lot more courteous and I waved
him on, advising that there was one rider behind me. The truck exited
the hairpin and 50 yards later, Greg appeared and cruised past the
truck after I yelled out a warning to him. Call it a guilty pleasure,
but every once in a while I really dig bombing a fire road on a rigid
bike.
Spinning lazily on the rest of the trail, we BSed a bit about the area
and other possibilities for longer and different routes, as well as
other ride ideas for this Fall. It's going to be a great Fall and I'm
looking forward to riding a lot of what's new to me in my (old) new
surroundings.
JD