Bedford - Motorway - Maple Springs Friday 3/31 8AM

[royta]

I'm planning on creating a route for geoladders tomorrow morning. It should be about 28 miles and 6240 feet. Climb Bedford Motorway to Main Divide. North on Main Divide to the top of Silverado Motorway. Down Silverado Motorway and climb up Maple Springs to Main Divide. North on Main Divide to the top of Bedford Motorway. Drop down Bedford. See these two routes for more info. Bedford - Main Divide and Maple Springs - Motorway. If anybody is interested in riding along, PM me.

[TURNERob]

I can't join ya Royta since I have to work, but just curious how many miles is it from the bottom of Bedford up to Main Divide?

[royta]

I measure about .1 over 6 miles. It's pretty steep with only one loose section. The up and back is 2880 feet. I live off of the same exit, about 1.25 miles up Knabe.

[dukethenuke]

royta I sent you a PM.

Anyone know how much time it would take to drive there from Orange County? Should I expect traffic in the morning going toward Riverside?

[royta]

dukethenuke - Sorry you couldn't come along. It was a lot of fun. The last ride I did was San Juan - Los Pinos on Saturday. It took a long time for my legs to finally wake up yesterday. They were really hurting. You climb San Juan in order to warm yourself up for the climb up Main Divide to the Los Pinos TH, and afterwards you think you're all that. Then you start out with cold legs climbing Bedford, and you realize how slow you are afterall. Bedford is pretty steep. Anyway, the route is completed, so you can check it out of you're interested. Bedford - Motorway - Maple Springs

[Pain Freak]

That's some major mileage. I did a similar route about 4 years ago and it wiped me out. Is Maple Springs closed now?

[royta]

Yesterday, I heard Maple Springs will be closing on April 30th

It's not really the mileage, but the climb to mileage ratio that takes it out of you. I have found these trails in Southern California are much steeper than I'm accustomed to. I used to ride in Yreka, CA, Ashland, OR, Eugene, OR, Ephraim, UT (college). As soon as I got back into riding in SoCal, I quickly found a set of compact cranks (22-32-44) to replace my standard drive (24-36-48 ).

I'm working on some fitment issues with my Flux, because I had some lower back muscle pain during my climbs. What it a relief it was to stop, take a picture, mark a waypoint, and arch my back backwards to stretch it out. That took some of the fun out of the ride, but I did my best to not think about it.

[Epic_Mtn_Biker]

back pain relief = doing sit-ups