Escaping The Rain At Ballinger

[WoodsChick]

I had planned to ride Stonyford last weekend but it was way too wet and snowy to get to the good stuff. I'd had enough of the rain and started looking around for some sun on www.noaa.gov. I found it at Ballinger Canyon in the Los Padres National Forest. We headed down Thursday night and were on the trails by 11am Friday...

We had the place all to ourselves, and the trails had no tracks on them at all. I guess nobody had ridden there since before the last rains. Conditions were perfect, the weather was perfect, our campsite was perfect...just a stellar day for riding!

This section had a high pucker factor...

My turn...

The wildflowers are starting to come out...

This was the only mud we ran into, but it was nasty. My wheels just quit turning, and I had to stop and scrape some of the mud off with a stick in order to continue. Reminded me of Carnegie...

We ran into some mud further down this canyon, too, but it was different. It was sorta sandyish rocky mud that had run down the canyon in the last rain...it was huge fun, even on a trials tire!

We headed out of the canyon and up onto the ridges...

We had to climb up in order to go around this huge chasm...

This stuff seemed to go on forever...

We dropped down off the ridge into a sandy little canyon...

There were lots of pokey little cactus things...

More to come...

 

[flying_hun]

Subscribed. Two weeks until Rich Oliver's Off Road Challenge.

 

[Twenty36_1]

Man, all of your pictures and locations for riding look epic! Just curious, do you take along extra fuel during the ride, or just watch mileage and return back to camp?

 

[Butch]

you

make

me

crazy!

I love/ hate you.

OTOH, I am going to do a ride in France. Neener neener. I will kill you with the pics.

Maybe.

 

[WoodsChick]

Subscribed. Two weeks until Rich Oliver's Off Road Challenge.

You guys are going to have so much fun!

Man, all of your pictures and locations for riding look epic! Just curious, do you take along extra fuel during the ride, or just watch mileage and return back to camp?

Both! We both have larger IMS tanks, but my 144 doesn't get very good mileage. I can get maybe 75 miles out of a tank. Eric's 250 has a slightly larger tank and gets slightly better mileage. If it's going to be a long ride we carry gas. In some areas, like Kennedy Meadows, we can stash gas cans on the way in for big loop rides and pick them up on the way home

you

make

me

crazy!

I love/ hate you.

OTOH, I am going to do a ride in France. Neener neener. I will kill you with the pics.

Maybe.

Yeah, well...so? Maybe I just won't look at those fancy photos from France, so take that, Mr. Neener-neener



I love you, too




WoodsChick

 

[WoodsChick]

Ok, so after falling down on the yucca plant we headed out of the sandy whoopy wash and back up to one of the ridge-top trails. What these trails lack in technicality they more than make up for in views

Mr. Happy with a snowfield in the distance...

We finished up the day with 50 miles of rockin' fun trails. We hit every mile of "motorcycle-only" trail, and used the ATV/motorcycle trails to connect them, but we did no road riding at all. Well, unless you count riding around to all the fire rings in the staging area looking for firewood We didn't bring any since we had no room with my 144 and the 2 big bikes on the trailer (more on that later.) We ended up with enough wood for a rippin' rager on Friday and another one on Saturday. Speakin' of Saturday, that's coming up next


More to come...



WoodsChick

 

[2strokeYardSale]

 

[WoodsChick]

Saturday dawned much cooler than Friday. We headed out of the valley via that singletrack on the spine. Notice that the only tracks were ours from the day before...

Now, I know it doesn't look scary in the photos, but this is what it looked like to me up on the spine...(keep in mind I can barely get a toe down on my way-too-tall bike)

You can laugh at me all you want, but my riding pants were full of bricks


The trail got a little more comfortable at the top...

We dropped back down to the bottom...

And headed back down into the canyon trail...

We were wishing for knobbies down here...

At lunch we decided to hie on back to camp and take the big bikes out to the Carrizo Plain to see if the wildflower bloom had started yet...

I acquired a fear of heights many years ago falling off the Rincon Trail down at Kennedy Meadows and I haven't really been able to shake it since. I'll attempt the gnarliest stuff out there, I have no fear of failure in that regard, but if it's anything that I can actually fall off of, well, I'm a wimpering crybaby. There have been trails in Utah where I've gotten off and crawled across, Eric riding my bike for me like a He-Man savior. I didn't want to ride down the scary spine trail, and Eric said we'd go another way. Halfway back I realized he'd tricked me and we were headed for the Downhill of Doom. I'd taken a photo of the trail map but hadn't looked at it since we'd been on the bikes. He, on the other hand, copied the trail map onto a piece of binder paper and he knew exactly where we were...jerk I made fun of his map but it was pretty damned accurate...

Anyway, I obviously survived. I told him to keep snapping away should I happen to fall off the side. It's not like he'd be able to stop me from tumbling to my early demise if he threw down the camera, and I figured he'd be able to use the photos in the ensuing murder trial

I made it to the next plateau and waited for Eric before going down the Dowhill of Doom Part II...

The high-exposure section in the right in this photo damn near gave me a heart attack...

I lived to tell the tale, obviously.
2 hours later I was on my SM610 headed for the Carrizo Plain.
You'll have to head on over to the Adventure forum for the rest of this story here... http://www.bayarearidersforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=363717

WoodsChick

 

[WoodsChick]

How are the trails looking in your neighborhood? I'd like to ride out there before it gets hot and dusty



WoodsChick

 

[OaklandF4i]

Damn.... I am so bummed I chose not to follow you guys down there! I was worried about the long drive and being skunked by a rainy weekend. Looking forward to the Husky ride at Stonyford when it gets rescheduled.

 

[WoodsChick]

Damn.... I am so bummed I chose not to follow you guys down there! I was worried about the long drive and being skunked by a rainy weekend. Looking forward to the Husky ride at Stonyford when it gets rescheduled.

Yeah, we were talking about you. Mostly stuff like, "He's gonna kick himself in the ass for not coming!" It's a long drive just for Ballinger but you would have had a good time with us out at the plain on your 450, too. We got hit by maybe 20 raindrops all weekend...we were very pleasantly surprised!

I'm hoping Stony happens by the end of April




WoodsChick

 

[grumpyman]

damn ... wanna ride a ridge trail ... thanx 4 the pix again

 

[2strokeYardSale]

How are the trails looking in your neighborhood? I'd like to ride out there before it gets hot and dusty

Dunno, I haven't ridden in weeks. I saw snow on the north face of Dogskin ridge today. Not hot but could be dusty soon.

 

[Roadstergal]

Amazing! Those pics of the landscape and sky are just beautiful.

The spine is crazy talk...!

 

[WoodsChick]

damn ... wanna ride a ridge trail ... thanx 4 the pix again

Well, there's a few to choose from down at Ballinger It's a long way from the Bay Area, but if you do Pozo, too, it's a good dirtbike trip. We had a blast riding the plated bikes through the Carrizo Plain, too.

Dunno, I haven't ridden in weeks. I saw snow on the north face of Dogskin ridge today. Not hot but could be dusty soon.

Yeah, it seems to go from too snowy to dusty all too quickly for my taste.




WoodsChick

 

[WoodsChick]

Amazing! Those pics of the landscape and sky are just beautiful.

The spine is crazy talk...!

Thanks, RG! The sky and landscape really made it easy to take nice photos, that's for sure. Did you see any of the Carrizo Plain photos linked at the end of the ride report? Now, that was some beautiful stuff!

WoodsChick