Mountain biking is hard...

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but also lots of fun!

Christmas Day ride - 12 miles, 2100 feet of climbing (and descending! :D). Most of the climbs are a 12 percent average grade, but there is one half mile section we did yesterday that is an average 16 percent. Of course just at the top of the steepest section, there is a cattle gate. I got to it first yesterday and couldn't open it. I thought it was because I was so oxygen deprived that I couldn't figure it out. Actually, it was jammed. :p

Veronica

Sounds like a great ride Veronica! I'm glad to hear that you are enjoying riding in the dirt:)

Veronica, it sounds like fun! Also amazing that you get to ride during this time of the year with so few clothes :)

Another 12 mile ride today, this time we went to a different park. We have been riding at Black Diamond - our nearby regional park. It's like 4 miles away. We do drive to it, but we bought a park pass so we can park inside the gates and support the park. I really don't like riding my mountain bike on the road. Black Diamond Regional Park connects to Mt Diablo State park and you can ride your mountain bike from one to the other. That's an epic ride! I think I'd have to stage a car, since getting back would be tough. It's about 12 miles to the base of Diablo and of course once there, you have to ride up... Someday!

Anyway... today's ride - we went to Briones Regional Park. It's about a 20 mile drive, but Thom wanted to go somewhere different. We hadn't been to Briones in years. It was a good ride. We climbed up to the top of the ridge and then rode rollers for miles. These were some steep suckers though, up and down. Thom forgot his camera, so no pictures today. It was very pretty with views of Suisun Bay and Mt Diablo.

Veronica

Today we headed off to Mount Diablo with the intent of riding the Oyster Point single track from the Diablo side. We had found it too steep from the Morgan Territory side and not much fun. The Diablo side really isn't any better. :rolleyes: Although we did see a group of about ten, twenty-somethings head down it. I hope they like it, because I didn't. The single track was a deep rut, about a foot deep, maybe a foot wide at the top, rocky and rooty, with death to the left. It was downhill with an average grade of over 15%. I rode it until I just couldn't take the stress anymore. Thom went a bit further and said it didn't get better. Since it is an out and back route, we just turned around. We went in about 3 tenths of a mile.


To get to the single track required riding about two and a half miles, mainly downhill, average grade of about ten percent. After a snack we rode a loop that was really beautiful with some awesome views of the park.

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The picture is from the loop and you can see the fire road we took in and out in the distance and beyond that is the Diablo summit.

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I'm glad we tried the single track. We've now looked at it from both sides and decided it's just not for us. Thom might try it on his own, but it's not what I'm looking for when I ride. I would do the rest of the ride again for sure and look at some of the other fire roads in this area. The views were incredible and the climbing was easier than what we have been riding at Black Diamond. :D

There are a few other pictures here.

Veronica

Good old Mt Diablo. I got married up there.:D

Looks like beautiful weather and still a nice ride.

I like that pink jersey.
The scenery looks pretty awesome, too.

That is my favorite shirt for mountain biking this winter. It's an an Ibex Indie and it's just the right weight, keeps me warm even when I'm sweaty.

Veronica

Today we rode from Black Diamond Mine Regional Park to Clayton - the base of Mt Diablo and back - 11.5 miles, 2400 feet of climbing. There were some pretty "interesting" sections of trail, one very steep, very rutted descent, with the ruts running diagonally across the trail. I was kind of inching my way down and had not picked a great line - I'm not sure there was one! In retrospect, I'm amazed I didn't get off and walk it, but I didn't even consider it. About halfway down, I just let the bike go, I could see I would have some run out.

I'm definitely not ready to add climbing Diablo to this route yet. That will double the mileage and double the climbing, but I'm really glad we scoped it out. No pictures, we were too busy riding today. We had some nice views from the top of the ridge line out over the Delta.

Veronica

Sunday's ride was short, just 6.75 miles and just over 1,000 feet of climb and descent. I wasn't feeling great so I didn't want to work very hard. We took the easiest possible route up to the ridge. There really is no "easy" way to climb 1000 feet in 3 miles, but some are less stupid steep. The ridge itself is really quite narrow, so every way up has some ridiculous bit near the top. Yesterday's route had an 18% section for a little more than a tenth of a mile. AND, it's the "easy" way. There is one single track trail at Black Diamond that is bike legal - Corcoran Mine. It's 3/4 of a mile long with an average grade of 18%. We decided to go down that way yesterday. I had never gone down it before. Years ago we had gone up it with our bikes, walking much of it. Down is a lot more fun. It was almost all rideable - except for one tenth of a mile that my Garmin says had an average grade of 43%. It was like walking down the side of a cliff. It was all exposed rock with ledges, holes and ruts. It's the kind of terrain that the bike needs some speed to get over, but at the bottom of it is a sandy narrow switchback. I doubt I'll ever ride that bit. But the rest is great for working on single track skills. It's rooted and rocky with some exposure - really quite nice.

Veronica

We went out for more fun at Black Diamond yesterday and today. I finally conquered the Old Homestead Trail. The final pitch is 16% average grade for three tenths of a mile. We had been up it twice before and both times I had to stop before the top. I was pretty giddy to finally make it. One nemesis down, several still to go. :D

Veronica

I love it!! Good work.

This weekend I went back out to an area that I haven't been to in 2 years and I was amazed at the improvement in my skill level in that time. Sometimes it's hard to see the changes when you're riding in the same areas frequently. It's always fun to see yourself improving and mountain biking is great for that.

Have fun out there.

Wow! I'd like to do that someday. Nice view. I've tried biking cross country but never that difficult. I'll give it a shot before I get home.:)

We were off the bikes for a few weeks. The last weekend in January we went for a hike to do some recon for future biking. The first two weekends of February we had rain. Presidents' Day weekend Thom's folks were here visiting, but we went anyway. :D They walked around the reservoir while we rode for abut an hour - 6.3 miles with 830 feet of climbing. Because of all of the rain the cows have really chewed up the trails. It's like riding in a rock garden. It makes all that climbing more work! I'm really glad I have a fully suspended bike now.

Yesterday we went out to Round Valley to find someplace a little flatter to ride. It's about a mile and a half out to the valley which has a three mile loop. We did the loop three times. Thirteen miles and only 530 feet of climbing. We were going to head from Round Valley up towards Morgan Territory, the trail we had reconned in January, but the trail was closed on Feb. 4 for Golden Eagle nesting. We discovered that when we got to the trail and saw the closure sign.

Thom did take 120 photos, which we narrowed down to three. :p

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Veronica

Beautiful! The scenery, the sunshine, and you on your bike :)

We had rain again last weekend, so we didn't ride. We did do some bike maintenance and Thom patched and painted the exercise room. We had taken all my equipment out of it when Thom's parents were visiting and decided since it was nearly emptied and needed some love that it was a good time. It looks great and I'm happy yo be back in it. I found riding my bike in the garage just a bit depressing.

Yesterday's ride was back out at Black Diamond. Part of our maintenance was to switch my stem for a shorter one. I've had to do that all my bikes, so it's not really surprising that the Ibis needed it too. It just took me awhile to decide that it was fit, not a lack of strength on my part. My lower back likes the shorter reach, but the bike was noticeably more squirrelly climbing. I'll get use to it, just like I did with the others. :D You can't ride at Black Diamond with out doing crazy amounts of climbing and descending - just 7.3 miles with 1230 feet of elevation change, in both directions. :D The trails are still just a mess from the cows. Early on in the ride Thom made me crack up with his comment as we passed a nasty, recent cow flop, "Cows need to eat more fiber!" If we hadn't been climbing and me already gasping, I would have busted out laughing. Every flop after that made me want to giggle.

Veronica

Finally got back on the bikes today, a super hard ride on Mt Diablo. We climbed 1400 feet in 2.2 miles - average grade of 13%, with some sections much steeper. It was also our first warm ride of the season with temps around 80 degrees. We've had rain this last week so the water crossings at the bottom of the trail were fun and wet.

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The poppies are just amazing, huge swaths of orange on the hillside.

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I would guess this shows about the last 1.5 miles of the climb. The photo is taken from the ridge on the other side which we climbed up and then went down. The descent was pretty technical, with lots of changing surfaces, some hard packed, some loose, very ripply with some steps.

A good day, but boy am I tired! I can't believe we've been off the bikes for almost a month. It's not like I haven't been doing anything, but there is no real substitute for hard riding. :rolleyes:

Total mileage for the day was 13.28 with 1,950 feet of climbing.

Veronica

We rode at Black Diamond yesterday, just 8 miles, but with 1250 feet of climbing. The trails are still really beat up from the cows. I got a new camera, so I played around with it a bit. I saw some white lupine but it wasn't clustered close enough to make a good picture. We've got lots of the purple variety, but not so much of the white.

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That's the Sacramento/San Jouquin Delta in the far distance and windmills on the opposite shore. It's always windy here; the winds blow up the the river from San Francisco to Sacramento.


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If you took the trail up behind Thom, you'd be at the ridge top. That section of trail is freakishly, stupid steep, instead of just stupid steep like everything else in the park. :D

It was a good day.

Veronica

That last photo looking down into the valley is so pretty. It looks so green and so warm - it's still cool & brown here in the NE.

It was pretty warm - about 80 degrees. We should have gone out earlier, but we needed to do some yard work.


We were in Maine last weekend for my mom's 80th birthday. I do like the weather here better; it's a lot more predictable. I think it was 70 degrees last Saturday at my my sister's house and then they got snow a few days later. Crazy! Of course our summer days will go up into the 90s and sometimes even hotter, but we low humidity. :D


Veronica

Yup - 70 in Maine, then snow, and then flooding! And it is mud season now :D. I've ridden my MTB a total of 3 times this year (if you don't count the fat bike, which doesn't really count). Need to get back out there, but it looks so much nicer out in Cali than here.

SheFly