Mild Discomfort

So hooray I have some time to write about the ride this past Saturday.

The ride was scheduled to start in Aliso Woods, but that was all I knew as I showed up at 6:30AM. I had to take my friends dogs out to pee before showing up, so that meant I had to wake up at 5:15AM. Lame.

The group consisted of Mark W., Mark C., John "La Ruta" Colvin, Troy, Andrew, Matt and I. A pretty large group, but the more the merrier. The nice thing is that even though we had a group of seven, everyone kept up and no one was a jerk about waiting for other people. Attitude makes a huge difference.

The ride started with a quick trip up Wood Canyon and then over to Coyote. I'll never done Coyote backwards (as a climb), so that was new. I went to go over a technical rocky section and tipped over and banged my shin and knee on a few rocks. It drew some blood, but nothing too bad at all.

We went from there to Cholla where I'm pretty sure we went 7 for 7 in clearing the entire climb. There was one part at the top I was watching for, but I made it no problem.

From the top of Cholla we went right - around a gate - and went down an unmarked trail. When I got home I looked it up in my "little green book" and found out it is called "Corridor". It wasn't legal, but whatever. It was short and I see no reason why it would have a DO NOT ENTER sign at the top. I've poached before and felt bad about it, but not this time. I don't see the big deal.

The trail was fairly steep, but nothing like what we have been doing lately. In other words it was no Pinos.

From the bottom of Corridor we went over to El Toro Road and rode up to what I guess is called the James Dilley Preserve. Something like that. It was a mild fire road climb up to some sweet singletrack that dropped us into a valley. I'd really love to go hit this area again because the singletrack was non-technical, but fun. Also you don't have to work very hard to earn a fun descent.

We got a little lost at the bottom of the singletrack but ended up making our way over to the "Nix Center". This area was one of the highlights of the ride for sure. Apparently Laguna Coast Wilderness Park (LCWP) has just opened up a few new trails and we were able to break them in. We climbed and dropped a sweet singletrack called "Stagecoach", which was probably the highlight of the ride for me.

Stagecoach had some really fun switchbacks on the climb as well as the descent. I'm starting to really enjoy switchbacks all over. They're a challenge and it feels great to clean a tight, tough switchback.

We then wandered over to what I guess is the back side of El Moro. I dubbed that part of the ride the "Cactus Car Wash" because of all the brush we were riding through as well as the cactus that was all over the place. Several times I had to move quickly to avoid brushing up against a cactus.

Somewhere on this singletrack John Colvin ran over a bunch of dead branches and twigs and had one of them actually go into his leg around the ankle. When I say "go into", I mean go into like how a spear would penetrate the skin. It looked like it went in maybe an inch or so. Gnarly.

We patched John up and made our way over to El Moro where the singletrack let out near Fenceline. I got poked in the eye by a branch on the way, but otherwise came out ok.

From there we bombed down the fire road to a new trail for me called "Lizards". It was very subtle on the side of the road. No signs and really no obvious entry to the trail. This was a really fun trail as well. Not quite as good as Stagecoach, but still really fun.

This spit us out near Willow, which we took down to Laguna Canyon Road. From there we crossed the road and made our way up Stair Steps.

I will say I was proud to have ridden several sections of Stair Steps. When I say "sections" I mean very, very short sections. Haha. I only mention it because I took on a few challenges that felt uncomfortable, but I figured what the heck ... might as well try. I remember driving home wanting to go back and try to ride up more. I came off on one section that I wish I had kept going on. I had built up some great momentum but stopped to be safe. I want to conquer a few sections of Stair Steps on the climb!

We eventually reached a fork in the hike up Stair Steps at which point I made a horrible, horrible decision. I went right while everyone else went left. Bad idea. The trail quickly disappeared and I was too stubborn to turn around and take the easier route. Eventually it became pointless to back track since going forward was as painful as going backward.

The brush was very, very think and I'm just glad I didn't pick up any ticks or run across any snakes. This was probably the worst hike through brush I've ever experienced - and I've been on some tough hike-a-bike rides before. The real frustration was that the "trail" was rutted and I couldn't get solid footing on the ground.

After getting to the top of the ridge we rode over to "Top of the World" and then down Meadows. I will say that Matt gets honorable mention for popping his shoulder out of its socket for a split second while tipping over going up Stair Steps. Good job dude.

Going down Meadows was a blast. It really was. I had only been down it once before and that was over a year ago. I remember being _very_ scared of it the last time. It felt over my head in a few areas and I remember the guys I was riding with took it like it was nothing. They flew down it and I "survived" it.

This time I was aggressive but safe. I could have gone faster, but it still felt good to descend comfortably. The fear of switchbacks and steep sections has been replaced with excitement. What a great feeling.

Overall the ride was pretty awesome. We managed to stay on mostly legal trails (haha) and we got to explore a lot of new areas I had never been in. It's great also to connect several parks in the area to get a better understanding of what's out there and how things fit together.

The only downside was that my average speed was only 7.6mph. =( I attribute this to the amount of hiking we had to do. Especially my unwise trek up Stair Steps.