Trail Wanderlust
I have added a page to the site for the California Riding and Hiking Trail. At this point its designed to share my on-going information gathering on the trail in the form of an interactive Google map. I have not physically ridden all of the sections of the trail so if during the course of looking at my information you have some information to share feel free to comment here or email me.
I am in the process of going through some of my older pages that only have National Geographic TOPO! map files. I’m adding GPX, as well as Garmin Mapsource as well as Google Earth KML files. I’m also adding link/icon to the pages to search the blog and provide a list of related posts. Currently the Hollenbeck Canyon, Noble Canyon and Tour De Noble pages have been updated with others to follow.
So for the last couple of weeks I have been out exploring and researching the California Riding and Hiking Trail (CRHT) here in San Diego County. The history of this trail dates back to 1945 when the state legislature passed the California Riding and Hiking Trails Act which called for a 3,000 mile multi-use loop trail between Oregon and Mexico. The 3,000 miles never happened but over 1,000 miles did get built/designated. Here in San Diego county there is about 108 miles of the trail with only 76 of being used. A portion of those 76 miles are having legal/access issues as some land-owners (not just private but other government agencies) are denying access to the public right of way easements. It is worth noting that the County Parks and Recreation Department has officially put this trail into its Master Trails Plan. Most of my research has been using their official GIS data on where they recognize the trails to be. There are some deltas between their data and the current and/or historical trail that can actually be found. The trail segments vary in quality from sublimely superb to completely obliterated by pavement. There is a lot more to tell here and I hope to gather up and publish some of the information on the various segment issues in the future.
The trail passes through some of the trail systems that I have reviewed on the site. The Otay Mountain Loop, Hollenbeck Canyon, Cuyamaca State Park, and Oriflamme Canyon Loop reviews all have a segments of the CRHT passing through them. The Warner Springs area has been my latest bit of on the ground research on the CRHT route.
There are still bits to the original trail (as intended) still in use and accessible.
Back in the 1940s and 1950s when many of the section were designated that used old truck trails, cattle routes and farm roads as the trail. That might have been okay back then but as civilization came along some of those truck trails and farm roads have been widened and paved making them completely worthless as a trail. It seems that there was never any mitigation made to reroute the trail. Pictured above here is an old chapel that is still on a dirt road that the CRHT uses.
Lost Valley Road (Which on some maps is called Lost Creek Road) is one of those segments where the CRHT used this dirt road that has since been paved (still single wide) and the trail was not rerouted. This would be a nice dirt road climb with good views of the valley below.
The picture above is of the gate on the CRHT that uses the abandoned section of Lost Valley Road. A 1/2 mile up the CRHT the PCT joins onto the CRHT. Now keeping in mind that bicycles are allowed on the CRHT there is a bit of interesting co-use going on. For 9/10ths of a mile the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) uses the CRHT trail as its route and of course all of the PCT signage says “NO BIKES”. Now the Pacific Crest Trail was not established until 1968 a full 23 years after the CRHT. This is not the only place were PCT co-use antics occur. Up in the San Gabriel mountains, a 1/4mile section of the PCT was rerouted onto the Burkhart trail (a nice long open to bikes single-track) and the PCT folks tried to close that 1/4th mile section of the Burkhart trail to bikes. It is complete onsense.
Here is a view along the section of the 9/10ths of a miles of the CRHT discussed above.
A fair portion of the CRHT route in this area sees far to much of this action. Landowners illegally denying access to a public right of way easement. The CRHT uses the dirt road pictured above but the Vista Irrigation District has removed all of the CRHT trail signs and has locked the gates.
It also looks they have removed some of these notices as well.
This is just one of the tasty bits of trail that these landowners are attempting to deny the public access too. I’m going to publish more information in the future as I gather it up. In the interim here is a Google Earth file (KML) extracted from the San Diego County GIS data base. It also has some additional data in it and is what I consider a working document.
I have finally gotten off my butt and finished up new trail review on the website proper. The Crestridge Ecological Reserve. In the last year I have mostly been doing blog posts or updating existing pages. I have at least a dozen other trail pages in the works so hopefully it won’t take as long to get the next one out. Then again beer, bikes and life in general could foil that plan.
I squeaked in a lunch time ride today out at La Costa with Michael Paul aka YetiRider. Homee has been a program and been slimming up. Down 15lbs already. (I think he is trying to get down to women chasing shape)
Michael is certainly climbing quicker. Good on ya!
It was a mighty pretty day out today as well. All the better to be out riding a bike. On a final note, this is my first shot at using the mobile app for making posts do I’m going to have to see if this is going to meet my needs or not.
Yesterday I drove up to the LA area to get in some riding in San Gabriel Mountains. It had been nearly two years (May of 2012) since my last time out of these trails. (Note: In the process of getting this post together I came across of bunch of pictures from that last visit that had went unpublished so this post contains a mix of pictures from both. My cohort in grime was wearing the checkered shirt yesterday if you need to know which one are more recent.)
We did a modified shuttle/point-to-point ride on this day. We meet up off of Windsor Street in Altadena near NASA’s JPL and left a truck there where the ride was going to finish up. We then went up HWY 2 and rode in the Chilao Flats area where we got in some riding on Mount Hilyer and the Silver Moccasin Trails as well as couple other bits. The weather was great and the riding was just as nice but the damage from the Station Fire really did a number on this area.
After knocking out a nice loop in that area, we got back in the truck and road over to Eaton Saddle on Mount Wilson Road. From there we hopped on the old Mt Lowe Road where we did a bit of fire road climbing. This is really cool section of fire road that even includes a tunnel.
After about a mile on the fire road we turned off onto the Mt Lowe single track. There were some challenging rocky bits on this climb that took us up to around 5,540 feet as the trail were around the eastern flank of the mountain. This would be the highest evaluation we would see for the rest of the day as the truck was down at around 1200 feet. Meaning we were in for some killer descending.
The Mount Lowe trail was tight and fast with some rocky bits to keep you on your toes. There was some exposure on this trail as well but mostly the kind that is going to leave a mark versus the assuredly kill you kind.
The Mt Lowe trail eventually dumped us back out onto the Mt Lowe road where we quickly turned off onto the Sam Merrill Trail. Oh My what an awesome bit of trail this was. I particularly enjoyed the opening section that has been spared by the first that was wonderfully wooded with tight single track on the rocky hillside. Laughter could be heard through the woods during our transit through here.
The trail eventually dumps you back out into open scrub brush and views all the way down into the LA basin are to be had. You can also see quite a bit of the trail that lay ahead.
The section down to Echo Mountain has plenty of technical goodness, tight switch backs and some exposure spots that could ruin your day or year.
Once we got down to Echo Mountain, we climbed the Echo Mountain Trail back over to the lower parts of Mt Lowe road. This trail follows along the old track bed of the Mt Lowe Railway which operated between 1893 to 1936. The cement foundations for trestles are still in place.
Just a 100 yards or so down the old road from where the Echo Mountain trail comes out is the top of the Sunset Ridge trail.
More downhill goodness ensued for about the next 3.3 miles (with a short road interconnect) where the trail comes out in the Millard campground. After the campground there was about a mile of fire road climbing to keep you honest. From there we hooked with the El Prieto trail.
This trail was just a hoot with some fast flowing sections, creek crossing and technical bits to keep you on your toes. While we were overall shedding off elevation there we enough undulations to get some quick climbing grunts in.
The El Prieto trail dumps out onto a fireroad that feeds down to Arryo Blvd (closed to vehicles) where it is followed back up into civilization and Windsor St where the other truck was waiting. After we drove back up to the top to grab the other truck we kicked back and enjoyed the view while shooting breeze before getting heading off for the rest of our weekend. It was way good times on the bike today. (I’m planning a get a page with directions and GPS data up on this ride in the coming weeks)
So the blog was down for the better part of this week. My web-hosting service kind of screwed me by shifting my databases to a new server and did me no favors in the process. Those issues are now resolved and this should be back to normal. Think it is time to go for a ride in the San Gabs tomorrow to celebrate!
This past weekend was mighty nice up in the Laguna Mountain Recreation Area also known as the Big Laguna Trail. The cool crisp air was a real pleasure to be in.
Anytime you are out with Steve on a trail impromptu log riding can break out.
We hit some routes that I have not done in a long time or had not done in that direction before. Here Steve and Mark climb Lightning Ridge. While I have descended this trail plenty of times this was my first time going up the trail.
I was digging pine needles and oak leaves under the tires.
A view down into Big Laguna Meadow.
A view across an area affected by the Chariot Canyon Fire. Hmmm some Perfect Cycling Trail can be seen in the distance.
Grabbing some snacks at the General Store.
(Photo by Steve)
Next snack stop would be at Alpine Beer Company for some pulled pork and IPAs.
Last weekend I joined hundreds of fellow mountain bikers for a Protest Ride at “Missing Trails” Regional Park. 
The article linked above gives a little bit about the story. I plan on dedicating more to the trail problems in San Diego County in the near future. 
After the protest ride a handful of us worked our way over into Santee to play on some of the real trails in the area. By real I’m mean the city and county had absolutely nothing to do with their creation.
Evan playing on the rocks
I even managed to get both wheels off the ground. (Photo by Sean)
In the category of “Stupid Human Tricks” I was trying to get a low angle looking up shot of Steve going off a rock jump. I have probably taken over a 1,000 pictures of Aqua doing stupid human tricks in the past. I’ve come to know the sound of his bike coming in as planned. That was not the sound I heard on this occasion.
I already started my air raid rollout when Evan got the first shot. Other than a handlebar in the back it was kinda nice getting in a little cuddle action in on the side of the trail.
This was the shot I was originally aiming for. There were tasty post-ride burritos had and Steve even sprung for the burritos!
I needed to pedal off so Christmas cookies calories so Dave and I headed up to the San Juan Trail to get in some climbing. I’m pretty sure there are some Thanksgiving Turkey, Halloween Candy, San Diego Beer Week and Octoberfest calories to be dealt with as well 
It was a bit cool at the trailhead but just a few switchbacks up the trail it was quite comfortable. The day turned out of to be simply awesome with warm sun and superbly clear skies. San Clemente and Catalina Islands were easily seen. The further up we climbed the more impressive the views became.
I have been spending most of my riding time lately on my XC hardtail so taking out the my long-legged UZZI with it additional weight and heft on this ride was quite a bit more work on the climb. I was quite happy to see cocktail rock when we got there.
We did the traditional loop at the top in the counter-clockwise direction. I had not forgotten how fun this trail can be but I had been away from it just long enough for each to turn had a bit of “Oh I remember you” excitement to it.
The main descent back to the trailhead was a rip roaring hoot. I have ridden this trail in what I would call perfect conditions before where the dirt could be best described as “Hero Dirt”. That was not the case on this day, I would call it “Normal” which was also great. It was the kind of dirt where you could easily overdue it in the turns and ending up loosing control. But if you paid attention you could hear your tires and the dirt telling you when you were approaching the limits of traction. I had big stupid grin on my face every time I was able to make the tires and dirt sing to me in the turns as my long-legged bike was shining in gravity direction it is optimized for. We polished off a great day of riding with some tasty burritos in San Juan Capistrano before heading back to casas.
