Santa Monica Mountain Rides

I thought that I would take the time to write an entry on the riding that I have been doing in the Santa Monica Mountains. All of my family, friends and colleagues have already heard about most of this ad-nauseum, but hey, there are more ears, or rather eyes, out there for me to talk to!

For the last couple of weeks I have been taking rides into the Santa Monica Mountains on the weekends. It is such a great escape from the urban life of Los Angeles. It is really just like being a kid again and going exploring for a few hours on the weekend. It is so close to home but feels so far away! I have previously mentioned some of my journeys in a previous blog entry but now have pictures to show for it. The first batch of pictures is from August 5th and was my first journey up into the Santa Monica Mountains by myself on my mountain bike via Brentwood. They give you a little bit of an idea of what it looks like up there and how quickly you can leave the urban sprawl behind. These photos were taken with my camera phone only about a mile or two into the Santa Monicas from the trailhead. In the first three photos, you are looking west down into Mandeville Canyon. While the fourth shows you a bit of the fireroad that comprises this section of trails and the fifth shows you the entrance to the Whoop-dee-doos just off the fireroad. On this particular day I did not get much further than the Whoop-dee-doos. I was still not used to the steep climbing and was beat by the time that I got a couple miles in.

A week later, on Aug 12, 2006, I decided to give it another go and try to get up to the Nike Missile site on the tip of San Vicente Mountain and back for my weekly ride. There are a few pictures from that trip hidden deep on our personal website. On this particular day I started on the Kenter fireroad and headed up the hill. As you can see in the first three photos, it was sunny but kind of hazy on this particular day. This time I did not stop at the Whoop-dee-doos on the way up the hill, I was on a mission to get to the top! So I proceeded up the fireroad to Canyonback, above the Mountain Gate ritzy housing tract and golfcourse, along the trail to dirt Mulholland and finally made it to the Nike Missile site on the top of San Vicente Mountain. There are some beautiful views from up there. You can see most of the LA Basin on one side and the San Fernando Valley on the other. Underneath you is Mandeville Canyon and off to the west is the Pacific Ocean.

After seeing all of these great sights, I was really hooked (you know fitness coupled with exploration can be an addictive combination!). So after my back had healed (I mentioned that I hurt my back in an earlier blog entry and it took the better part of August to heal), I decided to head back up into the Santa Monica Mountains again on Sept 2nd to see some new sights. Since I am trying to increase my fitness level, I decided that I was going to retrace some of my previous trips to try to meet up with a ride that was organized by the North Ranch Mountain Bikers. The ride was to leave from the south end of Reseda Blvd and precede to the Hub in the middle of the Santa Monicas. The group was supposed to meet at 9:00am at the south end of Reseda. I decided to ride in from the westside and started in from Brentwood a little later than I had anticipated at 8:30am. Needless to say, this didn’t leave me much time to get the 6 miles over the mountain! As you can imagine, I missed the group but kept on going until I reached the intersection of the Temescal Ridge Trail and Dirt Mulholland. At that point it was starting to get a little bit hot and I stopped for a few minutes and talked to a very pleasant man and woman that were also taking a break (it really is amazing how many pleasant people are in the Santa Monica Mountains on any given weekend). After an extended gab session about some idiots that they had run across smoking pot in the Santa Monicas earlier (really a stupid idea if you know anything about the ecology of Southern California, but then again pot-heads were never known for their brain cells!), I continued on the next 2 miles to the Hub. The Hub is a very interesting place. It is overlooked by a very interesting looking peak and consists of a signboard, a trashcan and a Porta-Potty. You can see the signboard behind my bicycle in this photo. At any rate, as I was taking a break in the shade of the signboard (the only shade around) I ran into another guy on a mountain bike and the organizer of the North Ranch ride that I had missed earlier in the morning! I then started the long 11 mile trip for home. I think that I bit off a little more than I could chew a little bit too late in the day because I was so hot and tired by the time that I made it back to the Nike site at the top of San Vicente Mountain that I had to sit down, eat and rehydrate for about 30 minutes before I could even begin to think about starting my trip back to Brentwood. Compounding the problem was the heat. In the Santa Monicas, you notice that there is NOONE left up on the trails after about 11:45am on a summer day. The only ones left up there are the folks like myself whose optimism is only outwieghed by their stupidity! At any rate after soaking my bandana and jersey in water, I made my way down the mountain and home.

I have not yet decided if I am going to repeat the trip a little bit earlier or whether I will try an alternate route. Wish me luck!