A Hot, Long Ride on Toad Day

Yesterday was the Warrior Society's Toad Festival, which I did not attend. The Toad Festival is named for the toad that the Sierra Club uses as an excuse to close Maple Springs road for six months out the year during toady mating season. Actually, it may have been conjuered up to keep over-zealous developers from cutting a major highway through the canyon and over or under the Santa Anas at that point. Anyway, the ironic thing is that the toad festival route does not include Maple Springs. The route is up Holy Jim to Main Divide over to Trabuco Trail and down. It's not a race, but more of a fun event for intermediate and better riders with lots of prizes.

Anyway, like I said I didn't do that ride but I wanted to do something that day. So I saw a post from a young kid named Kipp who is a serious rider. He is training for a 24 hour race (solo!) and was considering a 35-mile, 7200 vertical foot ride on the northern section of the Santa Anas (north of the Toad Festival). Notably, it did include Maple Springs road, home of the dreaded toad. Another rider named Mark also signed up with a 7:30 start planned.

As I was driving up to the start at the end of Mojeska Cyn Rd, I noticed the clouds starting to break up. It has been cool all winter and spring so far, and all week had been cloudy at least near the coast. But skies were blue in the Santa Anas on Saturday. Nice for views, but it promised to add to the heat factor. I loaded up about a gallon of Gatorade and water and we started up Harding Truck Trail. The ride up Harding was pretty uneventful, although there was less shade than I recall from past rides, maybe due to the time of year. It took about 1:45 to get to the top of the 9 mile trail/road.

After a break at the four corners intersection (where we would return after our climb up Maple Springs), we head down (and up) the Main Divide to the Silverado Motorway. This section of the Main Divide is very fast in spots and has one big climb with some loose spots. I was able to clean it, and although it was only about 80 degrees it felt hot due to some of the steep pitches.

Going down the Motorway is always an adventure. It is four mile singletrack trail, fast in spots, very loose and shaley in others. At the bottom we hit Maple Springs Rd. We took a short break, and started the grind up. We had already climbed about 4500 feet, and we had another 2700 to go. The worst part of Maple Springs is on the lower paved part, about 3 miles up, just before it changes to dirt. I started cranking, wanting to get it over with. Probably a mistake, especially since Mark started complaining a lot at that point. From there up to the top of Maple Springs Mark struggled, although his pace was OK. I had a few leg cramps, my first ever while pedaling (I've had others due to spinning a lot, then standing on the pedals on a downhill). But I was basically OK.

At the top of Maple Springs we were back at Harding with 9 miles of almost pure downhill to go. I felt good, but Mark was hurting pretty bad. So I stopped about half way down to make sure he was OK. At the bottom, Kipp had some ice cold water and apples waiting. Man did those apples taste great. Due to the heat, that was definitely the toughest 7000 foot vert ride I've ever done. I guess summer is here.

Mt Lowe Grand Tour With Thomas

Thomas returned but only for about a week, so we had to make the most of it. We decided to go to Mt Lowe on Sunday and do a a grand tour of most of the trails in the area. I had started a similar (but shorter) ride the previous weekend, but it was with a large group and I ran out of time and had to cut it short. So I was amped up to conquer the whole enchilada. The planned route was to start at the parking lot just east of JPL, ride streets over to Lake and Alta Loma, up Lower Sam Merrill ST to Echo Mt, up Mt Lowe Railway FR to Inspiration Pt, down Middle Sam Merrill ST to Echo Mt (again), down Sunset Ridge ST to Millard Campground, across Millard fire road to El Prieto ST, up Brown Mt FR to the summit, down Ken Burton ST, down/across Gabriellino ST back to the car. Makes me tired just listing the route!

The ride started out great, on a nice cool overcast morning at about 8:30. Going up Lower Sam was great. This is an extremely popular hiking trail. It climbs 1400 feet in about 2.5 miles. The trail is impeccably maintained. In fact there were two rangers grooming it that morning. We passed about 30 hikers, including a boy scout troop. After a short rest at Echo Mt, we started up Mt Lowe Railway. We snapped a couple pics of the fog below, and this is where I found out my battery was low and I somehow didn't bring the spare.

We started at an easy pace but soon started pumping harder. Before long, we were at Inspiration Pt and ready for the first reward- down Middle Sam Merril singletrack. As we were catching our breath before descending, we talked to a few bikers and hikers. I told one of the hikers our route and he warned us about the water in the creek that flows through the Gabriellino trail. He said we were in for a lot of hike a bike. We took it under advisement and headed down Middle Sam.

Middle Sam was in good shape, but it is usually pretty loose, especially on the lower part. Definitely a trail to use some caution on due to lots of exposure. After a short climb back up from Echo Mt, we descended Sunset Ridge. Sunset is fun singletrack with a lot of switchbacks with railroad tie steps. Makes it challenging! Rode through Millard Campground, crossed a creek and headed up toward El Prieto. At El P we took another short break and debated whether to put on leg warmers to guard against poison oak. Decided not to and headed down. We had a couple wrong turns along the way, but found our way down the fun, fast, twisty trail. At the bottom, took a short break before heading up Brown Mountain.

By now it was around 12:00, I think and although it wasn't a hot day, this fire road is totally exposed to the sun. So we baked pretty good for the 6 miles and 2000+ feet up. After another rest, we started down Ken Burton. Right away we could see it was really overgrown. But it was rideable and still pretty fun. At least until we started hitting poison oak. We got to one spot where the poison oak was covering the entire trail. We had to just plunge on through and hope we could decontaminate later. At the bottom of the trail we hit the Gabriellino. We immediately found out what the hiker had been talking about earlier. We had to cross the stream every few minutes, and it was 2-3 feet deep and about 30 feet wide. So we were doing a lot of slogging and dismounting. At one point we got to a spot where the trail seemed to go away from the creek, but was blocked off by a row of rocks. We didn't see any other way, so we stepped across the rocks and rode on. After about 15 minutes, we came to the end- a waterfall about 100 feet tall with no way around or down! So after determining we had no choice we turned around. At this point it was getting close to 2:30. Of course, it turned out that we went astray where we stepped over the rocks. When we crossed the creek at that point we found the real trail. 30 or 40 minutes and another 10 stream crossings later we were back at the car. On the way home, we stopped at a drug store and checked out the remedies for preventing poison oak. We each bought a bottle of Technu. At home I used it to wash up real well and now, 5 days later, I am rash-free. Quite an adventure!