I was planning on going to Turnbull Canyon tomorrow A.M. (10ish I guess) since it’s supposed to be nice, and figured I’d invite others or I’d be open to suggestion. The route I take through Turnbull is A LOT of grueling but mostly manageable uphill, my first time I’d say I walked about half of the uphill sections, but I think I could take quite a few more of them now.
It’s mostly all fire road, starting from the bottom of Beverly/Turnbull Canyon (ample parking). Once at the ‘top’ of the very long initial uphill section, I ride out to a water station with a big tree along a very slight downhill section with a lot of hills–a lot of fun to ride. Then I ride back across that, over to the rusted out water tower, and then around to Daylight Rd where you end up with a variety of options to get back down. There are a few singletrack sections but they are all very short and not very entertaining AFAIC, so I just start at where a burned out house and swimming pools used to be, ride around to an electrical tower and down a series of wide and manageable steep (without breaks) hills until there’s a nice relaxing ride back to the intro fire access road through a very foresty/canopied section which features several technical ‘toys’ to screw around on, back to the starting point. Along the ‘exit’ fire road there’s a series of, uhm, dunno what to call them, but there mountain bikers have gone up the side of the hill and carved a steep angled path, there’s several of them and all but one are manageable and fun to attempt on a unicycle. There’s a lot of opportunity for more technical or trials-based riders to stop and have a good time, which is something I’d like to do (paging Peter and his orange unicycle). Even further on the way out along Beverly there’s a series of humps on the side of the road that are a lot of fun and easy to ride over as well.
Up at the top by the water tower and the water station with the big tree there are gorgeous views of Los Angeles (assuming it’s fairly clear) and Rose Hills cemetery, specifically the Buddhist temple, so it’ll be a very scenic route too for photographers. After all that rain it seems to be very green up here.
My first time doing this, without knowing the area very well, it took me about 2 hours to do the loop, just focusing on riding and hiking. Assuming we get a group that is in for a leisurely and somewhat difficult ride (since a lot of it is uphill) there is potential for a lot of fun and cool pictures/video that could take from 2 to 3 hours. If we just motor through it we could probably be up and down in less than 2 hours.
Or, you know, there’s the fullerton loop, which I’m down for, too.
Anyway, paging the SoCal muni crew from last month…
Here’s a link to the area where you’d park It’s safe to park ANYWHERE on Beverly to the right of Painter, and it’s a very short ride to the starting location at the end of “Rose Hills No 3 Fire Road”. I notice now that all the fire roads are labeled, so the trip would be: Rose Hills No 3 to Side Fire Rd to Tank Fire E Rd, which we follow for half of, then turn around and go back the other way on Side Fire Rd to Rose Hills No 1, to Skyline Fire Rd, then it turns into Skyline Rd and there’s two options back down, a singletrack that is visibly windy, or the thin line that connects to the very thick switchbacks. Both end up at the same place: the canopied section back to Rose Hills No 3.
Speaking of that, it’s time to organize another 36er group ride! Either at Huntington or Redondo, with a ride through Venice!
Do you ride a different 36 on the road?