{"id":790,"date":"2011-01-28T19:46:20","date_gmt":"2011-01-29T03:46:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mountainbikebill.com\/blog\/?p=790"},"modified":"2011-01-28T19:46:20","modified_gmt":"2011-01-29T03:46:20","slug":"midweek-cowles-mountain-and-pyles-peak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mountainbikebill.com\/blog\/?p=790","title":{"rendered":"Midweek Cowles Mountain and Pyle’s Peak"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wednesday was a mighty fine day in San Diego so an after work ride was in order.\u00a0 The ride today was Cowles Mountain and Pyles Peak<\/a>.\u00a0 I have done this ride quite a few times and I always enjoy the technical as well as cardio beat down this place can put on you.\u00a0 I started the ride at Mesa Road on the Santee side of the mountain and hooked up with the Mesa singletrack.\u00a0 This singletrack has a bunch of railroad tie waterbars that can really help you work on your uphill ledge climbing skills.\u00a0 The nice thing about them is you can usually pick how much ledge you want to attempt as the waterbars are a uniform height all the way across the trail.<\/p>\n

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I still have no idea how many of those waterbars are on the trail, but it is a lot.\u00a0\u00a0 It has been some number of years since I cleaned this trail and today was no different.\u00a0 I suppose if started taken the easier lines I would had a much better chance of cleaning the trail but what is the fun in that.\u00a0 Yes the singletrack kicked my ass but I certainly felt a little polish on the ledge skills by the time I came out on the fireroad.<\/p>\n

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It has also been some number of years since I cleaned the freaking steep fireroad up to the top.\u00a0 However I did just that on this day.\u00a0\u00a0 I can’t say that it was physical prowess that got me up the fireroad, nope wisdom was the primary factor in cleaning the fireroad.\u00a0 Right from the get-go I put the bike in the granny gear and paced myself up to the top.\u00a0\u00a0Having done this climb some number of times I knew right were the easier spots were and I made a point to go even easier through these spots to try and get the heart and lungs under control.\u00a0\u00a0 The fireroad is steep enough that in quite a few spots I had my nose just inches above the handlebar to\u00a0keep enough weight\u00a0 on the front wheel to keep it from popping up.\u00a0\u00a0My the time I got to the top I was microseconds from a cardio meltdown but was glad to pedal it out.\u00a0 It was not the most macho way to clean the fireroad but it counts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The views from the top were pretty darn nice with quite a few people out on the mountain.<\/p>\n

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After I was able to get my lungs back into my chest.\u00a0 It was time for the out and back trail to Pyle’s Peak.\u00a0 I am a big fan of the trail.\u00a0 It\u00a0sees a ton less use than the rest of\u00a0 the trails and has quite a bit of technical character to it.<\/p>\n

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The Pyle’s Peak trail is not too long but it is a lot of fun.\u00a0 Above is the view from end of the Pyle’s Peak Trail looking back Cowles Mountain.\u00a0\u00a0 Yep there was some work\u00a0to be done to bet back up to Cowles from here.<\/p>\n

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The sagebrush seem to be digging the wet winter.<\/p>\n

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Once back up to Cowles things were pretty zippy the rest of the way.\u00a0 The fireroad is so steep that you really can’t enjoy it as much as you should because you have to keep the on the brakes to maintain control.\u00a0 Once back ont the singletrack of\u00a0the Mesa Trail life is grand\u00a0with lots of micro-chunk and \u00a0small jump opputunites.\u00a0 It got even better when I split off onto the Big Rock trail which has even more of the rocky goodness.\u00a0 This is a really fun in town trail that some often refer to as “Little Noble”.\u00a0 One thing for certain it was a nice bit of fun.\u00a0\u00a0The Big Rock trail took me back to Mesa Road and my truck.\u00a0 A mighty fun weekday ride with a really good workout through in as well.<\/p>\n

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