Southern Sequoia Natl Forest

Horse Cyn, ?? Trail, SoCal Downhill, Sage Cyn Loop

Spring 1994

My friends who are primarily into riding motorcycles asked me to come out to the desert near Red Rock Cyn to hang out, maybe borrow a motorcycle and gear, and do some motorcycle riding up in the Natl Forest. I didn't really want to ride motorcycles that weekend but I had always wanted to do the above mentioned loop on my mtn bike. SoCal Downhill is a long, fairly steep sand downhill, drops probably 1000ft in 1/2 mile, starts in the trees and ends up in a desert cyn, has a cool motorcycle singletrack approach to it, and was a desert race destination since the late 60s. I had ridden it a few times on my motorcycle and ever since I got into mtn biking I'd wanted to do it on my bicycle. And this weekend would be a great time to do it since one of the members of my friend's motorcycle club was going to be 4-wheeling up to near the top of the descent to provide lunch, drinks, and gas for the motorcyclists, and I wouldn't need to worry about carrying extra water.

I arrived early enough in the afternoon to ride around camp on some of the motorcycle trails nearby and had alot of fun on the whoops. The next morning it was around 80 degrees at 8:30 so I figured I'd get going right away to get up the climb before it got too, too hot. We had camped near the aqueduct road which was going to add a couple of miles out-and-back to the loop, I could have driven closer to the loop but I figured it was nice out and I wasn't going to be hurting for water so I'd ride from camp. The aqueduct road is pretty flat, 4-cars wide, and lame but it gave me a chance to warm up for 2 1/2 miles before I started heading up Horse i Cyn. The bottom part of Horse Cyn is a steady climb on a sandy doubletrack that most passenger cars could drive with some speed. If I'd had even 1/8" narrower tires I probably would have had to have pushed through some of the sand but as it was I just had a few bobbles that I was able to pedal out of. After you climb up the wide part of the cyn the road becomes fairly steep and does two big switchbacks to climb up the canyon wall. This 9 mile climb ended up being the toughest part of the ride as the rest was either rolling singletrack, downhill, or flat.

This is almost at the top of Horse Cyn. You can see the road to the left and down in the bottom of the canyon. We had camped back around to the right of those hills in the hazy background. This was my trusty 1991 Fisher ProCaliber.

At the top of this saddle you have several options: back, left to head down the ?? Trail towards where we were camped, straight on some singletrack that drops out towards Lake Isabella, or right onto the McIver Springs jeep road or the ?? Trail that crosses back and forth over the jeep road. I basically chose the ?? Trail option. The section that I rode felt the same as it probably did when it was built 15 years before, it was pretty soft and narrow but had some cool rollers to it.

This was the condition of the ?? Trail when I did it. It varied from this wide down to about 6". The slope wasn't very steep so it was all pretty easy but it was pretty soft in places. If you look at a Sequoia Natl Forest map you'll figure the name of it out.

After a mile or so of this I popped back out on the jeep road which turned out to be just as fun as the trail in it's own way. A couple of 1/4 mile climbs and fun boulder (some perfect launchers) covered descents got me to the turn-off to So Cal Downhill at a total riding distance of 14 1/2 miles and where food and water were waiting. The turn-off is at a wide clearing off to the right of the jeep road. You ride out it 1/4 mile or so and you'll see a motorcycle trail popping off of the right. I think straight ahead would take you to a boulder filled cyn descent down to the desert. Anyway, it's about a mile or two on this motorcycle singletrack out a ridge to where the trees end and the desert begins. Until this point the trail is a gradual descent through Pinyon pines with some sections of deep, bobsled type trail. Once the trees end you can see several routes that just go straight down the face of the canyon. If you stay to the left you can stay along the top of the ridge for awhile before you make the final plunge. Since I was alone and didn't how long it would be before my friends would be along I took it easy on the way down. I was even able to stop to take the following picture:

I'm about 1/2 way down here. Just get back behind the seat and blast. The sand's pretty deep and coarse so you have a decent amount of control.

With an FS and 2.3 tires you could really scare yourself bombing down this hill. Once at the bottom I snapped the following shot and headed down Sage Cyn:

I'm pretty much at the end of the hill taking this from a little rise. I came down the trail to the right. The section with the longer steep section goes up along the left side of the picture through the boulders at the top.

Sage Cyn was a total blast! 4 1/2 miles of high speed, desert doubletrack dipping in and out of dry washes. Some really cool embankment jumps and some classic double-jumpable whoops. There were a ton of what I assume were bird hunters in the area because I was hearing several shotguns and the area is full of quail, dove, and chukar. I finally got down to the aqueduct road and had a nice boring 4 1/2 mile flat ride back to camp.

The ride was about 26 1/2 miles long, 2500ft of climbing, with a couple miles of sweet singletrack to which you could add, and a few miles of sweet doubletrack. If anybody wants to do big, steep desert downhills I've got several other ideas! Send me an e-mail at getnews1@dslextreme.com for more info.