Trail Wanderlust
Trails in General
A had another good week of getting in some good afterwork rides in out at Green Mountain State Park. Most of the week I focused on zipped over the west side of the west side of the park to get to know that side better. Plenty of trail on that side as well.
Had a fantastic time out at Capitol Forest west of Olympia today. Miles and miles of overwhelming buff single track. I took in just under 20 miles with 2,800 feet of climbing.
I have been getting in some good after work rides out at Green Mountain State Park. This place is my current “local” trail with the trailhead just 10 minutes away. For my first ride back out here I kept it simple doing and out and back on the Wildcat trail to the Green Mountain peak. Round trip was 8.4 miles with 1,740 feet of climbing. The views included the Olypmics Mountains, Mt Rainer and downtown Seattle. Later in the week I was reminded that trails can come and go on timber land and following one of the trails I remembered from eight years ago netted me a solid 10 minutes of bramble bushwacking at the bottom of the far side of the mountain from where I started. I was not exactly chasing daylight at that point but once you get under the trees it seems much later in the evening. I found myself putting a bit more gitty up on the pedals to get back to the trailhead just to realize I had more daylight left than I expected. Good times!
Had a great day out on the Olympic Pennisula. I revisited the Lower Dungeness and Gold Creek loop I had done some number of years ago. The last time I was socked in with clouds but today was clear skies and sunshine. Such good singletrack. I do have some tweaks to make to my review of this trail. Look for those at some point.
The last day on my commute up the coast trip included a return to the Siouxon Trail which I rode a portion of like 15 years or so ago. This time I did a much bigger chunk of it that included some rough climbing on bits that do not see anywhere near the traffic the stuff along the creeks. Fantastic waterfalls and pools along side the trail were just killer. Really good stuff. I am going to update my site on this trail.
The Tolkin Campground I stayed at was literally at the trailhead. After some coffee I had off on a really early morning ride on the Paradise Royale loop. The trail is roughly 14 miles long with quite a bit of elevation gain.
But you don’t start off climbing. From the trailhead its tasty downhill singletrack.
The trail were purpose built for mountain biking and hats off to the designers. The climbs are not unrelenting despite the elevation they gain.
The ride finishes up with a climb back to the trailhead and my campsite.
After a late breakfast and a catnap I drove down the mountain to the little town of Shelter Cove.
I had originally planned on checking out the town, camping for a second night were I was currently at and lake my way to Portland the following day. After seeing the town, I opted to move on up the coast. I made it Crescent City that evening which would make the next day’s drive shorter.
Yesterday I started a roadtrip that is going to taking me Washington state for a month of work. Instead of flying up I’m taking a handful of vacation days and driving myself up. I am going to some camping, mountain biking and scenic driving on my way up. My first day was a fairly short drive as I went up to Kernville in the afternoon to met up with Jeff Sherman and Bill O’Neil for and even catching up on life.
The following morning we headed up north. After dropping off a vehicle in Camp Nelson, we made our way back up to the Ponderosa/Quaking Aspens area for the start of the climb.
The climb up the Summit was substantial and downright burly steep in spots.
Once on Bear Creek the elevation shedding starting in hurry. Technical in many spots, rippingly flowy often, it was good stuff. The highlight was dropping down through a grove of Giant Sequoias.
Below the grove the trail flora transitioned to oak trees and trail became a bit more flowing with enough grade to be a rip fest
We enjoyed a tasty beer at the bottom. I had the luxury of not having to do the shuttle return back up the mountain so I drove down into the San Joaquin valley and made my way north. A great opening act for this roadtrip.
It has been pretty hot as of late so a dawn patrol ride was in order. Lake Hodges was the place.
My sweetie joined me on this ride as well. We pretty must did the north side trails as an out and back.
It is definitely summer with pretty much all the vegetation in dry hot weather mode. There was some surprises. The cacti for example has just recently flowered which I expected that would have happened much earlier in the year.
Bill and I did a ride on the Wildhorse trail near Big Bear and connected it up with the Santa Ana River trail. We typically do this as a point-to-point ride. This logistics of this takes over an hour at both due to the length and the long high clearance road you need to drive to get to the top.
We mixed things up on this ride and met up the evening before and left a vehicle at the bottom and camped at the top.
Since we were camping just for the night we both went pretty minimalist on the camping gear. One area we did not skimp on is the refreshments.
The next morning we came up with a novel idea. We need to start setting an alarm clock to tell us to go to bed. We had stayed up into the wee hours of the night having tasty spirits and trying to solve all manner of the world’s mountain biking problems. (The world has plenty of working on that pesky hunger thing)
Neither one of use were exactly moving quickly in the morning, but we still managed to get rolling earlier than if we had not camped.
Wildhorse did not disappoint and the SART was in good shape. Surprisingly we made really good time on the SART portion. I think we were afraid the wheels were going to fall of the bus of our hangovers so we should keeping movung while we were good.
A little hair if the dog at the bottom and all was well. It was a great day to be out on a bike.
I have been off the bike for quite a chunk of time with lots of competing interests taking up my time. I have a slew of home projects, a long overdue visit from my parents, some difficult work in town as well as some work travel.
It was not bad, just not mountain biking. I worked in Hawaii for a month which included having my wife out for a week.
I did not doing any mountainbiking in Hawaii on this trip but I did do quite a bit of hiking.
It was however quite nice to get back to San Diego and hit up some hometown dirt again.
What is not to like about this kind of trail action.
