Mid-October Coastal Central California Trip

[evdog]

Looks like there is some trails in Nisene park worth checking out?

Unless something has changed, trails in Nisene Marks aren't open to bikes. The original owner of the land apparently made that a condition of turning it over to state parks. That said the trails are fun. It was actually a state park employee at the campground who told us to climb the fire road up to the 3-way intersection and look for a singletrack near a bench just beyond it. Then keep turning right. We ended up outside the park at a buddist monastery. You could also get dropped off to do your ride at Demo and then ride back over the ridge into Nisene, then ride back to town from there.

[SchralphMacchio]

The Buddhist Monastery has significant hiker traffic and it's very disruptive when bikes come through there.

Lower Nisene Marks, Aptos Creek Trail is legal and open to bikes.
Upper Nisene Marks the fire roads are all open to bikes and is actually quite pleasant riding. There are threads on MTBR hashing out the history of the bike access in that area.

[evdog]

Yeah we had no idea where we were going to pop out. Just kept turning right. But instead of coming out in lower part of the park we came out at the monastery. I do remember seeing a couple hikers in there but mostly it was a bunch of jumps. This was almost 10 yrs ago.

[SchralphMacchio]

That is a nice map. Fucking fires.

well crap, you went from worrying about smoke to rain. Things might not be too soaked early but it looks like prime conditions wont return until Monday after the weekend dry-out.

[406]

I got a couple good rides in Monday & Tuesday and shorter one this morning, so it turned out well. Activities with the kids planned Th & Fr...sitting in truck with napping baby watching the rain now.

Found lots of fun trails, redwoods are awesome to ride under. Does seem like there is tons of poison oak, hAve been showering with dishsoap. 3 year old picks everything up and says "is this poison?"

[SchralphMacchio]

perfect timing!

[406]

Planning to be in the Santa Cruz area for thanksgiving again. Any updates I need to know about for riding the good stuff? I read in the SCMTS email that Demo has reopened.

[Andeh]

Planning to be in the Santa Cruz area for thanksgiving again. Any updates I need to know about for riding the good stuff? I read in the SCMTS email that Demo has reopened.

It has indeed reopened. It's in decent shape (I just rode there last weekend for the first time this year) - they did some work raising & steepening lots of the berms, but there are still brake bumps in some. There's 2 spots on Highland Road that are down to 1 lane where they're doing landslide repairs, which I imagine could get backed up.

UC stuff is fun but a lot of the popular HWY9 trails got just hammered by people who "discovered" them as an alternative to Demo while it was closed. Like on Sweetness, there's a few spots where there's brake bumps literally 18" long and 9" deep. I have heard that a lot of the people who used to ride HWY9 a lot have moved over to trails off Empire Grade now.

[406]

^^^thanks for the info!

[frorider]

Wilder Ranch has some fun trails IMO... obviously not like Demo.

Just a heads up they've been ticketing people lately for the illegal trails near UCSC.

Were they ticketing this summer?

[Andeh]

Were they ticketing this summer?

The post you quoted was 5 years old lol. I have only ever heard of them ticketing down by Poop Chute because it's a terrible spot for a trail to dump out onto the roadway.

[TahoeJ]

They were on a ticket spree for a minute in a couple of spots but yeah that was several years ago. Can’t speak to anything recent.

[406]

Ant trails to avoid day after rain? I know stuff off highway 9 should be good, but was thinking demo and south tomorrow.

[Andeh]

Mailboxes takes forever to dry out due to how flat it is.

[406]

Thanks, will save that for later in week.

[406]

Heading back to Santa Cruz area for thanksgiving week...looking like a couple inches of rain Friday. Good chance more on weekend.

I seem to recall Nisene are sandstone, but see on the bedrock geology map that there are clay beds in the area, are those trails ok to ride wet?

Demo ok if wet?

What about barking dog? Map has it on granite, but I have never been up there.

[Andeh]

Barking Dogs is decomposed granite so really good wet. Nisene I haven't ridden after rain but I would think it's too clayey. Demo (especially Flow) has a fair amount of clay that turns into brown ice when wet.

[406]

Thanks