Supreme Ass Whuppin’ on Caballero Canyon Muni
With aching ankles from riding the G-Spot stunt course for the last two weeks, Josh and I decided on a “training ride” with no big drops and no steep rock slabs. I knew about a challenging foot path that dropped off of the long Mulholland fire road (Santa Monica, California) and figured this would do. Five miles (mainly up) on the fire road and then two down the footpath into Caballero Canyon–such was the topography of the ride. A downhill MT Biker told me the footpath was too steep and loose for a bike, but I didn’t believe him and we went anyway–a very poor decision on my behalf.
The five mile grind up the fireroad provided some excitement when we took a couple detours and got strung out on slanting skinnies above big gulches made troubling because we hadn’t yet put on our gear. But we gained the drop in after a couple hours chugging up the fire road, suited up and proceeded to get our asses totally kicked on twisting, ledgy, shale strewn, sandy chutes, rarely more than a foot wide, steep as a staircase and flanked by disturbing trees branches and barbed shrubbery. About every hundred yards, big rock ledge drops added flavor and would have been the shizat had they not pitched onto more steep shale rolls outs on which we punched out countless times right onto our asses. One or the other of us would luck out on a big section and the other would try and inevitably fly off and end up pitch-polling fifty feet down the bushy cliffside.
Josh actually fashioned a new form of UPD I call getting “wishboned.” At about hour three, near the bottom when the trail got super thin and super loose, he flew off at speed, sailed airborn and ended up slamming (and stopping very suddenly) into a big “Y” formed by two stout tree branches. By the sound of the impact, that’s gonna hurt for awhile–like a year.
Most of the trail was doable via skidding and spinning like crazy, but the many tight turns made downright hazardous what would otherwise have been a spectacular test of chute skiing and ledge drops. Once was more than enough on this one.
JL
sounds like a great place to film upd’s! I cringed sharply at the thought of getting body slammed by a tree…sh!t