One of the things I do is cross the San Gabes north to south (or vice versa), usually on pavement. I mostly finished building my 'alpine touring bike' recently, so I finally have a bike that I can do these sorts of rides on. For this trip, I took the train to clean safe and beautiful Union Station to take the metrolink to Palmdale, another wonderful place to leave as soon as you can. The metrolink ticket was only $10! Very nice. I was off work a little after 1800, train to Palmton leaves at 1940, and I was in Palmton by 2140 or so. Got an Al Pastor burrito and strawberry beverage and headed east onto Avenue Q, which goes dead straight for quite some distance. I marked a large wash on my map as a probable bivy site and found a spot behind some bushes sheltered from the wind. The weather was fantastic, in the 60's with a light and consistent breeze coming from the southwest. I had my tyvek tarp, Klymit Inertia O Zone pad, and amazon Aegismax cheapo extreme brutalist Chinese duck slavery genocidal super-bad-guy unfairly harvested down bag, which is rated to about 40* and was $90 at the time. Despite knowing full well some Chinese dude in a mask and gloves probably stuck his finger in the gooses ass when ripping the feathers out while the ducks children watched in horror, I still slept alright. My cruelty knows no bounds. I am slated for 'reprocessing' by the AI overlords in 2027 or whenever we get to grapple with that 'problem'. I wonder if they know how many computers I have shot and exploded? I am a war criminal through and through.
I didn't actually sleep all that great, though I was free of guilt from the whole sleeping bag thing. I haven't slept super great lately and I've been abusing caffeine as well as consuming enough sugar to give diabetes to ancient Egypt. I kept waking up for a lil bit and turning over, looking at the stars. Once the sun started to rise, I deflated my pad, changed my layers, and got ready to boogie out. There were some Cottonwoods growing nearby and I've become rather fond of them and their environment as of late, so I rode over to have a look.
The route in the morning was dead simple: continue east on Avenue Q, then south on Longview or whatever worked. It's all a big grid pattern out there so it doesn't matter a helluva lot what you do, just affects how the surface is. I have pretty wide tires (29x2.6) on this bike so unless there's a shitload of sand, I'm just fine with whatever there is. Anyway, I rode east then south to the 138 where I stopped at the Town and Country Market per usual for a sangwich and some sort of caffeine beverage. Sangwich consumed (to fuel my immoral hatred of waterfowl, of course), I set off directly south into Juniper Hills. The route I had planned for this trip was to take Burkhart Trail south to the saddle, maybe bag some peaks, and filter my way back to the city. There are a buncha interesting choices, from the Three Points trail including Waterman as a summit, to just taking the 2 to Islip and descending the south ridge. Lotta cool choices. Anyway, I ride slowly uphill south towards the base of the canyon Burkhart ascends only to find a ranch owns the land at the mouth of the canyon. Dangit! I wasn't bummed about this, as I figured I'd just find another way. Checked the map, looked for ways around, and then settled on riding to Devils Punchbowl and figuring it out there. Maybe I'd ride to Wrightwood and get over Baldy Notch as usual, or go up South Fork trail to Islip Saddle and so on.
I descended back to the main drag and made a right, again slowly climbing uphill, this time towards Devils Punchbowl. The sign for the place had a bike on it, making me wonder if it's 'bike friendly', as it were. I got to the big panel with the map and the rules said no bikes on trails. I parked, took a crap, cleaned up my stuff, then went to the visitor center. A nice guy working there chatted me up and I told him of how I'm trying to ride east to get over the mountains by some means. We spoke for a while and I asked him if it was OK if I took the Devils Chair trail to South Fork. He said it was OK so long as I didn't run anyone off the road. No problem for me as I am big and slow, and I do try my best to be nice to people. Since I'm on a bike I do have the advantage of covering more ground in a day, often times even if it's not a great trail for a bike. I also don't want everyone thinking just cause someone's on a MTB that they're goin super fast and all that. I strongly dislike the rules and regulations that deny trails to bikes, as since I don't own a car that essentially stops me from being able to go there at all (I cannot teleport my bike to the other end of a trail, obviously). Anyway, so I set off on the trail to Devils Chair. It starts up along the edge of the canyon before turning east, where it gets real cool. Easy climbs and descents with a great view on excellent trail, really fun. I hiked to the chair and checked that out. From the chair eastward it gets a lot rougher, descending into the canyon where the trail is hard to follow crossing the creek. I cut some branches and moved stuff around to make it much easier to see the trail and cross the dry creek. After this it climbs the other side of the canyon steeply with full sun exposure. The trail becomes much narrower and very loose as you get close to the saddle, which was a challenge with the bike. Despite my bike being titanium and carbon and covered with really lightweight parts, it is still a big heavy object to carry on a steep loose burned trail with real consequences for falling. I was carrying 6 water bottles, about a gallon and a half of water, plus sleep kit and food etc. Not heavy for a touring type bike, but still a heavy object. South Fork looked cool and wet from the saddle, and the trail looked easier. The trail was not easier, and I still had to be real careful in sections to get down safely.
Upon reaching South Fork, I used the latrine again, then hiked up a bit to where the South Fork trail climbs up the western face of the ridge towards Islip Saddle. I stopped at some pools, washed off, drank lots of filtered water, and relaxed for a bit. Around 1430-1500 or whatever, I started up the trail, figuring I'd show up at Islip Saddle around 1730. The trail is very narrow, sometimes less than a foot wide, with a rock wall on the right and a big drop on the left in many places. This would be a really cool hike at a chill pace, but with a big bike it's a slow pain in the ass with risk. I slowly made my way up the trail, very carefully in a lot of places (a lot), as there were very real consequences for falling, and since I had to keep changing my plans based on route availability, nobody knew where I would be found. Lots of slipping on loose dirt and rocks, twisting ankles, rocks rolling onto my ankles, me kicking my ankle with my other foot cause there's no space to maneuver, bike's rear tire/end sliding off the trail towards the void all the damn time since there's not enough space, rockslides, etc. It took a long time and a lot of effort and I even had to take a few short breaks. The bugs started to assault me further up but I had spray AND a new bugnet, so they were instantly rendered meaningless. My cruelty knows no bounds, not convenience nor how I dare to keep as much of MY blood that I worked so hard to build inside MY body. My body, my rules! That one horse fly never asked ME for consent! But, as one should, once that bitch landed on my hand after passing by noisily several times, I smashed the fuck out of her dumb bitch body and then ground her remnants into greasy paste on a log. Fuck horse flies. In all seriousness, that was the first horse fly of the season for me, and she was rather small, only about 3/4 of an inch long. She had been following me for about 10 minutes. I've had much worse luck with those awful tiny black biting flies this year.
Reed Spring is flowing well. I marked it and other water sources on my map. Always good to see what's running in the middle of summer after a low snow year. While most of this trail burned, the section around Reed up to the saddle is in alright shape. I wish I had seen it before the fire. A real shame how many conifers died. That's one of the things that gets to me about these fucking fires, that so many old massive beautiful trees, especially the conifers and long-lived Limber pines end up dying and either won't be back in my lifetime or that the climate will have changed enough that they simply won't grow back at all.
I finally reached Islip Saddle around 1930, 2 hours after expected, 5 hours to cover 5 miles, and was relieved. A small group was camping here and I nodded hello to them. I reinstalled my quick release pedals (without them this trip would've been hell), put my helmet on, and started down the closed section of 39. It's always a bit of a trip when you start riding down a big mountain going fast after pushing up it going slower than walking speed. 35 miles up from the desert at a slow pace, then 35 miles down the other side doing up to 40mph with almost zero effort.
Numbers wise I did 83 miles with 6,700ft of climbing, which in no way reflects the difficulty and exertion experienced. If the trails were in their best shape, then maybe. It felt harder than when I did Baldy North Backbone by bike and that was 100mi with 13,000ft of gain or so.
Some important lessons and points:
-The MKS EZY quick release pedals are incredibly valuable for these sorts of trips. Forgive how retarded I am with words, but the pedal simple slots into a unit threaded onto the crank arm. On the unit is a spring-release collar which you depress then rotate like a child resistant pill bottle. Activate that collar and you can remove the pedal. Then you can walk alongside your bike without the pedal tearing your leg to shreds and pushing you off balance and sending you over the cliff end over end where you will slowly die alone with expensive bike parts scattered about. Very valuable bit of kit, this!
-The new bike frame can carry a lot of water! I didn't have nor need the maximum amount of bottle mounts for this trip, and I carried 6 bottles, 5 of which were liter bottles, hard to find since most bike bottles are a bit smaller. I'm a thirsty boy who goes to thursty places so I carry a lot of water. I did not run out of water on this trip, and showed up at Islip Saddle with 1.5 spare liters, which I then dumped since I was going to refill at the 4000ft spring on 39. In full maximum water desert mode, this bike can mount 8 water bottles. More realistically for a long trip with a rear rack, I'd likely have 6 bottles and at least a 3l bladder in the frame bag, for trips where you won't have water resupply each day.
-Footwear: I wore my Five Ten Guide Tennies, which had a mostly slick sole. All my non-bike/SPD shoes are so worn out that they're also slick, so these were the best I had. I now need to buy something that doesn't suck. Ordering some Jim Green African Rangers, which are a leather boot with a low top and the option for a barefoot sole. They're available with Buffalo hide instead of cow leather, which I will likely choose. I want a low top light boot that's durable and can be resoled easily, something that lasts for years, as I'm tired of new trail runners or whatever every year that let tons of dirt in and shit. I am also buying a decent pair of trail gaiters that attach using conventional methods. The Dirty Girl gaiters are good, but the velcro attachment isn't really that great for my bushwhacking purposes.
The higher top on these boots with gaiters would've helped with how many rocks fell on my ankles, and when I repeatedly kicked my ankle with the edge of my soles trying to maneuver on the very narrow trail with a bike. It will also keep more dirt, stones, seeds, and other crap out of my feet.
-It would appear some people have done maintenance on the upper part of South Fork Trail, within 2mi of Islip Saddle. Bless you guys! It is a beautiful trail that I think deserves to be experienced. I didn't have the time nor energy to work on this trail. There is so much work to be done and it's pretty long for 5 miles.
I think that's it for now. Cheers.
TransGabriel #unknown: South Fork Edition
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Taco
- Snownado survivor
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