Mountain Bike Bill, The Dirt on the Dirt

Category: Travels

Exploring in the Southern Sierras

I did some camping and riding a little while ago in the Southern Sierras.

We spent a couple days out off the beaten path checking out some potential MTB goodness.

It was a little late in the year to be where we were and the temps were down in the 20’s at night

We even got a little snow on us the first night.

The trip and riding were certainly this….

Playing Dental Floss on a rock outcropping that looked like a row of molars.

A little air time.

We got at high as 8,000 feet and some points.    

Oh the names of the trails?   They were KTS #1 and ICTU #4  (Kinda Top Secret and ICan’t Tell U)

The world is bike place, go bike it!

Goodies in the Mail

“Dad, why did you ship an empty box back to the states?”   That was the question my kid asked me shortly after I got home.  I was stoked already.

So look what was in my garage when I got back from Japan.   A carbon fiber hardtail frame.   Stupidly light and downright sexy.

I have not decided if this is going built this up to replace my single speed or if it may become my geared XC rig.   If it come in as light as I think it is going to it could see some travel action as it and the bike box’s combined weight may be under the threshold for the airlines overweight charge.   

More to follow.

A Little Land of the Rising Sun Action

After spending a few days in Seattle finishing up some work, I headed out to Japan to spend a week scoping out a project for next year.   As always I was hoping to squeak in a ride if time permitted.   I rented a mountain bike for the duration of my visit to serve as my primary means of daily transportation and potentially some recreation as well.   The weather was  forecast to be pretty much icky for the week with Wednesday being partly sunny.    Wednesday came around and partly sunny was indeed the case with a full serving  of windy and brisk to boot.   I was able to open my afternoon enough to get in some “Off-Site Strategic Planning”  accomplished on the bike.   While I still have some places to explore in this area on my list from previous visits, I would not have time for that with the shorter days October.   I had a handful of miles to ride on the streets to get to Zushi City where I would pick up the first part of the afternoon’s dirt adventure.   I had nearly forgotten just how culturally interesting in can be riding on the streets over here.   Narrow sidewalks, mom and pop businesses, scooters whizzing by, Japanese School Girl Uniforms, lots of people out walking and peddling, etc…  It is just an intersting scene.  

On one section of road with a bit of a climb in it I came across a new sign that was not there in June of last year.  I can’t read this sign but I know what it means.  And I like it.  The Japanese have a knack for iconing things so that just about anybody can figure things out.  Rider Up!

Once I made it over the Sengen Trails which is commonly referred to by us Engrish folk as Duck Pond since the trail starts at a small pond that typically has ducks in it. What a bunch creative Gaijins we are .  The trail starts with a heiniouly steep hike-a-bike up to a ridge that typcially requires you to shoulder the bike.   With the rain the day before I knew this was going to be a fun section with plenty of slick clay.   It was about this time I thought about the fact I had never taken the trail around this little pond.  So I decided to delay my hike-a-bike fun and go around the pond.  I was fairly stoked to find that at the end the pond was a little boardwalk that was quite fun on the bike.  It was just tight enough to be interesting and combined with the really brisk air and the thought of falling into the shallow mucky end of this pond made this section downright fun.  I had to do it a couple of times in both directions.   This was a pretty cool 5 minute detour and added some newness the ride right out of the gate.   The Hike-A-Bike up to the ridge was every bit of clay treachery I expected, but I was soon rolling along the ridgetops. 

After climbing along the trails I made it up to the top of Sengen Hill (or Peak – can’t remember ) there was some nice views of the mountains in the Hakone National Park in the distance, but it tooks some effort to see as mother nature is reclaiming the clearing in a hurry.  As is often the case, Mt Fuji was hiding behind distant clouds.  From here it was time to head down and I took one of my favorite routes down through the Tennin trail system before popping out on another street.  

After a short bit of road interconnecting I got onto a series of trails that headed westward towards Kamakura.   There are some really good trails that are quite popular with hikers.  Many of the trails are hundreds of years old with some of the more direct routes between the temples being over a thousand years old.   

There are several sections along the route where the trail cuts through the top of the ridge via a slot or notch.  Sometimes the notches are 20-30 feet deep.  I orginally thought that this was a result of the trail being “cut” by some machinery or tools sometime in the past.   The slots in the ridge were actually created from the countless footsteps of people who have walked these trails for hundreds of years.   Feet, time and errosion have cut through the ridge tops.  After riding and climbing along these ridges the exit was like most of the trails in the mountains around here, Hike-A-Bike up and White Knucklers on the way down.   The wet conditions earlier in the week made the descent quite challenging to ride and not much easier to walk.    There was a least a couple of clay samples taken.

Once I dropped off the ridgelines down into Kamakura I worked my way along the streets back to Yokosuka and my hotel.  Later on that evening I met some old friends for dinner to catch up on thngs and to fawn over their new baby girl.   It was good times on pretty much all facets of the day.

Good Opening Day in Seattle

Today was the start of nine day trip that will include a few days in the Seattle area.   While the weather sucked in San Diego it was downright awesome in Seattle.  My orginal plan was to rent a bike today and potentially get in a ride tomorrow.   With sunny skies and low 60s for temps, I made some tweaks to my plans and made a dash straight to the place I rented a bike from last time I was here.   I was stoked to see that had a new fleet of rentals and I would get to be the first person to break in a nicely built 29er hardtail.    I had a few hours of daylight left so there would be no exploring today.    I was soon at the Green Mountain trailhead.  I have ridden here a few time so I would pretty cool to just enjoy a ride without any route figuring.

 

After scrambbling around through my luggage to get the bike stuff altogether I was headed off up the trail.

 

While there some loops and options you can do at Green Mountain I opted to basic out-and-back on the Wildcat Trail up to the top of Green Mountain.

Wildcat is a multi-use trail that also includes motorcycles.   While this tends to make the trail a little wider, it also means there are lots of bermed turns that are simply a blast on the return leg coming back down the mountain.   And a blast I did have.    It was a great day to nearly finish up the day.   After the ride,  I took my dirty funky self to the hotel where I got some odd looks from some other the folks in the lobby checking in.   I’m pretty sure I had a better day than they did.

Oahu’s Manana Trail

I’m back from my quick work trip to Hawaii, but before I finished up there, I was able to squeeze in a second ride.  The Manana trail was less than 15 minutes from where I was working so it fit the bill for a post-work ride.  It was pretty short trail mileage-wise but mileage can be deceptive sometimes, particularly if the terrain is interesting. 

Such was the case with this trail.  There were plenty of roots to contend with on the first half of this ride.   I was glad today was a dry day as these things can turn your bike into an ejection seat rather easily when wet.   With the roots dry they were manageable and allowed for some serious brushing up on the technical “monkey motion” skills.  There were two unscheduled nose-wheelies that I still have no idea how I managed to keep from going over the bars.

Somewhere around the 1.5 mile mark the trail comes out of the thick foliage and starts following a somewhat open ridgeline.   In the picture above you should be able to make out the cut of the trail.  The trail was actually easier for a while along this ridge as the roots were much more sparce.  The views of the Ko’olau Mountains to the east continued to be intriguing as I climbed but the peaks were mostly shroud by the tradewinds clouds spilling over from the windward side of the island.

The views of the Waianae mountain range on the west side of island opened up behind me as I climbed.   I imagine that a morning time ride would be the best time to take in this view.

The trail follows up the ridge for a while and then started a bit more roller coasteering with things getting steeper.  It was easy to tell that I was moving beyond where most hikers where opting to turn around and head back as the trail transitioned from a dirt tread to a short grassy tread.  There were also plenty of strawberry guava plants along the trail which gave me great excuses to stop and sample the goods.  Snacking on tasty native edibles seemed downright decadent.

As the ridgeline undulations became larger and steeper, the hike-a-bike sections became more frequent and longer.   The trail started giving me glimpses of what a tropical version of the Los Pinos Trail in Orange County would look like.  Hike-a-Biking rarely bothers me as some of the best riding I have ever done has involved some quality time with your feet on the ground.  The Manana trail goes up to the Ko’olau summit over the course of six miles so this could be up to a 12-mile ride.  I did maybe six to eight miles total opting to turn around at a point where I thought the daylight buffer and expected return time equation seemed to balance out.   The actual return time was much quicker than expected and I wish I would have pressed onward a little further.   Maybe next time.

Aloha from the Hau’ula and Ma’akua Trails

So I am in Hawaii this week for a bit of work but I have managed to carve out a little time to grab a rental bike and get it dirty.  The destination for this excursion was the north-east shore of Oahu to ride the Ma’akua Ridge Loop and the Hau’ula Loop Trails. 

I have always wanted to be able to give these trail directions, “Just past the trail sign, turn left at the engine block”.

Got Chunk?   There is a creek crossing in Papali Gulch that will put most people on their feet.

The trade winds were bringing lots of puffy clouds across the windward side of the island so there were lots of transitions from bright sunny conditions to threatening patches of rain clouds.  The terrain was often tricky in spots with bits of roots and rocks.

After climbing up along a ridgeline for quite some time I came to this exception section of trail where the ridge had eroded down to a 3 foot wide knife-edge section about  50 yards long with vegetation covered cliffs to either side.   The flora hid most of the exposure but was certainly there.   The photo does little justice.

Before long the trail reached the highpoint of the loop and the trail turned back towards the ocean and a run down the Ma’akua Ridge proper.  It was quite a blast and I only stopped for a couple of pictures.

Once I reached the bottom of the loop and connected up with the Hau’ula Loop Trail which goes up a series of ridgelines to the north of the Ma’akua Ridge I was just on.

There was some significant difference in the flora along this trail as there were stands of pine trees on these ridges.  While I’m not sure of the exact species of the pine it was something along the line of a Douglas fir.   While I had been sprinkled on a little earlier in the ride, and really nice storm cloud blew through and gave the ground a good and steady pelting for about 10 minutes while blowing through.   I waited it out under thick foliage tree and stayed basically dry.

One thing that was pretty awesome along this trail was the wild tropical fruit growing along the trail.  Snacking on Guava and Lilikoi (Hawaiin Passionfruit) right along the trail truly gave the impression of being in a tropical paradise.

What was not paradise was the numerous roots that had now become wet which turned the normally challenging trail features into full on treachery.

The last half of this loop was mostly downhill and the descent through pines was pretty freaking cool and not what I expected in Hawaii.  The trail pops out about half a mile from the ocean and my waiting car at the Hau’ula Beach Park.   Before driving back to Waikiki I scrubbed off all the mud and muck from the ride with a nice swim in the Pacific.  Life is good on a bike.

Washington Riding

Man do I have a lot of catching up to do.    My six weeks in Washington went by really fast and I was really busy with work.   I did get in quite a bit of riding but much of my other work trips in the past, it is often tough to find time to work, ride and blog about.   I’m sure you can guess which one I set to the side.   I am going to get the story and pictures of   the cool rides I get in up on my site once my schedule drops back down to “normal” but here are a few pictures of these to come.

The furtherest trail away from my basecamp on the west side of Puget Sound was the Devil’s Gulch trail in the northern central area of the state.  It is often touted as one of the best XC trails in the state.  While I would have to ride all the singletracks in the state to be for sure, this is one really awesome trail.   I did about 14+ miles of mellow forest road climbing to get to the top of this trail and was rewarded with 12 miles of singletrack awesomeness.

Since I was in thea area I strung Devils Gulch and the Red Devil Trail together.   The Red Devil trail has a devil of some climbs to it and it fully polished off my leg after the Devils Gulch loop.   The grand total for the day was 36 miles,  4,500 feet of climbing and enough joygasm smiles to make my face hurt.

I made a total of two trips out to the “410 Area” east of Mt Rainier to ride the Palisades, Ranger and Noble Knob trails.  There is some stout climbing to be done but trail and the view are well worth it.

Got Wilderness?   The Noble Knob trail takes you right up to the edge some impressive looking wilderness.

Got Sunlight?   I could have used some at the end of this ride.

Google Duthie Hills, it is Seattle newest Mountain Bike Park.  It is a 120 acre park dedicated to mountain.  It offers something for everyone from tame,

to insane.  This place is a city park that is 100% legal.   Bottom line Washington gets it while SoCal is still in the stone-age.

Not everthing was an adventure to get to.  There were a handful of places that filled out the weekday ride schedule.  Like Port Gamble.

Green Mountain (Where is Waldo’s Shadow?) as well as other spots.

Like I said, I’ll get them up before long, but first I have quick work project to take care elsewhere.  I might get in some riding there too 🙂

The Opening Week in Washington

Last week was really busy.     While work was plenty busy, I did have enough time to get out and about on some trails.     After starting the week out by finding out with my bike being stolen, I was able to get my hands on a rental hardtail on Tuesday.    Wednesday after work I hit up Banner Forest.   I had hiked a small slice of this area in December of 2008 but this was the first time on the bike.   This places is a lot of fun.  Lots of the twists and turns and quick up and downs on nearly all singletrack.   Quite the fun XC playground.

Wednesday was supposed to be a quick afternoon ride at Green Mountain near Bremerton.     The trail was billed as well marked out-up and back-down.    Just a few miles into the climb I spied and sweet looking narrow singletrack heading off to the west and someone had made a wooden arrow on the ground pointing to it.   For those that know me, know what happened next.   Yes I took the sweet looking singletrack that was not on my map.   This was indeed a really awesome singletrack saw much less traffic the the one I started on.  This trail lead to another and another and the next thing I know I was much futher out than I had planned on being.   I had to dust off  some orienteering skills that I had not had to use so thoroughly in quite sometime.  When all said an done my 12-14 miles afternoon spin ended being a stout 21 miler that ended in the waning moments of the day.

 

 Saturday it was raining the Seattle-Tacoma area so I headed inland to the east of Mt Rainer to ride the Ranger Creek and Palisades trail.   The 20 miles of pure singletrack did not disappoint.   I am going to get back here when the sun is out.

Sunday I headed out to the Olympic Pennisula for a ride that is considered a Washington Classic/Epic.   The Lower Dungeness to Gold Creek Trail loop. For much of the ride I was in the clouds which made the fantastic singletracks take on a primordial rainforest feel. The cloud ride in thick old growth woods was sometimes spooky and I often found myself whistling so as not to surpise any critters further up the foodchain.

I’ll get some proper ride reports put together when I get some downtime, but for now it will just be the samplers.

Celebrating the End of the Day

There is nothing like a little celebration and the end of an awesome day.  It is great to reflect on day well spent with family and friends. One of my favorites is when there is a bit of great mountain biking in the mix as well.    I have been really fortunate to have lots of those days.    Today the celebration was for different reasons.

The day started off like some of my other work trips that have had some awesome mountainbiking through in as well.   Asunrise communter flight to LAX to catch a connector.  The connector in this case was Seattle and I have plans for a good bit of riding during my month long stay up here.   Once we got about the marine layer I was treated to pretty pictureque scene below.

 

 One of the other guys I will be working with on this project was going to drive up versus fly.  He has plans for some post-work vacation/roadtrip.   He offered to drive my bike up so I was more than happy not have tear in down, put in the bike box and lug it around the airports.   Shortly after getting off the plane in LAX and into the terminal things started turning for the worse.    I got a phone call from by work bud.  My Intense 6.6 had been stolen off the back of his truck.  Somebody in Kelso WA cut the fairly beefy cable lock and took off with my cherished rig.  I did have a long enough of a layover that all the phone calls were taken care of with the Kelso Police Department as well as make a few points online about the event.     Needless to say I was good and bummed.

My Baby when she was new (The shock has seens been replaced with a Cane Creek Double Barrel coil shock)    The setup of this bike is fairly unique and considering that “Works” translucent paint allows the unique weldmarks to show through, the underlying marks on this paint is a vittual fingerprint for this bike.

Hopefully this along with frame serial number will help it recovery.  I don’t expect I’ll see the bike again.  

Needless to say that I was not in a good mood when I got on the flight to Seattle.    I was however fairly comfortable in seat 5C.   Short BEFORE take off, the little five or so year old “princess” in row 8 started screaming crying and wailing.      It was freaking blood curdling and I could see the tightening shoulders and clinched jaws of everyone within my view.  Mom made good effort to try and calm the little princess down….for all of about five freaking minutes, then she just became pretty oblivious to her little freaking scream box urchin.    We were given the okay to use the portable electronics you should have seen the mad scramble everyone was making to fire that those things up to try and drowned out that the baby terrorist cell.   The scramble was enough that the flight attendant actually smile and had to hold back some snickers.    Even with the music pumping you could still here the screaming.   Now I know the difference between a kid in pain and a kid being a pain.  There was not ear ache, no upset stomach, this kid was just an urchin.  Come on Mom, do something, NyQuil, Sleeping Pills, Pillow across the face,  sock in the mouth, something!    The descent was pure torture once we had to turn off our electronic mufflers.   I was fit to be tied when I got off the plane,   luckily I have a couple hours of driving to do and was able to chillax a little.

Because of the length of my stay here I was able grab a condo rental for the same price as a hotel stay.   I was pretty freaking stoked with the accommodations and location.  It was well into the afternoon by the time I was finally able to set down and relax for good with a tasty Pacific Northwest cold one.    Somedays you celebrate a day well spent, today I was simply celebrating the END of this day.    The good news about this Monday is there are a lot of people out there who had something truly tragic happen today and I was not one of them.     Thanks everyone who acknowledged the bummage of my day and offered encouragement and help.   You guys Rock!

North Rim of Grand Canyon Sampler Pics

Still getting through pictures from the AZ trip, but here are some pics from along the Rainbow Rim Trail on the North Rim of The Grand Canyon.  

The waning minutes of the day from our campsite.  My tent was about 40 miles from cell service, 22 miles from the nearest paved road and about 20 feet from the edge of the canyon.   This is not a good place to camp if you are a sleep walker.  For everyone else, this is soooo freaking awesome.

The Rainbow Rim Trail is 18 miles long and easily ridable in a day as an out-and-back if you are “on the pedals”.   Personally, I think you would be quite the bonehead to do so as this ride deserves to take plenty of time to stop and smell the flowers, take in the views and generally just soak the whole place in.  You can hammer on any trail, but it’s not everyday you get to cruise along the rim of the Grand Canyon.  We were camped at Locust Point and did the trail in two days.  Day one was an out-and-back to Parissawampitts  Point.  It is a tricky name to say and we found unending pleasure from seeing how many ways we could butcher the name.  Day two was Locust Point to Timp Point and back.

The trail undulates mildly for most of the time as you gradually descend out to the points and then climb back away from the points before contouring around to the mid-point drainage.   When you do not have the Grand Canyon vistas, you have some sweet singletrack through the mixed pine and aspen forest.

Jeff cruising along

Once out to the end of the trail at “Popabeertopitts Point”  we spent about 30 minutes hiking/scrambling out to the far-tip of the of point for an even better view of the canyon.   Here we enjoyed a sandwich and a little something extra we had packed in our camelbak bladders.   Ahh still nice and cold.

One thing we all firmly agreed upon was that it did not suck to be us today.

The next morning we set off at just about the crack of dawn for an out-and-back ride in the other direction to Timp Point.  The morning light was pretty incredible.

Once again there were plenty of picture taking going on and generally enjoying  the stops just as much as the GOs.

Jeff on the Go

We also came across at buffalo kill that was presumably made by a mountain lion.  Amazing to think about the power of these big cats to take down a buffalo.  Armed only with cameras we were certainly not the apex predator out here.

Hello Kitty Toothpicks

The views from Timp Point (the terminous of the trail) were once again impressive.  The time of day can totally determine what you can see because of the way the light shifts along the canyon walls.  We noticed a small speck of white in the distance and were able to determine that it was Thunder Springs, an impressive waterfall that comes right out of the side of canyon from an underground river.  I did some Googling on this place and I might just have to dust off my hiking boots for a return trip up here.

The “back” part of the ride went fairly quickly but we did stop to smell some of these.

And check out this guy.

We were back at camp at brunch time and Jeff started busting up camp as he had to leave.    It was great getting to hang out with Jeff (aka MTB Mayor of Kernville).  Later that day Bill and I would get in another ride, but that is another story.