Blazing Trails at Water Dog

It was a sunny, crisp late fall California morning, the kind that promises to warm up quickly. So Jill, Cindy and I were itching to hit the trails with their post-rain tackiness. But this time, instead of grabbing our bikes we grabbed McClouds, Pulaskis and other trail building tools and got to work. ‘Cause Mother Nature may have created the forests and grasslands, but she doesn’t build the trails we ride, run and walk on. Volunteers do.

Our destination: Water Dog Lake Park in Belmont. Water Dog offers a rare taste of wilderness in the middle of the urban Bay Area: its canyons are deep, its bay-facing vistas expansive, and its streams largely untouched. How wild is it? Well, mountain lion sightings are not unusual.

Water Dog is also rare in that its trails not only welcome mountain bikers, its trails were largely built by mountain bikers. The singletrack designed by John Finch, Berry Stevens, Patty Ciesla and others is often technical, with ladder bridges and narrow boards allowing the trail to hug the canyon’s steep slopes. Water Dog delights thrill seekers, but has a reputation of leaving less skilled riders battered and bruised. More than one of my friends has been badly bitten by the ‘dog.

But on Saturday, my friends and I came out to Water Dog to build an easy-rated trail around the lake and tame the beast just a little. Led by Kevin Sullivan, a Belmont Parks & Recreation Commissioner and fellow mountain biker, we joined a team of other volunteers working on the new-and-improved Lake Trail. Volunteers have been working on this trail since before 2008, when I first joined a trailbuilding crew and helped pry out a small boulder.

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After a few hours of scraping hillsides, lifting lumber, digging foundations and drilling boards, we reaped the sweet rewards with a spin around the park. I strapped on the GoPro to capture the dizzying descent down the 17 well-banked switchbacks on the Finch Trail. Thank you, John, Berry, Patty and Kevin. It was totally awesome and only a little gnarly.

If you were building a mountain bike (or walking) trail, what would you want it to be like?

 

Duck Hunting in a Birdwatcher’s Paradise

Caution: If you think hunting is a barbaric activity that has no place in the modern world, you might want to stop reading now. Because this post is about shooting ducks, and I’m not talking about shooting with a camera.

Strictly speaking, I’m not a birdwatcher. But I live and work near San Francisco Bay, a major stop on the Pacific Flyway that draws in an amazing assortment of birds: great blue herons, snowy egrets, red-tail hawks, white pelicans, skinny-legged avocets and ring-necked pheasants (my personal favorites). If you walk, run or ride on the bay trails you can’t miss them.

Of course, there are ducks too. And wherever you find ducks, you find duck hunters. Even today, in the middle of the second largest metropolitan area west of the Mississippi, there are duck hunters and legal duck hunting just minutes off the 101 freeway, right in the heart of Silicon Valley.

On Sunday, Dick and I took an easy ride on the baylands where we met a group of hunters coming in from a morning hunt. The duck blinds on the salt ponds are open to the public on a first come, first serve basis, organized by a clipboard at the trailhead. As with all hunting, there are licenses and fees and lots of strict limits. But now the salt ponds are open to all, not just members of exclusive duck clubs, like it used to be.

Now, I’m not a hunter and I can’t see myself killing animals for sport. Yet as a meat eater, I don’t feel right criticizing those who kill the meat they eat. Hunting is a highly charged issue that brings up strong emotions on both sides.

What I find most interesting about hunting on the baylands is how hard hunters have worked to maintain access against formidable public outcry. Hunters are about as popular with birdwatchers on the bay as cyclists are with hikers on trails or drivers on the road. Maybe their slogan should be “Share the marsh.”

What do you think of duck hunting in a wildlife preserve? Does the advocacy work that hunters have done to keep wilderness undeveloped offset the fact that they’re killing wildlife?

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On Pumpkins and Other Weighty Matters

I like pumpkins. I like the way they look, all orange and round (or not). I like the way they taste, whether sweet and spiced or roasted and savory. Pumpkin pie, pumpkin soup, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin ravioli. Pumpkins make me smile at a time of year when it’s getting colder and darker by the day.

So it only makes sense that I would look forward to the annual Pumpkin Ride hosted by ROMP, the local mountain bike club. The ride starts at about 3000′ on the ridge line, then drops down to a pumpkin farm on the coast where we select as big or as many pumpkins as we’re willing to haul back up to the ridge. Costumes are strongly encouraged, as if hauling pumpkins uphill on a bike wasn’t silly enough.

The record pumpkin weight dragged back up to the top is an unbelievable 112 pounds, made possible by a BOB trailer. This year’s winning weight was a mere 38 pounds, strapped directly on the bike with some engineering ingenuity and duct tape, of course. Still outstanding.

The next day, as Dick and I headed out for a brunch and grocery shopping ride I wondered: how do my overstuffed grocery runs compare to the winning pumpkin haul? With Dick along, I was able to buy a lot more than usual, including a full bar restock at Bev Mo and full soda restock along with a modest amount of other items at Trader Joes. The numbers: 35 pounds for Dick, 21 pounds for me. Not 112 pounds carried up 3000 feet, but it was no sweat even without a trailer. I could have even added a medium pumpkin or two.

What’s the most weight you’ve carried on your bike?

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Before anyone wonders why this post about a mountain bike ride doesn’t talk about the ride at all, here’s a video of the best part–the totally awesome loooong descent down Wittemore Gulch with over a dozen switchbacks sharply cut into the hillside. I can see why the downhillers shuttle this run.

 

Halloween with Passion

It was a dark and foggy night, when mountain bikers gathered and unleashed their true nature, with food and drink, stories and laughter, and devilishly naughty deeds. Who else could be behind this madness but my friends Charles and Patty, proprietors of Passion Trail Bikes, the bike shop with a cult-like following of the most passionate mountain bikers on the San Francisco Peninsula.

I do not make these claims lightly. Passion Trails has the hand-picked gear, the expert advice and the individual attention that makes the shop top-notch, earning it an exceptional 4.5 star rating on Yelp. But it’s their commitment to our community that sets them apart. From leading weekly group rides to spearheading trail building to advocating for trails with our local open space authorities, Charles and Patty are there with passion and it’s contagious.

Who did you hang out with on Halloween this year? Are your bike friends your party friends?

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Trail Ride, Interrupted

Ugh! Sometimes a ride just doesn’t turn out as planned. It can start out just fine, then an issue or two later, the whole ride is completely derailed. We survived a navigational error only to succumb to the flat tire that couldn’t be fixed. Two tubes, three CO2 cartridges, a half dozen mountain bikers, and a helpful neighbor with an industrial sized air compressor later, we called it a day. But it was nothing that a good beer, a juicy burger and an iconic biker restaurant (and I mean Harley bikers, not mountain bikers) couldn’t fix.

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Cyclocross: Dismounts, Remounts and Other Antics

The other day, Facebook reminded me of a status I posted two years ago: “Wondering if I’ll get any cool footage at tonight’s cyclocross skills practice. The holy grail: a perfectly executed, perfectly captured, no-hop remount.” I had just purchased my iPhone 3GS and was anxious to test out the video camera. In fact, I think I was more excited about the video camera than practicing cyclocross skills that night.

My friends and my iPhone came through that night, and I did capture the holy grail. With a little help from YouTube I added a soundtrack with absolutely no video editing skills. The finished product:

Fast forward two years. The video camera on my iPhone 4 is much better and I’m no longer racing cyclocross. Why not? When it comes down to it, I’m just not that competitive. I found the skills aspect of cyclocross fun and challenging: dismounting without breaking stride, throwing the bike on my shoulder to run up a hill, and jumping back on without losing momentum or hurting my delicate parts. That was fun. But busting a gut to catch the woman in front of me? Meh, not important.

What I miss most is the vibrant, crazy race scene, which is totally my style. Where else do elite bike racers dress in costume? Cyclocross racers are serious bike racers that don’t take themselves too seriously. What’s not to love about that? And I love a race that’s actually just a rolling costume party.

Photo credit Lynne Lamoureux

Especially a race where a wrestling match breaks out between some of the top local men and women’s Masters racers, dressed as Mexican luchadores. Yep, Masters racers means grown-ups. In this case, the 50+ age group variety. That’s me rolling by unphased by the fight at around 0:18.

What do you think: do serious sports have room for this sort of goofy antics? Or does this kind of behavior relegate the sport to the level of professional wrestling?

 

Tracking Your Neighborhood Mountain Lion

This morning I read in the Mercury News that the town of Los Altos Hills activated its emergency alert system over the weekend, phoning residents that a mountain lion was seen in the open space behind Foothill College.

I’m sure the residents of the Emerald Hills area of Redwood City weren’t surprised. They’ve had numerous mountain lion sightings this year, including one closer into town near Sequoia Hospital. There have been so many sightings that the Mercury News now provides an interactive sightings map on their web site.

Are all these sightings a single cat, or are the hills full of them? That’s what scientists at Santa Cruz Puma Trackers are trying to figure out by using sophisticated gps collars to track these big cats. Their research in habitat fragmentation tells interesting stories about the lives of mountain lions.

On their web site, I found maps tracking cats in the nearby Santa Cruz Mountains such as a territorial young male in the Boulder Creek area. His range is approximately 20 miles in diameter, from Big Basin to Swanton to Ben Lomand. That’s further than the distance from Emerald Hills to Los Altos Hills.

A neighboring cat is 5 year old female, possibly with cubs. Her range? Almost as large as the young male’s, and clearly overlapping. And there are at least two other cats being actively tracked in this same area.

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After watching videos on their web site, my guess is that the sightings in Emerald Hills are probably multiple cats, and it’s completely possible that the cat in Los Altos Hills is from Emerald Hills. But without a formal program tracking them, we’ll never know how many are out there or where exactly they go.

Does knowing mountain lions are out there affect whether you go out onto the backroads or on the trails? Would you be afraid or excited to see one?

 

Snake Envy

I confess. While I was pleased with my wildflower photos from last night’s trail ride, I had hoped for more. I wanted fauna, not flora. A coyote, a jackrabbit, a deer or some wild turkeys would have made me happy. But we saw nothing. Absolutely nothing. Plus, Dick was riding with me this time, and there have been too many nights where I come home and tell him all about the wildlife he missed. Especially the snakes. Dick loves snakes. He wasn’t riding with us last year on the night when we two rattlesnakes, and boy he was bummed.

So no luck last night, but c’est la vie. We’ll see something next time.

Then, this morning I check in with Facebook and see that my friend Julie has posted an awesome photo of a rattlesnake from her ride, on a dirt road just up the hill from where we were riding.

Isn’t it badass? It was even coiled up. Seems like the ones I’ve seen before have been either too laid back or too busy running off to strike that classic pose. I suppose I should be grateful that I’ve never encountered an agitated venomous snake on the trail, but I can’t help having a little snake envy.

At least I had the GoPro helmet-cam running last year so I could share the experience with Dick, and relive that rare night again.

What wildlife are you just itching to see on the trail? If you saw rattlers on the trail, would you be excited or head straight for the parking lot?

 

Wildflowers of Late Summer

You can tell fall is on its way when the oak leaves start to turn red. The poison oak leaves, that is.

Dick and I shared a dirty little bike date at Arastradero Preserve tonight. Unlike most summers, when I rode there every Monday night, I’ve barely been out to the park this year. So it was particularly sad that summer is nearly gone, and the wildflowers, so fresh and abundant in spring, were fading like the setting sun.

Here’s what we saw tonight, which stand in sharp contrast to the wildflowers of spring.

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What signs do you see that summer is ending?

 

Charmed by a Snake

“It’s a snake? I LOVE snakes!” Did I really say that tonight? How did that happen?

Being from Louisiana, I grew up with a healthy respect for snakes. We have cottonmouths, rattlesnakes, copperheads and coral snakes–every venomous snake in North America. Plus big fat water snakes, long skinny black runners, and kingsnakes tough enough to eat them all. Scary stuff. In California it’s much simpler: stay away from rattlers and you’re safe. But that didn’t mean I enjoyed the company of snakes.

One of the things I love about mountain biking is the wildlife. Deer, rabbits, wild turkeys, and coyotes are commonplace on our trails. So are snakes. It took me years not to immediately recoil at the mere sight of them. Then comfort at a distance, and most recently, curiosity.

Tonight, when riding with crew from Passion Trail Bikes on their Wednesday Wride, we came upon this beauty, a California Kingsnake.

The guys in front of me stopped to check it out, and when I realized why, I pushed my way through the crowd and exclaimed, “It’s a kingsnake! I LOVE snakes!” As soon as I said it, I realized that I had been charmed by a snake. More precisely, charmed by my husband, aka Snake Boy.

Here he is with a Gopher Snake we encountered on another ride. See the excitement and boyish joy all over his face? He LOVES snakes. Is it possible for passion to be contagious? Even when it’s something you once avoided, even feared?

Have you ever become passionate about something because you saw the passion through another’s eyes?