Cuyamaca Rancho State Park Mountain Bike Trail – San Diego County, California

Just east of San Diego is an astonishing feat of nature in an area called Cuyamaca Rancho State Park with over 26,000 acres of oak woodland forest, mixed with a smattering of pines and charming meadows with playful creeks. There are over 100 miles of trails which offer hikers, bikers, and equestrians ample stomping grounds. Within the Park are two great places for mountain bikers to establish base camp and spend the night, one of which is called Paso Picacho camp, which is nestled between Stonewall Peak elevation 5,700’, and Cuyamaca Peak elevation 6,512’, both peaks present spectacular views of the deserts to the east, the coast to the west, and Lake Cuyamaca at the base. The other campground which I prefer is Green Valley because it has a refreshing stream that runs through camp replete with waterfalls. Both camps are great base camps because you can start your ride to anywhere in the park from either one of them. Cuyamaca is just a maze of trails and if you are like me then you will want to mountain bike as much of the 100 miles of trails as possible. Cuyamaca is in fact so popular with mountain bikers that they have annual bike events held there. The popularity of the place does have its draw backs though as you shall soon see, some riders are caught off guard by the beauty and relative ease of the trails succumbing to hell bent egos of tearing the trails up.

On a beautiful rainy day three of us went to ride in Cuyamaca, conveniently, just 50 miles east of San Diego off sports car blistering highway 79. We parked at the day use Green Valley campground and saddled up for a three hour tour along Cuyamaca peak and around middle peak via several kind fire roads.

Dennis my good friend and normal riding partner who always wakes me up early on the weekends considers himself to have the balance of a cat and likes smoking cigarettes. He brought his friend Willie who just bought a used mountain bike and was itching to get to try it in the Cuyamacas, he had never done any serious riding. Cuyamaca is almost all intermediate to beginner riding; the trails are wide fire roads and not very technical. They are however fun and fast. More of the technical riding can be done on the hiking trails throughout the park which I often go on and fake ignorance if stopped, so far no problems. This could be a debate for another time that I would like to get into with any dire hard hiker protective of his precious trail if that is the problem or is he just worried I might come careening down a hill and hit him?

On this particular wet rainy day with the green horn Willie along, I opted to stick to the regular designated mountain bike trails, in this instance Fern Flat, Azalea Springs, and Middle Peak fire roads. The trail along Cuyamaca Peak and Middle Peak is a vast woodland forest with the occasional pleasant out looking vista. This is the type of playground where at one point going down hill a buck snorted fiercely at me, yes I did fear for my life, and pranced right along side of me for a good 50 yards then cut right in front of me and disappeared into the woods; fun stuff, even for the animals apparently. I have yet to run into the elusive Mountain Lion but there are plenty of posted warnings and several reported human stalking and killings. Yes indeed fun stuff.

I enjoy all kinds of inclement weather so riding in the rain on this day was a treat, first we went along Japacha Spring Creek, then the wide base of Cuyamaca peak. Watching the trinkets of water flow down the trail during a rain storm is amusing and after about an hour we came to a clearing which opens up to middle peak. The trail goes around middle peak and takes about an hour. The fork in the road goes left starting with a down hill or right leading into an uphill.

Dennis and I were doing what we normal do during these easy types of rides and were talking and enjoying nature. Not paying much attention, the green horn Willie, who apparently loves speed, instantly took off left down hill, obviously he wanted to get a feel for his bike on our first downhill of the trip. Keep in mind this is a wet rainy day and he is new to the sport. Dennis and I looked at each other and thought alright lets go, we peddled for a few feet and began our downhill decent.

As we followed after Willie who was now way ahead of us and not just going down hill holding his bike in line like most riders, he was all over the place and oddly, still peddling at a ferocious rate. I start out this section with a few hard turns of the crank but it is steep enough that you pick up speed and follow your line, not Willie. He was well down the hill and still peddling wildly. He had to be crazy I was thinking and wondered if he was so green that he didn’t realize he had free wheel and could stop peddling. Even now I can see him peddling, flying down hill like some speed demon, swerving out of control, careening off the trail, flailing into a sharp ditch, bike and body flying, and Willie going over the handle bars flying like a man shot out of a cannon.

Dennis and I stared at each other in disbelief hoping for the best but expecting the worst. Not that that wasn’t scary enough but when we caught up to him he was not moving but talking and was sprawled out inches from having collided head on with a nice sized boulder. I’ve seen this before, dare devils just missing catastrophe by a mere fraction, perhaps there are angles out there protecting some of us. At the speed he was going hitting that rock most likely would have broken something and possibly put him lights out. Not wanting to think about it, we made sure he was alright and I went back to get his bike about 20 yards back up the hill. Willie starts talking about how he’s fine and we should continue on the ride. I’m still baffled at how nonplussed he is when I pick up his bike and quickly discover that the bike was not so lucky. The front rim majorly bent and will not rotate, along with brakes and levers that need to be adjusted.

Obviously the ride is over and we decide to turn back much to Willies dismay, I think he was trying to man up and didn’t want to ruin the rest of our ride, out of the question, I’m not going any further into the forest with Willie in this condition we must get back to civilization. In order to get Willies bike in some kind of working condition we disassemble the front brake taking off the front tire and hammer away on the rim trying to bend it back to some semblance of straight. This technique does not work well but we do manage to get the wheel to go around without getting stuck on the front brake. Now the hour to get back takes two hours of slow riding through the rain but tragedy has been averted so all is well that ends well.

Lessons learned; any senior rider in a group with a green horn or for that matter any rider not familiar with the terrain, has a responsibility to the pack. I believe the experienced rider should keep a fairly constant dialogue about the trail and trail safety. When we came to the fork in the road I should have minutes before talked about it and had us all stop and at that point talked about the trail and certainly instructed Willie to follow Dennis or myself. I can still see Willie just screaming out of control down that hill and of all things constantly peddling when he was clearly out of control. When I saw him go flying over his handle bars will nilly, I seriously thought he was going to be messed up. And when I saw how close he was to hitting a serious rock obstruction I think we all realized how lucky he was. So all experienced rides keep your group informed and don’t let any green horns lead the pack even if they have a new bike. It’s similar to someone getting a new sports car they think they need to floor it and speed around.

Needless to say, Willie never fixed his mountain bike; he sold it and joined the Army.