Today’s ride wasn’t a hammerfest, nor was it an epic ride of mammoth proportions, I’m not even sore. Instead, today’s ride was about finding new trails, exploring the road less travelled, and linking up trails and campgrounds which had previously been isolated. So what did we do? Well, there are some old trail descriptions on a site called Milo’s Singletrack. He has 6 rides and maps mostly from the Strawberry/ Dodge Ridge area and while I’ve ridden most of these trails, I’d never ridden one called Strawberry Trail before. Looking at the map I saw that the route included some trails that very nearly connected the bottom of the Pinecrest Peak Downhill with the Lyon’s Lake area trails, including one of my favorite area trails, Pinball. It turns out that this trail covers about 80% of the distance between the two areas, plus puts us at a considerable elevation. Perhaps we can avoid a bunch of climbing to the top of Pinball. As a bonus there was about 8 miles of just phenominal singletrack that I’d never even suspected. The trail goes right by a great camp site right near the Stanislaus river…. Oh, and much of this trail is beginner friendly so Fiona and Jenny were quite happy with the find too.
We can certainly connect the existing trails to the Lyon’s Lake area by Forest Service Roads but, I want to try find some singletrack to bridge that last little gap to the top of Pinball, or Crandall Peak. My real D’oh of the day was forgetting my camera. To be continued.