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| Sick artwork by @mattcrank on Instagram |
Earlier this year after I completed an ITT of the AZTR300 route (after cancelling plans to do the 800 due to the absurd winter Northern Arizona had which included lots of snow and a closure in Grand Canyon NP), I had planned to run the 800 in the Grand Depart in the fall. However after a couple months went by, my mind still wasn't excited to do the full route, and going into it halfhearted is not a recipe for success.
With that, I began pondering other alternatives for a fall adventure when I saw a new route being developed in SoCal. I filed it under the "maybe" category.
Not long after, I saw my friend John Schilling announce he was doing the route. I reached out immediately and asked if he wanted a road trip/riding partner and he said yeah, so I put in my name for the interest list and hoped for the best. I ended up getting in and then the anticipation and research portion of the event started. I had never ridden in California before, so it was really hard to really know what I was getting into (lots of climbing; steep climbing). Logistically, the ride didn't seem too tough from a resupply/water perspective. Certainly easier than the AZT300, though going counter clockwise, there was a big food carry heading into the front side of the San Gabriels and there was a critical water stop in before ascending Mt. Gleason as well. Can't afford to make mistakes there. In fact there was one rider who was way in front of us who ended up turning around and scratching because partway up Mt Lukens he realized he didn't have enough food to continue safely. Bummer, he was riding strong.
Anyway, as the date of the grand depart started to draw near, John reached out and said that he was likely going to have to bail due to some physical ailments which was definitely a bummer. I was really looking forward to riding with him, but it was the wise choice for sure. As weird as it sounds, there is plenty of backcountry miles on this route. I was often shocked at how "out there" we really were even though we were literally surrounded by millions of people. The vibe was rad for sure.
Let's get started on this thing!
Day 0 - Getting there.
I decided to drive out the day before, and I want to give a shout out to Dan Moses for a place to park and a place to crash out the night before. This was also a clutch spot to clean up before heading home. I owe you one man!
The drive out was pretty straightforward, LA rush hour notwithstanding. But we all know about that.
Day 1
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| Rig dialed and ready to go at the start point - Santa Monica Pier |
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| The bikepacker takeover begins to materialize. |
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| Dan Moses here - thanks for the parking/place to crash out. And for the quick neighborhood tour to the start! |
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Soon enough, we are all off! Should have taken one of those scooters :)
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It was a bit chaotic, but no incidents that I know of.
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After some quick miles along the beach, the route went through some beautiful neighborhoods as we (counter clockwise riders) began our climb up to Sullivan ridge. This took a while - the roughly 1800 foot climb definitely set the tone for the rest of the route. Lots of long climbs to contend with. At least this one was very ride-able.
I am going to say this right now. I was not ready for the types of climbs this route offered. It's just not anything like typical AZ riding. The climbs were long and steep. And they just kept coming. The route going CCW features a 5k climb and a 4k climb within the first 100 miles of the route, though they don't start until about 40 miles in. There is a sneaky 1200 foot climb mixed in there too. It's definitely more rideable than what I was able to do, but you better have some WATTS. I don't, so I walked a lot. Good thing I have perseverance and patience. I needed it. Anyway, if you want to prep for this ride and you live in Phoenix, go do some 4 peaks or Mt. Ord repeats. Or Picketpost to the river and back. Mt Lemmon, etc. In short, don't sleep on the difficulty of this route. Physically, it's pretty easily tougher than the AZT300 route imo. Resupplies and water are much easier to deal with though comparatively. Camping is also a bit more of a challenge due to the urban nature of the route.
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| Dropping back to my normal position towards the rear. |
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| Evan here to my left. I figured our paces would be very similar and in fact they were so similar that we basically rode the entire route together. The biggest bits of separation were here on Day 1 and another bit on the last day of the route when he had a bit more fun and quicker descent than I did on backbone. |
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| Plenty of sunscreen applied. #MelanomaAwareness |
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| Made it out of the neighborhoods for a bit and this climb was definitely filtering everyone into their proper place in the race order. |
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| Looking back down to where we came from, Pacific Ocean in view. |
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| Rode briefly through an active construction zone but it was all good. |
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| The construction zone did have a HAB bypass. Get used to this view. I have plenty of views of Evan. Consider him my cycling model for this ride report. It was pretty cool to have a human subject to capture. |
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| Oh yeah, Dan rode up with us before peeling back. |
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| Picked up a couple riders here, Shelly and Sammy. Perfect timing as it gave us strength in numbers while we navigated some rush hour traffic on Mulholland Drive. Evan and I leapfrogged these ladies for pretty much the whole event before they pulled away for good on the last day. So fun and such strong riders! Always in a good mood and laughing. Their energy was like #legaldoping |
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| Steep tree lined connector street. Jesse on the left on the fat bike (if I remember right) |
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| Interesting "locals only" type connections. Felt like being a kid and following a secret route only you and your friends knew about. Somehow lost the girls in here and didn't see them again until much later. They made an early coffee stop which allowed us to pull away for a bit. |
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Beautiful neighborhoods.
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We went through some busier urban riding around some of the movie lots before approaching Griffith Park. Again, very surprised with the courtesy of the drivers. I don't think we got honked at once.
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| I have to say, riding in traffic was way better than I expected. Drivers appeared to be much for courteous than those here in Phoenix. The infrastructure of the roads were rode on certainly was better than I expected. |
Eventually we started to climb up to Griffith observatory which meant a view of the famed Hollywood sign. Just a small bump on the elevation profile, but it was still 800ft to gain just to drop off the other side.
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| Hollywood sign via my crappy phone. |
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| The bike wants to get in on the action. |
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| Griffith observatory |
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| Iconic. |
It was a burning pavement descent off that hill and a quick transition through a community tennis center where I loaded up on some water before jumping onto the bike path that runs adjacent to the LA River - that well known concrete river that runs through the city. Quite the interesting place, where people of all walks of life recreate and/or live along the corridor. Odd objects and colorful graffiti were found along the entire stretch.
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| Pedestrian bridge over I-5 to connect to the bike path. |
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| Similar vibes to the canal riding in Phoenix. I was by myself from now until I hit up some resupply areas. I had previously told Evan I would plan on seeing him at a Mexican place to get burritos so I was hoping that would still work out. |
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| The remains of an organ as it acts as a caboose to the rest of the cart train. |
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| Escaping the increasingly depressing LA river to a shock of nice areas and neighborhood riding. |
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| Riding by the world famous Rose Bowl. |
I checked the tracker and it looked like Evan was a bit behind me still, so I stopped at the Subway for a footlong, some cookies and a big drink. I'd eat half the sandwich now and have the rest later. I was eating out front when I saw Evan ride by so I packed up quickly and chased him to the Mexican place. I bought two breakfast burritos for the road and we had now picked up Nancy. We would end up making the push up the mountain together. Nancy is a freaking LEGEND and tough as nails. Really glad to have met her on route.
Somewhere after this, I managed to lose my footing and I started to tumble a bit downhill, but there was plenty of shrubbery to catch me. I didn't know it at the time, but I had sliced open the back mesh compartment of my pack. I ended up losing a couple items, with the most important being a bike bottle I was planning on using to mix up drinks with. I lost some other nutritional items and misc things, but everything in that portion of the pack was non-essential which is why it was there in the first place. The loss of the bottle was annoying though. I was carrying two water bladders, one in the frame bag and the other in my pack so I wasn't worried about capacity. Meh. Guess I have an excuse now to wash out the pack and send it in for repair. Osprey has the best product support in the business.
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| We took a little side trip to check out some old relics of the past operations that was apparently destroyed by a fire in the early 1900's?? Really cool. |
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| Bigger views, and oh yeah the sun goes down EARLY this time of year. It was near dark at around 5PM each night. |
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| The sunsets are pretty OK here too. |
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| Postcard worthy. |
At this point we were riding quite a bit as it was railroad grade (literally). Nancy had once again climbed away from us on the ride-able sections. Evan was behind me a bit too. Eventually though I caught up with Nancy as the grade started to steepen a bit. We ended up rounding a corner near Mt Lowe campground where we hung out and waited a bit for Evan. Nancy crushed some of her burger and I ate a bit until Evan rejoined. We continued the ride up and were treated to some amazing city light views and a very cool tunnel we got to ride through.
Day 2
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| Some early downhill to wake up as we headed toward Switzer |
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| Some techy bits that I wasn't quite expecting and walked. |
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| Evan caught me coming around a corner. |
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| Starting to get a small taste of how big the mountains are. |
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| Brief and short pavement had Evan walking and the rest of us grinding. |
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| Vegetation encroached on the trail a bit, but it was brief. |
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| We still need to top out and get off the mountain we are on, then we are tackling that monster over there... |
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| Evan riding a bit |
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| Proper HAB obstacle. Photo by Evan. |
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| Evan rides over a semi-sketchy part of the trail. |
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| Safely across |
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| A saddle attained and a gigantic view all around. |
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| Evan catches me dropping in. |
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| Quick snack break at a picnic table in the middle of nowhere. |
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| And more views. |
We were yet to top out on Mt Lukens, and we still had a ways to go. We rode some and walked some.
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| Just on the edge of being comfortably rideable for both of us. So we walked. |
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| Were able to hop on the bikes occasionally. |
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| Just stunning landscapes and hard work to view them. |
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| Continue the push. Up, up, up. |
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| Hey, I'm riding! |
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| Is it ever going to end? Haha. |
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| The grade mellowed as we got closer to the towers and we were treated to amazing city views. |
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| Still hopped off a few more times though. |
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| Can just about reach them... |
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| Stats don't lie. Even with a couple miles of descent thrown in, look at that ratio. |
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| Topping out and welcomed by a canopy of big trees. |
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| Top of Lukens attained! |
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| We forgot to take pics at the top, but dropped down a bit for a snack before literally dropping off the face of the earth (it really felt that way). Evan found this while we were riding. Dude is an amazing steward - picked up so many pieces of trash on the ride. 100% done - with that climb. Still so much climbing to do. |
We now were to descend off of Mt Lukens, and this was one beast of a descent. One of the steepest bits I have ridden and some major penalty for failure. Had to keep your wits in check and your feet planted. I walked quite a bit, cause that's how I roll.
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| A steep and loose chute that we both walked. |
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| Picture does it no justice, but if Evan is walking, you know it's sketchy. |
That was about the last I saw of Evan until the bottom. I just wanted to survive haha. Mission accomplished.
The descent ended at Big Tujunga Creek where we ran into some other riders filtering water (this was a critical water spot) and prepping for the massive climb up Mt Gleason. Nancy rolled up not too much after we had gotten there and we were glad to see her.
After filtering some water and eating a bit, we were ready to head out when I noticed my rear tire was soft. Ugh. Looked like a small pinhole in my rear tire. Annoying since it was literally brand new. I am starting to lose some faith in these Rekons, even though so many use them. Hmm.. Anyway, gave it some air and hope it would seal up on the upcoming pavement bit before were got onto Condor Peak Trail.
The guys up front put in a stiff pace and I found myself off the back a little bit. I could still see them, but couldn't keep contact. Kinda frustrating for me, but all good. And my rear tire seemed to be holding so that was good news.
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| Photo by Evan |
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| Trail mellows out for a bit. |
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| Pretty amazing that trail exists here. |
Evan mentioned that a pretty exposed cliff section was upcoming and he wasn't kidding. It was beautiful but no room for mistakes as you will see.
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| You can tell by Evan's pushing position how steep this actually is |
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| Very molino-ish |
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| Pretty rad to be here as golden hour starts to creep up on us. |
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| Yeah, I'll walk thanks. Photo by Evan |
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| Check the trail on the side of the hill across the way. Crazy. |
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| The trail mellowed for a bit which allowed for riding a bit and enjoying the majestic evening that was falling. |
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| We were up on that other mountain earlier today. |
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| Gaining enough elevation and losing enough daylight to start to see city lights below. |
It's funny, were were chasing some other riders and every time we looked up their lights kept getting higher and higher. It was impressive and somewhat disheartening at the same time. Again, I think both Evan and I were hoping to knock this out quicker, but our pace was our pace. It was steady at least.
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| Night mode activated |
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| Another one of my favs |
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| Caught the other dudes on a flat-ish saddle setting up camp, but Evan and I both knew there was still work to do. We hung out for a bit then got going to finish off this climb. |
From here, it was grind and go until we made the top at Lightning Point. Evan pulled out that 100% done balloon again! haha.
We decided to cruise down for a bit but we both started to get a bit cold and honestly I was pretty smoked. Really tough day. We ended up stopping at North Fork Station where some PCT thru hikers were camped at. We quietly went to a spot away from them and crashed out fairly quickly. What a day. One of my hardest on a bike @ 44 miles, 9200 ft of climbing in 15.5 hours.
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| Another beautiful morning. |
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| The day started with you guessed it - some climbing (700ft or so) that would earn us some downhill miles. |
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| I'm running out of ways to describe the views out here. |
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| Evan in push mode. |
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| I was also - and you can see why. |
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| Hard to be mad when the views are this good. |
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| A bit flatter but the downhill hasn't started just yet. |
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| Started running into clockwise riders. Drew here in the red helmet. |
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| Flying downhill now. Gotta watch for the road washout... |
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| Should be coming up any minute... |
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| Here it is. Absolutely incredible what runoff did to the road and earth here. |
There was a flimsy barrier that was put up which was good cause you wouldn't want to head towards this at speed at night. It wouldn't end well. Evan wanted some shots of him getting ready to drop into the abyss - and it truly was a massive one.
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| Pretty rad. Side note: check out the upcoming climb on the mountain across the way. |
We ended up on some brief pavement and suddenly a familiar face popped out of a van - Emily! We weren't being kidnapped. It was soda and beer handup time!
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| We hung out and talked for a bit, what a nice surprise. Thank you! #beerme |
Literally three minutes after leaving, my front tire started spewing sealant at me. WTF? First the rear and now the front. Again, right in the center of the tread. Might need to switch to homebrew sealant instead of Stans. It hasn't treated me great over the last year or so. I know the tires are legit. All the cool people are using them lol.
Anyway, I thought it would seal up on the pavement we were climbing up, but it just wouldn't. We got to some shade and I put a plug in it and hoped not to have to mess with it anymore. Let's get another 1000 foot climb out of the way.
Evan took the lead through here and that helped us out a ton. Ended up getting through the whole route unscathed by the death plant! It was tricky in some spots, but definitely not unavoidable, especially with Evan beating it down at the front of the line. #theregoesmyhero
After the ravine, we had yet another beefy climb (1400 feet) with dramatic views of the expensive houses below. Again, lots of HAB, but the descent off the back was a hoot. Rode most of it, but there were some techy bits I walked. In-n-out was definitely drawing us in.
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| Descent towards burgers! |
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| Dirtbag gathering. |
It was really cool hanging out here. Got our fair share of attention including by one worker who asked us about bikepacking and how she wanted to get into it. And one guy who kept coming out telling us stories. All kinds of tall tales it seemed. Tales of mountain lion encounters and past adventures.
Nate caught up to us - he was riding a drop bar bike that made him a bit slower on the techy downhills, but the dude was a CRUSHER on the climbs. He would demonstrate that the rest of the night. PS, he was wearing very minimalistic footwear too.
The girls (Sammy and Shelly) caught up to us too, and we tried to call them over, but they totally dissed us in favor of a hotel room. Can't say I blame them. I think the four of us had some ideas to push deep into the night - and we did.
We took off and did a few more urban miles before putting things into stealth mode and getting access to the Conejo open space. We might have briefly been chased by a neighborhood rent a cop. Maybe.
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| Stealth mode activated while going by some houses. #NIMBY |
We rode deep into the night. We also had a ton of laughs about the ride and our experience so far. We hiked quite a bit while Nate smashed the pedals uphill. So impressive. We got about dead center of the open space setting us up for minimal if any trail users interrupting our brief sleep. That ended up being perfect and we woke up to an amazing sunrise.
68 miles, 9,640ft in 18 hours.
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| Last pic of the night after a big push to get away from town. |
Day 4
The first thing I remember was a little bit of light in the sky. The second was hearing a massive fart from someone. I responded with one of my own and we all laughed and started to get out of our bags. What a way to start the day. Boys will be boys...
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| Looking pretty stoked. Photo by Gregg. |
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| Quick pavement to dirt, the some climbing on dirt. |
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| There she is. She rode those up on her bike btw. She definitely wasn't as sad as she looks here. Sorry for that haha. |
Evan's tire was being weird now, so after having our bonus beverage, Evan added sealant, then hit the tire with the CO2 then promptly lost all of it as we all watched not saying anything because his valve core wasn't in. Oops, sorry dude. Hand pump it is.
We got out of there and said bye to Nancy - Evan and I took a beer for the road. We had another big effort before a relatively smooth and long descent down to Sycamore Canyon campground just yards away from the beach.
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| One of the last views before dropping down to the ocean. |
It got very cold and windy on us as we headed down. Nate had dropped back so it was Evan, Ben and myself. We made it to the campground and I was OK stopping or moving forward. I think Evan and I were both worried about the canyon climb up would be cold. The effort of the day was also not to be understated. It was tough. Ultimately Evan said he was gonna stop and I was down with that decision. We got over to the the hiker/biker site and found the ladies as well as Keith crashed out. The site was sheltered well from the wind and there was a water spigot right there too. Score. Evan and I ate and cracked the beers we had taken from Nancy's stash. That's how you end a ride. We heard something rustling around but didn't see what it was.
54 miles, 7,300 feet in 15.5 hours. 1 massive burrito. 4-5 beers? haha. #fasttouringpace
Day 5
OK so turns out that camping within a few hundred yards of the beach has its photo benefits. Keith and the dynamic duo left before us and we never did catch them again other than briefly catching and passing Keith on the climb to backbone. All three rode strong for the duration of the event.
We got ready to roll, and headed out.
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| Good morning. |
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| Riding at sunrise on PCH? Yeah, kinda bucket list for me. |
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| Evan captures me. Thanks! |
We did have to navigate a construction zone which was kinda sketchy. We just found a gap in traffic and hammered. It was over fast, then we stopped for a quick photo at this gem before beginning a brutal climb up to the backbone trail.
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| Those towers are close to our destination |
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| I think Evan said we had traveled from that far mountain top on the right in the background to that mountain to the left of that with the towers on the top. To where we are now. Wow, no wonder it has been so hard haha. |
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| Snack time - Evan starts loading me up with cheese and salami lol. I was in full raccoon mode, ready to eat anything so I took it. |
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| Almost ready to top out. |
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| Big descent on tap, it was frigid in the shade. We wanted to get into the sun again, but never did. |
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| Full clown sunscreen remnants, haha. |
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| Cool rocks at the top. |
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| Yeah, we've been climbing. |
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| Begin the rocket ship down. |
This next area was cool - Malibu Creek State Park. Famously known as being a filming location for M.A.S.H.
Such a beautiful area, glad I got to see it! The trail to get out was fun but night was falling quickly.
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| Another tree canopy leads us to a long awaited soda machine. |
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| Fun riding leaving the park |
We hit up the soda machine (only a dollar each!!! I was shocked). Leaving the park, we were confronted with some fairly busy road (rush hour) and it was dark. Evan put down a solid tempo like he had been the whole ride and I held on somehow. So much climbing today. We stopped at a market in Topanga Park and bought a couple of tallboys to carry to the finish. lol. It turned into that kind of ride apparently. #notsorry
Another steep, steep, steep pavement section had us walking through a neighborhood before we finally got to dirt again. This part of the night seemed to take forever. I was running out of gas. Eventually, Evan dropped me pretty good heading down the final bit of backbone. I was not feeling the trail at all. Just had to back off and ride smart. Sightlines were poor and it was just techy enough to increase the difficulty factor. No need to do anything stupid now. I remember frustratingly yelling out "how the fuck are we still descending!!!" Just then I found Evan waiting for me near the bottom and we just had some mellow dirt/pavement to wrap this adventure up.
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| Right where the trail mellowed out from a downhill that took forever. Ocean view at night. Sweet. |
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| Instantly back in civilization. It's the most wonderful time of the year... |
Just like that, we got spit out to the bikepath at the beach. The pier stayed firmly in the distance for far too long as we rode, but then we made it in. Ben came out to accompany us to the finish and take a couple pictures. Thanks dude!
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Finish selfie. Pretty shattered, though I don't look like it.
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Totals for the day: 68 miles, 10k feet climbing in 16 hours. Oof. Rolled in with Evan to well represent the DFL crew. Very appropriate.
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| Can't avoid the HAB anywhere in this town! |
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| Tourist mode. |
We thought we had found a taco shop, but nope, kitchen was closed. What now? Wendy's drive thru.
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| We rolled though the drive thru as one unit to trigger the drive thru microphone! Put in the order then I went to pay and pickup. Cashier was super cool and told us we could eat on the patio. Score. |
We crushed our fast food and just like that, it was all over. I had to figure out how to navigate back to Dan's house which was much more difficult than it should have been, but it was late and I was tired. Finally though I got there and cleaned up in Dan's garage. I really wanted to get away from town so I could avoid Tuesday morning rush hour. So I made it to the first rest stop out of town and was surprised with how packed it was. I literally grabbed the last spot available and promptly crashed out for a few hours. Woke up at sunrise and made the rest of the trek home. That was a rough drive. Oof.
Final thoughts
1. I really want to thank Gregg and Jason for the huge amount of work it must have taken to put this together. The fact that it rode without any BS (trail closures/private property/whatever) is a testament to that.
2. Thanks to the SoCal bikepacking community. You all were so much fun and it was a blast experiencing your local trails and all of you brought positive vibes.
3. This route was tough - really tough. Bring your climbing legs, HAB legs and patience. If you find some additional legs, bring those too. In my opinion it's tougher than the AZT300 from a pure physical standpoint. Most of it was smoother and less rocky than AZ, but the climbs were relentless. I might think differently if I trained more specifically for the long climbs. Might have to try that sometime...
4. I was blown away by the beauty of the route and the diversity. It certainly isn't the tourist view that most visitors to the area get, and I was thankful for that. New perspectives are always good, and I got some new ones on this trip.
5. Thanks to Evan for being an excellent riding partner and for all the info about the areas we rode through. I really enjoyed the company and I'm glad it worked out the way it did.
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