{"id":821,"date":"2011-03-12T19:36:24","date_gmt":"2011-03-13T03:36:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mountainbikebill.com\/blog\/?p=821"},"modified":"2011-03-12T22:14:53","modified_gmt":"2011-03-13T06:14:53","slug":"el-capitan-open-space-preserve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mountainbikebill.com\/blog\/?p=821","title":{"rendered":"El Capitan Open Space Preserve"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last Sunday and this Wednesday I spent some time exploring the El Capitan Open Space Preserve located near Lakeside.\u00a0\u00a0 El\u00a0Cajon Mountain\u00a0is the extremely promient granite mountain on the preserve you can’t miss if you are driving into El Cajon from the west.\u00a0 And if you have ever ridden Anderson Truck Trail it is mountain on the other side of the reservoir.\u00a0 I can’t count how many times I have said I wanted to get up on that mountain and snoop around.\u00a0 I finally got around to doing just that.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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So for the first go around on Sunday, I checked out this area on a whim.\u00a0 I literally left my house in the morning and did not know where I was going to go ride.\u00a0 I did not feel like driving forever and\u00a0I did not feel like the usual stuff.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0After remembering how many times I had commented on\u00a0“What’s on that hill?”\u00a0 I started pulling up maps on my\u00a0phone and headed towards Lakeside and ultimately the\u00a0staging area for the El Capitan Open Space Preserve off of Wildcat Canyon Road.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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I knew I was in for some climbing,\u00a0and it started right out of the gate.\u00a0\u00a0After climbing\u00a0about half a mile on\u00a0dirt\u00a0streets I came to the\u00a0trailhead proper and keep going on a sorta wide singletrack up from there.\u00a0 The going was steep in spots but I soon came out to a saddle and junction\u00a0with an old mining road.\u00a0\u00a0 I could see lots of ups ahead and some of it looked steep.<\/p>\n

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All along the route there were wildflowers here and there making an appearance.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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It became pretty clear early on that there was a lot more climbing to be done than the simple bottom to top elevation would lead you to believe.\u00a0 There was a lot of “UP three” and “DOWN one (sometimes two)” action going on.\u00a0 One of the mental bummers of this was that you could see that you were just going to have to pay back the elevation real soon.\u00a0\u00a0 While most of the climbs were workable (hello granny gear) there was some heinous pitches that required the foot gear.<\/p>\n

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I was amazed how much water was up here on the mountain, little brooks and the sounds of running water were often heard along the route.\u00a0\u00a0 One week ago to the day, there was snow of this mountain.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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One of the things that had been intriguing me about this mountain was all the huge slabs and rocks that could be seen from afar.\u00a0\u00a0On this first outing when I got up to what I thought was the main ridgeline with the bulk of the climb behind me, I started snooping out lines and playing on some of the rocks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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I ultimately wanted get on the east end of the mountain to be be able to look down at El Capitan Reservoir and across to Anderson Truck Trail.\u00a0 After checking out an off-shoot trail I saw I still had a long way to go to get there and no trail heading directly in that direction.<\/p>\n

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Also in this area I came across an old mine that was pretty cool looking.\u00a0 It had three opening that only went back about 20 feet before stopping.\u00a0\u00a0 I don’t know if this was its as-left\u00a0state or wither the shafts were later\u00a0plugged\u00a0but it was an interesting bit of history carved into the rocks.<\/p>\n

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Beyond the mine site the old mining road turned downhill in a big way.\u00a0 I followed it for a ways and it looked like it was going off of the ridge and towards the Barona Indian Reservation area.\u00a0 I did not have good cell coverage here and I could not pull up any kind of aerial or map views of the area.\u00a0\u00a0 I thought about continuing on but the thought of slogging back up in the other direction or having to ride way around on the roads did not sound appealing at this point in the day’s effort.\u00a0\u00a0 So I chocked it up\u00a0 to thats what I get for not preparing enough for this exploration and decided not continue\u00a0downward from there.\u00a0 I started heading back and played on some rocks here and there on the way.\u00a0 At the bottom of some of the descents, my rotors had that dark blue hot look and the smell of burning pads filled the air near the bike.<\/p>\n

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Fast forward to Wednesday and\u00a0armed with some new information, I repeated the Sunday ride but pressed beyhond the sadddle at the old mine and commited to loosing a\u00a0good chunk\u00a0 of elevation, knowing that I was just going to have to\u00a0gain it back.\u00a0 The descent had some pretty gnarly steep bits.<\/p>\n

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(The “Much Steeper Than It Looks” moniker applies here)<\/p>\n

I know I did not lose as much elevation as I thought, but knowing that you have to come back up this stuff later in the ride makes the terrain\u00a0seem\u00a0much steeper and each foot of descent\u00a0seems like it is going to be 18″ of gain going the other way.\u00a0\u00a0Just as Google Earth had shown the old mining road soon turned aburptly back towards the ridgeline and started going uphill in a semi-heinous manner.<\/p>\n

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Part way up this climb there is an old jeep along the route that was pretty cool to check out.\u00a0\u00a0 Not sure of the era, but it\u00a0seemed way old.<\/p>\n

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The rocks and natural features along the route were also pretty interesting but I did not spend anytime exploring these as it was later in the day and I had\u00a0some uphill ground to cover still.\u00a0 To compound things, the signs at the trailhead said the gate is locked at 5PM which seems a little crazy. (Why not something reasonable like “sunset”)<\/p>\n

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I soon got up to a junction where if I would continue straight\u00a0to get out to the point I was looking to get to.\u00a0 Going off to\u00a0the right would take me to a viewpoint on a secondary peak, and to the left was a foot trail that would take me up to the main peak.\u00a0\u00a0 There were still no views of the reservoir at this point.\u00a0 The old trail out the point straight ahead was quite overgrown, way rutted\u00a0 and downhill from were I was at so I opted to forgo going that way.\u00a0\u00a0 I spent some time working my way up the foot trail towards the main peak but once it started becoming mostly a rock scramble I decided to turn around as I did not want to test the 5PM gate policy.<\/p>\n

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After turning around\u00a0I enjoyed a sizable bit of tricky\u00a0descending before getting back into the granny and foot gear.\u00a0 I had plenty of UPs to do on the way back but I was ultimately loosing elevation.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I made back with 15 minutes to spare before the gate was scheduled to be closed.\u00a0 I was pretty good and pooped.\u00a0 While I had only covered 11.5 miles I had climbed 3,491 feet.\u00a0\u00a0 I think I am going to go back out there maybe once more on a weekend just to fully see the rest of the place, but I don’t\u00a0know how much more\u00a0beyond that I will spend out here as it is ultimately a high price to pay to play kind of place.<\/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 Virgin River Rim Video<\/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 A tale of Mistakes and Epicness<\/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 WANTED: New MTB Model\/Beer Sherpa<\/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 Fort Ebey and Kettles Park<\/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>