News and Events 2004

MBOSC was one of the lucky 100 mountain bike clubs to be awarded an outdoor stewardship toolkit from REI. This toolkit includes a Pulaski, McLeod, clinometer, gloves, shirts and lot of other goodies to help out with volunteer trail maintenance projects.

MBOSC made a decision to turn around and donate the toolkit to Trailworkers.com. Mark Davidson of MBOSC and Greg Lydon of TW.com carpooled from Santa Cruz over the hill to the Saratoga REI. We joined the employees in their morning huddle and briefly discussed the goals and issues facing our respective organizations.

Trailworkers have been taking the lead for doing trailwork in Santa Cruz county. As a non-recreational group affiliated trail maintenance group, Trailworkers can recruit mountain bikers, hikers and equestrians to do trail maintenance activities. We encourage all MBOSC members to give back to the trails and "work the dirt". Please use the services of Trailworkers.com to plan your trailwork activities.

REI is an outdoor retail co-op dedicated to inspiring, educating and outfitting its more than 2 million active members and the community for a lifetime of outdoor adventures. Founded in 1938 by a group of Pacific Northwest mountaineers seeking quality equipment. As an active supporter of the communities in which it does business, REI is committed to promoting environmental stewardship and increasing access to outdoor recreation through education, volunteerism, gear donations and financial contributions.

MBOSC would like to thank David Jayo, Corporate Giving Manager at REI and Brandon Dwight, Grassroots Advocacy Coordinator at IMBA for considering our club for the toolkit donation. I would also like to thank Hillary Harding of REI Saratoga for helping to co-ordinate the donation.

For more information on the REI/IMBA Outdoor Stewardship Toolkit awards please see the press release at imba.com

A good summary of this ride would be Coe south. Comparisons to San Luis Obispo and Rockville were also made. Perhaps Mount Diablo as well. Certainly, this is much different than the riding in Santa Cruz and even radically different from Fort Ord just across the highway.

I guess this would be called a mystery ride since this was virgin territory for all of us. No one except for Kurt our guide knew these trails. The details and profile of this ride was unwittingly kept from us as well. 18 of us departed at 11:30 am and after hitting the dirt we immediately went into a climb. Which continued into another climb. Followed by another climb. At a singletrack junction, there was a little rebelion among the group - because of all the climbing. Then we got the our first taste of downhill single track - about 50 feet - and this led to another climb. You get the idea...

When Kurt means "quick downhill" (as in fast) he actually means "short downhill" (as in not enough). Keith joked that short climb means 1100 feet and long climb means 1800 feet and downhill means traverse along a skinny mountain contour line.

We took a break from climbing to rip down a modified cow trail called Red Tail Canyon and then we got back to climbing, climbing and yet more climbing. This time it wasn't so bad. We rode along a ridge trail with a gradual grade. The views were spectacular seeing 18 riders stretched across this ridge gave one a sense of the magnificent scale of the landscape. For most of the climb to Black Mountain we could see the entire group looking like ants streched out for miles along a ridge trail. At the top of the 1100 foot peak we were told that this was "a top" not "THE top" so we had to do a 200 foot fast decent into a saddle point and then up a steep ridge trail to another 1800 foot "a top". A sense of delerium but enjoyment had settled in with this group. The fact that this was all new and the vista points were spectacular helped the sense of adventure for this bunch.

Eventually we got to "THE top" of Black Mountain at 2150 feet. From that vista we could see Loma Prieta, Pinnacles, Ventana Wilderness area and Los Padres National Forest. Kurt mentioned that this mountain top was the best place to watch the Salinas air show. Sounds like a plan if someone else wants to haul up a BOB trailer with the beer and folding chairs. Kurt assured us that there will not be any more (major) climbing. The next section would be tasty downhill single track for 6.5 miles.

The 6.5 mile downhill singletrack made up for the hurt from the climb. We headed down along a ridge into an opening of manzanita brush twisting, turning and into a cannopy of brush which felt like we entered the rabbit hole. Then we followed a contour line around a knoll and regrouped at a really nice picnic spot overlooking valleys and surounded by peaks. From there we decended along a contour line which led to the appropriately named "butt pucker ridge" - a narrow trail along a steep ridge with 180 degree switchbacks all the way down the side of the hill. Falling along here would have serious conseqences. In fact, most of the single track on this ride was really narrow along small ridges cut into the mountains. You had to pay attention to the trail rather than the view. For most of these trails, I had my valley side pedal at the bottom of the stroke with my weight on it to maximize traction with my mountain side pedal high to avoid rocks and roots and my foot ready to clip out and tripod along the mountain.

At the bottom of the ridge we picked up the airplane trail - named after the wreckage of a small private airplane which crashed in the 70's and was strewn about. This trail led through the center of a very pretty canyon. The trail cris-crossed around the bottom rising along both sides. Some bridges, rocks, roots and steep little chutes and peaks. Some technical challenges but all very fast, fun and narrow. The trail flattened out and opened up as the valley widened. One of the most beautiful moments for me was near the bottom of the canyon following a thin ribbon of dark brown dirt surrounded by the bright green valley floor of clover. The sun beams piercing through the leaveless mossy covered oak trees gave it a technicolor sheen. Such a happy place. It felt like Hobbits would be greeting me around the corner with a nice bowl of pipeweed.

We regrouped near a watering trough for the many cows in the valley that created these trails. We were all glowing from the "precious" that we had just experienced and felt honored that we were shown some really sweet singletrack.

Once we were together we took off along a fast dirt road, catching air off small rocks, berms and avoiding cows. Then the road led up up a hill and then climb, climb, climb. The climbing seemed pretty long at this stage in the ride. Kurt explained that we had to go over the saddle point to the valley on the other side. Hmmm... he failed to mention that. No wait he did quietly mention a 200 foot climb at the top of Black Mountain but I guess we weren't paying attention. I think this climb was more like 500 hundred feet. Anyway, the glow from the downhill had been tarnished by the hurt of this last climb but the glow still stuck around.

The last few miles of the ride were on a gradual downslope dirt road that had little cow trails and cows crossing along. It was fast and it was a great to put it in the big ring, fire up the afterburners and haul ass.

There is a fine line between epic ride and deathmarch but this was definitely an epic ride. For a ride to be classified as a deathmarch, people must have run out of water, there must be a major mechanical or serious crash, someone must get a serious injury or have an emotional meltdown and the ride has to finish when it's dark. None of these event happened so it was an epic ride.

I think we did about 20 miles which included about 3000 feet of climbing. Afterwards a bunch of us went to Seritas in Marina for Mexican food and relived the ride.

It was an epic ride.