Chicken Nuggets In da Sauce_2021

good to hear from you ocpop

 

Try seeing it live. That might explain...

Harmonica player had never been in a band before OMD – handles it. Nice application, @Old&InTheWay


@Ocpop, we'll have to leave the sweeping duties to D and Simon this time. Great memories!

 

You'll be there in our minds and hearts, and we'll do a make-up ride of your choosing when you are ready. Floop? I'm in with the 'Cuda. Lemme know!

 

Chicken train
Runnin' all day
Chicken train
Runnin' all day
Chicken train
Runnin' all day
I can't get on
I can't get off
Crazy Bear take the Nuggies to ride!

Laser beam
In my dream
Laser beam
In my dream
Laser beam
In my dream
I can't get on
I can't get off
In da' Sauce like a sawed off dream!

Chicken train
Runnin' all day
Chicken train
Runnin' all day
Chicken train
Runnin' all day
I can't get on
I can't get off
Crazy Bear take the Nuggies to ride, whew!

 

The Squiggle Bug is having an undesirable condition and is in the shop. I hope she gets the nod for Saturday, but I may have to rely on the Rumblefish if the bug isn't ready in time. We should not require all 11 hours to do the ride, unless there are issues in the field. I recommend a light just in case we are out there longer than anticipated. What could go wrong?

 

Where are the deets?! Saw the stravas

 

Yeah, really... We're waiting!!!

 

Disclaimer: the details are a little foggy.

I merge onto 210 east in La Verne at 4:50am and abruptly see the CrazyBear van zooming by at an 80mph clip. I still have to stop at GH’s house to rendezvous with him and Dante. Dante wants to stop for coffee but we manage to arrive more or less on time for the 6am rendezvous. Gerard with Crazy Bear was totally awesome: “we know you have lots of choices for your MTB shuttle needs, so we thank you for choosing Crazy Bear Bikes as your adventure brokerage.” Thank you Nuggets for not asking for change for the $37 shuttle fee! #Whodoesthat?


As we drive up, I’m supposed to advise the driver when to pull over. As we pass the spot, I begin to tell him to be on the lookout for a turnout and sign. @burt from the back of the van recognized we went too far and saved the day. The idea to start from Onyx Summit was Burt’s, and everyone was on board! Anytime Burt suggest an alternative, you gotta consider the type of rider he is. I mean it’s Burt, and he’s taking us to 9,500’. The HAB to Lightning Gulch summit was rugged and steep and included a false peak (we though we missed the summit) only to realize we had another hill to climb. The views were ok. @konakc claims he’s been here before and shows proof with a KC sticker on the summit marker.

It was on the DH from Lighting Gulch where I realized riding the 130f/120r Rumblefish with 69.5* HA like the 150f/140r SquiggleBug with 65.5* HA down a blocky boulder field would not work. I ran out of suspension travel and talent and ended up slightly off “route” (not really much of a trail to follow) and watched as the rest of the group passed me by. That got GH all pumped up for the rest of the day so I went from 4th to 5th in the DH conga line…until @Cyclotourist ’s oldest young’s showed up (details below). Here is GH and me having a safety break. GH talks more than @rossage. I’d love love love to have them both on a ride one day.

The romp down Wildhorse was awesome as always. Dante, Burt, and Matt all got cuppies here and later on too. After a quick rendezvous at Wildhorse Camp, they are off again. Burt gave Dante and Matt a head start and gave chase…until he washed out a front tire and landed on some rocks. We’re 10 miles into a 50 mile ride, and Burt is already having to perform an operation on his leg.

SART from SouthFork to Angelus Oaks was ridden safe and became a blur. I get a head start up Middle Control Road and get picked off one by one. Dante and GH decide to climb with me for a bit. Here comes (and goes) @Lost Kiwi . I fully expect GH to give chase, but he doesn’t. I have a strong suspicion Simon was gonna rip his legs off, and GH knew it, so he didn’t engage.

The Egg sandwich at The Oaks Restaurant was awesome. Real food hit the spot after 25 miles and perked me up. @konakc splits off at this point to tackle Loch Leven. Thank you for lunch KC! The group goes from 11 to 10, but only for a moment, as @Cyclotourist arrives with his son and buddy from our PCE romp a few months back, and they’re ready to rock and roll! A small operation on a tire, and we’re off down the mountain.

Something about fire roads and bikes that have been in the presence of Faustie make for tires to go flat.

Thomas Hunting Grounds and Morton Peak Trail are the best I’ve ever seen them! Trimmed and primed for roosting! Burt, Dante, and Matt are out front. @redwoods and I find ourselves in the back of the pack and give chase. We are amazed at how magnificent everything is out there. The colors, the trail, the bikes, the company…glorious! A few rendezvous between segments, and we regroup. Dante, Burt, and Matt still in front. GH takes a spot ahead of me, and I give chase. The pace is good.

The climb up Morton is the home stretch. As usual, I’m at the back of the uphill pack. Going toe to toe with Redwoods until he and his coil shock behemoth drop me the last quarter mile. One final rest, and we’re off. Burt enjoys the fire break straight down the ridge, while Dante and Matt charge down ahead of everyone else. GH and I give chase. After a few minutes I hear a rider behind me. We keep charging, GH eats it, recovers, blows a switchback, I take over, blow a switchback, and the dude behind me goes in front. Here comes Jacob Estes, MoFos! Spandex kit on Faustie’s Santa Cruz carbon Highball. GH and I give chase, and yea, we chased the rest of the way. Nice run Jake!

A romp through Mill Creek to Hangar 24; we say our goodbyes, drink beer, say more goodbyes, and I know I am forgetting lots of details. My main takeaway is I am grateful for everyone coming out! It was a magnificent day, and life is better with these group rides to be had. I love you Nuggies!

 

I'll speak generally and say the weather was PERFECT, the trail was PERFECT, the people were PERFECT! All around PERFECT day in the mountains.

I shuttled up with Fisrstborn and friend Allan to met the Nuggets at Angelus Oaks and took off from there. Contance Peak S ART was PERFECT! Flew through the THG section... yep, PERFECT! Fire roads to Morton climb, they were PERFECT. It's a 1.25 mile climb and I was bitching about how hard it was, but it was fine. Break time at the summit, then hit the Morton section of SART. This is always a rough section due to lack of traffic, but it has been thoroughly brushed recently and flow is PERFECT! This section claimed a few riders, with at least three taking dirt baths. But nothing ride-ending, and everyone made it to the bottom of the hill! Some back roads through fragrant citrus groves, then continued on the lower SART trail to the Redlands airport which I think was new dirt for everyone??? Citrus fragrance replaced with brush-fire smoke for a minute, then a solid group finish at Hangar! The far-away folks took off, while the foothill people (Rancho, Montclair, La Verne) hung out with the IE denziens for some grub. Good cover band playing, great beers on tap. D3 was close to nodding off, so glad he made it home! Firstborn's front wheel was not holding air, but Burt was handing out tubes trailside so how could we say no? No drama from that point on till the boy did a superman around a switchback. Allan's pack came open and he lost a multi-tool, and more consequentially his truck keys. Gonna' be an expensive ride for him, but still all smiles at the end! I may have planted the seed for people to come back and do the Three Peaks Challenge (Morton, Pisgah, Crafton) at some point!

I've said it before but it bears repeating: If you aren't riding the SART right now, you're missing out!

28/1,500/4.5

 

Sounds like a hoot, gents! Nice storytelling and photos. Looking forward to more tales from this ride.

Oh - and who is GH?

 

Nice work, all!! I hope Burt is okay!

 

George. He’s a mix of me, @rossage, and @ridinrox…if you can imagine. You can find him on Strava as @G H.

 

He didn’t bring it up again, and it didn’t seem to phase him from what I can tell.

 

Epic ride with epic company!
It was a very foggy start at stupid o'clock for me to make the 6am pick-up. Luckily I somehow ended up in the shuttle next to this Hollywood voice-over talent for the ride up the hill. He tried to throw the van off by telling us his name was actually Pat (@redwoods) no one believed him. Borsellick was in usual form, the muskiness emanating from his hockey pads had anyone sitting behind him opening windows in a desperate effort to clear the fog. Like @DangerDirtyD said we missed the turn-off where we were all supposed to bail. We turned round a bit further along at another road also heading in the same direction we were hoping to ride. We back-tracked to were @burt had decreed we were supposed to enter and started what turned out to be a pleasant walk to the peak, no really, it was very pleasant! No-one bitched or moaned, not even when we came across the other road partway up that looked very rideable. Don't believe me? Here's @konakc partway up looking really happy on his walk (yeah, yeah, I know he always looks that happy)

The views from the top were worth the effort, someone told me this is looking towards the Mojave, given at this point I was still trying to locate where I'd left my lungs on the trail in the thin 9000+ ft air I'm surprised I can even remember that much.

Big Bear Lake off in the distance looking very empty

The first stack of the day honors went to the Mantis who washed out in some very soft stuff on the run down Wildhorse. Nobody saw my small excursion into a bush earlier whilst trying to avoid testing a plated clavicle against pine so that doesn't count
We re-grouped at the bottom and then bombed down the road to the entry onto SART (well thats how I understand it to be anyway). The run through SART was sublime, only one dude walking some dogs and he must have heard us coming cos he was well out of the way. When we rode through here last year we caught some racers on the Grizzly 100 or whatever its called. One racer heroically threw himself off the side trying to keep up with George. This year @David Cho decided to very gallantly re-create the crash by stepping up to the plate and throwing himself of the edge. No real harm done but top marks for taking one for the team and doing what no-one else was prepared to do . Jacob's young'un Kai tried his best to go over the edge as well but unfortunately picked a good sized boulder to stop his plummet.
I went up the dirt road climb to Angelus Oaks at a pace more akin to someone finishing a ride and not halfway through. I blame the thought of those zucchini fries at the top! Refuelled and ready to go we lost one and gained three. This years route saw us taking the Thomas Hunting Grounds to Morton Peak. Apparently that would save us the climb from the 38 all the way up to Morton and cut out the rather uninspiring Loch Leven section. The crew got a bit splintered but we re-gathered before the final bits of single track. The very cool @Cyclotourist was showing off his local knowledge and just generally being a top bloke putting up with my bullshit at this point. We had to have a few stops for his boy to keep topping up a soft tyre. Fun to watch the various fingers of blame being pointed at whose fault it all was. He finally cracked and threw a tube in it which fixed everything up. Of course he thanked us all by thoroughly spanking everyone up the last climb of the day. Kids a freakin whippet so hardly surprising.
Heres looking back up towards Angelus Oaks from Morton Peak, we had a chat with the fire lookouts at the top, they couldn't believe where we'd come from.

The run down from Morton was much better than last year. I actually bought leg protection this time cos my legs got pretty tore up and I didn't want a repeat. @redwoods tried to share a little pickle round partway down but couldn't get any takers. Apparently he'd picked it up at the store in Angelus Oaks (hopefully he didn't pick anything else up whilst he was there ) Where the ST comes back out onto road half the crew decided to bail and make a run for Hanger 24, I waited with the others for the remnants to pop out before heading down. @Cyclotourist pointed out the line we took last year, its pretty steep and great fun, @David Cho made it about 20ft past where he did last year before taking a tumble after getting caught in the same rut. You really do have to admire his consistency!
Thanks to some local knowledge we took an alternative route back to vehicles. The scenery was up to the usual standards when one gets close to civilization again, trashed cars, smoking ground, crime scene tape and flytipping everywhere. At least the cops are friendly enough and wave.
Unfortunately I had to head home to rescue the missus from the kids after having to deal with them single handedly all day so sadly couldn't hang round for a post ride cleansing ale with the others.

Have to say it was a great bunch of guys to ride with, super cool to put a couple of more faces to some forum names as well. Looking forward to next years effort, maybe @redwoods and I will man up and bring the hardtails then

 

Story of my life.

 

So much of a great day!

• I am highly impressed with this group of riders! Everyone was well-prepared and knows what they're doing, and everyone was strong.
• With (I think) around 14 total riders covering so many miles, there we remarkably few incidents: no "bonks", only 1 mechanical (flat), only minor unscheduled dismounts that everyone pedalled away from.
• The weather was about as perfect as could be for SART. Cold at 8500' to start, but once we were hiking - I mean biking - it was fine. Yes, we did a fair bit of pushing the bikes up toward the peak before Wild Horse, but it wasn't bad, we recovered quickly, and the payoff was worth it.
• I was worried about being out so long we'd need to descend the Morton singletrack in the dark, but we were making excellent time all the way down and we finished in about 9 hours elapsed time (probably less for the faster riders).
• I had also been concerned about my own endurance - I've been able to work back into some long-ish rides lately (30-35 miles), but SART has so much PEDALLING. I got through it OK, but anything pedally after THG required a low gear and patience. I tried to make up some time on the DH's, but there was A LOT of loose dirt after Morton Peak, and one soft edge got me. Not a big deal, thankfully, but I was put on notice that [tired] + [narrow margins] = [slow down or else].
• It's strange to do a big ride (we were at 27 miles at Angelus Oaks), and within an hour START another big ride. Thankfully we could refuel and refill water! I went through about 150 oz of water & Tailwind, 5 energy bars, one delicious fried egg sandwich at the restaurant, and some pickle juice about half-way down the Morton singletrack. I was getting some pre-cramp feelings and knew it would help. No one wanted to share. Oh well.
• Everyone was cool - the riders that were way faster than me were patient when caught behind me for a minute, and the peloton stopped and waited at the logical spots for the rest of us to catch up. Seemed like everyone was having a great time!
• 24 hours after finishing, I'm sore...quite sore. But if I had to decide now whether I'd do it again, I'd sign up in a heartbeat.

 

You know it!

 

Wow guys! This is awesome!

 

Not just a seducing voice over talent but actually has a good eye for picture taking! I thought you were at the back cos you were just slow

@DangerDirtyD I vote @redwoods chief photographer for future shenanigans. He makes us look good

 

Well, you weren't wrong.
I gotz the multi-tasks sometimes tho.

 

All great reads! Kiwi put tears in my eyes...

@Cyclotourist - Some of your font was grey. My dehydrated and exhausted eyes couldn't take it. I made it all black.

 

Firstborn summed up:

There is no good writing, just good editing!

 

@redwoods: Excellent photos! You can really observe the curvature of the Earth from the Lightning Gulch Summit! Considering the grandeur of Burt's route above 8,400', there was no Strava bicycle segment for Lightning Gulch. Only 11 riders have Strava'd it...and it's not a coincidence that all 11 are CHICKEN NUGGETS! Between the climb and DH, there are Cuppies for all!

 

DDD, I've been contemplating going up Lightning Gulch summit from Wildhorse -rideable, or lots of HAB? Any locked gates? -& since you're the guru of that area, have you ever ridden 1N02 to Coon Creek Cabin and vicinity? CalTopo shows a possible connector FR going north (with a little bit of SOT thrown in), to make a sort-of loop with Lightning Gulch. Don't know if private property is involved, but the Onyx /Sugarloaf area is FUN! Wish I could've been a Nugget this year.

 

No locked gates. Most of Wildhorse to Lightning Gulch would not be rideable for me going up. I see 1N02 road in the area of Coon Creek/Heart Bar, which we skipped from there to SouthFork. I’m not sure if 1N02 is also known as Wildhorse Meadows Road, which is a N/S fireroad (mellow climb) from the 38 to Wildhorse Meadows. We dropped to Heart Bar via the Wildhorse singletrack and took Hwy 38 tarmac to SouthFork. Show me a screenshot to make sure we’re talking about the same routes.

 

Here's the proposed linking trail(s) -1N02-?Fire road/trail paralleling SOT -SOT -Lightning Gulch TH:

 

thank you for all the ride reports and photos! And thank you DDD for setting it up like always.. DDD stock is up 5 percent today... doing very well... leader in 3D printing!!
Why am I craving McDonalds???

 

I see what you mean. I haven’t ridden that area and don’t know if there are access issues. Per the image below, the green overlay is SBNF and the areas without an overlay are non-federal lands (including possible private property). The green route is SOT. Blue routes are fireroads. Brown routes are singletracks. I assume the routes between Coon Creek Group Campground and Onyx Peak are not shown because the layer I have is Federal.

 

Thanks, DDD. It'll be on my list of areas to check out -mebbee to add on to next year's CNIDS?

 

Awesome photos redwoods!