Noble Efforts at Noble Canyon

My final day in California was spent riding in Noble Canyon. For this trip I contacted Laura "Sunny" Drexel of Sunny Rides LLC to guide me down the canyon. Laura provided everything for me: my bike, my camelbak, food, water and helmet. We met near the bottom of the trail where we left my car and we shuttled to the top of the trail with her car. This service that Laura provides is well worth every penny. This is the first trip in a long time where I didn't need to know where to go (I didn't get lost!!), I didn't have to find a nice rental bike, I didn't need to pack my own gear. Laura took care of all the details. All I had to do is show up and ride a bike.

We shuttled up to the Penny Pines parking lot at the Penny Pines Mounument in the Cleveland National Forest.

At the Noble Canyon trailhead I noticed a sign about the Mountain Lion Activity. I wish I had read about this the day before when I was by myself flying down Santa Rosa Mountain. Apparently if you see a mountain lion and you ride away very fast it will think you are prey and chase you. I'm glad I didn't see any. The mountain lions in the west scare me more than the bears in the east.

The start of the ride is between 5400 and 5500 ft elevation. At this time of the year there was a little snow to deal with for the first mile or so of the ride. This was not the same snow I have ridden in Ohio. This snow had an icy layer on top, so once you broke through it really slowed you down.

The scenery on this trail was superb. Up to this point the riding was all fairly straight forward smooth single track. I had an "event" with a tree stump moments before this picture was taken because I took a corner too fast as usual, and so I ended up in a pile of brush on the side of the trail. I started slowing down a little after that. The slow speed would prove to be my most major hurdle to overcome for the rest of the day.

Another scenic view from the point where Laura told me it might be best to put on my knee and elbows pads. From here on the trail was technically challenging. For the record, if it had not been for Laura I never would have brought pads, which surly would have caused me pain. Her wise advice throughout the day saved me many times from certain doom.

Here I am, a poser in the woods.

There was some trail damage here and there. We had to pull and drag our bikes under this tree.

Here I am at the "Widow Maker." Laura explains it best in her blog here. Laura could ride this like a pro. I made it this far and then chickened out. Those rocks look like they could really hurt!

More scenery from some of the best singletrack in the world. The trail had ventured out of the woods and back into the open at this point, and the rocks were getting more and more numerous.

Here I am having fun riding down the rocky trail. I was still going too slow, and I had a death grip on the handlebars, but I was having a great ride.

Back in a wooded area again, where the rocks started getting larger.

Laura wouldn't let me get up until she took a picture of one of my many falls. I thought I could get through this one, but I just couldn't get past that last rock.

The offending rock garden of the fall from the picture above.

Laura asked another rider in the area to take a picture of us while we were taking a little break near the stream.

Never in my life have I seen cacti near such a large tree. I would have thought that the tree would have needed much more water then the cacti, and the cacti wouldn't be able to survive with this kind of shade.

Just as we got out of the woods we started to get into some of the more technical descents. The video above is from one of these areas.

Another wonderful view just before a treacherous hill.



Here are a few of video clips of the ride in the more technical sections.

Taking a break at the bottom of a hill. Yes, that is the trail that you see running up the hill. I made it about halfway down before I chickened out again. Laura made it to the bottom, but then told me she had an "incident" at the end.

After we got through the technical downhill sections we hung a left at a fork in the trail and started the long climb up the "extra credit" section. This climb was not as steep as earlier in the day, and the surface changed form the football sized rocks to a desert like sandy dirt with larger rocks here and there. It also started to get very, very warm. At this point I was amazed that in one ride I could go through snow, woods, rocky hills, and now this sandy dirt. I have never been in a place where I could get all of this in just one day.




After the climb was a lot of fast and furious downhill runs with large obstacles around every bend. "Extra Credit" was a great way to end the day.

Finally I'm actually navigating through some of this trail. By the end of the day my skills had improved tremendously. The bonus I got with Laura is not only is she a great tour guide, she is a amateur downhill racer, and she is also a great coach. I learned a lot from her that day.

Of course as much as my confidence was up at this point, there were still these little rocks like this one under my pedal in this picture that would pop out of nowhere and stop me cold. The next time I'm in SoCal I'm doing this ride again, and I'll be a better rider.

Here were are at the parking lot at the bottom of the hill where we reluctantly had to end the ride. I had a two hour drive back to my hotel in Ontario, the time flew by. This was the best single day ride I have yet to accomplish.

If you are ever within a few hours drive of San Diego (I was just east of LA) I would highly suggest that you send Laura an e-mail (laura.drexler@gmail.com) and have her take you on a tour. If this particular ride looks too difficult for your skill level contact her anyway, as she knows many places to ride and will be able to set something up that suits your skill level.

Riding SoCal Style - Pinyon Flats

Once I finished on Santa Rosa Mountain Road I didn't quite feel like quitting for the day, so I drove about 3 miles downhill to the start of the Pinyon Flats trail.

I parked the car on the side of Pinyon Drive across from the entrance to the Pinyon Flats campground in the San Bernardino National Forest. You can find it on the map here.

The trailhead where I started was right behind this sign. MountainBikeBill.com describes a loop you can take in great detail. I didn't have enough time to do the full 11 mile loop, so I just went out for about 40 minutes, and then turned around and headed back to the car.

The singletrack here was well maintained and fun to ride. There were a few technical areas here and there, but this was just mostly fun riding. I understand that if I had gone a little further down the trail I would have been rewarded with incredble views of Palm Springs 3500 ft below.

This is the view of Santa Rosa Mountain from Pinyon Flats. At this point it was still hard for me to fathom that I had just been riding up in that snow, and now I was dodging cacti.

The bushes and cacti overlap the trail in many places. This one doesn't look like much but they can do a lot of hurt if you hit one too hard.

This picture doesn't do justice to what my finger looked like 5 minutes later. I had run into a bush just like the one pictured above and it sliced on hell of a paper cut into my finger. By the time I got back to the car my hand was a bloody mess. I don't like to wear gloves that cover my fingers, but I think I'll get a pair before I ride in the desert again.

More singletrack candy with just enough slope that you can get your speed on without having to worry about when its going to end.

This was a pretty fun way to spend a day in the sun. The real fun would come the next day at Nobel Canyon in the Cleveland National Forest outside of San Diego. Laura "Sunny" Drexler of Sunny Rides in San Diego guided me down some truly amazing singletrack. Once I get the pictures (and movies too) I'll put another post here describing it all.

Stay tuned...

Riding SoCal Style - Santa Rosa Mountain

Last week I was in southern California on business. While my family was freezing in single digit weather in Cleveland I was basking in all of the glorious sunshine that California had to offer.
I took advantage of this rare opportunity and extended my stay through the weekend so I could spend a couple days on a bike.

On the first day I chose to ride in the Palm Springs area because it was the only place I could find a bike shop that would rent me a quality bike. Tri-a-bike rents high quality bikes at bargain prices. Everyone who works there was knowledgeable and friendly. The bike was maintained to high quality standards, and the staff was very helpful in describing how to get to the local trails. It was truly a great place to spend my money. I highly recommend Tri-a-bike if you want to spend some time in the SoCal desert trails.

Upon arrival at the bike shop it was a warm 85 degrees. I would later drive to the start of the ride at 4200 ft where the temperature was a little more tolerable in the high 60's.

The first trail I rode wasn't really a trail, it was a dirt road that I read about on MountainBikeBill.com, a good resource for trails in the Palm Springs area, called Santa Rosa Mountain road. I really wanted to take it easy on this day, so I chose this ride so I could test my endurance without having to worry about any technical manuevers or injuries. There was nothing technical on this ride, just a long steady climb.

This is the start of the rode off highway 74 south of Palm Desert and just past Pinyon Pines in the San Bernardino National Forest. It was displayed on my Garmin and Google Maps as the "Santa Rosa Truck Trail." Start elevation was about 4600 ft.

The good news about riding a real road is its easy to mark the route on Google maps like I have done here.

The following pictures were taken every time I stopped for a rest. I paced my ride so that I rode for 15 minutes, then stopped for 5 minutes. The dirt you see in the picture above is not single track, but is the full 12 ft wide road below.

There were spectacular views in every direction.

Between the second and third stop there was a small amount of downhill relief which can be seen in the picture above. By the time I had stopped for the third time I was running a little low on water and I was wishing I had brought my camelbak instead of a lowly 24oz water bottle. It was also getting quite cooler at about 5600 ft according to my garmin.

Who says it has to be single track to be fun?!? Once I started going down the mountain curves like this provided many thrills.

The top two pictures were taken fairly close together on the road. It seemed as if at one moment I was still in the desert worried if I would have enough water to go much higher, then the next moment I was riding on ice.

This point at 6200 ft where I had to stop since the road was completly covered in ice. I had a hard time walking to this point to take a picture, there was no way I could walk up this hill, let alone try to ride up. Elevation here was 6200 ft. Total elevation gain for the day was 1600 ft + 100 ft of the small downhill run for a total climb of 1700 ft. in a little over an hour. I was proud that I made it this far, but I felt I could have done a little more had it not been for the ice. This road was a good test of my endurance.

It amazes me how quickly the scenery changes in this part of the country. Where I come from you don't see snow like this just 1/2 mile away from a cactus.

I didn't stop to take pictures on my way down, I was too busy going very fast....