RR: Santa Luz Loop

It was another last minute decision to ride this afternoon, and this time I wonder if I would have been better off staying home.

I'm going to permit myself a brief departure from this RR to mention something that I've noticed lately: I'm getting a little bored with biking. It was gorgeous all weekend, and with Rachel still sick but feeling guilty for making me take care of her for the last two weeks, I had almost carte blanche to ride. But I really didn't feel like riding. Maybe it is because my wife has been so sick, I just wanted to spend some quality time with her rather than ride. Maybe it is because I didn't have so much time that I could ride somewhere far away, and I'm sick of all my local trails. I don't know. But today I decided to go for a ride with Sean largely because it was a beautiful afternoon and I had nothing better to do, even though I didn't really feel like riding. I kind of felt obligated to ride, which is very unusual for me.

In any event, earlier this afternoon Rach and I were hanging out by the pool when Sean called to let us know that some sunglasses she had ordered had arrived. He came by to drop them off, and I suggested that we go ride somewhere. We hadn't eaten lunch yet, so after a quick stop by Wahoos to grab some food, we decided to keep it local and do the Santa Luz Loop. We finished our tacos and started the ride from my front door instead of driving up to Black Mountain Community Park, which we had done in the past.

We climbed Carmel Valley road to BMC Park, and hooked up with the singletrack from there. After the pavement climb, it was nice to be on singletrack, and that section is the only real fun section of the Santa Luz Loop. I tried to maintain my speed down the singletrack as much as possible, and did pretty well flying down that section. We finished out the singletrack by crossing the short wooden bridge in Santa Luz, and then began the fire road section that crosses the meadow.

As we rode across the meadow, the fire road/doubletrack was extremely dry and cracked, and rattled our teeth. It didn't make for an enjoyable ride across that section. The views to the west were nice though.

We finished the meadow, and crossed under Camino del Sur to the short downhill near the horse park. As I sped down that section, I saw that the trail ahead was filled with some weird scummy liquid that had pooled in the middle of the trail in some deep ruts. We stopped for a second to try to determine what the liquid was, but I have no idea. In any event, we avoided it.

We did see some nice flora near there though. Apparently the spiny artichoke plants that have popped several of my tires have very pretty blooms if they live long enough to flower.


From there we rode along the "paved" trail through the neighborhood toward the service road that would take us to the singletrack north of Santa Luz.

I was actually able to ride up the first steep hill on the service road, which I had not been able to do before. Sean made it up easily, and just as he was about to crest the hill, he began to taunt me and celebrate the fact that he had done it in his middle ring. Mid-celebration, he promptly lost his balance and fell over, unable to clip out of his pedals. Awesome.

This is the view from there to the east. You can see Black Mountain in the distance.

After making sure Sean was OK after his spill, and getting a mechanical issue straightened out, we rode down the back side of that first hill and tackled the second service road hill. I only made it about halfway up that one, and then had to HAB the rest. That thing is steep.

We got to the top, rested briefly, and then rode down the other side to San Dieguito road. We then rode up the road about 200 yards until we hit the trailhead that would take us into the valley and along Lusardi Creek.

We sped through the singletrack and rode under the Camino del Sur bridge to the east. Then, instead of riding the rest of the Santa Luz Loop along the south side of Lusardi Creek back up to Black Mountain Community Park, we instead crossed the creek and rode along the north side headed for my house.

We rode along the creek and then crossed through the nursery. At that point, we had to decide whether to ride a steep uphill just to the west of the nursery, or take the faint trail to the east that used to be part of my local ride instead. I thought the trail to the east would be faster and easier, once we got to the section that had been cleared, so I suggested we go that way. Big mistake.

We ended up doing some massive bushwhacking and HAB, much like I had been forced to do the last time I tried riding this section of trail. It was not fun at all. After we finished bushwhacking, we then were forced to HAB up an incredibly steep fire road up to the mesa where they're building Del Norte High School. It was not a fun HAB either. We should have gone west from the nursery and up the road I had ridden down a few weeks ago. Lesson learned.

We finally made it to the mesa, crossed through the high school, and ended up making it back to my place in just about two hours. It was far from a great ride, but we made some memories. I was also glad to have cleaned the first service road hill, which spoke to at least some improved fitness on my part. In general, though, the Santa Luz Loop pretty much sucks. The only really fun part is the singletrack out of Black Mountain Community Park, which is less than a mile long. The rest of the loop is fire road or paved road for the most part, and just not worth it. If it wasn't in my backyard, I'd never ride it again. As it is, the loop is definitely a ride of last resort.

Here are the stats:

Total Distance: 14.31 miles
Total Time: 2:01:03
Ascent: 1,726 feet
Average Speed: 7.1 mph
Top Speed: 34.9 mph
Bike: Specialized Enduro Elite
Map:

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