Mountain biking Guides and Trips
Trips
We camped at White Tanks Regional Park in Phoenix longer than anywhere else on our trip, mostly because the weather everywhere else was colder than we wanted to deal with. But as it turns out there is some great riding around there, including some "competitive tracks" designed for trail running and mountain biking. Also, being around a major city, Krispy Kreme was never too far away.
After dropping Anne's friend at the aiport in LA and an afternoon at the Getty Museum, we headed for Malibu Creek State Park. The next morning, we rode a tough loop on the fire roads, with great views down Malibu Canyon to the Pacific (our last views of the Pacific as it turns out). The tough ascent was somewhat compensated by passing through the location for the exterior scenes from M*A*S*H. There's...
On our way south to LA to pick up a friend at the airport, we manged to squeeze in a bike ride near Morro Bay. We found it online on the way down (loving the wireless internet), and we weren't sure what to expect but it turned out to be a great couple of climbs and descents with great views of Morro Rock and the Pacific.
Henry Coe State Park was one of CJ's favorites when he lived in California, and he was excited to take Anne there. It definitely delivered what we expected in terms of wildlife (hawks, deer, and a close encounter with a bobcat), views of the oak-studded hills, and almost perfect solitude. But what we hadn't counted on was that the steep roads and trails, which make for tough uphill hikes, make for almost...
Bend is amazing. There are hundreds of miles of trail, much of it interconnected, in the national forest around Bend. The town itself has lots of cafes, farmer's markets, organic groceries. A little outdoorsy lefty paradise, all fueled by the software industry (the Microsoft mother ship is only 15 miles up the road). The trail system close to town is full of 'enhanced terrain": jumps, banked turns. It's as close as we've found...
This was our third ride from the IMBA's list of "epic" rides. We haven't been disappointed yet. Though really almost all of the rides we've done could qualify as epics. Like many of the trails we've ridden, this one was mostly built as a mountain biking trail, with lots of banked turns and few unrideable spots (even for us). All in all it was a great day with our friend Reinar. ...
The mountain biking guidebook described this as 'euphoric single track' and it really was. We had a great time, but found ourselves whistling and singing to be sure we wouldn't find a bear around a corner. At this point, we're big fans of Montana and Bozeman in particular.
We really didn't think we would be up for this ride, and we were right. It was tough. 9 hours on the bike, starting at around 3500m and going up to 3700 before dropping, dropping, dropping along some pretty rough trail by our standards (use the little profile icon at the bottom left of the map to see the elevation profile of the ride). But the weather in central Colorado was unusually...
Because of our unexpectedly long bike ride the morning we left Arkansas, we didn't make it all they way to the Rockies, and in the high plains of Kansas and eastern Colorado, there are very few state parks. So we went somewhat out of our way to stay at Bonny Lake State Park on the extreme eastern border of Colorado. It was pretty empty, meaning that we were the only campers there....
After our ride on the Womble, we drove a couple of hours to Ft. Smith, Arkansas. We luckily ended up in a campground with a mountain bike trail. We set out the next morning to ride it, thinking it would be a 15 minute loop. Instead, the Springhill MTB trail was around 15km of tightly packed curves and straightaways through the forest surrounding the camping areas. Super fun! We came across an...
To the extent that we have a plan for where to go on our trip, it is using the International Mountain Biking Associations list of epic rides (http://www.imba.com/epics/). The first of these for us was the Womble, a nice single track ride through the Ouachita range in central Arkansas. We only did a short piece in the morning before it got too hot and looped back on forest service roads. We spent...
On our first day we drove from CJ's parents in Johnson City to Meeman Shelby State Park, on the Mississippi River north of Memphis. Anne was excited to see Tom Sawyer's stomping grounds since she loved the cartoon version as a kid and was singing the theme song. We found our camp and went out for a bike ride on the quiet roads through the forest, though we never made it to...
