Downhill Tower - San Luis Obispo

so when are we setting up a ride for this gnar trail?

 

Make sure you have your neck brace for this one G lol I might even get one for this trail ha ha

 

haha Hell yeah! I just got my brace yesterday. Haven't tried it out yet, too bad too. I crashed yesterday without any armor. Now my neck is sore, and I think I kinda rolled my ankle, bruised my shoulder- and definitely jacked up my knee pretty bad. :lol:

 

I'd be willing to take a trip to SLO for some DH action. I'm sure I could hook us up with some guides for the trails I havn't been on. Let me know

 

Stumbled upon a vid of the trail you speak of on MTBR/Vimeo today.

http://www.vimeo.com/1935275

 

I don't know why, but as far as I see in the video, it really doesn't look that bad. :-k

I am a little worried about that barbed wire fence though...

 

videos flatten it. it's pretty steep. That fenceline part is pretty hairy though. all sorts of metal posts and pokey things ready to impale you #-o

 

haha yeah that's what I'm worried about.

 

The video is of Tower trail which isn't real difficult. Its pretty steep and chunky but there are no big moves. The barb-wire section has probably the biggest move and as you can see on the video it is 100% do-able. Of course I wouldn't want to mess this section up too bad because the barb-wire is right beside you and a fall to the left would pretty much suck.

I kinda think the harder section is further down when the trail gets a little steeper. There are a couple tight turns and its weird looking straight down at 101. Overall though I thought this would be pretty safe to share with everyone and trust me, you would get a kick out of riding it.

Nice find!

 

hmm... you have my attention... :-k

 

Jeep King of the Mountain Bike Race October 24
This season, the world’s greatest mountain bikers will battle it out on the action-packed, fast-paced dual slalom format, taking place on competitor inspired racecourses filled with berms, jumps, bumps and other man-made elements. The race takes place at the famous Madonna Inn.
:-k

 

I wonder if they are going to build up a trail on Madonna Mtn. If not, isn't there a small hill just behind Madonna Inn? If so It would be a pretty short run.

 

It's already built, just needs work and a few big ol' boxes to fill the doubles. It's a little ways behind the madonna inn. (also that hill directly behind the Inn isn't as small as you'd think. try hiking it )

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=...0378&spn=0.00212,0.004828&t=h&z=18&iwloc=addr

It's actually a fairly long run, with some interesting features. there's a step up to a shipping container and a stepdown off of it (when my friends and I scouted it we were like 'WTF is this double?' because the container wasn't there).

Also a big run of logs etc. Fun stuff though, definitely worth checking out

 

I just checked it out in Google Earth and yes the hill is bigger than I remember. Now that hill is private property right? I'm sure they'll knock all that stuff down after the race anyway.

 

nope...they do the race there every year (for the last few now), so they just leave the course mostly built, and do maintenance as required right before the race. Just cows grazing, so the owners are fine with it. They're also pretty much okay with people wandering around over there, as long they aren't destroying stuff.

Like I said, a few of my friends and I went and scouted the course awhile ago.

 

SLO trails are difficult to figure what is private property and what is legally open to bike traffic. At this point the private landowners don't seem to much care. It seems like much of what I rode last week was a combination of the two. On one ride we where riding the train tracks, that is the official route to get from Shooters to Poly Canyon and I know for a fact that riding the Rail Road easements is a no no.

Dean

 

In my experience, most of the riding in SLO falls under something like "accepted Easements". they're not official easements, but they've been accepted for long enough that nobody really cares. I recall some local easement law coming into effect, but I can't recall right now. Pretty much, as long as gates stay closed and Ranchers' cattle and other livestock are okay, nobody gets mad.

Also, Union Pacific doesn't seem to really care about riding on the railroad easements either. You can usually get a wave and a nice horn blast out of most of the engineers, and every work crew/surveying crew/railroad muckety muck I've come across has been cool with us being there. I'm sure if you were poking around in the tunnels, you'd get a very stern telling to, but most people aren't crazy/stupid enough to be caught in the tunnels.

 

Is it possible to ride the trains tracks from the bottom of Shooters over to Stagecoach Road? Or are the tunnels that you need to ride thru?

Dean

 

Yup. just keep going, and stay on the beaten path. starting from shooters and heading north along the right away (not actually north, but the way northbound trains would go), you go around a big turn and you can see the cuesta grade. there's a big tunnel that's sealed off (mostly, you can get in the east side of it ). keep going to the first tunnel the trains go through and hang a right on the road there. that will take you down to stagecoach.

of course, I don't see any reason to climb stagecoach with shooters right there being a perfectly good single track climb. I've spent tons of time up there riding, so if you want directions (from anywhere) let me know. I also have a sweet .kmz file for Google Earth that has most of the known trails in SLO (not the DH ones though) if you get me an email to send it to.

 

The "f" isnt a hush trail everyone knows about it but nobody has the balls to do it that trail is ten times harder than tower and even if you know the name of the trail you prolly still couldn't find it unless u live here