Tag: Poway

Snooping around South Poway

This past Friday, I went and checked out a loop in South Poway that I had heard about that contained a mix of city approved/created trails and social trails.   I really did not have much in the way of expectations when I set out on this semi-urban adventure.

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The first chunks of “trails” that I went on were what I typcially expect when I hear of a municipality in San Diego county being involved with creating  “Trails”.    Dirt sidewalks and bullshit existing dirt roads trying to be passed off as “trails” which provide little in the way of a quality natural outdoor experience.    After six or so miles of the this homgenized lowest common demominator tripe things picked up as I went further along on this loop.

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Here is a bit of an official new city of Poway trail that is a  nice singletrack.   Clearly somebody gets it in the city as it provides a nice natural outdoor experience, its sustainable and it is narrow to minimize the enviromental impact.

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The next section of trails I was on roughly followed the route of the planned eastern end of the South Poway trail.

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According to the current city trail map the eastern end is still just planned.   I sure hope the intent is to use this trail pictured above as the eastern end of the of the South Poway trail because the trail above  it is just an awesome chunk of cross country singletrack that had great flow and contoured well.

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Once I got onto the “built” western portion of the South Poway trail, I was once again back onto the crappy “THIS IS NOT A F#$^^NG TRAIL”  dirt road junk.  Note in the picture above only about half the width of the road being passed off as trail is in the picture.   It is a wide barren strip of non-native gravel that is an enviromental blight that the city probably spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to “create”.    Everytime I have pulled the string on the  “who designed this”  question,  it seems to typically point back to some trail standard the governing agency has that was written by people who have a background in civil engineering (aka building roads) vice either an enviromental or forestry background (aka protecting and managing natural resources).     People (or contracted companies by the city) then blindly follow these antiquated standards to build these low quality, expensive hunks of crap.

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This little gem (which I think is not an offical trail), was probably built by volunteers and did not cost the city a dime.   Its enviromental impact is a mere fraction of the offical dirt road tripe that scours along the ridgeline above it.     The rest of the route I did during the day was a mix of both the offical junk “trails” and a fair amount of  well done social trails.    Overall the awesomeness of the singletracks outweighed the retardness of the dirt/gravel road abortions (referred to as “trails”  by the city) that had to be dealt with.   I did about 15 miles total that day.  I will be doing some more exploring out here.

The Killing of Iron Mountain

Here is a special contribution from a long time riding friend of my mine.   Iron Mountain is (rapidly heading towards the “was”) a classicly technically challenging hike/ride in San Diego County).   People enjoyed this trail because it was hard.    Once again we have well intended but misguided people in charge listening to the vocal minority of the trail users who want to “say” they did something hard without “doing” something that is hard.   There are plenty of sterile dirt sidewalks being touted as trails in the city of Poway.     The city has plans for additional trails, how about putting the sparse resources they have to making new trails instead of screwing of the ones we already have.     

The Killing of Iron Mountain

by: Steve Gordenker

Mark and I had a chance to get up to Iron Mountain, yesterday. We witnessed firsthand, the latest round of “Trail maintenance”, by Poway parks and recreation trails manager, Bob Hahn. Recall if you will, last year, I spoke in front of Poway’s city council, sat in on parks and trails planning meetings, wrote letters, and emails, and made phone calls to city council members and the Mayor.

 What a complete, colossal waste of my time.

The slow death of Iron mountain continues, at the hand of Bob Hahn.

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This is towards the top, at the “Hemotoma” area. Large swath of granite removed.

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Wheelchair accessable.

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Ironic, no?

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They dismantled the Iron Meatball.

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Two military guys were hiking down Iron from the top. This poor guy slipped on the loose, powdery mess that Bob Hahn’s butchers left when they removed large portions of granite. He rolled his ankle badly and was unable to put any weight on it. With no way to walk out, his buddy had no choice, but to carry him out on his back. They were 2.5 miles up at this point.

 Thank you, again, Bob Hahn, for making Iron Mountain a “safer” outdoor hiking experience, by completely obliterating all of that dangerous grippy granite.

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Another iconic section of trail at the top , sanitized for your protection.

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Yet another switchback section cleaned and smoothed out by Bob Hahn’s wrecking crew.

Playing At Iron Mountain

Friday I met Brian and Steve from some TGIF chunkage out at Iron Mountain.

After spending the last month riding (between work stuff) in Washington state it was nice to get back onto some turf/chunk.   Of course it is always good to catch up with friends.  The light was good and the temperatures were great in comparison to the mega-hot temps from just a couple of days earlier.

Steve playing

Brian rocking out

My turn

Trickier than it looks.

Getting some Iron in the Diet

I needed to get some iron in my diet so the Saturday morning ride was Iron Mountain and Ellie Lane.

 This place is well known as a serious chunkfest and I was looking forward to seeing how the UZZI would feel in this stuff.

 Steve was the usual suspect today out playing on the clown bike.

I was pretty effing stoked about how well this bike was handling in the goods out here.   Both and the fork and the shock were responding nicely with not bucking or squating in the travel.  I certainly optested out the bashguard a handful or so of times.

 Steve playing in the chunk.  That is a 3.8 tire on the front if your wondering.

 Another chunktastic section of trail.  Steve accused me of cheating with this bike.

 This drop into the switchback was not the problem.  It was turn afterwards that took me nearly a dozen attempts to get.   Geez, I really need to work on my happy face,  I look way too serious in these shots.

See now this clown looks like he is having fun!

Some stairstep chunk

Playing on the rocks.   We did not do many miles today at all but the terrian certainly made for a pretty high effort to mile ratio.   Good stuff.

Iron Mountain and Ellie Lane

I had been needing a  little Iron in my diet so a ride out at Iron Mountain near Poway was in order.    This place is pretty popular with the hikers so if you are going to ride out here you need to plan to be real patient and mind your trail etiquite  as you will certainly have plenty of interactions.  That is one of the reasons why it is best to do this ride on a weekday.   It has been some time since I was last out here and I was quite shocked to see some of the maintenance that was done to the lower half of the Iron Mountain trail.    There were lots of sections were most of the rocks has been either removed from the trail or buried in decomposed granite.   While it may make the trail smoother in the near term I think it will cause more erosion problems in the long-term than it will fix.   There were some sections that had been needlessly widened and debrushed to the point where they may never recover as the vegitation that stabilized the soil has been removed.  

Luckily the upper half of the Iron Mountain trails has not been touched (yet) so the iconic rocks and technical features of this trail are still intact.   The trail can be quite exhausting on the way up and on more than one occasion I had to stop and catch my brest breath.   I felt like a boob for not being able to clean some of the sections that I have handled in the past. 

After a nice break at the top it was time to play on the way back down.  The chunk of this trail is always a challenge and we sessioned our way back down the trail.

Steve working an interesting line.

One of numerous gnarly switchbacks.

Steve taking a roller

After the Iron Mountain trail we hooked up with the Ellie Lane trail.  I had nearly forgotten how much of a grunter it is get get up up the first saddle where the downhill chunk-o-rama starts. 

Once over the first saddle on Ellie Lane there was some high quality chunk to tackle on the way down.

Steve taking on an interesting line.  After the first chunky descent were would have two more grunt/hike-a-bike sections before the final technical descent of the day.  By the time we got down I was feeling pretty worked over but stoked to have got in some solid technical riding.

From there we had some mellow cruising to loop back over to the trailhead where…. 

the marvels of modern MTB frame designs could be really appreciated.  This Santa Cruz frame features a built-in bottle opener!

Getting a little Iron in my diet.

Yesterday,  Steve (Aquaholic), Mark (HecklerMark) and I decided to get our chunk on at Iron Mountain located between Poway and Ramona.  The weather was a bit brisk and the threat of getting a little wet was moderate.  All of the other times I have done Iron Mountain I have been solo and the temps were high.  Today was a treat by having folks to ride with and not having to stew in my own juices.

There were a metric ton of hikers out today, so trail etiquitte was certainly something we had to be very mindful of today.  As in all of my previous visits here, the hikers are generally freaking amazed that anyone would ride a bike out here.  There were lots of words of encouragements thrown our way both on the climb and then descent.

The weather did not offer the best of views, but I always find it cool to look down from the peak and pick our there vehicle down at the trailhead.   The descent down went well as all three of us seemed to be in a good groove for riding the chunk.

Once back down the mountain, we split off onto the Ellie Lane trail.   I am not fan of the ill-placed peeled-log waterbars, then again they are quite a challenge.  Once we worked our way past the Ramona overlook we into some good downhill chunk.

Steve being Steve on his circus bike.

Mark in some chunk

Getting some chunk on myself.  This was my first time cleaning this sequence.

More Mark Chunkage

Steve and the trail ahead.

The top of “Final Exam” (Trickier than it looks)

Can you tell Steve hates to have his picture taken?

This was by far my best ride out here yet.  A damn fine day on the bike, if you like playing on technical bits and down have a problem with some hike-a-bike.