Favorite Ride

Mount Falcon -> Lair O' The Bear -> Mount Falcon

What's your favorite ride?  If you are like me the answer to that question changes weekly.  There are so many good trails within 60 min of my house that it is hard to choose favorites.  This week, my favorite ride is shown above.  I have ridden Falcon to LOTB out and back so many times that I should be sick of it but I keep coming back again and agan to bask in the awesomeness.  In the weeks leading up to the 2010 Point 2 Point, I rode the complete out-and-back twice a week as part of my training and it proved to be a good prep for that awesome madness.  The trails offer the whole gamut of riding conditions: rocky-sustained climbs, 22%-grades, swooping fast singletrack, punchy hills, technical rock gardens, and some amazing views of city and mountains.

Why not 23% grades you ask?  There might be, but speculation based on last weeks discussion with some EECT teammates, we are pretty sure Garmin devices don't go above 22% so that is all I can report.  Who would ride something steeper than 22% anyway?

Moving on. One of the best things about the ride is that you can easily climb over 5,000ft in less than 30 miles without realizing you just climbed over 5,000ft in less than 30 miles. I attribute this to the constant changing trail that always keep you guessing, whooping, and grunting not to mention the 1,500ft gained within the first 3 miles of the lower Mt Falcon parking lot.  If you have time to ride the whole Falcon trail system in reverse on the way back you'll go over 6k.

Now that I have spilled the beans on some sweet but really not so secret riding, I will warn you that this trail is really popular on the weekends.  Some days I've ran into herds of trail runners, hikers, horses, and people just not really paying attention.  So if you want the trail all to yourself it would be best to do what I do and start at 5:30am on a weekday.  You can then relax in your cubicle the rest of the day knowing you hammered out some seriously sweet riding before most of your co-workers were even out of bed.