Ivan's trail

Whenever staying in LA, I have to ride Ivan's trail, of all the local loops I've ridden it's maybe the best (surely beating the pants of the Lummen Loop).  A good butt-kicking climb with some steep, technical sections, followed by a ribbon of fast, sometimes technical, ridgeline singletrack.  It's nothing short of completely fantastic.

Too lazy to ride to the trail head (it is a bit of a haul to ride there...), we threw the bikes in the truck and headed up the canyon.

There's a long dirt road climb that keeps getting steeper and steeper.  Until recently the locals had used this area as their garbage dump, but recently that had all been cleaned up.

Halfway up the climb, we met a new friend.  We called him Michael.  Seems Michael had got into a bit of trouble with some drunk, gun-toting locals.  They had left him for dead.

We shared some stories with Michael.  Ivan in particular made a special bond with him.

We offered to let him ride with us, but he didn't feel he was up to it.

We'll always have a little bit of Michael with us.

So off we went.  At the top of the climb (the last 1/3 of which is painful), there are sweeping views of all the mountains north of LA.  LA is a desert and you kind of forget about all this.  Pretty stunning views.

...and then we head down.  Kind of hard to see Ivan here, he's a little speck at the top of the trail.  But it just keeps going on and on and on....

It had just rained that morning so the trails were wonderfully sticky.  Here's me on a steep little downhill section.

And here's the last uber-gnarly descent, more loose and rutted than ever.  You may remember Ivan's crash on the beach-cruiser from here...needless to say today was injury-free.

Always fun, I could ride that every day I think.  Afterwards we did some exploring and bush-whacking and found some small bits of additional trail.