RR: Santa Rosa Plateau

Today I had the opportunity to do my first "out of town" ride, and it actually surpassed all of my expectations. I've been doing pretty well working my way through my 2008 Goals List, but still had not done a ride outside of the San Diego area this year, which is one of the goals on the list. But thanks to some neat circumstances, that was about to change.

I had signed up for a morning training for the Truth Project at Calvary Chapel Murrieta, and after talking to Doug and Scott at the SMaRT ride on Wednesday, realized that the Santa Rosa Plateau was almost right across the street from the church. It was too perfect a scenario, and I was worried that something would come along and complicate it. Something did.

Friday afternoon my boss asked me to host our summer intern for a few days over the weekend before the intern's regular host family returned from vacation. I had no choice but to agree, and now I had a houseguest.

I had already registered for the seminar, so there was no skipping that. But I felt bad spending another couple hours out of town while the intern was stuck at my house, so I had almost resigned myself to skipping the ride. Then I was struck with a brilliant idea: I would bring the intern to the seminar, and then drag him along on the trail! It was perfect: the Truth Project is something he should be interested in anyway, the Santa Rosa Plateau is considered a beginner friendly ride, and I still had my old FSR that he could ride. It was all coming together.

Friday night he arrived at my house and I began laying the groundwork convincing him to go along with my plan. The seminar was an easy sell, but he was a little more reticent about the biking. He told me he did ride a road bike back home, and over the course of the evening he seemed to be coming around. Around 8:30 PM I quickly switched out the clipless pedals on the FSR for some flats, and he finally caved in. My ride was saved!

We left early Saturday morning for the seminar, and the bonus was that he offered to drive since he had a Prius. With gas prices out of control, the hybrid was way better than my Tahoe, and I was stoked.

The seminar was scheduled to end at 12:30, but instead ran until a little after 1, and we arrived late to the trailhead. When we got there I saw Scott's car parked at the trailhead and was surprised to see that he had decided to show up last minute. Because we were late, however, he had already left on the ride. I felt terrible, but since we didn't exchange numbers and I wasn't sure he was even coming, I had no way to warn him we were running late.

We parked at the Santa Rosa Ecological Preserve Visitor's Center, paid our $2 each for the facility usage, and quickly changed into riding clothes.

The Visitor's Center:

Here is the intern, ready to go:

I had been extremely worried about the heat, which was forecast to reach 110 degrees, but actually it wasn't that bad. The temperatures were over 100, but there was a nice breeze that kept the heat from being overwhelming. We also spent about half the time riding under canopies of trees, which helped as well.

After gearing up and consulting our maps, we headed across the street and up to the Tovashal trailhead. I was planning to follow this geoladder's route, which we did to the letter. A helpful STR member had private messaged me an interesting addition to the route, which I would have taken had I been solo. But with a first-time mountainbiker with me, I figured we'd stick to the easy stuff.

We rode along the Tovashal trail for about a mile, and then turned right on to the Sylvan Meadows fire road. Across from us was the expanse of what had to be Sylvan Meadow, and it was a scenic landscape, even with the grass having turned brown and dry with the recent heat.

After half a mile we turned uphill a bit, and rode up the Shivela trail. Things got a little interesting there for the intern, as he struggled with some of the moderate climbs and rocky sections. The trail was still beginner friendly, and he did pretty well for a first-timer, but he still had a few puffing HAB's.

After another half mile, we turned right and continued uphill on the Stevenson Canyon trail. This was a fun section for me, with a nice easy climb that had a few rocky spots, but nothing particularly difficult.

The intern gamely battled on. We headed up Stevenson Canyon trail until we passed a gate, and according to the geoladder's route, needed to turn around and head back to the Shivela trail. If we had continued up the hill a little farther, we would have connected with the section the guy from STR had told me about, but I wasn't about to push the intern any farther at that point. He wasn't complaining or looking that bad, but it was clear he was struggling somewhat.

The trail continued uphill as you can see here, but we didn't explore any farther:

We turned around to head back the way we came. Here is a picture of the gate we passed though back down the Stevenson Canyon trail:

The downhill from there was a lot of fun. I opened it up a little, and had fun flying down the trail. I stopped to wait for the intern at a point on the trail where I could see a singletrack offshoot to the right of the Stevenson Canyon trail. I wasn't sure from the geoladder's route whether we should take it or not, but after waiting for the intern to catch up, we decided to go for it.

I'm so glad we did.

The next half mile or so of trail is among the most fun I've ever ridden. Seriously. It was under a canopy of trees, along a small creek, and was swoopy, narrow singletrack. The trail was a little off camber in parts, and it was just a blast. It was a little like the tunnels at LPQ, but the tree canopy was much higher than the tunnels. I flew through that section, my bike rising and falling with the undulations of the trail. It was awesome.

I did stop to wait for the intern near the end, and took this picture:

The picture doesn't do it justice.

Eventually, after far too short a distance, that trail re-linked up with the Stevenson Canyon trail we had ridden up, and I was re-oriented.

I got to the bottom, and soon thereafter the intern caught up:

At the end of Stevenson Canyon trail, we headed right and hooked back up with the Shivela trail.

From there we crossed a bridge, and rode a mile or so of fun singletrack until we ran into Sierra Elena Road. We headed left, and quickly crossed Tenaja Road and linked up with the Fenceline trail.

Fenceline trail is aptly named.

I wish I had taken a picture of the Fenceline trail at the beginning, because it could have served as the dictionary representation of singletrack. It runs right along the fence, parallels Tenaja road, and was a lot of fun to ride. It had several gradual descents followed by easy climbs, and it was at this point the intern started to have some fun.

Because the Fenceline trail was smooth, buffed singletrack, he wasn't as afraid to open up his speed a little. There were no rocks or technical features to get in his way, and the descents were gradual but sustained, so he had time to build some speed. As we got to the end of Fenceline, he remarked that he had no idea that someone could go that fast on a mountainbike and not die. I think he was probably going 15 mph at the most. But the look of joy on his face was awesome.

From the end of Fenceline, we again crossed Tenaja Road and crossed through a dirt parking lot. At that point we started on the Nighthawk Loop trail and beared left at the fork in the road. After riding half of the Nighthawk Loop, we veered left again and took the Mortero trail. On the side of the trail I spotted a large rock grouping that I think had at one point been a single large boulder. I wanted to ride over it, and did it the first time without hesitation. It was fun and pretty easy, and I realized that this would be a good chance to get a picture of myself out on the trail. I have relatively few pictures of myself because I'm always the one taking the pictures, but this time I had the intern with me, so this was the perfect circumstance to get a nice action photo.

I handed the intern the camara, positioned him next to the boulder, and headed back up the trail to get a running start at the boulder. I adeptly rode up and over it, and stopped immediately afterward to survey his camarawork. Lets just say it was subpar.

I ended up sessioning that boulder eight times before we had a decent shot, and for the one that worked, I practically trackstanded in the middle in order to give him time to get a worthwhile pic. Lets just say photography isn't in the intern's future.

Here are two of the one's that came out OK:



After the boulder we continued along the Mortero trail until it intersected with Sylvan Meadows Road again. Just before we hit Sylvan Meadows, I was riding along the trail and hit a small, two foot drop that was pretty fun. Despite the camara problems we had had just minutes earlier, I couldn't pass up another opportunity for a cool picture of me in action, and I set up another shot.

Apparently, all of the practice from shooting me on the boulder paid off, because the intern took this beauty on the first try:

It was a harder shot to get than the boulder one, because I was moving pretty fast, so I take back the rude comment about the intern not having a future in photography. He just needed some practice.

We rode along Sylvan Meadows Road for a mile or so, and passed a couple of singletrack offshoots that I would have liked to have taken had I been alone. They all seemed to hook back up with Sylvan Meadows pretty quickly, and I'll definately hit them next time. At this point, however, the intern was looking a little peaked.

After another half mile or so we found ourselves back on the Tovashal trail, and were getting close to the trailhead. I rode ahead a little, enjoying the last section of trail and trying to get some speed up for the final portion of the ride. This was a mistake.

I was riding down a minor descent, which had a medium sized rut right in the middle. The rut was easily avoidable by riding up above it on the trail, but I didn't do that for reasons that still escape me. Still, merely riding in the rut shouldn't have been any big deal; I should have just been able to ride it out until a good spot presented itself to get my tire back up on the edge of the trail.

But before that spot decided to show itself, the trail turned sharply to the right. I was going too fast to follow the path of the rut as it turned, and found myself going OTB off the side of the trail, heading for a very large rock that was innocently sitting there in just the wrong spot.

I supermanned toward it, and hit it dead on. My right hand was out to brace myself, and my thumb jammed painfully right into the rock. My momentum was slowed just enough that neither my head nor rest of my body hit the rock, and the rest of me came to an abrupt stop right in front of it.

I got up and shook myself off. My thumb hurt a lot, and I took off my glove to see that it was bleeding under the nail, and was throbbing a little, but was otherwise OK.

I hopped back on the bike and finished the last section of the trail and waited for the intern at the trailhead. We made it across the street and back to the car without further incident, and our ride was over.

This trail was a lot of fun, and I guarantee I'll be back here again. I may even bring Rachel. The trails around Sylvan Meadow are definately newbie friendly, and even the other sections of Stevenson Canyon trail and Shivela are doable by almost any rider. But even with this trail's low level of difficulty, it is a blast to ride, and I never found myself bored or feeling like it wasn't worth riding.

Even the intern had a great time, though he suggested that we should have ridden the loop in the other direction, clockwise, in order to give him a little longer to get comfortable on the bike during the easy sections before hitting the climbs on the west side. He may have a point, but for all but the most newbies, I'd say the route we took would be best.

Here are the stats:

Total Distance: 7.62 miles
Total Time: 1:31:00
Ascent: 852 feet
Average Speed: 5.0 mph
Top Speed: 22.9 mph
Bike: Specialized Enduro Elite
Map:


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