Winter Desert Bikepacking
Towards the end of last summer I did a bike tour from Dawson City, Yukon to Inuvik, in the Northwest Territories. The road wasn’t paved and because it was past the usual summer travel season, it was quiet and remote. That trip solidified that I preferred off-road touring to traditional pavement trips. It was then that my friend Paul showed me the website bikepacking.com. “This! This is what I want to do!” I exclaimed. Paul laughed, and asked if I was going to buy yet another bike and set of gear for bikepacking. I left Alaska knowing that I wanted to get into bikepacking. The options for more remote travel on trails was extremely appealing, and the mix of the flow of mountain biking and the joy of travel by bike over long distances seemed just right.
As winter approached, my knee tweak from the last ski season began to nag. I decided that I would not ski much until I could figure out the issue. However, I found it impossible to motivate myself to do squats and lunges and stretches. And without skiing, winter was becoming a bit of a drag. I opened my computer and pulled up bikepacking.com and was met on the homepage with a route called “The SoCal Desert Rambler.” I clicked through the pictures and quickly skimmed the logistics. I texted my friends Anna and Ryan with the link, “do you want to do this route?” Both replied nearly instantly that they were down. Sweet! It was on. I used to spend all my winters in the desert (climbing) and was looking forward to the pleasant temperatures and mild winter sun and days full of biking (which would hopefully rehab my knee!).
Fast forward to March, and I had indeed purchased a fourth bike (oops!), but had saved myself from buying new gear by sewing all my own custom bags for the trip. Anna had to bail due to work commitments (she left the day after us to lead 25 women on bikes across the country), so Ryan and I met up in San Diego and after a big breakfast and a few struggles getting our bikes ready, we hit the road. We planned to ride the SoCal Desert Rambler route (500 miles, 30,000' elevation gain) and link up with a route called the Baldy Bruiser (150 miles, 19,000' elevation gain), which would take us to LA, at which point I would fly out of LAX and Ryan would take a train back to San Diego before heading to Alaska for the summer. Things went mostly according to plan. Read on to hear about the trip!
San Diego to the Mountains
We started the trip from Pacific Beach in San Diego. The official start of the route was Ocean Beach, so we rode there and then headed through downtown San Diego. We then began to head inland toward Alpine. Our first two and a half days were spent climbing up from sea level to over 5000'. As neither of us were in our best biking condition, these days of climbing whipped us into shape pretty quickly. The riding was a mix of road, dirt road and trails, and some singletrack. I found the singletrack a little technically difficult as it was very rocky and I was still adjusting to riding fully loaded.
Mountains to the Desert Canyons
After all our climbing, which included riding through a bit of snow, it was time to descend into the desert. We entered Anza Borrego State Park and rode some really fun singletrack. We then had a long and rocky descent down into a completely new landscape. We entered Canyon Sin Nombre, which was really neat and fun to ride through. We were happy to have bigger tires for this section as it was rather sandy. I was running 3" tires while Ryan had a 2.5" and 2.8" set-up. We were also both running tubeless, which was a great choice for this (and any!) ride. Just when we were starting to feel really isolated, we began getting passed by all kinds of 4-wheel vehicles and dune buggies. As it turns out, we were riding through a canyon that would spit us out in Ocotillo Wells, dubbed as the 4-wheel capital of the world. As it happened, it was the weekend, so the place was teeming with all kinds of off-road enthusiasts. A section of road riding took us to the small town of Borrego Springs, where we stopped for pizza and groceries at a great little market. Then it was off to camp, where we got a bit of overnight rain. In the morning, we rode the Arroyo Salada Wash into Salton City.
California Weird- Salton City to Coachella
Perhaps we should have known this ride would be a bit kooky when in the very first sentence of the route description the word bizarre is used. Nonetheless, we were surprised by the oddities we encountered on this section. Salton City was our introduction to the Salton Sea, which had a brief history as a vacation hotspot, but which is now an extremely salty body of water that may dry up and cause disaster because of the toxic dust that would rise out of it's bottom (really an interesting thing to learn about, look it up!). The Salton City AMPM was our resupply point and an extremely overstimulating one at that. There were the weekend hordes of 4x4ers stocking up on soda, booze, and expensive racing fuel for their various vehicles and RVs, flashing lights, loud music and altogether too much going on inside. We sat on the hot concrete and ate our meals before hopping on our bikes for a 26 mile stretch down the paved highway. Our only motivation was the promise of a date shake in Westmoorland, which was rumored to be quite tasty. After pounding the pavement, a few seat adjustments, and a couple stretch breaks, we made it to the shakes. They were delicious! Unfortunately, we couldn't linger as we needed to find camp for the night. We were stuck in a bit of an odd zone for camping and ended up sleeping at an intersection between crop fields that smelled of the stinky nearby sea (/lake). We were awoken by a truck pulling up beside us, but rather than bother us they went on their way and began fertilizing the fields nearby. The experience probably took years off of our lives, and we woke up early and hit the route towards Slab City. Slab City is billed as the last free place, and is home to many free spirits living in trailers, vans, RVs, and other homemade dwellings. We stopped off at Salvation Mountain and as the midday heat picked up we pedaled away towards camp. At camp that evening, I very narrowly avoided peeing on a rattlesnake. He expressed his displeasure at my presence with some rattles and I ran away to set up my tent and hide. The next day we fought a headwind into Coachella, where we resupplied before our climb into Joshua Tree. It is probably worth mentioning that this section of the ride was HOT. I think we topped out at 88 degrees two days in a row.
Joshua Tree to Big Bear
As we began the 4000' climb into Joshua Tree, I had very legitimate doubts about our ability to make it. And when I say 'our' I totally mean my ability. Ryan did this entire ride on a singlespeed. And he didn't even sweat. Or blow a snot rocket until day 12. Don't ask me how that's possible. Anyway, I just kept pedaling and pedaling- at first through gun fire as the road we were riding up was also the local target practice area. Eventually we entered a nice canyon where the temperature was much cooler and guns were no longer allowed. And after a few hours of relentless slogging upward, we reached a highpoint. Joshua Trees began appearing all around us. We did it! We found an awesome camp spot and had a big dinner. We had beat the heat wave, but according to the forecast there was a wind advisory for the next day, so we settled into sleep hoping for a tailwind. The following day started calm enough with a glee-inducing descent down a lovely sandy road. That was followed by another large climb and we popped out into the more main area of the park. As we were biking out of the park the winds really started to pick up, and unfortunately it was a head wind coupled with some side-blasts that nearly knocked me off the road several times. We had to pedal with all our might to make it down to the town of Joshua Tree. We rewarded ourselves with a burrito and then set out to pass some time to see if the wind would calm down. One of our stops was to the Joshua Tree Bicycle Shop, where I got some new grips to combat some palm pain and numbness I was having. The owner of the shop was super friendly and had some very helpful beta. It ended up remaining much too windy to ride so we set out to find camp for the night. After trying to find a good spot in the gusting wind, we gave up and went back into town to get a motel for the night. The next morning dawned cold, but significantly less windy, so we made our way to Yucca for supplies and then on to Pioneertown for a delicious pull-porked sandwich for lunch. Next, we began our climb into Big Bear. We ended up having a chilly night camped at around 6800' and reached town the following morning. After a tasty breakfast it was time to move on before a storm moved in! Big Bear marked the end of our time on the Desert Rambler and the beginning of our journey on the Baldy Bruiser.
Big Bear to LA
Soon after leaving Big Bear, the weather started to look pretty iffy. Snow was forecasted down to 4000' so we found a nice spot and settled in for the night. We woke up in the morning to several inches of snow. I know that Ryan hates being cold and when I saw his snow-covered bike I was a little nervous that he would revolt. But we both got packed up and started navigating the snowy trail. I could tell that Ryan was hating life but I was secretly kind of excited because snow in the mountains usually means an adventure! My excitement didn't last too long though as I crashed on a particularly ditchy part of the trail, which put a bit of a damper on my confidence. We eventually got to some drier trail but were soon climbing up a hellacious grade back into snowy cold climes. The climb lasted forever and spit us out at an ice cold intersection. We bundled up and descended to a place called Blue Jay, which wonderfully had a taco shop. We tucked in for some hot Mexican food, and when that didn't fully warm us up, we popped into the coffee shop next door for a hot beverage. Our morale was pretty low at this point as the morning's ride had really taxed us mentally and physically. Ryan coaxed me onto my bike with a Twix and we were off again. Unfortunately, it was too cold to take our phones out to check the map, so we got lost in a neighborhood trying to get back to the route. This is literally the convoluted area we got lost in:
I think we both had some serious doubts in the back of our mind at this point. Fortunately, we got on the trail and immediately descended about 3000' which meant dropping well below the snow line and into some warmer, friendly areas. We found camp and went to sleep happily knowing that we wouldn't be getting snowed on again. It was shortly after we got into our tents that it began to hail. The next morning began with everything covered in frost, but it soon warmed up and became a wonderful-weather day. We climbed up to Cleghorn Mountain at 5325' and were treated to some spectacular views of the mountains we had come over and the mountains we were to climb the following day. Unfortunately, we happened to be in another off-road hotspot on a Saturday, so we shared the adventurous dirt route with many jeeps and trucks. After our climb we descended to a gas station at Cajon Pass where we grabbed a few snacks before another climb and a descent into Lytle Creek. We met a nice couple who maintained the currently closed picnic area and campground and they helped us find a suitable spigot for refilling our water. Then it was another climb to our camp at the base of Mt. Baldy- our most formidable obstacle yet. We were lucky enough to be able to have our first campfire our of trip and celebrated by staying up way past our normal 8:00 bedtime.
In the morning, we began our climb up to Mt. Baldy, the highpoint of the route at 7800'. We were both feeling like toast at this point in the ride, perhaps even burnt toast. It was our 13th day of riding with no rest days and considerable amounts of climbing each day. The climb was unrelenting and we both stopped frequently for snack breaks. Around 7000' we hit the snowline and had to walk our bikes through the snow because it wasn't firm enough to ride on. We probably had a mile or two of hike a bike before we finally reached the ski area at Mt. Baldy! It was a great moment, made even sweeter knowing that we had an amazing descent ahead of us. We started down the mountain in some slushy snow, which soon turned to mud, then dirt. We eventually hit a paved road that was incredibly fun to ride. It had 15 MPH hairpin turns that we careened around. Eventually we came to the Mt. Baldy Lodge where we stopped for lunch. The manager of the restaurant came out and asked us about our bikes as she was planning a bike tour herself. She was incredibly kind and it was great to be at such a bike-friendly spot! We had a delicious lunch and got back on the bikes for the rest of our descent. The road we took down was SO.MUCH.FUN. It was the perfect grade, with the perfect turns, and almost no vehicles on it whatsoever. We descended all the way from our high point at 7800' down to 1500'. Towards the bottom of the descent we passed what was supposed to be our last resupply point on the route. Unfortunately it was closed. It was a somber moment as we realized that we would run out of food the next morning and have to bail off the route. We tried to come up with alternative plans, but there was no way to continue without food and there was no way to get food without a 40 mile detour to town and back. With a forecast that showed more than 1.5" of rain coming in a day it seemed that the logical thing to do would be to bail off the route in the morning toward LA and call it a trip. We found a spot to camp for our last night, played some cards, and went to sleep feeling bummed that our trip was coming to an end. In the morning, we got on our bikes and ended up riding about 50 miles to the closest bike shop to the airport that had a box available. We boxed up my bike and I called an Uber driver to come pick me up. Ryan called a friend in the area to pick him up. Just like that, our desert adventure was over. The two weeks we spent on the route were incredible. We saw an amazing variety of scenery and terrain. We had all kinds of crazy weather. We pushed ourselves physically. We laughed and smiled and soaked up some sun. We ate lots of burritos. It's only been two days since we finished riding, and I already miss the simplicity of waking up everyday with one thing to do- ride my bike. I am already scheming about my next bikepacking adventure.
Thanks to everyone who helped make this ride a reality and a success!
Brian- for your support and encouragement!
Lisa- for taking me to the airport
Joanne- for picking me up from the airport, doing my laundry, and watching the dogs while Brian was at work and I was on the trip
Mt. Baldy Lodge- for a delicious lunch
Joshua Tree Bicycle Shop- for great beta and the awesome new grips
Anna- for always being pumped and for the new shirt
Bikepacking- for curating cool routes
and of course Ryan for being an amazing riding partner, a great friend, wonderful navigator, excellent bike mechanic, for lubing my chain, for being patient, and for agreeing to this crazy adventure and sticking with it through all the unpredictable weather.
