Best Santa Barbara Trail?

[jcampbell]

Have to go up there in two weeks to meet some new clients, after that I would like to hit a trail... probably a 2.5 to 3 hour ride or something close. Any suggestions? What's the best singletrack?

[2wheel_lee]

If you can arrange it, there are some awesome shuttle rides (Tunnel, Cold Springs, and Spookydave now knows of a few more).

I don't know any XC rides, but I hear there is some good stuff for that, too.

[SBSinister]

The best SB trails you wont find on any map or internet directions. Are you looking for a shuttle or an XC loop? Smooth or rough? We have any of those 4 combos available.

[Burner]

what's the xc loop riding? anything in the front country?

[sheclimbs]

an xc loop on the front side in SB sounds like Heaven to me, does it exist?

Originally Posted by Burner

what's the xc loop riding? anything in the front country?

[SBSinister]

There are 2 popular ones - Romero Canyon and Jesusita.

Romero Canyon can be done as an out/back or come back the upper half of the descent and dive off into a riverbed that is a lot more technical and lets you out 1 turn from the bottom of the fire road. If you're feeling like anything real technical, take Camino Cielo across the top to drop down Cold Springs or San Ysidro.

Jesusita is a loop with a little road riding. If you have 2 cars available it's actually much more pleasant to just shuttle out the road riding altogether because it's all done on a narrow, fast windy road that is kinda steep, or a foothill highway with no shoulder and rocky ditches off to the side. Most of the climb is hike-a-bike once you're on the singletrack unless you're superman. The drop down is somewhat technical in spots - a good rockgarden up top, short fireroad bit, some switchbacks, creekbed sections, open fields, blazing fast through the trees. I most commonly do this trail by dropping Tunnel first and then climbing it to extend the run by another 4 miles - turns into an epic DH run with a 15 minute climb in the middle. The singletrack exit on Tunnel and the singletrack entrance to Jesusita let out about 100 feet from each other on the same fire road.

Both are what I would call rough for true XC - more AM rides unless you do Romero and take the same fire road/st route back down without the creekbed. The true epic XC is in the backcountry and is smooth, flowey and.....EMPTY. A bit different terrain than frontside SB too - very similar to the singletrack you'll find at the top of the mountains with lots of yuccas and smoother dirt/less rocks.

Hope that helps.