SoCal Road Trip

San Luis Obispo | Santa Barbara | San Diego | Bootleg Canyon

Trip detail | Five days 1,800 miles

Thule rack fully loaded

Taking off the three work days between Christmas and New Year's, gave me the opportunity to hit the road and ride some fresh goods. I called some homeys who I thought would have some time off too and Michael Schickenberg and Josh Trenter agreed to head south for a SoCal DH tour. We packed up the Pathfinder and left the morning after Christmas and headed down to San Luis Obispo.

San Luis Obispo

I had originally booked us a local tour guide, but that fell through, so we had to do some figuring on our own. Michael had run into some guys from SLO the previous weekend in Santa Cruz, so we gave them ring and they provided some intel to DH trails in SLO. Some web searching led us to possible shuttles of of Cuesta Grade, and our SLO sources confirmed that's where we wanted to go. We headed up TV tower road and followed the treasure map to the goods.

The View from the TV Tower Road. Check out Moro Rock in the distance.

We made our way to the top and found the trailhead quickly with the help of our local intel. We had to roll odd man out style because we didn't have another vehicle to get back to the top. Michael volunteered and Josh and I got to hit it first. We were stoked to find a nice little ladder drop and wall ride right out of the gate, leading to a series of berms and some flowy sidehill sections.

Michael teeing off in SLO

The drop above put you right into this sweet little wall ride

Several more berms, mandatory gaps and some seriously fun, high speed rock sections led us down into a nasty creek bed and subsequent hike-a-bike out. A quick jaunt up the other side had us back to marked trails, where we connected with Morning Glory. Morning Glory is a bit more XC, really smooth, sinuous, with fun turns and a few pedaly sections. This leads you down to some fast sections through open cow pastures, through a couple of gates and across a set of train tracks. Another fun flowy single track section takes you to the exit fire road and you end up right on the Cal Poly Campus for the shuttle pick up.

We decided to camp at the trailhead so we could wake and ride and get to Santa Barbara by noon. We knew it was going to be a cold night, so we went and picked up some cheep fleece blankets to add another layer to our sleeping bags. Despite a campfire, a bottle of Jameson and the additional blankets, we all froze our nuts off overnight, waking up to frozen puddles and the smell of campfire infused in our souls.

Hitting the DH trail and Morning Glory at sunrise was a great way to start the day, making the two hour push to Santa Barbara fly by.

Santa Barbara

We met up with Rex and Matt in SB and went straight to Tunnel Trail. Now we had 5 riders and a shuttle car, but only a four bike rack. No problem, a sleeping pad, rotated bars and removed left crank arm allowed us to lay Rex's Bullit flat and we strapped it down to the roof of the Pathfinder in true heckadude style.

After rollin up Gibraltar Rd, we headed straight to the top of Tunnel Trail, the epic descent thats like Mile in P-town, but about ten times longer. We attached our bike bells and headed down for the super rocky white knuckle drop in.

Michael with his SB biker bell

JT in mid negotiation

Rex enjoying the vistas from Tunnels

JT droppin in on Jesusita for the bonus loop

We all got to the bottom, safe and sound, grinning ear to ear. We turned right where Tunnels tees into a fire road and pushed the bikes up to Jesusita trail for a bonus loop. Another ripping, flowy trail, Jesusita has a bunch of tight switchbacks, small rock drops and and little nuggets to pop off. We were famished after the ride and headed directly to Freebirds in IV for a killer burrito. Post burrito coma, we retreated from the late December cold and stuffed all our bikes and dude stank into one tiny room for showers, bike porn and some well earned ZZZ's.

Packed into the Hope Ranch Motel, switched on the bike porn and manufactured some ZZZ's

We awoke to a dark, cloudy day, with Cold Springs and another Tunnels run on the menu. We did the misty mountain hop at the top of the ridge, a heavy drizzle soaking our clothes and coating our goggles. It's a pretty long shuttle up and we all enjoyed the view at first chance.

Drip coffee

Cold Springs was really fast and smooth at the top and quickly morphed into the typical SB rock chute, with sharp sandstone teeth biting at your rims. I already had a massive flat spot from yesterday's run down Tunnels and tried to keep it a little smoover today. We got most of the way down Cold Springs trail, but lost the single track towards the bottom. We ended on old school fire road, with big sweeping turns and a few steeper rocky sections, making feel like we should've grown out our handle bar mustaches and been on Klunkers. We rallied to get back to the top and do another run on Tunnels before heading out to meet my boy Andy in San Clemente.

We hit the road after feasting on some Indian food and were at Andy's place for the night. I use to work with Andy Hilliard back in the day at Sierra at Tahoe. Since runnin board shop there, Andy's joined the bike industry and currently works for Crankbrothers. A huge thanks to Andy and Megan for putting us up for the night.

San Diego

Another early morning had us wolfing down killer breakfast burritos from Pipes in SC and heading down to Poway to ride a spot called Ted Williams.

We had talked about shuttling in Laguna, but Rex convinced up to check out TW. It was a wise choice as TW might have been the highlight of the trip for me. The place is very similar to Carlmont, but bigger; complete with red soil, step downs, berms and gaps...super fun. Like C-mont, you can either shuttle or just push up the hill. Most people just push since it's almost as fast.

Last couple hits in the 8 pack leading back to the car

There are a bunch of DH trails leading down from the top, one with pretty challenging rock gardens, trail gap step downs and another with a series of really fun berms. They all kinda criss cross each other and meet again at a bowl near the bottom that has a bunch of step down gaps and other booters. Most of the locals we met were super friendly and willing to show you around.

Rex hitting the smoothest step down road gap ever

Steep rock roll-in

Andy eyeing up this crazy line...

There was this huge step down gap that we were eyeballing a bit, but not really determined to hit. I took a speed check run at it and that was enough to gather some attention. A few local riders came over and one volunteered the other to show us how it was done. There was a nice steep drop-in to get up to speed and then about 150 yards on the flat leading to a smooth take off, about a 35 foot gap and an 8 foot step down (camera battery was dead). This thing made big pimpin at C-mont look tiny. The local ripper hit the steep drop-in pedaling and had it wide open across the flat, in his top gear, mashing as hard as he could all the way to the lip...he barely made the landing. He did it one more time for good measure and the results were almost identical...savage! Watching that was enough to ensure I would not be attempting it this day. From the bowl back down to the car was fun little 8 pack. We almost convinced ourselves to stay in San Diego and avoid the perceived NYE traffic to Vegas, but after repacking the car we opted for for Bootleg Canyon, NV.

Bootleg Canyon

Bootleg Canyon is a well known DH riding area about half hour south of Las Vegas. The bicycle industry trade show also has dirt demo there annually.

There is shuttle you can take to the top for $5 a run or $25 for the day. The shuttle drop is about a 5 minute hike from the top.

While Bootleg has trails for all abilities, it is a pretty unforgiving place, tons of sharp rocks, lots of exposure, making a digger there pretty consequential. The local shop is super helpful, has all the gear and spare parts you need, and produces a nice map of the trail system. We hit up most of the trails and over heard one rider say that a trail called Ginger was the gnarliest trail he had ever ridden. It was after lunch and getting towards the end of the day and I knew we had to go check it out. Ginger was as promised, steep, loose, mandatory drops to steep sketch landings, narrow drainage slots, exposed, exposed, exposed. It kept you super pucked with each move getting techier and techier, growing your stoke each time you make a section and puck into the next.

I had been riding with a pack all day and decided I didn't need it anymore. As luck would have it, of course I flatted on that run. My rear wheel was already flat spotted to hell after a years worth of riding and the beat down of the previous days in SLO, SB and TW, so I got the joy of riding out with my flat and totally destroying that soft DT 6.1 rim.

Rex, JT and Michael went on for the last run of the day and we closed out another epic DH riding day. We took turns driving home and blazed all the way back to SF that night. It was great to get out and see some new trails and open up our MTB universe a little more.