Fast And Rippin' Trail, as opposed to our original plan of SART.
We ended up doing Backbone between Kanan and Corral today. JD showed up at
the house around 10am and after a few last minute bike adjustments by me we
were on our way, unfortunately JD's 1/4 cup of coffee didn't last as long as
my few bits of maintenance.
Looked to be a perfect day weatherwise.
Quite a few people at the trailhead but thankfully everyone we encountered
on the trail was pretty cool. The initial pitch up to the top of T3 kind of
blew me out and it took the next 2 hours for me to recover from it. I was
really slow, even on the flat and downhill sections between Kanan and
Latigo. From Latigo we cruised up the motorway rather than the trail and we
walked a bit since I still was feeling really sluggish and a little off
(gotta get more sleep). When we dropped down to the top of the Solstice
section I was debating making that our turnaround point but after a rest of
a few minutes of rest we were on our way dropping into Solstice, and
Solstice should definitely not have been skipped today. It was a blast.
Without water in the creek all the creek crossings were cleaned by the both
of us.
We were soon at the turn out of Solstice and on our way to Corral. Here's
JD cleaning a nice stepup on the minor climb out of Solstice:
http://homepage.mac.com/getosx/backbone/jerry1.jpg
http://homepage.mac.com/getosx/backbone/jerry2.jpg
At Corral we decided to retrace our steps on Backbone rather than climbing
Castro Motorway and it was an excellent choice. The section from Corral
back to the bottom of Solstice Canyon is just rippin'. Again, heading back
up Solstice we cleaned everything except for the very last creek crossing
(since I'm an idiot and forgot that I had switched my focus button from the
shutter release to another button on my camera those were way out of focus).
Here's JD rolling up and over a couple of cobblestones about half way up the
canyon:
http://homepage.mac.com/getosx/backbone/jerry3.jpg
http://homepage.mac.com/getosx/backbone/jerry4.jpg
http://homepage.mac.com/getosx/backbone/jerry5.jpg
http://homepage.mac.com/getosx/backbone/jerry6.jpg
Thankfully I was back up to speed climbing Solstice but it still wasn't
enough to keep JD in sight, he flew up the overly sanitized Solstice
switchbacks after the last of the creek crossings. The next sections before
and after Latigo were fast and furious, and then it was a mellow climb back
to the top of T3 with the short, rocky descent to the truck.
Greg