Last Saturday Eric Kvamme organized a great ride in Santa Cruz where we
checked out a great new trail (Dead Camper) - but as good as the ride was,
the best part turned out to be meeting a local biker at the end of the
day. He told us about several new trails, including one enticingly named
“Better Than North Shore”. He assured us that it was “Really sick, man”.
So today at 7:30am, we were off to Santa Cruz. Bruce Bundy had scoped out
the area and found us a better access point so we only had a 1 mile,
mostly level approach to the top of the trail. Our directions were to take
every right fork possible, so we did, passing at one point a beautiful
trail sign, North Shore style: “Sidewinder Trail”. Soon we found the first
ladder bridge, the start of “Better Than North Shore”. It was a little
depressing, because there seemed to be only two main structures, and we
couldn’t really ride either (drops too big and scary). I managed to fall
head over heels, grinding dirt down my shirt etc. But we headed down the
hill to see if there was more. This trail would be well worth riding
without any structures because it is VERY steep and beautiful. A few
wipeouts later, we found quite a few more ladder bridges, a long log to
ride, etc. There was a teeter-totter, but it was so rickety we didn’t dare
try it. Thanks to Megumi we got 20 minutes of pretty entertaining video,
but overall, our skills are too little and our fears too big to really
ride all of this stuff. We went all the way to the bottom of the hill and
found that it came out on the road .15 miles from where we ended up on
last Saturday’s ride. So now we have instant drive-up access direct to the
bottom of the trail! And there are at least two others there we didn’t
have time to ride today.
We hiked/rode it back all the way, taking still pictures (some riding,
some posing) and having a blast. Near the top, we met the creators, two
nice young local guys. It turns out they’ve never even been to
Vancouver, but have seen all the videos and have been out there
constructing every morning, and all day every weekend, all summer. They
were finishing up a structure (likely unrideable on unicycle due to the
slant of one short section) and were very psyched to watch us playing on
their creations. When I mentioned that they are missing the long skinny
trees to ride that the real North Shore has so many of, they said that
was next on their agenda.
This area is actually in a State Park, and thus the construction is
probably very illegal. But it’s a small area of a large park that
sticks out on the “other” side of the road - basically nobody goes
there, so I think there’s a good chance the area will be around for a
while. I sure hope so.
I have a few photos up at http://www.movaris.com/nathan/photos.html and am
thinking about getting a firewire capture card for my computer so I can
put up video clips.
Ride on,
—Nathan