[Closed] How many people here could honestly manage a 40 mile mountain epic?

"Allow one hour for every three miles forward, and half an hour for every 1,000 feet of ascent."

Heather Bash - Member

...and Naismith wasn't a fat I.T type he was a fit Mountaineer

How hard can it be. These are yanks who are reputedly overweight and slow. You should be able to do it easily in that time.

I would assume that in the 12 hours there is a three hour allowance for a very big lunch and a further hour for a mid sized late afternoon burger stop.

DO IT!
The whole point of an epic ride, is that's it's EPIC.

People tend to exaggerate distance anyway.

San Diego's 8 hours behind GMT, remember. So it should only take 4 hours.

My 8th bike ride of 2010 was 103 miles, all off-road. On a borrowed rigid singlespeed.

MTFU 😉

gothandy - Member
Those photo's look great. You'd be a fool to miss the opportunity! Go for it.

Posted 41 minutes ago # Report-Post

+1

First sight of a mountain lion and I reckon you'll do it in a couple of hours... 😯 😆

Definitely got to be worth a go, you'd regret it for ever if you turned it down 8)

I wonder is it this ride:

http://www.viddler.com/explore/johnnyfuel/videos/9/

Seems to only take them half an hour 🙂

If it were me doing it then I'd be worried about falling asleep and generally feeling yuk due to jet lag.

How hard can it be. These are yanks who are reputedly overweight and slow. You should be able to do it easily in that time.

You forget that this is California.

They're all freakin free radical consuming, clean living, uber healthy olympians.

Looks cool to me - can I swap with you?

You are doing it single speed too aren't you?

You are doing it single speed too aren't you?

Yes - Slow. Apart from the downs where I hope to redeem some kudos 8)

Just make sure you're waiting for the septics at the top of every climb and again at the bottom of every downhill, whilst all the time maintaining an air of nonchalance.
Forbid yourself from sweating too.

More gratuitous 'look where I'm riding next week' pictures 8)

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>I always thought it was a fairly good average for a mixed-ability group. <

Sure but that wasn't my point. I'll bet you haven't actually walked / climbed many 40 milers in less than 12 hours incl stops.

Looks good - I reckon you'll be quite tired after 40 miles of that terrain 😉

I'd stick pins in my japs eye to ride a trail like that. I can't believe the navel gazing you're doing.

Your sir, are a big pair of girls pants.

Heather Bash - Member

Sure but that wasn't my point. I'll bet you haven't actually walked / climbed many 40 milers in less than 12 hours incl stops.

That is exactly the kind of trail i love riding. I crave for rocky descents

I'd call 40 miles on the Quantocks an "epic", as, due to the short sharp nature of the hills you're either going up or down and you'd be lucky to get away with a total ascent of less than 10,000 ft.

Those pictures look magic! Just go for it. Epic isn't just a function of distance and time but also how technical the ride is, how many mechanicals you have, how many riders get left at the side of the trail to cries of "leave the weak". 😀

Epic is when you go out as men and come back husks! If you have the thousand yard stare and a post ride 16 inch ham and mushroom pizza feels like it's barely touched the sides, then you may have done an epic!

Do it and post pics, fella!

Cheers

Sanny

I'd love to have a crack at that lot. I wouldn't expect any problem. But go at your own pace not someone else's unless it's absolutely necessary.

BTW notice they are walking on the rocky bits anyway?

When a fat 40 yo devs retired from rugby and took up mountain biking he was given the chance to do a 1 day C2C hundred miler for charity. He bricked himself because he was the only novice in a group of gnarly shredders. He did 108 miles and 10000ft in 16 hours, loved it and decided that this was the game for him. Go for it, it looks magic and if you don't you are gay. That is all.

I remember being told it would take 3hrs to do the Slickrock Trail at Moab. It's 10 miles and we were initially thinking in the region of 90mins.

It didn't take 3hrs, it took nearly 4. OK, a lot of picture taking, re-riding sections etc but God it was hard. Oh and in that 10 mile ride I drank every ounce of the 4L of fluid I was carrying.

All those people saying it's a piece of cake may not have ridden outside of trail centres... Just be aware that terrain, altitude, heat/humidity etc can make a massive difference and if he reckons it takes 12hrs, then I'd at least go out prepared for 12hrs! Looks like a great trail though. If you don't want to do it, I'll swap with you.

I am with druidh - and I am only a year or two younger ( 🙂 ) and no superfit endurance athlete.

I would not be concerned about 40 miles of offroad unless it contained lots of very technical sections or tens of thousands of feet of climb

to put it in perspective the Bein a ghlo circuit is 35 miles and 5000 ft of climb and takes me around 7 hrs including picnic stops. Whilst I don't often ride more than that in a day I have done.

I don't know whether I'd make it but would certainly give it a good go 🙂

Even if you have to walk a few sections (nothing wrong with that ethos - I certainly do it) looks kinda exciting if not tiring - Go for it 🙂

I had the good fortune to live in San Diego for a year in 1995 (when I was 25) and I rode Noble Canyon. I remember it as a 12 mile descent and an 18 mile climb. I did it on a fully rigid Klein attitude but I would love to do it again on a good all mountain full susser.

(Ellsworth factory is near by. see if you can get a test of the 2011 Moment)

Most people park a car at either end and just do the descent bit !!!

Either way it is well worth the experience. go do it!

If you don't do it, you'll kick yourself for years to come. i'm 52 and would kill for the chance.

Didn't ride down Mammouth, CA, last year, still miffed........

Oooh, oooh, how exciting.

I know you'll be fine on the downs, so: Just really take it easy on that up section, walk if needs be.
Start eating for Britain NOW.
Take loads of fluid, food and energy stuff (as others have said) and enjoy.

You have a long flight back to recover.

Have fun and report back with pitures and how you get on.

Jammy git!

Have a search on the MTBR Turner forum for videos by "TiSSer". He rides round Noble, and is a pretty damn good rider. Some of the trails look awesome. Very rocky, very exposed and with the odd mental switchback or 10. Do it!

Ride Report

OK so I survived! Although in truth we didn’t cover anything like 40 miles. I owe this to the simple fact that even in California it gets dark at 5.30pm in January and the sun rise is a lazy 6.30am so with only 11 hours of useable daylight (that has to include breakfast, travel, fannying around etc), a 40 mile ride was never on the cards.

First thing I want to report on is my guide – Steve Gordenker. He is something of a local hero in the San Diego area riding community; the sort of guy that when you’re out riding with, more or less everyone that you bump into will know of him, usually via the MTBR.com website and more often than not because they recognise his bike (twas ever thus).

This guy is more than just a local hero though. He is someone that the STW community should adopt and take close to their heart. He doesn’t just embody many of the highly esoteric and utterly individualistic characteristics of many people here, he positively raises them by a whole order of magnitude.

Firstly, the guy rides a fully rigid, Jones 29er with a 26” front wheel that has a monstrous 3.8” front tyre. Oh and did I mention that he rides single speed?

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Yes seriously. All of you who joked I should ride singles speed should eat your words because this guy rode 24 miles, with 4000ft of seriously rocky elevation and descent on a freakin’ fully rigid, single speed, 29er hybrid. And he didn’t just ride it, I mean he rode the pants off of it. Steve is probably about the best technical rider I’ve ever met. His quick enough on the descents, on a rigid bike, so that I had to work to keep up on everything apart from the most rocky of trails (he did have a slight advantage in that he knew every single rock, pebble and grain of sand on the ride) but where he really excelled was in riding the technical features he’s built over the whole place (he’s built so much that it’s a big part of his local fame!) Some of these were seriously scary pieces that I didn’t want to go anywhere near; precipitous 3m high boulders with almost vertical roll ups and then similarly vertical roll downs where you had to both commit serious speed (not to mention skill) to get up and then serious bottle to get down. Think Danny McCaskill and you’re not far off.

So the ride. What can I say apart from one of the most amazing days I’ve ever spent on the bike and certainly the best ride I’ve ever done.

You drive east of San Diego for about 90 minutes, over into the dry, arid and rocky mountains you can see from the coast, to a place called Pine Valley. This is proper pioneer type territory; think ‘Little House on the Prairie’ or John Ford’s ‘The Searchers’ and you’re very close.

The ride starts from going up straight from the car park and it doesn’t stop going up for 12 miles, by which time you’ve climbed 4000ft or thereabouts. The initial part of the trail, which is also the final descent, is a gravelly, sandy path that is interspersed regularly with big technical rock sections that will eat your rear derailleur and have most people clanging their pedals and walking. Even Steve, with his Jedi like technical skills, didn’t clean it all. The great thing with this climb though is that you get to see the trail you’ll be descending at the end of the day, so you can scope some of your lines and the features.

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After about 1000 ft and a couple of miles, you do get a break and the first real descent, which is also the last climb of the day. Depending on which way you’re going this is either just the first descent, or it’s called ‘The Whore’ if you’re on your way back and it’s the final climb. Incidentally, the last descent is called ‘Extra Credit’ because it’s possible to circumnavigate the ‘The Whore’ and just drop directly back into the car park, but you don’t get the last amazing descent.

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The first descent then is a subtle and relaxed introduction to the style of riding. Fast, swoopy single track that opens up into broader double track at just the right points, i.e. where the trail is fastest, allowing you to carry loads of speed into the natural jumps and berms that pepper the track.

At the bottom of this climb though is where things get serious because from here it really is non-stop uphill. The first section is about four miles of road climbing with an average gradient of about 1 in 10 and in places it’s more like 1 in 7. They call this one ‘Alpe D’Wheeze’.

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Beyond that you can choose to continue for another six miles of tarmac or take a rocky trail up Indian Creek. This thin ribbon of technical, rocky single track threads its way up the side of the mountain, taking in a seriously rocky section called ‘The Waterfall’. At the top of this you get to the Sunrise Highway and an amazing view of the top valley, where the fires raged a few years ago and there are still charred and scared trees. You can also see into the Anza Borego National Park, which is desert and a designated wilderness area.

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This is the top and from here it’s more or less downhill all the way home (apart from ‘The Whore’ of course).

I was pretty tired at this point but still feeling strong enough to give it beans. The trail starts off as a fast, smooth and very swoopy ribbon of single track. You’re carrying lots of speed into turns and you need to get committed to the front of the bike in order to make it around some of the turns. It’s always strange riding completely blind behind someone who knows the trails intimately, even if they are riding a fully rigid bike (except of the suspension action of a 3.8” front tyre) and I found myself in the unusual position of having to work really hard to keep Steve in view. Fortunately there were just enough seriously rocky sections to allow my advantage of 150mm of suspension to work in my favour and catch me up.

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The smooth ribbon of single track does however give way to much more serious rock – ‘chunk’ as Steve calls it. If you’re familiar with the rockiest sections in the Peak, such as ‘The Beast’, the drop down to Rowarth Mill or the more serious sections on the classic Edale loop, then you’re sort of almost there, but the rockiest sections were quite a bit more rocky that those. One section called Hell’s Staircase, really is a rock garden worthy of the best riders. I had to ride it three times before I could clean it and that involved one over the bars moment.

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But undoubtedly the most amazing thing about the ride (apart from the weather, which as you can see was sublime, about 25 degrees and baby blue skies) is how you pass from one eco system to another. At the top of the canyon, you’re in open pasture, then you move down into a woody glade, almost Alpine in feel before then dropping (via the serious rock gardens) into arid desert where the frogs and crickets croak and chirrup.

The scenery is breathtaking; just utterly breathtaking. The views out over the desert and the surrounding mountains are to die for. The sheer magnitude of the location, the ‘out there’ feel to it, is stunning. At one point I actually snapped my chain and being on 10 speed and not having a dedicated 10 speed connecting link (with Steve not even being ‘any speed’) I was seriously worried that we would have an extremely long push/scoot back. It snapped just at the half way point and we were then a very long way from anywhere. Fortunately a 9-speed link seemed to work without too much protestation from my drive train.

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Hopefully the photo’s will do this write up some justice. The whole thing was one of those ‘book mark moments’; those experiences in life that act like bookmarks in your memory. It will be one of those days that I think about on my death bed and I count myself lucky to have had the opportunity. The only problem now is that the Surrey Hills seem so utterly pointless.......

[url= http://gallery.me.com/greg.turner#100067&view=grid&bgcolor=black&sel=17 ]Noble Canyon Ride Album[/url]

Good job you decided to do it then 🙂

Wow1 Glad you went now??!!

I enjoyed your write-up and pics, what a ride to remember, and thanks for reporting back. 🙂

Thanks for the write-up - awesome!

great write up geetee! now there are a few afternoon daydreaming pictures 🙁

Great report - top photos - makes we want to be on holiday!!

Ah. You didn't say you were riding with Aquaholic!

I really, really, want to have a bash around there.

On the to-ride list.

I love the way you (sort of) compare the 'steps down to Rowarth', to that gurt big steep rocky section 😆

Glad you're safely back and had a wicked time.

Come back to the Peaks soon.

Ah. You didn't say you were riding with Aquaholic!

I really, really, want to have a bash around there.

You're kidding, you mean you know him? Small small world! And yes, you really do want to ride around there. There are several other big riding areas to be tackled, not to mention to rest of the trails in and around Noble Canyon.

I love the way you (sort of) compare the 'steps down to Rowarth', to that gurt big steep rocky section

In all honesty, although 'Hells Staircase' was chunkier than Rowarth the gradient wasn't all that steep so while it was tricky to ride, it wasn't intimidating. The drop down into Roych Clough from Rushop Edge side is harder to ride well as you have so much speed and the rock sections, while not as chunky, as still pretty serious.

It sort of reinforced how good the riding in the Peak is, if not the weather!

Know him from MTBR. Seems a handy rider for a coffin-dodger on a paperclip. 😉

Steps down into Rowarth? Do tell...?

Looks like you had an ace time, with some great riding.

The only problem now is that the Surrey Hills seem so utterly pointless.......

Can't eat cake everyday, can we. 😕

JonEdwards - Member

Steps down into Rowarth? Do tell...?

[url= http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4128/5064976869_3c72b4fb6a.jp g" target="_blank">http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4128/5064976869_3c72b4fb6a.jp g"/> [/img][/url]
[url= http://www.flickr.com/photos/n_b_t/5064976869/ ]Marple Pootle[/url] by [url= http://www.flickr.com/people/n_b_t/ ]Notoriously Bad Typist[/url], on Flickr

Around here, heading east, perfectly legal. Now alittle easier since Greg cleaned up on of the overhanging branches on the last ride 🙂

http://www.streetmap.co.uk/map.srf?X=401570&Y=388715&A=Y&Z=120

No probs.