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Tour de Los Padres 2024

Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2024 9:49 am
by dima
I toured the Los Padres again this year. Somehow they made it even harder.

The TDLP is a bike-packing race through the back-country of the Los Padres national forest. Due to insufficient fitness, this year I rode the tour route, the shorter option: 186mi, 18.5kft gain.

As usual, this is mostly routed through unmaintained dirt roads, which aren't traversable by vehicles anymore. Our two previous rainy winters weren't kind to these roads: there's now a ton of mud, washouts, slides and rock-fall everywhere. And at the higher elevations there's still a lot of snow.

Does anybody have any idea which roads are fully abandoned, and which ones will eventually maybe get some work? Will the road around Big Pine Mountain ever be passable again? Buckhorn? Juncal? What about something like Camuesa? Is that the domain of volunteer trailbuilders now? It would be a bummer if these were to disappear, and only so much is possible without the support of the LPNF.

I'm going to start aggressively editing the OpenStreetMap data to downgrade these from "roads" to "trails", or even as "abandoned roads", so that the map reflects conditions on the ground. If anybody knows what LPNF is planning here, tell me.

From past experience, this route should have taken me 2 days, but instead it took 3.

The rig at the start:

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No saddle bag at all. Backpack primarily for water. I used an old climbing chalk bag as an easily-accessible feed bag in the front. New tiny bullhorns and grips. I think this was all a good setup. The 3" tires were quite nice in these conditions, but likely did slow me down. Something smaller would probably have been better.

The tour route group at the start:

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Mostly hard-tails. I think a full suspension would be even better, but a few people brought rigid bikes. That sounds crazy to me, but I guess they managed.

Alright, at the start you're on some loosely-defined trails approaching Mt Pinos from the NE. It's an OK double-track in a few places:

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You meet an OK dirt road, climb to ~ 7500ft, and descend the McGill trail. This is usually a nice MTB trail, but was mostly snowed over this time. Then you're on pavement, and on some more single-track here and there, and you descend partly down Quatal Cyn rd, and then off to the side, to some motor-bike trails. It's a cool area

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Eventually you rejoin the roads, get your supplies in New Cuyama, and head back out into the forest. New Cuyama is the last pavement or cell service or anything for the next 100miles. Aliso Cyn rd climbs up into the mountains. It's paved:

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I was pretty gassed at this point, and took it real slow. Walked almost all of the climb up the Aliso trail to Sierra Madre rd. The sun set just as I crested at the road

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Made it a bit further to painted rock, and camped there. There was a nice little waterfall coming off the rock:

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In the morning:

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For the next few miles the roadbed is extra rough: a herd of cows walked through here after a storm. But it is pretty

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Further up you get out of the cow-walking area and into a rock-fall and tree-fall and rock-slide area.

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Chokecherry spring no longer flows into its trough, but it's still flowing well

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Past Big Pine mountain, more rockfall and streams where the road is supposed to be

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Some semblance of earlier maintenance:

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Descending towards Camuesa rd. This is the road:

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Camuesa rd is still epic

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You now have to dismount a lot to get around stuff. This is the road:

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Next day I climbed Juncal rd. This was graded up to Jameson reservoir, but not past that

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At the saddle you climb up the STEEP, but maintained Monte Arido trail

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We're going behind this thing:

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Following the ridgeline:

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Here was a fat rattler that couldn't be bothered to move or rattle or anything

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This was the 4th rattlesnake I came across. The first one, I didn't see, until he started to rattle and hiss from the right side of the road as I was riding by. I swerved to the left to avoid him only to discover that I was now riding directly towards ANOTHER rattler on the left side of the road. He started to rattle and hiss too, and I managed an ungraceful dismount, sorta jumping off, and dropping the bike at him. Everyone survived.

Anyhow, you get a glimpse of the ocean up on top

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And there's a dirt road. You turn left, the road ends immediately, and you're then at the start of the Ocean View trail.

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This is maintained. It's steep and undulating, and rideable only with a lot of effort. You pass around the back of White Ledge

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The trail builders built a series of benches along the route

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Getting them up here must have been quite a project.

Eventually the trail starts to descend

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You drop down to and ride Camino Cielo rd, which is another abandoned road maintained as a single track by the trail builders. It must have taken a ton of work to clean that up. Thank you, Get It Done crew! At some point the maintainance of Camino Cielo rd ends, and the route jumps off to a series of trails that eventually end up in Ojai. Then there's some stuff around the Ventura river, and the bike path back to the finish.

Whew. This took a while. It's the first time I started with the group, and it was really nice to cross paths with the other riders. Looking forward to next year!

Re: Tour de Los Padres 2024

Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2024 11:02 am
by Nate U
Great way to see a lot of remote territory. I want to explore more Los Padres. Your experience with the two rattlesnakes reminds me of a reoccuring stress dream I've had where in the process of trying to avoid a rattlesnake I realize I'm actually surrounded by them with no escape...

Re: Tour de Los Padres 2024

Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2024 1:12 pm
by Girl Hiker
Wow very impressive! I've hiked a few trails in Los Padres including McGill which is one of my favorites.

Those huge boulders look intimidating but at least you were able to get around it.

I love the pink bench!

Thanks for the TR & great photos.

Re: Tour de Los Padres 2024

Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2024 1:39 pm
by HikeUp
Where's the god damn Like button :)

Re: Tour de Los Padres 2024

Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2024 3:11 pm
by Sean
Thanks for the report. I was following your dot and wondered why it was taking so long. Those roads suck.

Re: Tour de Los Padres 2024

Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2024 7:26 pm
by Tom Kenney
Ha! Spectacular. I dropped in to post on my Castaic adventure, another non-San Gabriel non-hike, and find this wonderful epic.
HikeUp wrote: Mon Apr 22, 2024 1:39 pm Where's the god damn Like button :)
I fully endorse this sentiment...for what that's worth. :P Sometimes, I feel I haven't anything to say, and just posting 1.44 column inches of 'like' feels disruptive. It may be a hard feature to code for this flavor of forum software, or hard to do in a way not annoying to users. Sometimes I do have something to say...sorry!

Re: Tour de Los Padres 2024

Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2024 7:54 pm
by dima
Adding the "like" buttons like we had in tapatalk is actually easy; we can use the same extension they used. Can somebody prod me on the admin board to make sure I get it done? It'll take 5 minutes to actually add the extension, but if it somehow breaks something cleaning up the mess could be a pain, so I'd like to be more thorough about it.

Re: Tour de Los Padres 2024

Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2024 8:17 pm
by HikeUp
FWIW, I genuinely wanted to acknowledge Dima's accomplishment - wow!

In general, the "Like" button lets the poster know that I read it and had positive thoughts about it, yet didn't have any specific comment to make.
I think it's a worthwhile addition. Maybe call it a "Yeah that's cool" button. FIIK.

Re: Tour de Los Padres 2024

Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2024 9:04 pm
by Tom Kenney
dima wrote: Mon Apr 22, 2024 7:54 pm Adding the "like" buttons like we had in tapatalk is actually easy; we can use the same extension they used. Can somebody prod me on the admin board to make sure I get it done? It'll take 5 minutes to actually add the extension, but if it somehow breaks something cleaning up the mess could be a pain, so I'd like to be more thorough about it.
Once you've reached the summit, you still have the descent. HAHAHA!!!! :lol:

I'm sorry. As a life-long programmer, that feels like schadenfreude.

Re: Tour de Los Padres 2024

Posted: Tue Apr 23, 2024 6:17 am
by Girl Hiker
HikeUp wrote: Mon Apr 22, 2024 1:39 pm Where's the god damn Like button :)
Right??? I miss that! But not having it gives more opportunities for replying with a nice comment.

Re: Tour de Los Padres 2024

Posted: Tue Apr 23, 2024 1:06 pm
by AW~
I was thinking "cool"...but im too lazy to use a smile.

Re: Tour de Los Padres 2024

Posted: Tue Apr 23, 2024 7:08 pm
by dima
Tom Kenney wrote: Mon Apr 22, 2024 9:04 pm I'm sorry. As a life-long programmer, that feels like schadenfreude.
Did you just out yourself as a "life-long programmer"??? Want to help fix with the image recovery? :)

Re: Tour de Los Padres 2024

Posted: Tue Apr 23, 2024 9:24 pm
by Tom Kenney
dima wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2024 7:08 pm
Did you just out yourself as a "life-long programmer"??? Want to help fix with the image recovery? :)
I suspect I travel in a very different realm...and I'm aging out. Mostly it's C#/db stuff, but I've done all kinds of crazy things including (YUCK!) PHP. If you can describe the problem, maybe I'll see something and can ask better questions. I'm only moderately at home on linux, been Windows mostly.

Re: Tour de Los Padres 2024

Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2024 8:36 am
by jbreinholt
Well done, Dima! It was nice meeting you at the finish. I assume you made the 5:30 Amtrak, since I did not see you on the 7:45. (You might have beaten me to the last earlier bike slot.) But I did meet Brendan and we had a nice debrief. It seems like the three of us were all really close during the ride...It's amazing we never ran into each other (at least in daylight!) Hopefully we'll cross paths again some time. Let's chat more then!

Re: Tour de Los Padres 2024

Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2024 9:50 am
by dima
Great ride, and great to meet you, John! I actually couldn't get a bike ticket on the earlier train either, but the conductor took pity on me, and let me on anyway. I rode with Brendan for a while; had I known yall were hanging around somewhere, I would have joined. We will cross paths again1