Tour of California - NSMB style.

Here's a wicked map of the trails, thanks to the Santa Barbara Hikers

Chris has hooked us up with two of his old friends who are doing a three day trip of SoCal's best mountain bike trails. The best part is they plan on shuttling them. The only catch - they live in Venice Beach, CA, and the rides are spread from Santa Barbara to San Diego. Our planned 3200 km trip is quickly ballooning to a 6000 km epic adventure! Good thing I changed the oil on the Jeep before we left!

Hey Sven, have you hit up the rest of Socal yet? Give me a shout if San Diego is still on the menu. Looks like you have guides but I could show you guys some trails here if you're around this Sunday. Hopefully they're going to take you to Noble Canyon or San Juan trail - the best 2 shuttleable trails around here.

If by chance you're still around next weekend (29th) I have a ride planned in Palm Springs - the Palm Canyon epic, a 30mile point to point high desert shuttle. I guarantee that would be a highlight of your trip. Check it out at mountainbikebill.com http://www.mountainbikebill.com/PalmCanyon.htm.

Cool trip…must be nice to get away from the shitty weather back at home!

Evan

:lol:

we're back in north van now, but Noble Canyon and San Juan Capistrano were the creme de la creme on Thursday/Friday (pictures still coming)

Thanks for the offer!

hey, honey, we drove to San Fran in 16 hours. I bet we could make it back to Palm Springs after work next weekend…

Oh well, this gives you a reason to come back next year :idea:

hey, honey, we drove to San Fran in 16 hours. I bet we could make it back to Palm Springs after work next weekend…

shotgun!

A couple kegs would work.

too much foam on the I5. plus - what would i throw at the trailers?

cool pics, sven

Thursday - San Juan Capistrano

We rode two trails in San Juan Capistrano. This place is 20 minutes south of what I thought was L.A., or at 20 minutes past the "big city" on the San Diego Freeway. Turns out it's 55 miles from L.A., and it seems like you're driving forever in big city traffic on the freeway.

We took three vehicles - Shuttlewhore style, even though the trails are quite pedally through the desert. Fritz led the way doing 80 mph with his lifted, extended cab Tacoma running on 20" Rockstar wheels (you're nobody in CA if you don't have pimp rims).

The San Juan Hot Springs are half way to Lake Elsinore in the Cleveland National Forest.

A little history lesson - eyes glaze over to the pictures - In 1907 President Roosevelt made extensive additions to both the Trabuco Canyon and San Jacinto Forest Reserves, to include Palomar and Laguna Mountains and those farther south to the Mexican Border. A year later (1908) President Roosevelt combined the two Reserves to form the new 1,904,826 acre Cleveland National Forest.

During the next seventeen years there were several deletions to the Cleveland. A major one in 1915 when 749,730 acres of non-forest value lands were returned to public entry, and another in 1925 when the San Jacinto unit was transferred to the San Bernardino National Forest. Today the Cleveland National Forest consists of approximately 424,000 acres of forest land.

I emphasize this point, because tomorrow's ride is 90 miles south, and still in the Cleveland National Forest!

Side bar - An interesting link on the USFS stand on mountain bikes and trails

First trail that we ride called Chiquito. 8.6 miles (13.8 km) long, it starts at Blue Jay Campground and winds down through hardpack smooth sandy trails to Upper San Juan campground.

OK, enough talk…

Chiquito.

note - XC riding, Cali style.

San Juan Trail

11.6 miles (18.6 km) long, this ride was significantly longer, and had equal amounts of climbing as it did descent, even though it was a long shuttle.

Damn, I forget the name of this rock now, but legend is that this is where Jeff Streber had the idea to start Intense Cycles. John and Fritz have a 4 PM tour scheduled at Intense in Temecula today, since Fritz has been a long time owner of Intense bikes.

can you say butter smooth? Fritz and John are long gone, so I'm resorting to self portraits here. Dorothy's back at the Jeep, holding down the lawnchair and making sure the beer doesn't get warm.

you can just see the trail switchbacking down that mountain way over there. This was about the 3/4 point on the trail, with the end being at the bottom of the switchbacks.

a little zoom action. you can see the switchbacks hiding behind the bush in the bottom left corner of the picture.

but first, we have to follow this ridge

start at Blue Jay Campground trailhead

Leave a shuttle chase at Upper San Juan campground and at Lower San Juan campground

After doing the chase and waking up Dorothy, John and Fritz dash out of there to Temecula in hopes of getting to Intense before they close. Fritz needs a new rear drop out (recall Santa Barbara…) for his brand new M6.

We took our time and skipped the tour, but bought super fresh, huge strawberries on the side of the road. Mmmmm! California fruit!

The Intense Tour was, well, intense. The boys met us at the brewery and were stoked on the tour, and excited about their new T-shirts and socks

I'll "borrow" some pics now…

Thursday night - Stone Brewing, Escondido, CA

John is a real beer connaisseur. No mtb tour is complete without a taste of the local brewery.

This is definitely the best brewery I've been to. The label on their Arrogant Bastard Ale pretty much sums it up.

They stick to Ales and Stouts. Lagers are too watery for Stone.

Quite the impressive building to boot…

yes, those are the vats of yummy goodness behind the tall windows.

A couple pints and a few sampler kits later - where are we going to sleep?

The parking lot looks good, so does the back of that Stone delivery truck…

This is a great TR!
Looking forward to the rest :)

Damn, I forget the name of this rock now

Cocktail rock. Its where a lot of those who pedal up turn around. Which is a shame as there's a ton of fun, technical rocky trail up there to explore. Good to see you were able to get in some of that other good stuff.

And make time to stop in at Stone, nicely done. For a clue as to how popular that place is, it is packed from open to close when most other restaurants and bars are pretty much empty due to the bad economy. I like how in the first pic its bright daylight and in the other 2 its dark outside :lol:.

Looking forward to pics of Noble.

Noble Canyon.

yeah, it's been a while, but I got busy with riding instead of posting.

Well, this ride was the cream de la creme. The finishing touch to our weeks adventure.

This clip pretty much sums up today's ride.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRQj8IuVXsk

Wait, there's mountain biking outside of the North Shore?

Looks like a great trip. This pic makes me drool: