My Most Memorable Rides of 1998

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride - No, not the one at Disneyland but the epic mountain bike ride in South Lake Tahoe. Mr. Toad's Wild Ride (aka Saxon Creek Trail) is the hardest downhill I've ever ridden, errr walked. I started from Hwy 89 and rode the Tahoe Rim Trail to the Saxon Creek Trail junction. My favorite part was actually the climb up the TRT. The rim trail is a hardpacked, mostly smooth singletrack with a few challenging technical spots. To get a little feel for the downhill portion of the ride check out this Manitou rider near the start of the descent. By the bottom half of the descent, I was riding stuff I normally am too afraid of because I was tired of walking.

Daley Ranch - I rode this relatively new park in Escondido for the first time in May. There are tons of trails and some awesome singletrack. Why did I wait so long? Soon afterwards we heard that they had bulldozed the trails to smooth them out. That scared us off until late November when we decided to give it another try. From the looks of it only the main dirt roads had been bulldozed. We found even more singletrack than we did the first time we were here. I'm not going to wait so long to go back this time!

Cuyamaca-Laguna - We finally learned about a trail that connects Cuyamaca State Park and the Laguna Recreation Area. We've talked about a trail like that for years, so it was exciting to finally be able to ride it. We're not sure if it's a fairly new trail or we just didn't know about it, but either way it is fun. The singletrack connector starts from the end of the East Mesa fire road and goes through a high meadow ending north of Pine Valley near the Indian Creek trailhead.

Noble Canyon - We hadn't ridden Noble for a couple of years so we made this one an epic ride. We went up the Indian Creek singletrack, discovered a new singletrack that took us to Pioneer Mail, then rode over to the Noble Canyon trailhead. We then rode the really fun, 5 mile long Big Laguna singletrack before heading back to Noble via the Sunrise Highway where we had some great views of the desert. This would have been a great ride if we had stopped here, but the legendary Noble Canyon trail awaited us. Noble presented us with its usual assortment of big rocks and drops. We only had one crash in the group (wasn't me!) and no broken bike parts. I'll admit I played it smart and walked a few of the dicier sections.

Amateur Cup #1 - This was the first Amateur Cup race of the year at Snow Summit in Big Bear. Due to some late snowfall there was still a little snow near parts of the course and a lot of runoff from the snow on the course. The downhill portion of the course down Fern Trail was a blast because of the mud and slippery conditions. We did 2 loops of the course and the second time was even more fun than the first. Anyone racing on this day had to feel like a total kid again. Of course, that's why we all mountain bike in the first place!