San Fernando Vly/Ventura Cty – Awesome trail
I found this awesome technical trail yesterday. It’s called lower suicide connector. It’s in Oak Park just above Kanan Road. It has some very challenging rocky parts. It’s got spots that are above my abilities, but I think some of the Santa Barbara crowd would like this. Sorry, guys, no steep drop offs, though. I had to do a quick in and out on the same trail. It was a 30 minute hike up to where it nearly meets Dead Cow Road. It took me 50 minutes to ride down it. I could have taken longer if I had decided to work the trail. The most challenging parts are the top half of the trail. There are some steep parts of the trail with outcroppings that create drops of 1 – 1.5 feet to loose and slanted surfaces especially near the top 1/3. The remaining part of the trail has many 25 to 50 foot sections of constant rocky surfaces. It’s lumpy, bumpy, and slanted in parts.
I think this could be combined as a shuttle ride. This will put you up higher without the 30 minute hike. Park near the bottom of dead cow Road, then a hike up Dead Cow to get even higher into some technical single track above Palo Comado Canyon. A nice ride might be to hike up into the interior and then ride all the way down to the Suicide trail to a waiting car. Looks like it could turn into a 3 – 4 hour ride including hiking.
I wish I had had more time to go up higher. The hike up isn’t that bad. With another rider or a MuniCrew, it would make it more inviting and the time would go more quickly on the ascent. The topo profile shows that it is nearly 2 miles down from where it intersects Dead Cow Road(above). I Think I was within 10 minutes of reaching that, but had to turn around and suit up for the challenging descent.
I really recommend this trail for experienced riders. It’s a gass to ride down.
I wish I had brought a camara, but mine is just too big to fit in my bag.
Here is a link to the trail description. You will have to scroll down to trails numbers 19 and 29.to see a description of both trails.
If you want more directions, let me know. Email me at teachndad(at)unicyclist(dot)com