Sweetwater – The Ramblings of MTBBill

Sweetwater Bike Park

The Sweetwater Bike Park has been around for a few years now but I had yet to make my way down there to check it out. I was interested hitting up some the trails in area so this was a good fit.

Ran into Jose out at the park. This guy has an amazing eye behind a camera lens.

I have say this Park is quite a bit of fun. There are a couple of jump lines, a couple of flow lines, a couple of walls and some other assorted MTB skills development bits. It is quite a nice asset for the community.

After getting my fill of the place and chatting up some of the locals I headed out to the Sweetwater trails.

Jose making me look like I know what I’m doing

I primarily worked my way up to the top of Rockhouse from the backside. (The front side trail was eat up with hikers). After the

From the summit I dropped down into main trails area and a few loops before making my way back to the park where I had started.

I had forgotten that this area (outside of the trails up to rockhouse) have a lot more climbing to them than the layout would lead you to believe. I did about 14 miles with 2,200ft of climbing. It was a mighty fun day on the bike.

Sweetwater and Rockhouse

For those of you who have every been on some of Hoser’s Bonita rides leaving from Donny’s Café you know there are 5o,000 ways plus to put together some serious miles out in this area.

You also know that trying to give by turn-by-turn directions for some of these routes would be pretty damn difficult.

In the past I have just always tagged along behind other folk’s wheel and just enjoyed the various route without really caring where on how I was getting where.

Lately I have been putting in some solo miles in an effort to calibrate my own compass out in this area.

The Rockhouse area has been the latest section of stomping around and figuring out.

I have been traveling trails and adding new bits with every visit. There is lots of good stuff out here

Here are a few pictures from the area from the various rides so far.

Where The Hell Have You Been?

Where The Hell Have You Been? I have gotten that question a couple of times as of late. Yep I have been slacking on the posting stuff of my Blog.

I have been getting in some quality Hockey Dad time in with my youngest son on most weekends as he is playing on two In-Line hockey teams. One recreational league team out of Kit Carson Park in Escondido and a tournament team (The San Diego Stingrays). This works out to practice and games commitments of four days a week.

With both teams practicing out of Escondido I have been getting in quite a bit of riding in at Lake Hodges and the surrounding area as of late. Besides the stuff already on my site I have managed to find some cool stuff here and there like this patch of woods between Lake Hodges and Poway.

I have also managed to find some complete crap as well. This tripe located in the city of Poway is simply insulting. They dumped 4-6″ of gravel beside a stupidly steep road and called it a trail. The unprofessional asses that did this debacle did not even bother to compact the gravel down. This thing is so F’d up that had to put signs up ever 50 feet to try and convince people that it is a trail. City of Poway—This is not a F$%^ing Trail! If you would care to improve your trail building knowledge why don’t you spend an afternoon on the playground at Chaparral Elementary School. Pay attention to the six year olds with the Tonka trucks, they get it more than your “trail builders” do!

Enough about city governments wasting money, I managed to catch a baseball game with my girlfriend. The Padres even managed to win on the night we went.

Of course San Diego is arguably a Craft Beer Mecca so there has been plenty of outings to check out what the latest awesome offerings are from the over 71 (and growing) microbreweries in the county.

Recognizing that mountain biking is a preexisting condition with me my, girlfriend he has gotten onboard with the program and is coming up to speed quite nicely.

I have also managed to get in some dirt time at La Costa here and there. If for nothing else than to check out some advertising dollars well spent on the Copper Canyon Bridges.

My work schedule as of late has been conducive to grabbing some after work mileage out in South Bay. I have ridden out here numerous times and there are lots of trails to push the pedals around on. In the past I have nearly always been with somebody showing me around through the maze of canyons with interconnections through parking lots, culverts, streets and backyards. It has been kind of fun trying to use the “Swartz” on solo efforts to retrace some of my previously guided steps. More to follow as I continue to get semi-lost with that ongoing effort.

So as far as where the hell have a been? I’ve been around on my bike….

Sweetwater Cruising

This past week I got to Sweetwater Reservoir for an after work cruise. It was been quite a few moons since I had been out here and I had been itching to give the place another go.

Sweetwater

Spring is in the air and the hill sides are nice and green.

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Miguel Mountain in the back ground as I head out towards the Steel Bridge. (The Rockhouse trail is still on my to-do list)

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The bridge is where I normally turn around, but today I was riding with some zip so I decided to explore further “up stream”

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I did find some nice trails both in the valley as well as up along the hillside . I had a commitment later in the evening so I was watching clock trying to maximize my ride time. A flat tire shortly after my “turn around time” ate up some of my time buffer so after fixing the flat I had had to get on pedals fairly hard.

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On the way back there are a couple of options on this otherwise out and back route. Staying to the right will keep you near the reservoir and over to the tiki hut and the left option will take you up to a saddle on the opposite side of the hill. On this return I saw a third (new since my last visit) option that looked like it might split the difference and do some nice contouring. Thinking I might be able to save some time, I took this option and soon found out that while this would be an awesome trail coming down, it was a bit of a bitch in the uphill direction. It was a bunch of work and I am certainly going to hit that trail in the proper direction up on my next visit. It did not save me any time at all, but getting on some dirt I have not been on before is always good in my book.

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I was feeling whooped at this point and all the undulations were putting some pain in legs as I was still trying to press the pace.

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Just as I rolling back into the camping/staging/playground area parking lot I spotted my first rattlesnake of the year. It was a baby without even a single rattle yet. Considering that he was in a area where an encounter with a camper or kid could easily occur I rolled over to the nearby entrance gate where a park ranger was and asked if they relocate them when they find them in this area. The ranger did confirm they catch and relocate the ones they find in the immediate area. This was not the ranger’s first rodeo and within a couple of minutes he was over with his snake wrangling gear and soon had the snake moved into container. In in the next few hours the snake was to have a new home out in the back forty of the park somewhere. I ended up being just a couple of minutes late for my appointment that evening but felt good about getting in a good ride and doing a good deed.

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