Mark and I headed out to Colossal Cave mtn park again to fine tune the upper alignment and get another pair of eyes on my “highline” drop into the La Sevilla campground.
The snow level was below 6000 feet, and the clouds cleared just enough to give us a view of the south side of the catalinas as we headed out there. I don’t think the temperature rose above 50 all day, and clouds were gathering around us. But it was actually a perfect day to go scout out trail. All the pounding rain yesterday meant we could really see where the water was going. I noticed that our original alignment took us through some sticky clay, so we re-routed.
We also re-worked the gnary wash crossing of death. Our original plan was to blast some huge rocks to make way for the trail. But now we’re taking it EVEN FURTHER back on the wash, to a still gnarly but more do-able crossing. It’s going to be quite a trail building challenge but the end product will be worth it.
Once out of that wash we continued on my highline to gnarly crossing #2. It worked out better than I thought, and Mark was quite happy with it. From there we found ourselves in a large boulder field, so we took it straight through. This will be a very, very nice section of the trail when it’s done. Challenging, but not so hard that an intermediate rider couldn’t handle it. The views alone are worth the price, anyway.
From there we cross a few more interesting crossings, then turn and drop down to the picnic area. I’m quite pleased that the highline worked out. To have singletrack heading out of the picnic area will be so much more attractive to day hikers, not to mention how fun the boulders and crossings will be. It’s satisfying because if I had not been participating in the trail scouting it probably would have ended up dropping to the road well before the campground.
Afterwards I donned a bit of warm clothing for a Suburbo ride. The air was brisk and fresh, so it felt really good. I sneaked through the silent foothills with my lights off, enjoying the last moments of sun light from the west. When I got near traffic I started up my HID, then kept a high pace along the powerline over to Finger Rock wash. The downhill wasn’t too cold, nor all that wet.
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