Ride Report Annual 'Saint Patrick's Day - Beers at the Peak' Ride

Discussion in 'Ride Reports' started by dcrfx, Mar 20, 2016.

  1. dcrfx

    dcrfx Member

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    An OC centric RR, hope this works on the new platform....

    Great ride and great group with JB, Rob, Ray, Mark, Luke. We try do some version of this every year on March 17, just because...
    We cheated and parked cars at Cooks and drove over to Modjeska. Harding is always/still a beast of a climb for me. Just put it in the "take it slow and smell the flowers and enjoy the view" mode and it went by about as slowly and painfully as expected. Harding is in good shape, all the slides have been cleared. A little hazy, buggy and warm at 4 corners... A PBJ and some pickles helped get my head back on straight...

    IMAG1608.jpg

    Main Divide up to Modjeska turn out is the same steep, loose shale stuff I remembered. Granny gear (24-42 for me, I prefer not to walk) and grind it out. Then you see the peak and it's "right there" as the crow flies, but another 2 miles and 700 "goes on forever" feet via the long switchbacks.

    Finally there after 4 hours of climbing,.... a beer and rest in the shade of building 22.
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    Hazy view from the peak looking east to San Jacinctos...
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    Now the fun part. A short, fast, loose decent down Main Divide to the entrance to Upper Joplin singletrack. UJ is in great shape and a fast flowy non tech hoot all the way back to MD where we just came up. It took a little over 2 minutes to get to MD, where the climb on the switchbacks was probably 30+ minutes.

    Pic at the top of Joplin on MD, looking up to Santiago peak where we just came from, 2 miles up on the switchbacks, 2+ minutes down on upper Joplin....
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    The Joplin trailhead looking down, 2000 feet in 2 miles, woohoo!
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    I took no pictures on Joplin. It's in decent shape, not too overgrown, yet. Crazy fast at parts, tecky and challenging in others. We came across a moto climbing at Jamisson spring (he was taking a break, drinking a beer), No idea how he could get up there with that beast. But didn't see any torn up trails lower down from his climb.

    There are three high degree of difficulty (IMO) spots below Jamisson. A loose steep (ski the gravel type) chute, then a big boulder steep right-left chicane. I was able to make those but the last one is my nemesis, the right hand switchback on rocks under the oaks, freaks me out every time and I have no energy left to try to session it and figure out the line. Next time!

    There's a 12" diameter Oak tree down over the trail on the lower part, a get off and throw the bike over affair. The moto rider told us he cut through the tree trunk with his hand saw but couldn't move it off the trail. Need to get some bodies up there with some energy to get that out of there.

    The climb out of Old Camp was fun as ever with little energy left. Super fast decent on STT to Cadillac where I realized my rear tire was going down, I think from a sidewall scrape on Joplin and the stans wouldn't seal it. Put a tube in and then pinched flatted further down. Buddy JB gave me 29er tube and I folded it into my 26 wheel and it got me out down the luge, carefully as we were out of tubes, water, energy and time.

    Awesome ride on Saint Patricks Day with some great guys!


    Side note: I hope this STR OC forum can pick up some activity again, but have to give big props to Mikie and IMTBTrails forum, lots of good north-of-OC people and content on there, as well as some OC stuff.

    Cheers!
    Dave
     
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  2. trailninja

    trailninja Going Slideways!!!!

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    Dave I almost felt as if I was there by your descriptive narration! Kudos on the RR! Love the pix dude!
     
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  3. dustyyoungblood

    dustyyoungblood Member

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    How many miles is this super loop?
     
  4. dcrfx

    dcrfx Member

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    A little over 24 mi with the shuttle between Cooks and Harding. And a little more than 5k feet climbing. It took us ~7 hours, that was with 2 flats and lots of regroups and breaks.
     

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