The bikes: ready to rock the SART… or is it ready to be rocked by the SART? We soon find out.

We jokingly considered buying lift tickets again for Sunday morning’s ride, but riding some of the best singletrack in So. Cal. was too tempting. After cleaning up the cabin and packing our stuff, we set off to visit the local bike shops in town… for umm… research. Then off to the trail.

Our trusty steed all loaded up waiting at the Visitor Info center

The Santa Ana River Trail is somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 miles of trail, the vast majority of it being singletrack. Because of time, fatigue and lack of knowledge of the trail, we decided to ride just about 8 miles of it. Since the trail is really best done as a shuttle, and us with only one car, we had to ride a little over 4 miles of fireroad to get to the trailhead. 4 miles of fireroad with a return of almost 8 miles of singletrack is a deal I’ll take everytime.

Yes, a flowing river in the middle of summer in So. Cal. No cement side walls either

We parked at Angeles Oaks off of Glass and Hwy 38 then rode 4 miles to the South Fork campground. I never really thought about it before but SART actually parallels the Santa Ana River. The 4 mile fireroad also paralleled the Santa Ana River even crossing over it a few times. The gradually ascending fireroad was a relatively easy ride if we hadn’t juiced our legs the day before. But, we grunted it out and quickly got to the SART trailhead.

Tim & Jeremy riding the fireroad for four miles

WOW. It’s not often when something actually lives up to its billing, but the SART definitely did. Singletrack for 8 continuous miles, probably the longest stretch of uninterrupted singletrack I’ve ever done. SART, though, isn’t for the faint of heart though. During the 8 miles, we probably had some sort of exposure for at least 1/3rd of it. Exposure is both good and bad in that it makes the ride more technical, but has its dangerous aspect if we fell. It’s also great for getting some sweet vistas of the river and valley. Some of the exposure was VERY umm… exposed, like someone made the singletrack half as wide as normal and there was a sharp dropoff that left absolutely no room for error.

Eroding singletrack. Time to dab or walk… not time to do something stupid

Other times, the singletrack would drift away from the side of the mountain and we would find ourselves in a beautiful meadow dotted with trees. During these instances, we would open up the throttle and hammer along until we got into more exposed singletrack that required a bit more technical acumen and bike handling accuracy. Add in a few short climbs with baby head sized rocks thrown in for fun, some short descents going in and out of the forest, lots of blind turns and you basically had the 8 miles we rode. At the point where we turned off the trail I think all three of us stared longingly at more singletrack. This is definitely a trail we are going to hit up some more.

Khoa comes into the clearing

Part IV, some lessons learned and miscellaneous pictures that weren’t on the other posts.

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The morning trails were not what we were expecting when we decided to come up and do the lift-assisted riding. At least it was not what 3 of us were expecting. The two who had driven up for the morning are definitely on a different level of riding then us and prefer different types of riding… which is another lesson learned and one that will be examined in the last part of this series.

Trail leading up to Grand View point

During a subdued lunch, the three of us reviewed our morning. We especially were downtrodden when we recalled how little riding we did compared to how much walking we did. For all the walking I did, I even received a little prize in the form of a cut & bruised knee. Tim, the resourceful one, decided to change our course for the afternoon and took things into his own hand by walking up to a random gal riding a nice Specialized Safire and engaging her in conversation.

Tim resting at Grand View Point

After chatting up the gal, we find out that she is a local. Even better is that this gal, Deb, volunteers to lead us to the much sought after but not found XC style trails. Deb, and her husband John, whom she rounds up and explains the plan to, then proceed to spend the rest of the afternoon with us as we hit Pirate, Fern, Pineknot, Grand View and other linking trails. It got so good that we took very few pictures! As bad as the morning was for us was how good the afternoon turned out to be.

Khoa posing at Grand View Point

Singletrack, XC style

The afternoon was spent riding many, many miles of fast, swoopy, singletrack trails with a little bit of technical challenging sections that also happened to be accomplish-able. These XC style trails were fun in so many ways and were the exact trails the three of us, who had spent the night, were looking for and expecting. Riding the singletrack we darted among the trees, going up a little but down a lot, launching off of small rocks, using body english, ripping it all… sweet XC riding. After just riding one short section of trails with Deb & John we knew we had found a couple with penchant for the trails we liked. Even better was that I knew I could take off my elbow & knee armor.

John, leading us back to the bikes after our break. John, who was fighting a little cough, was still WAY faster then any of us out there.

By the way, Deb & John, who have kids that are just a couple years younger than us, are FAST out there on the trail. John led the majority of the time while the rest of us played catch up, without ever catching up. Familiarity always makes you faster on a trail but John wasn’t fast due to familiarity, he was fast because he was fast. Deb was skilled as well taking on pretty much everything the trail threw at her with aplomb. But not only were Deb & John fast and skilled, they were also great ambassadors of mountain biking. Deb, towards the end of the ride, said that she didn’t want us riders to head out of Big Bear thinking that the trails sucked when there were actually great trails to ride that fit our style. How cool is that?

We’ll be riding down there tomorrow on SART

Part III coming tomorrow as we ride part of what is widely considered to be one of the top trails in Southern California, the Santa Ana River Trail aka SART.

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Cabin sweet Cabin

This past weekend three of us went up to the local mountains for one day doing lift-assisted riding and the second day riding the Santa Ana River Trail (SART). We drove up on a Friday night and stayed at a cabin that had a front porch with full view of the lift we would be riding up on the next day. The bikes got a great spot in the kitchen. Every time I glanced at the bikes that first night I smiled. It’s just one of those things that bikes do to you.

The slopes & lift could be seen from our cabin porch!

Things had changed over the years in our local mountains. Just a few years ago the local mountain lift, Snow Summit, allowed you to bomb down the ski slopes with huge downhill/freeride bikes. But as the years have gone by, the local mountains have banned downhill/freeride bikes as well as riding down the slopes. In the meantime, great XC style & downhill trails developed as alternatives to the straight downhill slopes used by the winter skiers and snowboarders. The only difficulty? The XC and downhill trails are not marked, not on the trail and not on the map.

First ride up to the top: Khoa, Jeremy & JJ

We met up with two other friends when we got to the lifts. The other two guys decided to only join us for one day of riding… the wusses. j/k. 3 of us had never ridden the lifts before. 1 guy had but it was years ago and he spent most of that time on the now forbidden slopes. The last guy did the same lift-assisted riding last summer, so at least it wasn’t totally blind leading the blind. But still, we basically guessed wrong the whole morning.

A paragraph ago I mentioned that there were XC style & downhill trails? Well, all morning, except for maybe a short 1 mile section, we rode downhill style trails. “Rode” may be too generous a term here as you’ll see in the pictures below I did very little “riding” and lot more walking. And as always, the camera never makes the trails look as steep as they actually are.

Jeremy walking

Jeremy walking… some more

Jeremy walking… even more

OK, just so you know it wasn’t just me… Jeremy, Tim & JJ walking

Some random pictures:

Gotta love them lifts

The great thing about walking our bikes is that we get to see things we don’t normally see, like this caterpillar that Tim picked up. Tim nicknamed him the dinosaur caterpillar due to the horns and weird tail.

RL, you like the caterpillar?

Justin hitting the log jump

Justin, adding some flair to the jump

JJ, grinning like a mad man

Justin riding a log, no sweat

Redline Mono 9 & Trek 9.0 ready to hit the trails

Well utilized Honda Ridgeline

Part II, a HUGE lesson learned as things get much better.

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