End of the trail: Russ and the Pacific on our last day at Prairie
Creek.
Rode for six days straight in northern California with Russ on what proved to be a really grand mountain bike tour that stretched from the Bay Area to the high Sierras and back to the coastal redwood forests. We both felt like we'd died and gone to California.
Our first stop was Santa Cruz, where we rode in three areas -- Wilder Ranch, El Corte
de Madera, and the Forest of Nicene Marks. All three are easily accessible from Santa
Cruz, yet each is distinctly different in personality and setting.
Wilder, which abuts the University of California at Santa Cruz campus, is an extremely
well-groomed playground of considerable scope and range. You would be hard pressed to ride
it all in a day, but very little of it could be called technical or difficult by Galbraith
standards.
Two trails that qualified as interesting were the Enchanted Forest (which is a fairly
steep NW style plunge into a deeply shaded canyon with a couple not-too-scary root and
rock drops along the way) and an unnamed trail above the Old Cabin Trail (which featured a
series of short, half round log bridges pitching back and forth across a narrow twisting
little creek).
Russ and I put in nearly six hours at Wilder on 12/3, riding with several groups of
locals and enjoying the general feeling of camaraderie that was reminiscent of Galbraith.
There were some exotic bikes on display too: I saw an Ibis Bow-Ti and several exotic
custom hardtails such as a Brodie. We both felt like Vikings from the north, though, since
none of the riders we encountered was as strong as we were.
On 12/4, we rode next at Corte de Madera, north of Santa Cruz above La Honda. Corte
offered some big redwoods (including the 1800 year old "Methuselah Tree") and a
more mountainous setting. Again we were fortunate to connect with a skilled and
knowledgeable local rider. Kevin Conde (a young environmental sciences graduate who is
working as a Sega game rep in the Valley) served as an excellent guide for the first
two-plus hours of our ride.
Nicest of all the Corte trails to my taste was a one called Resolution, which featured
a very mellow singletrack climbing grade (with lots of cool swoops) climaxing in 50-60
yards of slightly technical climbing over rocks at the top. We ended the day and the ride
at the high lookout just off Skyline, where we could see the Pacific gleaming in the sun
far below off San Gregorio.
Next, on 12/5, we sallied south of Santa Cruz to the Forest of Nicene Marks and the
Soquel Demonstration Forest above. The climb on the road to the top of Nicene Marks is
easily the mellowest up on an unpaved road I have ever encountered. Smooth as a sigh, with
a hardpacked sand surface, the road allowed you to work on pure climbing techniques to
your hearts' content. Since there were no obstacles in the roadway at all, you could try
all sorts of angles and gearings.
I ultimately came to prefer climbing up to the top of each banked curve early into it, and then spinning around the next straightaway. Even though the turn usually had a little more climbing to do to make it to the top of its arc when I finished my first move, I could usually shift down a gear and accelerate. The technique required me to ride the widest (and therefore longest) path around the turn, but it enabled me to carry speed best, and carrying your speed is definitely the name of the game in most of the California riding we encountered.
At the top, we got another killer view of the Pacific, and the entrance to the Soquel
Demonstration Forest, where we actually encountered our first log rollover in the Santa
Cruz area. I rode it several times. Further on, the trail offered a couple of interesting
rocky descents, which we shortly had to climb as well when it turned out that we ran out
of daylight on the Sulfur Creek Trail. Next time, we decided we'd go down the singletrack
Tractor Trail and then climb back up out on the Sulfur Creek Trail. This was our biggest
day of the trip in terms of verts, with more than 3,700 in a five plus hour day.
The rip down the Nicene Marks road was major fun, since the road is gated to prevent
mechanized access and there are no horses allowed either. I bet we hit 40 mph several
times. On the way down, I scared a local rider by hoping up on a log at the first lookout,
riding it for a short ways, and then jumping off into a track stand to admire the view.
Then a little further down we encountered another skilled local rider on a very
tricked out
grey Santa Cruz Superlight.
He showed us a a bunch of very cool trails on the right of the road just below the one
lane bridge (I remember one was called Rusty Car). There were several steep short ups and
a couple drops, including the one at the top of the singletrack where it leaves the road.
My left calf had been twitching since the climb back out of Sulfur Creek, but I was able
to handle just about everything our guide threw at us (the exceptions were a 4' high Evil
Twin-like root/tree hopup, and a steep soft sand bank where I took the wrong line). At the
end, our guide brought us out a couple blocks from the shopping center where we parked
just as the sun was setting. Another great day!
On 12/6, we rode in Marin County at China Camp, which is located on the Bay
between Mill Valley and Petaluma, and allowed us to ride from tidewater on the San
Francisco Bay into the mountains that reach their summit on Mt. Tamalpais. Because of the
political hassles and restrictions on Mt. Tam (the cradle of mountain biking in the US),
we were advised we'd have more fun at China Camp, and in fact the ride proved to be a ton
of fun. As we found everywhere in the Bay Area, the trails were micro-groomed so that you
could go into blind corners and ASSUME that the sweet line would be not just rideable, but
buff. Another thing about California riding: all trenches are benign. You can ride right
down them without fear of the sort of malignancies that are so often seen in the NW (big
alder logs laying length-ways, etc.).
As our confidence began to increase, we began to ride the bermed up corners higher and
high until... well, until I came into a corner far too fast with the steep face where the
trail had been cut into the hill staring me right in the face. My instantaneous,
improvised move was to throw the bike up the steep face where the trail cut through the
hill, hunker down and apply power from deep in the pocket (which is of course one of the
things that is always a joy on the Jekyll). To my semi-amazed pleasure, I shot through the
turn at maybe twice the speed I could have gotten any other way. Whoa! Make a note! That
would make a great spot for a photo. I have to hasten to add, though, that this is
California's main problem. The trails as so buff that mountain bikers just FLY down them,
often too fast and too close to others on the trails.
The next day, on 12/7, we rode in the high Sierras above Downieville in the headwaters
of the Feather River. Here we climbed a broad fire road to the snow line and then retraced
our steps. We had hoped to reach Chimney Rock, and a single track trail to loop back to
our starting point, but were stopped maybe 400 verts short by snow on the trail. If we'd
brought our Gore-Tex over socks with us (they were in the van), we probably gotten to the
rock. Instead, we turned around and rode down a portion of the famous Downieville
downhill, which runs 27 miles in its entirety. This was more like skiing than any mountain
biking I've ever done, because you were constantly cutting back and forth across the fall
line on a broad but defined track (like a ski run) which was pointed relentlessly downward
(like a ski run) and your turns were a big part of the way you controlled you speed (like
a ski run).
On 12/8, we rode at Prairie Creek State Park on the coast just south of Crescent City.
In many ways, this last day of the trip was also the best. Certainly the setting was
splendid, with countless huge, thousand year old redwoods all around us as we rode for six
miles through the park to the begin of our trail -- and what a trail! This singletrack
through the redwoods offered first really interesting new technical riding challenge
of the trip -- leaping runoff erosion channels in bedrock slabs on the fly as the trail
spiraled steeply through redwoods to the ever louder roar of the Pacific.
It also took us to Fern Canyon, which is easily the most beautiful place I've ever
ridden my bike into. The 100 foot deep canyon begins at the back of the beach, and snakes
back into the hillside with a stream twisting in the bottom and its walls turned emerald
with maiden hair fern and moss. Russ noted that this must be the absolute ideal
native habitat for the maiden hair, which is usually seem as a small peripheral hanger on.
We walked our bikes across the gravel bars and then rode them to ford the stream until we
reached the far end of the canyon, maybe 150 yards inland.
The last bit of our ride, and our trip, brought us down to the beach and the crashing
waves of the Pacific, and then a splendid logging road climb and high speed, swoopy
descent to a large herd of all male Roosevelt elk in a meadow along 101 at dusk. After
this, we turned north and made it as far as Eugene, where we spent our last night on the
road before arriving back in B'ham around 3 pm on 12/9, easily in time for Shanna's choir
concert (which I promised I wouldn't miss).
Approximately 13,000 verts combined for the six days of riding (including our first
half day at Wilder on 12/2). I am now just 5,000 verts short of my goal for the year --
400,000 verts climbed in one calendar year. |