Mtn. Bike Stuff

I've been doing quite a bit of Mountain Biking since I moved here to California, almost 7 years ago. I started dabbling in off road cycling before I left NY, but unfortunately in the NYC limits, good riding is pretty limited and kind of inaccessible. I was relegated to a few cool spots on Long Island, some parks in Queens and Brooklyn and the occasional bigger trip to Vermont, New Hampshire or Upstate NY. I was still really into road riding (which I still am), but I was just looking for something different. The Mtn. Biking scene here in California has really opened me eyes to a very cool sport.

When I moved out here and started working at Wonderware, I was lucky enough to hook up with some really cool people who bike a lot. I got together with Rich Rentrop who works in IS @ Wonderware and the rest was history. He showed me some really great trails all around O.C. and we’ve been riding together ever since. Orange County, and all of Southern California for that matter, is the home of some outrageous riding!
Rich, myself, and shit-load of others, still ride together at least once a week, many times more. We regularly ride on Wednesday evenings at Whiting Ranch and The Luge, in the Foothill Ranch area. The group usually includes between 4-9 pretty proficient riders. We all look out for each other (as demonstrated from my elbow demolition story), push each other to go bigger and faster all the time and usually enjoy a “pop or two” following the rides. Good times.
Occasionally we decide to do a race together or take a road trip to new spot to mix it up a little. I’ve detailed some of these trips below. Maybe if the description sounds interesting, you’ll give one of these rides a shot. Better us be the guinea pigs (read: fools) than you.

"June Epic" – 6/21/2002
With another operation to fix my ‘jacked-up’ elbow approaching at the end of July, we decided to try and hammer-out a few memorable, longer rides before I had to put the bike away for a month or so. I got this book called ‘100 Best Mountain Bike Rides of Southern California’ so the thought was we just pick out one good ride a month and go for it. Since our Wednesday night rides are in the 1 hour 40 minute\15-mile range, we decided to look for a ride about twice that length.
My choice was Irvine Regional to Weir Canyon and back, a nice three-hour loop. Bob (second from the right in the above picture) decided to add little to it to keep it interesting. He proposed we add a little road stretch at the back of Weir that would take us back to Skyline Drive. Skyline would take us over Beek’s Peak and back to Black Star Canyon. From there it would be Black Star down to Silverado Canyon and Santiago Canyon Road for a little road spin to the starting point at the Taco Bell on Jamboree and Chapman. Bob was a little foggy about the road section from Weir to the trailhead at Skyline, but we figured it couldn’t be hard to figure out. Done, the route was set.
Here’s how our “3-hour ride” went:

Hour 0–1
Bad sign #1 – Bob bails on us and decides to do a road trip instead. None of us are 100% sure of the route but we decide to go anyway.

Bad sign #2 – Rich shows up ‘hung to china’ after a 6-hour marathon swill session at a new bar in Foothill. He pulls up at the Taco Bell right on-time @ 9:30AM but he’s a little yellow, has on some Stevie Wonder-esque dark glasses and whispers “I’ll be OK, I’ll be OK” about six times to himself while staring at the ground, before he even gets his bike off his truck. This is gonna be a classic.

It’s 9:45, 85 degrees, the sun is breaking through the clouds and the 15-minute crybaby rule is in effect. Rich, Dave and myself push away from the lot and we’re on our way. Dave has to be home by 2PM so we’re planning on at worst case a 3-4 hour adventure. Man, were we wrong.

Its getting’ hot now but we’re feeling pretty good. There’s little to no shade at Irvine or Weir and the deep canyon has us out of any breeze that may be happening. Nice fire road and overgrown fire road. Lots of fun. Rich and I watched Dave do some masterful hill climbing over some technical sections as we topped-out at Weir and reach the back of the park. Rich spots a little ‘hike-a-bike’ that he thinks will take us out of Weir and on to the road where we need to go. Now we’re in ‘Magellan mode’, we don’t have the damnedest idea of where we’re going, but we leave the trail and head to the back of some badass homes.

Hours 1–2
Getting a little hotter now. We haven’t quite figured out where we are and we’ve been traveling the fence line, on a fire road of a pretty nice community for almost 45 minutes. We can see the 91 Freeway in the distance so we think we’re in Anaheim Hills….maybe. People are living pretty large out here. Sure its ‘Africa-hot’ but they’re sitting on some nice cribs, these folks.

We see a crazy old guy running on the road through what is now an iron fence, and we ask him where we are. Sure enough, Anaheim Hills. He tells us to take the fire road for a little bit, go through an opening in the fence and hit the road. From there we should get our bearings. We follow his directions and eventually hit the top of Weir Canyon Road. We bang a left on that and head downhill for a couple of miles (to Dave’s chagrin) until we hit the 91 Freeway service road. Now we are looking for the Santa Ana River Trail.

Hours 2–3
After meandering around Anaheim Hills and now Corona, we find cross the 91 near Carbon Canyon and head what looks to be the Santa Ana River Trail. We see a park that looks like the beginning of the Green River Golf course, we hit the bike path and we’re gone. The golf course and the next trailhead shouldn’t be far now, so we think. We ride the bike trail till it becomes a dirt trail. OK, no big deal. Rich and I never heard of the Santa Ana River trail becoming a dirt trail but alright, we’ll go with it. Its about this time that we realize we are almost 3 hours into this thing, we don’t have two nickels to scratch together, we’re running out of water and food and we are getting lost. Sweet.

We go a little bit farther on the “trail” and realize we’re now in an orange field next to some train tracks. We cross through a couple of barbed wire fences (why, no one knows) and decide to stop and get our bearings. In the mean time Dave calls his wife and leaves her a message saying he may be a “little late” cause he’s lost in Corona. While we wait we decide to poach some oranges off the trees in case this thing get rough. We eat a few, pack a few and hit the road, through the grove. We are riding around through the trees when I hear Rich yell out “Bees, Bees!!” Holy crap, I look up and sure enough I’m 30 feet from a dozen hives with swarms of bees all over the place. A quick U-turn and we’re outta there. Where to, who knows.

Hours 3–4
After being lost in the orange grove for a while realize there is no bike path in site. There is the Santa Ana River to our right (a roaring 30 foot wide body of water, believe it or not) and train tracks to our left. We can’t find anywhere to cross the river so we decide to cross the train tracks and ride beside them for a while. Dave insists that we walk on some ½” branches he sees lying across the river, but we keep trying to convince him its deeper than it looks. Not to mention its rippin! I see us on an episode of COPS or something; three fools floating down the river like some illegal immigrants in Mexicali.

Within a couple of miles this comes to an end too, a dead end. We decide to once again cross the tracks and hope for the best. No good. We see the 91 in the distance but no way to cross the river and even then, we don’t see the path. We decide to double-back and retrace our steps. Now this is getting like the movie “Stand by Me’ by Stephen King. I’m sure we’re gonna find a dead body back here. Mommy….

Hours 4-5
We get back to where we first crossed the road and we are back on what looks like the river trail. Its paved and well maintained. We see a couple of roadies and they show us where we went wrong. We never had to cross the river to begin with. We finally hit Featherly Regional Park where people are having picnics and stuff and we stop to refill on some water. We’ve each gone through almost 100 ozs. of water at this point and the smelly water coming out of the water fountain is not so bad. We’re down to only a few Goo and some donkey shit grease bars each and its hot as hell. As we sit around, we wonder if we can sneak into one of these corporate BBQs’ going on around us. We’ll just saddle up to a table and mow down a couple of cheeseburgers……mmmmmm, cheeseburger. Who are we kidding? Who’s not gonna notice three guys in spandex smellin’ like ass. We pedal on.

We ride the Santa Ana River Trail till it ends and we head into the hills of Corona. We have a rough idea of where we have to go from our map and we start looking for street signs. Much to Dave’s delight, we start taking back the 1,500’ feet we lost on the downhill out of Weir two hours earlier. We wind through these neighborhoods like we’re climbing the Alps in a kind of ‘Ghetto Tour d’ France’. The 91 service road, Right on Serfas Club Drive, Left on Pine Crest Drive, Right on Paseo Grande, right on Ontario Ave, right on Mangular Ave and BAM! We are at the trailhead for Skyline. There aren’t many signs, just a gate and some trucks here and there. We take a breather, eat some stolen oranges and get going into one hot-ass canyon. We realize that we at about 900’ and we need to climb to 2,850’ to reach Beek’s Place peak and the start of Black Star trail. Its now 5 area codes, 3 cities, 2 counties and counting.

Hours 5-6
In a word, HOT. It could definitely be worse but it is about 90 degrees and there is not a lick of shade. Skyline is a well-traveled fire road out here and we meet the occasional truck on the trail. There are some really cool single-track trails out here that we can see as we gain some more elevation. I guess this is Troy Lee’s stomping grounds and there are some really steep downhill shots that cross the trail we are on from time to time. We are all digging deep at this point and Dave is feeling the heat. He is starting to cramp-up a little and like the rest of us is starting to burn from the constant sun.

After 45 minutes or so we reach Beek’s Place and we decide to take a breather. I guess this was a fire lookout at one time and there are the ruins of some stone houses and a tower that still remain. There is even a meadow with an old farm and hunting shack up top, which are pretty picturesque. Unfortunately Riverside’s fine citizens seem to be using it as a shooting range so it’s blown to hell. Rich, who hangover and all has been going strong, does a little exploring and finds a hidden bunker that is pretty interesting. Dave decides to lay in a coma while we scout around. From the peak we get a great view of Riverside to the east and Orange County to the ocean to the west. Nice spot.

So far the riding has not been very technical at all, just a lot of it. With the exception of the start of the ride in Weir Canyon\Robber’s Peak area; it has been all fire road and pavement. We chill for 30 minutes and head down on Black Star, which from here, looks like something out of a Mountain Bike dream. We see miles and miles of winding fire road as far as the eye can see.

Hours 6-7
The ride down Black Star was just what we needed right now. Hard and fast non-technical downhill stuff. There was the occasional hairpin that made you wake up and take notice, but for the most part it we were on autopilot. We rode Black Star until reached the part of the trail where the you have to look out for the kooks who live in the canyon. I guess there has been a long standing battle between the squatters and the riders on if the land is public or private. The truth is its public but it’s hard to tell a guy shooting at you with a shotgun that. We make a quick stop and agree that we’ll say nothing, stay super quiet and ride as hard as we can trough the next few miles to get out of the danger zone. Unfortunately Dave pulled into the conversation Rich and I were having a little too late and didn’t get the plan. He only knew we suddenly stopped talking, started pedaling like our hair was on fire and he had no idea why. We eventually crossed through the danger zone and spun out of Black Star onto Santiago Canyon Road. From here on out it would be a road ride to the car.

Hours 7-8
We forgot how long the ride was back to the car. It meant a few medium hill climbs in a head wind for the next 5 or 6 miles. A ‘walk in the park’ and minor distraction as part of a normal ride, but after running out of food and water and riding 45 miles…….just a pain in the ass. We were all cramping up a little at this point and the ride to the cars was especially grueling. Dave seem to be cramping up the most but he stuck it out like a champ. Finally, home free. We made it, 8 hours (5 hours ride time, 3 hours lost time) and 50 miles later we had accomplished our first epic of the summer. It had all the ingredients of a great ride: foggy directions, getting lost, killer heat, tough climbs, fun downhill, slim supplies…..very cool.

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