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Subject: Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 11:39:41 -0700 From: Eric Muhler
Downieville Degenerate's Non-Epic Cruise - A Ride Report from the Lap of Luxury After all, it ain't named Uppieville!
Clairvoyant gold miners saw the future and picked the name with prescient precision. Ryan Christbaum, in his fading days of bachelorhood, lined up our three day hiatus to the Sierra regions for his freedom's swan song. The first day found us at Nevada City heading for the South Yuba Primitive Camp. Having wound our way deep into the river canyon, we headed up the canyon by car and parked at the lot above camp. We got out the steeds and headed up the dirt road for North Bloomfield. After climbing for awhile we found the little town of Lake City. This turned out to be a nicely mowed field graced with a stainless (but rusty) steel sculpture of a huge bouquet of steel magnolias. Soon we found the entrance to the Rim Trail which circumnavigates the Malakoff Diggins State Park with a beautiful singletrack that is mostly flat and buffed, but has its little, surprise, gear-destroying, climbs, and a bounty of zip-rippin' descents as well.
We dropped into the charming town of North Bloomfield. A biker named John we met up with asked an old codger walking up the road if he knew where the Missouri Bar Trail was located. The Old guy said "Whaaa.!?", evidently somewhat hearing impaired. I asked a nice old lady, walking with her cane up the one-block downtown, if this was indeed the town of North Bloomfield. She replied "I hope so!" with a smile.
We left John the biker right outside of town and took the singletrack detour to Martin Ranch. Eventually this led back to the dirt road which took us to the Missouri Bar Trail. This trail would be worth ten times the effort we had put into getting to it. What a gem of buffed, 1200 feet, descending. Shaded, thick aroma of sugar pines, ferns in the ravines like a San Francisco bar from the seventies. The riding was only impaired by the need to stop and get pictures of such glorious riding! Once down to the South Yuba trail, we were in for somewhat of a surprise. Despite the fact that the trail descends down the river gorge the trail alignment found a way to do plenty of ascending. In the ten miles back to the start (formally called the finish) we climbed about 1500 feet! As we traveled down the canyon we started to see and smell plenty of smoke. This wasn't smoke signal type smoke this was forest fire type smoke! We began to wonder if we were riding down into a fire that had started while we were heading out. It turned out to be smoke from fires burning in other areas that was blowing over the ridges and filling all the Sierra canyons. Bikers all over the area reported similar phenomena. You would start a ride in clear conditions, and then by late afternoon, smoke from many different fires would blow into your area and give you a little freak out.
At the end of the ride, Ryan gave evidence of a slight dehydration. We headed up to Downieville to find a campsite. There were plenty available along the river south of town, but a sudden urge to splurge seized our souls and we drove straight to the Riverside Inn and rented their last room. Ensconced in our two-room, four bed, two TV, suite with complete kitchenette, we had committed to the Lap of Luxury. There was no turning back. After pizza with fifty mountain bikers (many from Team Wrong Way) we returned to our TV sets and got a knock on the door from the manager, Chet. "You boys interested in the 9:00 am shuttle up to Packer Saddle?" he inquired. We had delved this far into ease and comfort, why not tread ever further into the heart of darkness and luxuriate as completely as possible? "Sign us up!" was our cheerful reply.
There is nothing quite as pleasant as chatting with your fellow mountain bikers while climbing steep mountains with your heart rate around 70 BPM. In my experience, this can only be done in the shuttle. If you pedal, the whole conversation happens between gasps at around 140 BPM. Of course the same distance takes five times as long, so you have more time to express yourself. Traditionally, (last year, a rather slender tradition) I have found myself sorely dropped off the back and end up conversing with myself doing grade, distance, speed, and time algebra to keep myself company. Then I bore everybody else, who has already finished lunch by the time I reach the summit, with algebraic data . The shuttle has its advantages.
We headed up the Deer Lake fire road, resisting the urge to poach the PCT. There is no good reason for keeping bikes off this trail, but they do. Stopping frequently for pictures, we traversed the ridge and eventually descended to Summit Lake. From there we did the classic downhill to Pauley Creek and back to "Downie"ville. We put in 20.6 miles and still managed to gain 1070 feet. That turned out to be sufficient aerobics for two seekers of ease and luxury.
Sunday it was off to Bullard's Bar. We cooked up a new route which involved riding up Old Camptonville, down to the reservoir, up 7-Ball, along the "frontage" trail on Marysville road, down Rebel Ridge, and back out the way we came in. This totalled 18 miles with a 1650 elevation gain. Did I say Rebel Ridge without giving a rave-psycho review?! This is the most fun trail of the weekend. If you could build a trail like it that went for ten miles, it would be the greatest trail on earth! In and out of the ravines, quick, buffed rollers that would make Great America roller coasters swoon with envy, shaded with pines and fir trees, this trail had all the fun and none of the pain. You had to exercise caution not to skid out on the thick oak leaves like Barb did last year, but other than that, what the heck; no ruts, no roots, no rocks, no pain. Nothing but smooth, fast, narrow, rolling thunder! Of course I forgot to mention the collapse of the XTR titanium cogset. While negotiating one of the tricky, rapid-transitions from 2-6 downhill to 1-2 uphill which occur on Bullard's Bar Trail with shocking speed, I ended up torqueing down on my cogs and the little weasels responded by flexing themselves into something resembling RoldGolds! After 45 minutes of gripping the outer two cogs with vice grips and bending, yanking and pulling for all I was worth, I got the things straight enough to hold the chain, and finished the ride in pretty good shape. However, after a finger dab on a particualrly narrow, tight turn, I ended up shifting a milli-second late, putting too much torque on these weakened cogs, and inducing just enough bendage that they once again had to be avoided. I finished the last climb of two miles in 1-5 which forced me out of my 3 mph comfort zone. I had to do between 4-5 mph, sweating like a Vizier in a Turkish bath, out of Cytomax, only letting Ryan put five minutes on me on the climb. Worried that this might damage his sense of superiority I kept the fire road descent back to the car down to 26 mph and only beat him by 3 minutes.
Our solar showers, uneeded so far, were waiting at 116 degrees and nearly boiled the skin off my scalp and back. I was squealing like a medieval crusader getting the moleten lead poured on their head from the castle walls. Very refreshing, indeed! Clean, we drove on to Auburn, had dinner at the same restaurant where Danny, Randy, Barb, and I ate last year, and cruised on home. It was the perfect capper to three days of downhill singletracking, TV-hotel camping, shuttle-induced, non-aerobic, climbs, and lap-'o-luxury mountain biking in general. Shameless!
STATS: South Yuba 19.18 miles 2320 elevation gain Summit Lake-Pauley Creek 20.6 miles 1070 elevation gain Bullard's Bar Reservoir 18.5 miles 1650 elevation gain TOTALS: 58.28 miles 5040 feet elevation gain Epic-NOT One tacoed XTR cogset No flats. One smoke filled canyon. One effortless, 20 mile climb. Four beds, two TVs, a kitchen, and a pizza.
Eric Muhler The Grand Vizier
ericmuhler@btceastbay.org
http://www.btceastbay.org