Elevator Shaft
This trail veers off the popular West Ridge fire road and plunges directly into Sycamore Canyon (Santa Monica Mountains, So. California). This marked our third attempt to try and Muni the whole enchilada.
It’s got a piss-your-pants drop-in down a 100 foot shale cliff that has to approach 60 degrees. We spent more than a few minutes on the fire road, staring down over the lip, and just about bagged it till we started trading insults and finally sacked it up and dropped in. One revolution down and you either stay on the wheel or slid the distance on your arse, something Josh and I luckily avoided.
Then suddenly the trail narrows to about 6-8 feet wide – and after last years rains – features malevolent ruts 2-6 feet deep. You ride the steep edges of the ruts on crumbling foot wide lines and occasionally have to drop into a rut and sometimes have to ride dirt skinny’s between ruts. One 100 yard section was so loose, steep and rutted we could only “ride” it in 20 yard bits. We just kept skidding out of traction, pitching off our rigs and sliding luge-style for twenty or thirty yards owing to the steepness. Such falls do remarkable things to your clothing. Josh ground holes through both his arm pads and the plastic inserts in his shin guards.
That awful, rutted, precipitous, pinched down shale chute really blew because it was flanked by thorn trees that ripped our flesh. But just below the trail firms up a little but stays steep and technical and starts throwing an amazing variety of obstacles at a rider: a thin and tilted rock peninsula full of mini-drops and screwy vectors; another few dirt chutes you skid down more than actually ride; high log skinny’s; stream crossings; goodly drops off dirt cliffs; one mambo steep rollout, all ending with a cement culvert pouring into the bottom of the canyon. Amazing variety for a trail barely a mile and a half long. And once in Sycamore Canyon (a favorite with mountain bikers) there’s a whole days worth of stuff to play around on.
Never had to use so many different techniques on one ride, but man, this trail sure beats you up.
JL
