{"id":101,"date":"2008-11-13T11:22:18","date_gmt":"2008-11-13T19:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mountainbikebill.com\/blog\/?p=101"},"modified":"2009-06-29T04:39:20","modified_gmt":"2009-06-29T12:39:20","slug":"a-tale-of-mistakes-and-epicness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mountainbikebill.com\/blog\/?p=101","title":{"rendered":"A tale of Mistakes and Epicness"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“I forgot my camelbak.”<\/strong>\u00a0 That is how this tale of forgetfulness, epic trails, conditions and people starts.\u00a0 My buddy Bill O’neil had never ridden Noble Canyon <\/a>out in East County San Diego.\u00a0 Noble Canyon is designationed a National Recreation Trail and is one of the IMBA Epic Trails.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If you live in Southern California is basically considered a must do.\u00a0 So Bill was on his way down to my house from LA on Saturday.\u00a0 The plan was to hang out on Saturday and then ride on Sunday.\u00a0\u00a0 Bill called me when he was halfway to my house when he realized that he had forgotten his camelbak.\u00a0 This was no big deal as I had spare smaller 70oz camelbak that would work.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

So Bill gets down to my house\u00a0and as he\u00a0is always good for, he brought some might tasty beverages and spirits along with him.\u00a0 We ended spending the evening enjoying them while tinkering with bikes.\u00a0 Bill is also a pretty accomplished quitar player so there was also a bit of jamming\u00a0 going on with my boys as both of them have recently picked up the quitar.\u00a0\u00a0 It did not take long for my boys to be give Bill the Wayne’s World “Were not worthy” salute.\u00a0\u00a0 It was a bunch of fun.\u00a0\u00a0 When the lights finally went out in the house, I had no problems falling asleep.<\/p>\n

The next morning came pretty quickly and I found myself just a little “foggy”.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0We were not doing the full “Tour de Noble<\/a>” today.\u00a0 We were doing a point-to-point that included Noble,\u00a0the Big Laguna Trail (BLT)\u00a0and the \u00a0Laguna Mountains.\u00a0\u00a0 So this meant two trucks.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As I packed all the stuff into the truck I ran through the mental checklist:\u00a0 Bike, Shoes, Clothes, Helmet, Gloves, Glasses — CHECK!<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0 Off we went.<\/p>\n

The weather had made a dramatic turn over night as a storm had moved in and there were had been some intermittent rain overnight and the skys look somewhat menacing but with hope of blue on the horizon.\u00a0\u00a0 The Lagunas are a long way from North County San Diego so the thinking was that the weather might be different at the trailhead.\u00a0\u00a0 On the drive out, I had resigned to the fact that we would most likely get rained on at some point during the day, but we had a good chance for some incredible conditions.<\/p>\n

Once at the bottom of Noble we started making the final preps to leave a truck at the bottom.\u00a0\u00a0 Then I noticed it.\u00a0 My Camelbak was no where to be scene.\u00a0 CRAP!\u00a0\u00a0 How the F$%k did this happen?\u00a0 I did the checklist: Bike, Shoes, Clothes, Helmet, Gloves, Glasses,,,,,,,DAMN IT!<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Checklists suck if you leave stuff off of them.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Okay lets figure things out.\u00a0\u00a0 Bill still had the\u00a0small\u00a0Camelbak I\u00a0let him borrow.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0However, the only other\u00a0things in that Camelbak were snacks and a multi-tool.\u00a0\u00a0 No pump, tubes or patches.\u00a0\u00a0 This is where some of the real coolness of the day first came into play.\u00a0\u00a0 There were three other riders at the trailhead getting ready to head out.\u00a0 They were gratious enough to let us bum a tool and tube from them.\u00a0\u00a0 I was able to find a patch kit stashed in my truck so we were covered in that area.\u00a0\u00a0 On our way to the top we stopped at the Pine Valley Market and picked up three 1-liter bottles of water to stuff in my jerseys.\u00a0\u00a0 (My camera was also in my camelbak so all of the pictures here are from other trips on these trails)\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Once at the upper trailhead at the RedtailRoost Volunteer Center off of Sunrise Highway it was pretty cold at 39 degrees and and breezy.\u00a0 My trusty windbreaker was (you guessed it) in my Camelbak.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My garb for the days was shorts, knee warmers, long sleeve jersey with a short sleeve jersey on top and a pair of wind-proof winter gloves.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Being in the clouds of a brewing storm was pretty interesting as you had what looked like fog but you also had the whipping breeze that had a\u00a0primordial type of feeling as\u00a0forest\u00a0just sort of\u00a0disappeared into a\u00a0gray but shifting nothingness as the different densities of the clouds would pass by.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0opening section of trail was really\u00a0cool as the moisture from the night before (or maybe even minutes\u00a0before we arrived) had patted down the trail enough to\u00a0make for perfect traction.\u00a0\u00a0 It was fast rolling and gripped in the\u00a0corners at near velcro strength.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 After a good bit of ridge riding that was mostly downhill we connected up with the Aqua Dulce fireroad and climbed up to the top of Los Gatos Ravine for one of my favorite singletrack descent into Big Laguna Meadow<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It has wonderful flow and enough grade to keep you ripping along with little in the way of pedal action if you just want to cruise.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\n(This is Indian Creek Trail, but this was the fogginess of most of the ride)<\/p>\n

Once we got out onto the meadow, we were smacked with the full force of the wind and for some period of time it was just hunker down and keep mashing the pedals to keep moving forward,\u00a0 Since the wind was mostly blowing from the south, once we got on the south side of the meadow we gained a little shelter from the breeze.\u00a0\u00a0 At this point we were both pretty stoked not to have gotten rained on yet.\u00a0 We were making pretty good time as moving meant generating warmth and rest meant loosing warmth.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nBig Laguna Meadow during sunnier times<\/p>\n

We soon made our way to the far end of the meadow and onto the connector to upper Noble Canyon trailhead.\u00a0 While grabbing a quick snack at the top of Noble we encountered our first bit of snow.\u00a0 It was just a few flakes here and there but it was indeed snow.\u00a0 We were soon on our way down the Noble Canyon trail.\u00a0\u00a0 We were not on the trail more than five minutes when the wind got to howling pretty hard and I thought I was getting sand blown into my eyes.\u00a0 The problem was that there was no sand nearby.\u00a0 After a minute or so I figured out the stuff pelting me was not sand my but very small bits of sleet.\u00a0\u00a0 Besides the slight stinging that the sleet gave when hitting you at speed, it was not bad as it mostly bounced off so my clothes were not getting soaked.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The sleet only lasted for a few sessions of a minute or two at a time.\u00a0 Once we dropped a little elevation we got down below the clouds that were producing all the wind and things became pretty calm in comparision.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\n(Above Big Laguna Trail in April of 2007)<\/p>\n

Noble Canyon was freaking great as always and the overnight moisture made for a ripping good time.\u00a0\u00a0 I was throughly enjoying showing off some of my home turf.\u00a0\u00a0I ran into one of my local riding\u00a0friends\u00a0who was riding up Noble while we\u00a0descended.\u00a0\u00a0 He had forgotten his trail grub and was planning on\u00a0cutting the ride short.\u00a0\u00a0We hooked him up with\u00a0enough snacks to\u00a0keep\u00a0him going.\u00a0 We both thought that after all of the generosity our three buds at the bottom had show us it was\u00a0the\u00a0least we could do.\u00a0\u00a0 It was shortly before the “Stairway to Hell” that the help of the buds at the bottom became pretty important as Bill got a flat.\u00a0 Luckily we had that\u00a0pump and tube to get us going again.\u00a0 While changing the tube it started to rain.\u00a0 While it was cold and\u00a0biting we were both pretty stoked at this point as we had fully expected\u00a0to be\u00a0rained on hours ago.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nStairway to Hell at the 2005 SSSSS (Spring SoCal Single Speed Summit)<\/a><\/p>\n

Once we got rolling again it was time for the “Stairway to Hell”.\u00a0 It is a technical challenge of jumbled rocks without a line per se, more like a general direction to go, and it was wet.\u00a0\u00a0 On the first attempt, the tires were somewhat doing thier own thing on the wet rocks\u00a0and it gave me the hebegeebees enough that\u00a0I lost my momentum.\u00a0\u00a0The\u00a0second time was a charm as I trusted the bike and tires to make thier own “adjustments” properly if I kept the speed up.\u00a0\u00a0 By the time we got to the longest and last climb of\u00a0Noble Canyon\u00a0a somewhat steady but very light rain had settled in.\u00a0 The good news was that we were climbing so it was\u00a0easy to keep warm by\u00a0burning\u00a0calories.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As luck would have it the rain\u00a0let up when we reached the top of the climb.\u00a0\u00a0 The last technical bit\u00a0down to the lower trailhead (known as extra credit)\u00a0has always been one of my\u00a0favorites and it did not disappoint.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Down at the bottom, we were ready to make quick work of getting the bikes in the back of the truck and get the heater going on the way to retrieve the other truck.\u00a0\u00a0 This was when Bill discovers that he left his truck keys in my truck AT THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN<\/strong>!\u00a0 Holy Crap!\u00a0\u00a0 What to do, what to do?\u00a0 This is were the coolness of\u00a0Mountain Bikers came into play once again.\u00a0 A couple of guys hooked me up with a ride to the top the mountain.\u00a0 They were a ready life saver and I can’t thank them enough.\u00a0 As we neared the top of the of the mountain there was snow coming down pretty hard and it was obivous it had been coming down for a while.\u00a0\u00a0 There was about 3\/4ths of an inch of snow on my truck at the top and the temperture was 31 degrees.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Enough of the snow managed to survive the drive back down the mountain that I was able to craft a sizable snowball\u00a0that turned out to be just perfect for\u00a0pelting Bill. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Over mexician food in\u00a0Alpine with some fellow MTBers\u00a0coming in from another ride, we recounted the day’s adventure.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The trail was only a portion of what made the\u00a0story an\u00a0epic.\u00a0 The trail conditions certainly played a major\u00a0portion of the story, but I\u00a0say it was the awesomeness of my\u00a0fellow\u00a0MTB junkies that made the day great.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Without the help of five strangers, this would have been a pretty miserable day.\u00a0\u00a0I hope many\u00a0days of good Karma\u00a0\u00a0come to these five guys.\u00a0 Instead this\u00a0day being a disaster, is destined to\u00a0be recounted numerous times over fine whiskey or tasty microbrews.<\/p>\n

Isn’t that what started this whole mess in the first place? \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

More Stuff Like This<\/h3><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
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<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t MIA Status<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
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<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Winter Park, Colorado<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
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<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Opening Spin on Mount Yumihari<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
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<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Snooping around in the Laguna Mountains<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n<\/div>