Noble Canyon, SD

In my quest to ride all the IMBA epics, a trip to nearby Noble Canyon came to be long overdue. Just 45 minutes from downtown San Diego, it's supposed to be one of the best rides in California, or possibly the US.


It was also my first ride south of LA, and too much road biking was bringing me down. So my colleage Taylor and I headed out early one saturday morning to tame the beast.


Any epic ride worth its weight in salt will feature lots of climbing, in my opinion. Noble didn't let us down. 5km of steep climbing was a good warm-up, thank goodness it was paved...


This led to a long single track climb that was technical and challenging. Loooong singletrack.


But this led of course to sweet desserts. After a short descent that led to another climb, we were welcomed to some sublime forested singletrack, Smooth, buttery sections were broken up by technical rock gardens.


After a while the trail cam out into some open, rocky desert single track. Super fun, this rolled up and down for almost 30 minutes, keeping you on your toes with tricky bedrock sections and some short little climbs. The last section back to the car was a roller coster of fast, buffed out singletrack, broken up by big rocks that could throw you from your bike. I must say the belgian 29er did admirably on this ride, where normally I would want to have 5" of front and rear travel.


Of course, we're in the US, so it should come as no surprise when a man comes walking down the trail with a big gun...


But usually he doesn't bring his family with him. Ah, the US...