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This past Sunday, Tony and I joined the crew from The Path Bike Shop on their group ride.  With all the recent rains in Southern California, I’ve learned a lot about picking trails that don’t turn into mud fests.  In particular, those trails of decomposed granite or shale seem to be the way to go as they filter water particularly well.

Check out the video I took with the awesome Vholdr Contour HD1080p camera!

Tony gearing up

For this weeks ride 12 of us headed out to ride Trabuco to the Main Divide and back.  Climbing Trabuco is a grueling and sometimes demoralizing climb.  Due to recent rains, many stream crossings broke up the dredge of hike-a-bike sections and granny gear climbing.  Robbi and a few other ‘fit’ people were able to haul A on the way up, whilst Tony and I slowly ascended on our all-mountain rigs.  If I go back, I’ll definitely take my trail bike, if I’m gonna grind up-hill for about two hours, it’s gonna be on something below 30lbs!

Robbi Providing Trai Side Support

Several of us were bemoaning the climb when it was time to turn around and descend.  What a difference 180 degrees makes!  All those steep technical climbs were now merely fast and fun sections on the way down.  Also thanks to the poor weather on Saturday, we mostly had the trail to ourselves for some high-speed action.  I took chase after Robbi only to discover that yes, I’m still slow!  By the time we reached the cars every rider was elated and happy to have made the trek uphill.

Post ride mud-face

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This past Sunday, Kim, Tony, Steve, Josh and myself met up at Aliso and Woods Canyon Wilderness park to ride what I consider one of the best Orange County All-Mountain rides.  We set out from the lower lot at 9am to pedal up Meadows to Top of the World park, descended and crossed Laguna Canyon Road to pedal up Willow Canyon Road, Descend T&A, cross Laguna Canyon Road again, ascend (walk mostly for me!) Stair steps and finally descend Rock-It to head back out to the car.

Tony entering the Trail

This was a maiden voyage for Tony’s new ride, a Pivot Firebird and he was diggin’ life until a pivot bolt for the upper rocker backed out and caused a failure of the upper rocker.  The bike performed well up to that point and we were able to rig a make-shift repair to avoid a long walk back to the car.

Joshua descending the last bit of T&A

Joshua is a newer rider, but did pretty amazing on this ride.  Not a whimper or complaint the entire way, no angry accusal of attempts to end his life by taking him to trails this challenging, instead he was a great riding partner, he realized if he really had to think about it, it probably would be better to walk down some sections and by the end of the day his skills had increased.  Way to push your riding Josh!

Steve leading Tony at T&A

Steve is always a hoot to ride with.  He’s got endurance to burn, a penchant for holding conversations uphill as my lungs burn and Steve’s always excited to hit new trails (this was his first ride here).

Kim near the bottom of T&A

Kim also was new to this trail and man she impressed me.  Kim will roll over or through most anything!  It’s funny that though I may look like I’m doing something faster or better than Kim…the reality is that I’m trying to jump over, hop or avoid the obstacles that Kim is riding on top of.

I took some video with the awesome Vholdr Contour HD 1080p camera, check it out below.  The camera has been awesome, however I’m disappointed in how much the vented helmet mount rattles around, though I think I can remedy that by adding some foam to the mounting surface.  Enjoy the vid!

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Finally! A break in the rains that have been swapping SoCal over the past week! Since the trails only had one day of drying time, The Path Bike Shop wisely chose Sycamore Canyon for their Sunday group ride.  Sycamore Canyon tends to drain water very well and recovers rapidly from rain fall.  Click here for a map to the trail head.

36 riders on the trail!

Located in Riverside CA, Sycamore Canyon’s trail system is composed of mostly rolling double-wide XC trails. However hidden with this network of snaking XC goodness lays hidden gems of Free-ride worthy drops and all-mountain rollers.

Beautiful Stream Crossing

As usual, I brought along the awesome Vholdr Contour HD 1080p helmet cam, Tony and Kim Finch from the Mtnbikeriders.com race team and hit the trails. Check out the video below and a quick thanks to Sanjay, Rick, Maxwell and all the other riders who made it a great day in the saddle.

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On Sunday Jan 3rd, Tony, Kim and I from the Mtnbikeriders team along with a bunch of friends headed out to shuttle the San Juan Trail because Tony is allergic to pedaling up-hill.

Not really, Tony actually wants to ride up, but I always say I’d rather shuttle it twice than ride up and down!
The San Juan trail is one of the highlights of So Cal mountain biking and a key feature of the Clevland National Forest. The trail has a ton of fast singletrack, a little bit of exposure, rocky sections and just about everything you could want in a trail ride.

It’s a great trail for a 5″ trail bike or a 6″ all mountain bike. Check out the map on Geoladders. Also to add a few more miles of pedaling, we add in the Viejo tie, which is the upper loop on this Geoladder map.

I brought along the Vholdr Contour HD 1080p helmet camera and it was pretty awesome! I recorded with the settings at 720p and 60 frames per second.

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This past Sunday, Tony and I decided to take advantage of The Path Bike shop’s Sunday ride.  The ride location changes week to week so be sure to check The Path Blog for the current week.  It’s a no-drop ride and has riders from every skill level but typically takes on at least intermediate terrain to keep the more advanced riders satisfied. This week’s ride was through Santiago Oaks and was a great way to spend the last day before the rains came in. Here’s some video from that ride, the wide-screen scenes were shot with the Vholdr Contour HD 1080P camera, set to 720p and 60 frames per second. The other footage was shot with my point-and-shoot digital camera. I apologize for the lack of audio, so throw on some tunes when you watch this.

Also The Path happened to be hosting a Pivot/BH bikes demo that several riders got to take advantage of.  It was a well-stocked demo with the whole Pivot line in several sizes. I’ve taken advantage of a Pivot Demo before and they are awesome bikes!

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