Archipelago Ride Part III (Final Pre-Ride)

After a few weeks of trying to find time to pre-ride the final leg of my Archipelago ride, I finally made it out today. I headed out from home around 8 in the morning and started over to Black Mountain. I had been vacillating about what route to do, and had decided to ride this route clockwise because I was leaning toward doing the Archipelago route that direction as well.

I rode through the 4S trails and stopped for a minute to take some pictures of Lusardi Canyon. It was beautiful that morning.

Ahead I could see my destination: Black Mountain.

From there I rode up Carmel Valley road to the paved road that goes up to the Black Mountain trailhead. From there I rode up the trail to the beginning of the Miner's Ridge Loop, and decided to try riding it counterclockwise for once. Bad call.

The switchbacks at the beginning of Miner's (going clockwise) are brutal to climb, and I ended up HABing almost all of them. From there it’s still pretty steep going until you reach the top of the main climb, then it’s up and down as the loop heads east. Around the midpoint of the loop, I stopped yield to another rider coming the other direction. As we passed each other and said hello, the other rider asked if I lived on “XXXXX” street. Surprised, I responded in the affirmative, and learned that he lived just a few doors down from me. Apparently he recognized my bike from the times I’ve had it on the workstand outside my garage when I was cleaning it and doing repairs. His name was Scott, and he is apparently an avid rider with ties to the MTB industry, which is cool. We chatted for several minutes, and he gave me his email address. Hopefully we’ll be able to ride together soon.

On a side note, he mentioned that he’s watched my progression of bikes over the last year as I went from the FSR to the Enduro to the Spider. Since I am constantly outside my garage working on my bikes, it shouldn’t have surprised me to hear that people have seen me and noticed, but it was still eye opening to hear that my neighbors have noted my succession of bikes. It makes me wonder if I shouldn’t move my wrenching to the backyard, just to be cautious. I have no problem talking bikes with Scott, but what if a less-scrupulous neighbor takes a shine to one of my bikes and decides to help himself someday…

In any event Scott and I rode together for a little bit, until I split off to ride the cutover to the main Black Mountain fire road and he continued down Miner’s. I rode almost all of the cutover without dabbing, including the tricky G-out that I had flubbed on Wednesday with Dave G. I made it over to the Nighthawk Trail, and instead of immediately doing the HAB up to the main fire road, I headed southeast to check out one of the trails I hadn’t ridden before. I only rode it a little way, and when I could tell that it dropped down into Mount Carmel High School, backtracked and made my way up the fire road to the summit.

At the top, I paused for a minute to take some pictures of my community beneath me.


From there I rode down the Gorge Trail, and cleaned the entire short climb that followed the rutted downhill. At that point, instead of taking the singletrack connector back to Miner’s like I had on Wednesday, I did some exploring to the west on some singletrack. I was hoping to find a trail that would take me down the west face of the mountain and spit me out near the paved road leading into Black Mountain Community Park. As I explored, I found myself at the glider port where hang gliders take off on windy days. There was a narrow singletrack trail that spun away from the glider port launch area, and as I rode it I realized I had found my western-face route off the mountain. The problem was the trail down the mountain was extremely steep and loose.

Here's a picture of the launch area:

I was also able to take in the views to the northwest:

At that point I was faced with two parallel trails down the mountain to choose from, and I initially chose the one to the right. Just a few feet down I realized it was too steep and loose to ride, and decided to try the other one. As I started down the trail on the left, I started to skid and slide sideways, and elected to HAB down several yards to a more ridable section. I eventually re-mounted the bike and proceeded to skid and slide the rest of the way down the side of the mountain, arriving safely at the bottom in one piece.

From there I rode a short fire road out to Carmel Valley Road, then crossed the street and rode up to Black Mountain Community Park and the entrance to the Santa Luz singletrack, marking the entrance point for the next leg of the Archipelago Ride. After that I rode up to the park to refill my water bottle, then took the paved road back to the 4S trails and home. As a side note, going down the Gliderport Trail was the first time I’ve missed the Enduro since I started riding the Spider. The more slack geometry of the Enduro would have helped on that steep downhill, as would the extra travel. But the penalty for climbing the mountain on the Enduro would not have been worth it.

I took this picture from across the street at Black Mountain Community Park. The trail on the right in the picture is the one I rode down.

After completing this ride, I have pre-ridden each leg of the Archipelago Ride. I’ve definitely decided to ride it clockwise from home, which should be much more fun now that I think about it. Going counterclockwise, I have two significant climbs up the switchbacks at the end of the SDRP section, as well as a climb up the fire road at the end of Artesian and two rough climbs across Santa Luz. I then have the brutal climb up the back entrance to LPQ, and then the climb up the Santa Luz singletracks. If I was to continue counterclockwise, I’d have two monster climbs to get to the base of Black Mountain, then the fire road climb up Black Mountain to finish off the majority of the ride.

Going clockwise, I start with the Black Mountain climb, which is a little tough but manageable, as I proved today. I then ride down the Santa Luz singletracks, down the biggest hill at LPQ, and have a much easier time going that direction in the Santa Luz loop. I’ll have to climb Artesian, but will be able to now ride down the switchbacks near Crosby. I will also have to climb Del Dios, as well as the SDG&E road that’s now at the end of the ride, but I think this direction is definitely better overall.

I’m hoping to do the full Archipelago ride sometime in the next few weeks. I’m not sure I’m in peak conditioning, but it was never intended to be a race anyway. I know it will be taxing, and there will be parts that are very challenging, but I’m really looking forward to it.

Here are the stats for today’s ride:

Total Distance: 12.39 miles
Total Time: 2:20:39
Ascent: 1979 feet
Average Speed: 5.3 mph
Top Speed: 35.8mph
Bike: Intense Spider XVP
Map:

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