Epic Mountain Bike Rides

Epic mountain bike rides. That's the subject of today's post. I define an epic ride as one lasting at least 3 hours and having lots of climbing and beautiful scenery. A truly epic ride is one where you get in trouble with your significant other for not being home on time and you also have no energy left to do the things you promised them the night before. I had just such a ride this past Sunday on the San Juan Trail in Orange County. San Juan trail is off the Ortega highway about 45 minutes north of my home in San Marcos. It is currently my favorite ride. The loop I do is about 18 miles and has about 3K feet of climbing. My partners for the day were fellow ECBS guys Jose Quintero and Ernie Escobar.

Jose is trying to become a mountain biker, or at least trying to compliment his road miles with some off road training. For both Jose and Ernie it would be their first "epic" mountain bike ride. It was fun for me to be the veteran ATB rider taking the guys out for their first big ride. I warned them to bring enough food and water and come well rested with a good breakfast. It was a perfect day, sunny skies with cool air and the conditions were perfect. The recent rain storms and the sunny cool air combined to make what mountain bikers refer to as "hero dirt". For those of you who haven't heard the expression, hero dirt makes everything you do on the bike perfect. You can carve turns better, you can brake harder, and you can climb pitches that were impossible before, in short your a "hero". It was the perfect "epic" mountain bike ride.