Mountain Bike Bill, The Dirt on the Dirt

Sugarloaf Trail near Big Bear

Most conversations about the Sugarloaf trail among those adventurous enough to give it a go eventually have a component of is the juice worth the squeeze. You can’t shuttle it and it is a bunch of work to get up to the summit that will include some hike-a-bike. There is good easier riding all over the area so this trail does not see a lot of MTB action.

The nearly continual sounds of clanking and shifting rocks under your tires is a cool experience on this trail.

One of the reasons I like the trail is a its raw nature. It’s not a gnarly big rock chunkfest but something between micro-chunk and a blanket of scree almost always on a grade. Oh yeah, you also at 9,000 plus feet for most of your outing.

On this outing I did the short option of starting at Horseshoe Meadows and doing it as an out-and-back. If you really want to do something cool add the Wildhorse trail into the mix. For an epic adventure leave a vehicle at the bottom of the Mill Creek Road by the Santa Ana River and when you get to the bottom of the Wildhorse trail coast down HWY 38 for three miles and pick up the Santa Ana River Trail and take it back to your vehicle.

BIG BANG!

I thought I had lots a grip of footage from my August 2023 MTB vacation. Turns out I outsmarted myself and found my backup right where I had left it. I will get through most of that footage at some point. While in Flagstaff, I checked out a new to me trail (The trail is a newish legal trail) called Big Bang. I enjoy Flagstaff scene a great deal and this trail most likely is going to into the routine rotation.

The Cowboy Trails

So I have recently pushed out a couple of videos on the Cowboy Trails of Las Vegas. The first one was from the “Vintage” Vault of 2006 and the second one was from a ride from about a month ago. I have ridden the Cowboy trails a handful of times between the recording of these two videos and I had finally gotten through the three main down hills routes off of the ridge. I suppose you could do some laps out here and do more than one downhill in an outing but for me I have usually had my fill after one. There is a lot of MTB per mile out here.

For the downhills:

  • Boneshaker: Oh man this is a fun descent that will test your skills. There are some nice drops and other technical features that will keep you on your toes. This was featured in my vintage video of my first visit here.
  • Bomb Voyage: I consider this the most technically demanding route and has some squirrel moves coupled with some exposure. It feels the scariest.
  • Bob Gnarly: I heard this trail described as “90s Downhill Tech”. For those of you that are not of that vintage I would call it “On the Ground Tech”, It is often tight, twisty and narrow. Not bermy bike-park vanilla flow stuff. I consider this the easiest of the three descents but not easy.
  • Rock Garden: This is not only the list. While you could ride down it, the main traffic it sees is the the equestrian tourism traffic which I find the trails to typically be chewed up and riddled with horse poo.

No matter which route you take if you like rocky desert tech you should have a good time out here. If you need a bike, both the Trek and Giant stores in town typically have rental bike available.

The most recent video features the Bob Gnarly Trail
The vintage video that includes the Kibbles and Bits climb as well as the Boneshaker descent.

Condor Peak Awesomeness!

We start off with, I am once again slacking a bit on BLOG posts. I will try to catch up at some point, but for today I have to talk about the Condor Peak Trail in the northern bits of the San Gabriel mountains. I first rode this trail in in 2007 and thought it was a fantastic trail. I was quite saddened in 2009 when the station fire tore that area and the trail up. After thousands of volunteer hours put in by the dedicated folks of the Lowelifes Respectable Citizens’ Club the trail was officially reopened back in July.

Those folks did an amazing job of rebuilding that trail. It is in fantastic shape and they did not sacrifice any of the narrow twisty exposed nature of trail which make it such treasure to a single track connoisseur .

My buddy Bill and I revisited a point-to-point ride we did that included a 12 mile climb up Mendenhall Ridge and a connection over to the top of the Condor Peak Trail. Condor Peak can also been done as an out and back, but I don’t like the idea of trying to climb some of those narrow exposed sections when you are momentum deprived. No matter what method you take to get to the top of Condor Peak you are going to put in some work.

Oh Yeah!

Santa Margarita River Trail

A while back I revisited the Santa Margarita River Trail and shot some video.

The placed has changed a bit with the primary thing being some “improvements” to the south side that has “tamed” some of the trails a little and made them slightly wider. To the east of the preserve the Red Mountain and “Hills Loop” I used to describe have been cutoff due to an property acquisition by an environmental group. There is still plenty to see out here and while summer is not the best time to be out here it was still a nice outing on the bike.

My page on this area.

Lagunas Camping

The Laguna Mountains are one of my happy places. Nichol and I spent the July 4th holiday weekend (and then some) at the Laguna Meadow campground.

Our Casa on the meadow

We really love this area not only for cool trails right from camp but also for it just being an awesome place to just to chill outdoors. One of the things we like about it during the July 4th weekend is the lack of fireworks. Within hearing distance of our home are several annual fireworks events that pretty much keeps are dogs traumatized for the bulk of the Independence Day evening. Life is just better for our dogs (and us) up here away from the boomage.

At the UCSD observatories with view of the Kitchen Creek area and beyond.

Did I mention trails? I already posted up about checking out Garnet Peak, but I hit most of the stuff in the area over the course of the trip.

Climbing Aqua Dulce enroute to Gatos Ravine.

The nice thing about camping here is that you don’t have to try and hit everything at once. Some trails in the morning. Some in the afternoon. Hell, why not a post-2nd breakfast ride?

  • Chilling and Grillin
  • Check out “Observe A Thing”

Then of course there is hammock time. Yeah we had a great time!

A run down Noble Canyon