Simpson Park is another place I've been wanting to hit up for some time. I found it buried in the San Jacinto mtns section on MTB Bills site when I was trying to find info on some other trails. The description was basically of a small park with some fun trails that had lots of potential for some nice rock features.

Looking at the surrounding area you can see why it has potential.


We parked at the furthest lot inside the park and headed back to the nearest trail we had seen. There was really no plan, just go explore...


From the top we ended up on this somewhat rutted, somewhat overgrown trail. BKJ exits onto a more well used trail.


I like the look of that.


There were lots of big rocks off the side of the trail. Kreechan and Gman check out whats on the other side


We headed south, down, and then west. We started seeing hits of features. On the near side of this rock there was a discrete booter that you could hit and air over the whole rock.


We all had to take a turn up this one




It was hard to stay on the trail with so much temptation all around


The trail we were trying to go down soon disappeared. Gman searches for any sign of continuation. No luck, so we headed back up a little.


Well, after riding down some more rock, that is...


Kreechan rides a long spine


Yellow flowers leaving their mark on me


Checking out the view


We headed back up and found another trail a short ways over that looked to head down.


At this point we start to see some small lips and tables


Fun off camber roller


Rock roller


Fast and flowy


Another rock spine off the side of the trail


When we got to the bottom we looped around a bit hoping to find a trail back up. There was some doubletrack that went around a meadow and looked like it would drop down to the very bottom of the hill but no one wanted to suffer up the paved road to get back to the park. So we turned around and soon found a trail that did go back up to connect near the top of what we had just come down.

This part was fun to ride down


Going back up, not so much


We took another trail to the left that looked like it would go back up to the parking lot. It turned out to be rock playground heaven


Gman goes off the end


There were at least 4 lines here. This spine is what first caught our attention.


There was a sharpish turn to roller as an exit, which was easier than it looked, though you also had to turn immediately at the bottom of it as well.


Kreechan checks out the other line


Gman hikes back up for another run. The line he's going up would be the original line of the trail.


BKJ was only going to roll up to it so I wasn't supposed to take a picture.


Good thing I did, because she nailed it


Kreechan wasn't to be left out of the fun




Next we tried the far left line on the other side. It involved staying high-right after the first rock roll and then had a couple off camber roll-downs to the end.


Don't get caught in that bush, its a nice size fall if you get pushed off the line


Gman rolls in


And up the ledge


There some more features as we went up but I didn't get any shots. This trail came right up to the parking lot.

BKJ rides the rock wall back at the parking lot


So we had a few hours at Simpson Park. I don't think we even touched much of the official trail system or what MTB Bill has on his map. This place was fun and definitely warrants a return trip. I think you could spend a full day here quite easily. Its not far past Temecula either, but it will probably be getting too hot pretty soon, so hit it up while you can!

I didn't see any rock hucking, WTH?

Good job -- I always enjoy your TR's. Maybe one of these days I'll actually go on one of your rides. That looked like a whole lot of fun.

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Sweet, I have a cameo appearance on your shoot.
3rd pic, upper left on top of the rocks with a small canopy in red shirt.

Saw you guys rolling down but I knew where that place was heading. Not fun for a big bike considering I have already burned quite a bit of energy having pedaled the paved road twice. Lake View trail is a real fun short chunky descent. So glad I live nearby to explore this area more. There's also Pachea area to the west of this spot.. more chunk sweetness there too.

views were nice

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Department of Good Times

I think we saw that red shirt up there later too. In fact, after we saw people up there we figured that must be where the parking lot is. Hopefully you werent' still lost at that point

I got a little concerned when I started running into fences and barbed wires... So I went around the east side and found the bottom of the pave road/park entrance. I stayed on the west side after the road climb. Fun little place.

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Department of Good Times

What bike is Gman riding? That's not his regular GT...

Loaner from a friend while his fork gets rebuilt

Nice TR, looks like fun

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Normal is the halfway point between what you want and what you can get.

I definitely want to spend a whole day at this place and see what all the trails have to offer. I don't think we came anywhere near hitting all the trails there. I like that there are so many different lines to take and just cool rocks to play around on and see if there is a line or not. The one trail we went down that had all the whoops and tabletops was pretty fun too.

I'm hoping to go back again within the next few weeks.

Are those all the pix or do you have a link so I can snag them for myself?

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there are a few more but those are the better ones

Yep, you guys just scratched the surface. That's a great place to put in a few hours. The locals have done a pretty good job keeping it relatively off the radar, but there's some great stuff out there.



Be VERY careful!! That area gets a lot hotter than San Diego. I used to live about 10 minutes from Simpson Park. I went there one weekend in June a couple years back and it was in the low 80's. Went back the next weekend and the morning started off in the 70's and within a few hours it was up to 104!! We were stuck about 5 miles from the cars and getting back was scary. One of the older guys in our group stopped sweating and was borderline delirious. It'll be too hot to ride there soon.

took me just about forever to figure out how to make this sequence shot ... and I'm not sure I will ever get to the other 15 or so series, but here is one of Evdog rolling a feature:

and BKJ

and Gman

That looks like lots of fun. Thanks for the TRs!

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"We'll ride it until they pave it."

-Big Clyde