Some pics from our Trail Cyn-Condor Peak epic, Nov 2005
Click on the pics for larger, higher resolution versions (250k to 600k) stored at mac.com
My account:
The day dawned radiant and beautiful. I just wanted to sit on the patio, read the paper, and drink coffee in the morning and beer in the afternoon. Plus I had a raging, mind slamming headache that morning. But, I know that I have a lot of riding to do to get back into good enough shape to do the epic rides I used to do. So when JD brought up the idea of checking out the Trail Cyn and Condor Peak trails I was happy to oblige. I've had them on my to-do list for at least 16 years.
Unfortunately, since everything was so comfortable at home I didn't get off my ass when JD arrived, instead him, me, and Kimberly sat around discussing the state of the universe over coffee for another hour or so. Knowing that the trailhead is less than 20 minutes away sure didn't help spur me into hurriedly loading up the Jeep. We eventually got rolling, the Jeep was on empty so I had to stop and get gas, and JD realized that he didn't have his shoes, but thankfully we weren't far from home. So a number of minor things added up to a major late start time.
We blew by the starting point because the locals appear to have removed the road sign for people coming up from the valley. I noticed our error when we got to the trailhead for the end of the singletrack further up the road. It was actually a good thing because we at least could see the trail conditions at the end of the ride along with getting a feel for the road transfer between the end of the singletrack and our parked car. On the way back down the canyon the sign for people coming out of the mountains was still there and unmolested.
It was a little warm by then but I was well hydrated. I was already getting a little hungry by then since breakfast had been hours earlier but I had quite a bit of food with me. We quickly got headed up the short climb away from the highway and dropped into the actual parking lot at the trailhead. There are a couple of nice old forest service cabins where Trail Cyn hits Big Tujunga Rd, I think Kimberly and I will check them out on a hike to the falls sometime this weekend. It was nice to see a very obese couple out for a hike, they started just a minute or two ahead of us and had a nice trail doggie along with them, and there were a few other groups of people within the first half mile.
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| Things started out mellow and pretty. | The singletrack was still pretty nice at this point. |
Soon enough we were on our own. The trail had moments of brilliance but mostly was boulder hopping in the lower reaches. The soles of my shoes are getting a little worn so I was doing the SPD slip and slide on many of the creek crossings. We finally got to a point where the trail popped up onto the side of the canyon which was nice to see since we'd have a little relief from the boulder hopping and we might even have a chance to ride a little. It was here that we encountered a group of kids and adults out practicing a little orienteering. They were a little amazed that we'd bothered getting that far up the canyon with our bikes and one of the adults said "It gets a little more rocky up ahead". I thought to myself, "Damn, how could it get any rockier?". Anyway, we ascended a bit, waited for the last person (and two dogs) we would see that day to pass by, and then rounded a corner of the canyon to come upon our first view of the split falls. We knew we had a lot ahead of us so we didn't hangout long, I just scoped out the path from the trail down to the base of the falls for a future visit. After dropping down to the bottom of the canyon above the falls we got to the rocky section that the orienteering group had mentioned earlier. Clearly they hadn't hiked very far past it because from there to the top of the climb the trail was just overgrown and steep, most of the boulders were behind us.
Jerry climbing the one section of Trail Cyn which isn't in the canyon bottom.
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| The falls. | One of the sections where the trail just disappears. | And back to more goodness. |
It was still pretty slow going due to overgrowth, I had thick vines and small branches wrap themselves around my cassette on more than one occasion, but there was a trail, and there wasn't too much yucca. I got my rear flat and continued pushing my bike until I got to a spot with enough clearance to work on it. I was still feeling good here but we had been out awhile and we were still in the bottom of a steep canyon where I was starting to feel claustrophobic. We kept forging on and with every break in the canopy I hoped to see the rim of the canyon. The view was a long time in coming. Finally we got out of the trees and we were in very high chapparal where we still couldn't see our goal of the top but we could tell we were on our final ascent. Unfortunately this is where I felt the worst of the whole ride. Thankfully after an hour of this with JD far ahead I noticed that he had stopped. I pretty much hoped that that meant he was at or close to the top and that thought gave me a second wind. Sure enough when I got up to him he was at the intersection with the trail up to Iron Mtn or down to Condor Peak. Thinking back on those last 4 miles I am sure that they are going to be a blast descending someday: fast sections, cobblestone sections, vege tunnel sections, ledgy/bouldery tech sections.
At that point if I had still had my topo with me (I actually did, I found it stuffed in a pocket of my Camelbak a couple of days later) I would have chosen the route up to Iron Mtn because that route would have been a short uphill to a long, and reasonably safe descent back to the car. Instead, the route to Condor Peak and past to Fox Mountain was ridgetop trail with lots of elevation gain and loss. But those downhills were a blast, as mentioned before, there's not a lot of steep, sandy trails in the Angeles NF, the trails mostly contour along the very steep mountains of the San Gabriels.
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| Jerry powering through the brush. | A little overgrowth. |
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| Jerry pointing out the trail while I fix my flat. | Looking back on the canyon. |
After boiling my rear brakes on one descent we arrived on the flanks of Fox Mtn for sunset. We snapped our pictures and moved on into the darkness without so much as a mini Mag-Lite between us and with the hopes that the trail would be somewhat rideable. The beginning sure looked promising as seen in JD's sunset picture of me. And even though the moon wasn't up yet Venus is currently bright enough to cast a shadow, don't know if the Goddess helped much but she did provide a little comfort. Unfortunately 25 yards later the trail eroded into nothing. Thankfully we still had some light for the worst landslide of the descent. As things got darker I got slower and where there was exposure I got off the bike entirely. The first 2 miles of the descent were pretty hairy, we were up high and the drops to the side of the trail looked endless. JD clearly has better night vision than I as I had to come to a complete stop in a couple of places just to try to figure out where the trail went. There wasn't much choice because we were on the side of the mountain but I just couldn't tell if the trail rose, dropped, or did a switchback. I was also starting to suffer some severe cramps in my quads, and in my left elbow and shoulder from having carried my bike so much earlier in the ride. But, the trail was still headed downhill and except for falling over too many times I wasn't expending too much energy.
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| Sunset on Fox Mtn. | Descending into the darkness. |
After hiking to Trail Cyn Falls last Friday with Kimberly I took this shot on the drive home. It shows the top 1/3 of the final descent of our ride.
Thankfully, I worked my cramps out and when we started seeing signs of civilization the trail was actually getting to be fun. The dirt was light colored, there were bushes and trees on the edge of the trail to hide the exposure from me, and I was actually riding alot. It felt like the mid- and lower-section of San Juan Trail at this point. High speed, sidehill, well-maintained singletrack with some switchbacks every once in awhile. Very fun. Until...
...the damned trail did an about face and started heading back uphill away from the road. It was very demoralizing but I got my third wind, put my head down, and just started pushing. I was getting to the point of doubting myself, thinking that we had gotten on some new trail that wasn't on the maps yet, and that we were headed back up into the mountains. I was also flirting with the idea that we had died, and gone to hell, or had the curse of Sisyphus placed on us having to push my bike up a hill forever into eternity. Thankfully, neither of us paniced, I realized that we had just missed the shortcut on the old trail alignment and we forged ahead on the new, much longer alignment. There weren't many cars out at this point so it was really hard to tell where the road was, and the few houses in Big T were long out of sight, but finally I started to see a big white patch below us that just had to be a turnout. Sure enough, in short order, we were on what had to be the final downhill pitch to the road. There were two good switchbacks, I was happy to make the first, and JD was happy to get redemption on the second, and we were on the highway. And I felt like death.
I told JD I was going to stick my thumb out for the first car that passed going our direction but he convinced me that the uphill in front of us was quite minor and we would have a nice coast to the car after we tackled it. We ate the last of my pretzels, I offered JD some water which he declined, I finished my Camelbak, and we were on our way wobbling back and forth across both lanes of the road. The descent on the other side was fast enough that I was touching my brakes but JD went brakeless and he shot out into the darkness. At the next rise in the road JD was waiting for me and with my 4th wind we were over it and on the final coast to the car.
I'm grateful that we had no mechanicals on the descent, I'm grateful that the weather couldn't have been better, it was warm enough during the day to not get too cold at night, but it wasn't too warm that we were dehydrated, I'm grateful that I didn't have a cell phone otherwise I probably would have called for a helicopter ride, I'm grateful that neither of us fell off of a cliff or got eaten by a mountain lion or hit by a car on Big T (now that would have been ironic), I'm glad the Jeep started up, and I'm grateful for all the things that didn't happen that could have made the situation much worse.
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