Palm Canyon Epic: Update/Turnout

[Epic_Mtn_Biker]

First off, i have to say this was by far the hardest and most demanding ride i've had to do. the turnout was outstanding 17 total.

MTB'ers from ocrider.com, teambasso.com along with: Tom C, Tom's friend - Hector, Chris (RidetheRAAM4) & his 2 buddies and myself from socaltrailriders.org all showed up for this truly epic ride.

so we shuttled and started at the top of palm canyon at about 9 am, right off the bat we knew this was not going to be easy, the trails were rocky, narrow and extremely technical, not to mention the thin air. the switchbacks were very fun and steep. we traversed thru many mini canyons & gullies within the main canyon and the group quickly stretched out. twe had some poijnts of regrouping and had a chance to get to meet a great group of riders in the mean time.

the ride was going fine till mile 6, i broke my derailler hangar!! luckily Louie had an extra one and along with the team basso guys i was able to continue on.

Mile 10: my hub broke!! my cassette was freewheeling both ways, pedaling resulted in no forward motion at all, it would just spin. so at this point i figured i could huff and puff it to the the main fireroad which was Dunn Road ( 7 miles away!!!!). i would coast my bike as much as i could and hike a bike the rest which actually resulted in something like 80% hike-a-bike and 20% coasting (too rocky and sandy to actully coast). it was killer. riding the bike with a freewheeling casste made me very sketchy on certain parts and resulted in me breaking one the Ti rails on my saddle!! talk about bad luck.

mile 15: Hector was riding while i hiked my bike along a super long stretch deep sand (the trail was on the actual wash) a few miles to say the least. it was at this point that we by chance stopped to wait for 3 guys from team basso ( they were getting flats like crazy). also keep in mind that we all were the last 5 guys coming down the hill. so we stopped to regroup and take a small breather. so we started chatting and Skip from team basso, noticed something shimmering about 30 yards away. he noticed it was a bike!! we walked over to it and saw that it was a have buried washed out Litespeed! i must have been there for years,rust was all over it. it had a 7 speed cassette, super old-school Scott forks, cantilever brakes (not v-brakes, the older version), and the titanium frame was rusting (not sure why since it was a litespeed frame that said it was Ti, who knows, i'm not a metallergist; but anyhow we unburried it and started to strip it for parts. i was able to take the back wheel and unstck the freewheel action on that wheel and quickly swapped out my wheel for this functiuoning rusted wheel!! i essentially made my bike into a 3 speed, only able to change the front gears. and i had no rear brake capabilities since i have disc brakes. so with this wheel: rusted but functional and true. that part made me feel extremely relieved. i then swapped the saddle. the other guys took the bar ends, front D, H20 cages, and heavy duty tube.

the fact that we stopped there and not 5 feet before or after that spot and we were able to see the washout bike between the bushes for such a distance was trutly a miracle. we could not believe such a thing. i know this sounds wild, but i'm waiting on pix. the pictures will prove it! i truly believe this was some kind of higher power act. if it weren't for that bike i would have been out there till like 10 pm. the terrain was just so rugged and relentless that just doing sections of it walking with the bike was very hard. thankfully a lot of it was on the sandy wash, (walking on MTB shoes, is no joke). today i went to church. i had to, something or someone was looking after me. all the other guys were calling me the luckiest guy alive!

so we marched on 2 more miles on the wash (hike-a-bike,too sandy) to Dunn Road this is a Blvd.-wide fireroad and the only and last bail out of the ride. from there i was able to ride the rolling descent for the next 10 miles, slowly but surely since i only had front brakes and didn't want to pinch flat. the bike worked great, with me only being able to shift between the 3 front gears. going down the fireroad, there were more flats for the other guys one of them had 5 or more flats, not sure but i know it was atleast 5 flats.

so we made it down to to the bottom of Dunn Road, and made our way on to Hwy 111 and went for a mile or so to the main trailhead and meeting place just before dusk (the cars had their headlights on already).

you should have seen the look on people faces when i pulled up with my wheel strapped to my back with tubes, and the story of how everything came about.

this was truly a memorable and miraculous ride. if anything, this experience renewed my faith that there is something out there looking over us. to find that bike the way we did was truly a miracle, half buried and next to a bush abd the only waty we could have seen it was by being in that exact spot can't make me think of any other thing than it being god-sent.

thanx to AK, Skip, Rainey, and Hector for sticking out there with me. i'm truly in debted to you guys.

would i do this ride again? maybe, i'll have to think about it more, but i would do a different version of whats out there since there is a good network of trails up there.

tips for the next ride: keep extra D-Hangar at the ready, 2mm wench, zip-ties, & 4 tubes min. (just incase) other than that, i was self sufficient. oh yeah, i forgot to mention i did have 2 flats, one before the ride even started, and one during the ride.

Great story Hector! Yes, God does show himself when we need him.

[Epic_Mtn_Biker]

one more thing total mileage was: 25.91 miles

[RidetheRAAM4]

total ride for me was 30 miles....like 29.7 or something...we rode 3 miles up hwy 74 to pine springs rd opr something and headed down a different single track in the begining and boy was it awesome...there were some spots where my 2.0 front tire barely had enough room to stay on the trail....then we met back up with the group and continued on and since we didnt get lost (like we did last week) we made it to the sand wash a lot quicker...which was good because the sand was way softer than it was last time (it could have been my tire...i was using a used armando tire for the ride which had less tread than my old one did) once up the sand wash it was good across dunn road and up the hanh buena vista trail and down it too...then we made it back to dunn road and we went left over a dirt mound to make it over to the goat trails....talk about TECHNICAL!! All in all it was a great ride...good to see Armando make it out in time! He came rolling down the road maybe 2 minutes after we made it to the parking lot...I experienced some cramping because of the heat beating down on me and i ran out of water maybe 30 minutes before the end of the ride...the 2 hours before that i was really trying to save it because I knew I was low...consumed 5 e-gels and some of those electrolyte chews from clif..NEED MORE FOOD NEXT TIME

[Epic_Mtn_Biker]

I'm Armando

not Hector

[RidetheRAAM4]

oh yeah...total ride time was like 7 - 7 and a half hours...we started sometime after 9am and got into the parking lot at about 4:30pm...actually moving time was 4 hours and 7 minutes....all those breaks and waiting for the group to regroup add up!! add in the mechanical problems and the ride takes all day

[Epic_Mtn_Biker]

my food supply: 2 GU's, bag of beef jerky, big bag of peanuts, bag of trail mix, 3 bananas, 64 oz. of gatorade, and 100 oz. of water

[RidetheRAAM4]

yeah, i only had 70oz of water...it was fine last ride because it wasn't as hot...but i cramped up bad last ride probably from not enough food and not enough water....this time i ran out...definately need 100oz of water plus!!

[Epic_Mtn_Biker]

here are some pix, courtesey of Rainer *from Team Basso!!

[Epic_Mtn_Biker]

pic 2

[Epic_Mtn_Biker]

recycling the litespeed

[Epic_Mtn_Biker]

ready to go on my 3 speed with no rear brake!!

[Epic_Mtn_Biker]

packed with busted bike parts

[DtEW]

It was an interesting ride and also the longest one I've ever been on. I think it would be fair to say:

1. Desert vegetation are fundamentally evil. You would think of cactuses, but the real killers are the innocuous-looking bushes. Some these were dead-ish and some were greenish, but they all hide wicked hooked thorns that guide even the lightest brush into deep scrapes. When you start layering one shallow laceration upon another, it gets pretty bloody. Cactus thorns drive themselves into your tissues and they are built (microscopic reverse barbs) so that they aren't easily removable. Even when the thing is dead, the thorn asters (think Sputnik-shaped clusters of thorns) lie on the desert floor in wait. I had some bad experiences with that. When the ride ended some of us looked like we'd crossed the desert on our elbows and shins. We were determined to get a group picture of the carnage, but I guess it got too dark. Suffice it to say that shin and elbow pads should have been recommended.

2. The surface of the majority of the terrain can be described as loose-over-hard. For the most part the terrain rolled around, but unlike the high-speed hammering of grassy hills (think Aliso woods, Chino Hills), it wasn't easy to carry speed from one hump to another. This was because the transition/dips between humps were steep and short, sometimes only as big a wheel. Hit that wrong and and you can bend a fork. Basically, we were crossing wind-eroded rain ruts running perpendicular to the trail. I think that took some of the fun out of "flowing" a trail. IMHO, the descents on the decayed fireroads were the best part of the ride. They were rocky, fast and had me thinking about my coil-spung Heckler. Slam-tastic!

3. The Dry Wash "Trail" was fairly horrific. It's a never-ending Bataan death march in a sandpit. In addition to the backtracking I did earlier in the ride (yellow trackpoints) and a misguided spur down the Vanderenter trail, my ordeal on this part of the ride was complicated by hunger and loss of electrolytes (I made my Gu2O too weak.) I dropped behind the guys I was with (Dave and Tom) and lost sight of them. Then I took a wrong turn down a wash tributary and ended up without a trail out in the middle of the desert. I did have water, a GPS (which I should have been paying more attention to) and a radio, so I wasn't in that much trouble. But I was cramping up like mad, both legs, upper and lower. Dropped to my knees to flex those muscles, and THAT's where I found out about the cactus thorn asters. Picked up no less than 10 of them on one leg.

4. By the time I found the trail again and arrived at Mike Dunn's Desert Oasis (some water source would have made it less of an oxymoron), it was 3pm and getting colder. I figured it would be stupid to tempt fate up the Hahn Buena Vista trail and so bailed down the Dunn fireroad. All things considered, it was not a bad fireroad descent. It was kinda fun and I hit a GPS-measured max of 33.5mph.

All in all, this was a hardcore ride that if I had to describe minimally would be: emphasis on self-sufficiency. There is a plethora of other stories that I'm sure people will share on their own, so Iwon't deprive them of their thunder.

My total GPS raw mileage is 28.5 miles. Trimmed mileage (milling around waiting regroups) is 27.3 miles.

[LBmtb]

Man, sounds like a great adventure! Bet you all went home with smiles on your faces.

[RidetheRAAM4]

lol, some people didnt like it as much as i did...i loved the single track and flowed nicely on it doing speeds above 20mph on the techincal rocky single track on my epic....especially down the hahn buena vista trail...that trail is fast! from the begining (i took a different route than everytone else going up the 74 for 3 miles and then down some narrow 3 inch wide single track) i loved it...there are a few rain ruts you can't jump over but most of them you can just hop over or find a little hill to let you jump over them

[ShinKen]

DANNGG ARMANDO!! That’s a HEAVY DUTY freaking story!! It’s hard to believe that u found a bike that happen to have the parts u need it way out there in the middle of shit!! WHOAH!! Insane is all I can say!! It looks like u all had a good time and wish I could have been there!! But if Mando had problems can u imagine my super NOOB ass? lol thank God I had to work that day!! YAAAYY!!! . Well maybe next time I can join u guys. And thank god none of u broke anything serious...

[vivid_exposures]

well ... armando i guess your epic has finally come to you in this adventure of skill, determination, and pure guts. you always say "improvise, adapt, and overcome"... guess it paid off....

too bad film crew did not follow you on this one.. would make a great mini doc.


laters...

chuck

my bike hangs upside down above a 1978 corvette silver anniversary edition... how messed up is that... lol

[Tom Cosgrove]

Hey dtew, Dave,
Send me you ph# we live pretty close, for future rides.
Anyone interested I am planning a ride at Noble canyon over the Holidays along with a ride back in Palm springs to do the Art Smith trail, along with other rides over the 2 weeks.
Give me input.
Great ride at Palm canyon
Tom

[RidetheRAAM4]

im always down as long as im home...i know im going to colorado from like dec 27 until jan 2......other than that i should be open