A one-day Training Ride in preparation for my Vegas Ride Oct 29 - 31.
Date: Oct 24, 2010
Location: Long Beach (El Dorado Park) to Angeles National Forest and back
Distance: 87.63 miles (141 km)
Elevation gain: approx. 2,000 ft (690 m)
Total Travel Time: 9:21 hours
Net Travel Time: 6:53 hours
Ave Heart Rate (riding only): approx. 125 bmp
Max Heart Rate: 152 bmp
From Long Beach along the Gabriel Bicycle Trail all the way to the foothills of the Angeles National Forest.
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Sunrise in LA
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Gabriel Bicycle Trail - probably one of the best paved bike trails I have ever been on. It's an absolute thrill to ride on such well maintained trail like this one. This trail connects the beach (Long Beach) with the Angeles Forest, a continuous bicycle trail for nearly 40 miles (64.3 km). In the background -- the Angeles National Forest rising above.
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The Gabriel Bicycle Trail eventually runs into the Santa Fe Damn and the bicycle trail hops on top of that damn wall and continues there. It runs up that damn with a 5% grade. Unexpected, for sure. Damn (literally and figuratively)!
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In Azusa, a city at the foothills of the moutains. Breakfast time! Behind you see the Angeles National Forest.
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Once you are on top of the damn, you are rewarded with a nice view though. It turns out the damn isn't really holding up a lake...
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The damn wall makes a neat platform to ride a bicycle on.
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Well, as mentioned, not much of a lake behind the damn wall. Just a parks and nature area.
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Neat, um? A bicycle trail leading straight to the Mountains...
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... and here it is. The Angeles National Forest.
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The Canyon that I'm riding in this forest is called the San Gabriel Canyon with the equally named San Gabriel Canyon Road (aka CA 39). It's a narrow canyon and road, but fascinating nonetheless.
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The road meanders through that gap.
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Once you overcome the first climb, you'll see a reservoir lake with a damn (again). This one, however, contains a real lake.
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The lake in the San Gabriel Canyon.
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You can already see the weather changing in the background. The forecast predicted rain for the latter part of the afternoon. Guess, it's coming earlier than anticipated...
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No trees, but green, nonetheless...
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No traffic seen here, but traffic actually was relatively heavy for this kind of road, especially on the lower part of this mountain. Reason being that the bottom of the valley offers a great ground for 4x4, monster trucks and other similar vehicles for test-rides. So, a lot of people were taking their vehicles to such recreational events. As you can see here, shoulder is very narrow, making this road actually rather dangerous for bicycles.
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Narrow portions like these are especially dangerous. Some were courteous to wait till we passed the curve (till you see traffic again) ... some other $%!@#^&* drivers weren't, so instead came very close to my bike.
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Another view of the lake ...
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Once you reach about 2,000 ft elevation -- bam! A sign to fend off bicycles.
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Turns out this barricade used to block traffic the last year or two, making this a great place to ride a bicycle, as you had the entire road for yourself. Now, it's open for general traffic.
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At this moment, I weighted the options and what made sense given the circumstances. I can just ignore the sign and continue, or go back. I decided on the latter due to the following reasons:
1. Weather was turning back rather quickly. Dark clouds forming plus temperature dropping rapidly (to probably high 40s, about 10 C).
2. Traffic is surprisingly high-speed here. Cars and many motor-cycles were ignoring the signs, but they all zoomed by me with nearly 40-45 mi/hr taking advantage of the rather empty road. This road was supposed to be closed for traffic, they must have just opened it last month, since I saw a journal from someone who reported this road still being closed just a month ago.
I have no idea how narrow or wide the shoulder is on this stretch and riding up few thousand feet on a narrow shoulder with traffic zooming by while the weather was getting worse. Not a good idea. Plus, since this is a training ride, I needed to save some energy for the upcoming Vegas trip. I'll conquer the Angeles Forest some other time, hopefully next year in spring.
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Back in Azusa. I think I made the right decision returning. The weather -- which seemed fine when I took off from Azusa earlier (see picture from my breakfast break), has significantly worsened.
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Ironically, behind me -- in LA, the weather wasn't so bad (at least not yet).
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Back in Long Beach.
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No summit to the Mountains and reached only about 2,000 ft (610 m), but nonetheless a good training ride. A little disappointed, but feel at peace that I saved energy and chose the safer option given the conditions. Still got about 90 miles (140 km) of ride in and saved some energy for my Vegas ride.
I made a promise to myself that I'll return to the Angeles National Forest next year and hopefully pick a better route and better weather.
1 comment:
Great trip! The no-bicycle signs might not be legal nor enforceable. Generally, bicycles can't be banned from roads in California, unless it's a designated freeway passing through an area with a reasonable alternate route. This road is clearly not a freeway.
Some traffic engineers (often your enemy, though they shouldn't be) insist on signs like these nonetheless.
Here's a great site for more info on this stuff: http://moderntransit.org/bi/signs.html
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