I went up to Santa Cruz with my friend Thunder last weekend for some forest riding.

We just flew up for the weekend since a good friend of ours opted for an apartment full of bikes instead of a wife and kids. Smart guy.

On Saturday we did a couple loops at Soquel Demonstration Forest. We mainly were there to ride a trail called 'Braille' which is a pretty awesome 'freeride' type trail full of stunt and stuff.

To get anywhere at 'Demo' you need to pay dearly, right off the bat you climb about 1500ft on paved and dirt roads for a few miles. Once at the top you're greeted with prime forest singletrack.

This trail is called 'Ridge' as it follows the ridgeline and the remaining trails drop off to the north side.


Another arty-farty shot of Ridge that I already shared. I was rocking an iPhone for my camera the whole time and this is about as good a picture you can get with it.


After a mile or two on Ridge you get to the junction for Braille and there's some stunts already waiting for you. We had a lot of fun on this seesaw and it built up some confidence for us.


These next two pics were from Braille. You can see there's a ton of fun stuff to play on. Drops are everywhere and range from 'easy for a wuss like me' to 'holy crap who does that?' I particularly liked riding all the skinnies. I guess messing around on the curbs in front of my house paid off!



The next day we rode in Santa Cruz on a trail system best described as an 'unofficial bike park'. Think Calavera for the type of stuff you find out here. Very high trail density with an anything goes attitude. Trails are constantly in flux here as the trail gnomes and their enemies continually battle.

Here we are climbing up the U-Conn trail (only trail I'm gonna name from here on out). We were hurting, yes. 3000ish feet of climbing the day before was about 5x my normal amount.


Water tanks at the top. A little more arty than ours.


End of the second day, Thunder coming down to the tracks for the ride back to the parking lot.


Finally, a shot of my old bike. Now nicely setup for playing around town. We did a little ride to scope out the beach before heading out to hop the plane.

Luv their dirt.

Yeah conditions were great. They got a bunch of rain the same time we did a couple weeks ago and by the time we were up there everything had dried out and traction was awesome. Plus it's just awesome to be riding under a cool canopy at 2pm instead of baking in the damn sun.

I miss SC riding! Thanks for the TR.

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~I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
~Nothing from nothing is nothing.
~I'm allowed to be a pussy because I have one!

Yes. All is not good vibes in the redwood paradise. One of the sets of graffitied tanks says "Shred waves, not the forest". And pedaling down the road back into town an a**hole in a Ford Ranger intentionally cut it close, almost clipping us with his side mirror. But that was not enough to bring down the riding high we were on.

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Thus, if we are to understand the world, we should live somewhere between judgement and amazement — Alfredo Lopez Austin

Hehe that sounds like normal Santa Cruz. Went back there last winter and had forgotten the sketchier parts of that town. At least the riding is kick ass!

^^^ Funny, it wasn't until I re-read your TR that I realized that what I thought my friend called the Yukon trail is the U-Conn trail. Which of course makes more sense. He knew the name of that, but we were off the map on the others. a lot of climbing to get to them, but kick-ass trails definitely'

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Thus, if we are to understand the world, we should live somewhere between judgement and amazement — Alfredo Lopez Austin