On Labor Day, I got in some quality Father-Son time with my oldest son on The Hub Trails in Idyllwild. The trail system has really expanded over the years since I first started riding up here. I’m way overdue for update on this area on the site so I decided I would be going back the following weekend.
Here is Will riding on the Hard Sun trail. We had a great time and we rode quite a few trails I had not been on before.
I started the next weekend off by finally catching the Hub Cyclery Saturday Shop Ride.
The shop ride focused on some of the trails over on South Ridge. Here is Emily working on some tasty singletrack.
This gaggle is best described as some of the usual local suspects. They guys were kicking my ass up every climb.
A killer spot for snacks and nips whiskey.
Dee styling up the hill
Emily cruising up a climb
While on the shop ride the trail went by a killer looking campsite so I dropped a marker in my GPS.
After post-ride tasty beverages, yummy tacos and plenty of MTB chattage back at the bike shop, I drove back up into the woods and found my way back to the campsite we went by earlier in the day. This was Casa Del Bill for the evening.
The post-sunset view from camp with the lights of Hemet below in the distance.
After a leisurely wake up the following morning, coffee, breakfast and camp breakdown I headed over to The Hub trails. The route I had planned for the day was not what I would consider a “Good” series of loops as my goal was to cover as many of the trails I had not been on before vice just doing a killer ride. I knew I would be doing some of this trails in the non-preferred direction.
The opening set of trails included Uprising, Silver Crag, Onion and Mystic Creek that worked up the mountain to Toptimator and Project X. I first rode Project X back when folks did not want you talking about it…Now its on the map, but I was not riding it today.
Toptimator is just forested singletrack awesomeness with killer views to boot. I took Toptimator to Portal, Dreamtwister and Sleepwalker. At this point I was seriously considering dropping down into the lower trails and heading back to the trailhead as I was starting to wane. I managed to convince myself to close off the Sleepwalker loop back to Topimator. A check of my water bladder put me to water rationing mode as I made my way back over to Mystic Dubbings for a cool descent back towards the trailhead.
I took a wrong turn at the bottom of Mystic Dubbings and found myself climbing up Bear Trap. I had gone far enough up the trail that I decided to gut it out and take it back to its upper junction of the Mystic Dubbings trail. At that junction I turned around, polished off my last sips of water and then descended Bear Trap and then retraced my way back to the trailhead. I rolled into the trailhead completely out of energy and all full of smiles. The water in my ice chest never tasted so GOOD! I did 21.8 miles with 2,700 feet of climbing but man did that ride seem harder than the number convey. I will be updating my page on this area in the next couple weeks but it will still be missing a few of the otherwise “published” trails. To get the best and most up-to-date map you will need to swing by Hub Cyclery and pick one up.