Mother Nature Hates Mountain Bikers-Part I

...if the conditions on Mt Diablo this morning are any indication. As we all know, the area had a severe storm around the new year (I would guess it was the most rain in a day we've had here in at least 20 years, maybe more). There were floods and landslides all across Northern California, but I didn't think my beloved Mt Diablo's mountain bike trails would have been seriously affected.

So I went out this morning for the first mt bike ride of 2006.

Starting out on the trail, this looks pretty good.

In fact, it's a beautiful day and the hills look to be in good shape...

Uh oh, maybe I spoke too soon...This doesn't look good at all.

If you look closely at the picture above (click on it to enlarge), you'll see that what used to be the trail is now a series of very nasty erosion channels. That drainage pipe used to be UNDER the trail. The trail itself used to be wide enough for a truck to drive up. Now it's almost unpassable. The erosion channels are a good four to five feet deep at a minimum, and when I got closer they grew to close to 10+ feet deep.

Part II of this post will have more pictures, but I had to climb down into the channel and lift my bike up onto the newly exposed drainage pipe and then haul my fat ass up and over the pipe.

Once I got past this very technical barrier, I found that fairly large rocks were all over the trail. They used to be on the hills next to the trail...here's an example...

So I figured that was probably the extent of the damage. Bad, but it was only one part of the trail. Hopefully, the rest of the trail up to the top of Diablo was intact. The trail was indeed ok for a while. It was muddy, but it was ridable and the riding was actually quite good. When I got to the single track part, here's what I found...

SHIT! The better part of the singletrack trail was now in the ravine. Click for an enlargement.

But I was not to be stopped, so I leaned hard to the good side of the remainder of the trail and got past it as it crumbled beneath my rear tire...

Happily, the rest of the trail wasn't in this bad of shape and I was able to continue up the singletrack for some outstanding riding.

The creek alongside the trail in this area didn't even look like it had crested its banks

And then I ran across some very interesting stuff. This trail marker appeared to have become a home for ladybugs. Click to enlarge.

And I do appreciate that other mountain bikers have been trying to clearly mark the trails...

More pics in Part II....