Southern Backbone/Santa Monicas Ride

The weekend following the Palm Canyon ride, I joined an STR group of six riders to do a ride in the Santa Monica Mountains. I had done parts of the ride before, but it promised to include some exciting new singletrack trails. It definitely delivered. Mark, a rider from the Palm Canyon ride who lives in south OC met me at my house and I drove us up to the start in Pacific Palisades- right accross from Riviera Country Club. I had been in the neighborhood before, but this was strange parking here among the $5M homes. Anyway, the group was interesting mix of experienced riders. Two singlespeeders- one on a full rigid, and the rest of us on varying XC full suspension type bikes. Turned out that I was about mid pack on both climbing and descending. The singlespeeders were strong climbers but slow to descend and the other FS riders were mostly slower climbers. Anyway, we started by climbing Sullivan Ridge, a 1500 foot ascent. At the top, we went down Mullholland Dirt to a singletrack called Farmer's that is a fun, but very exposed little gem. Then it was a short climb up to the start of the first real technical challenge called Hectic. Wow, this was really technical for me! It was essentially a streambed with huge rocks, lots of drops, etc. Very steep. About 3/4 of the way down, I lowered my seat, which helped some. Next it was up Caballero Cyn Singletrack, which is a steep singletrack climb of about 2 miles- very nice and scenic. At the top, we went over to Eagle Rock and did that loop. The descent on the back side of Eagle Rock was more technical than I remembered- fun! After that, it was over to the Backbone -Will Rogers trail. Very fun, fast singletrack. After a few miles we turned left on J-drop. This was probably the most technical (or at least comparable to Hectic) with lots of steps, steeps, and switchbacks. I did pretty well on it for me, with my seat down the whole way. At the bottom was an abandoned house which one of the guys said was a house owned by a Nazi infiltrator or something during WW2. We climbed out from there up the driveway and onto Sullivan Ridge, then back down to the cars. An awesome ride with plenty of exciting technical singletracks and good climbs.