So with brother coming to stay, I felt we should get out and explore at least one of the famous mountain bike routes of the Bay Area. If you’re wondering why the image above, the location was chosen as it was near to Alice’s, so that he could sample their amazing baby back ribs of course.

A quick google revealed what we thought would be a reasonably challenging, yet do-able, 10 mile ride starting from Skeggs Point:

The ride plan was taken from this site, which has a lot of detailed information including gps track data, which I’d uploaded to my Garmin, as the advice was it’s pretty easy to get lost at this park. The park website is here.

After a reasonably flat start along Tifoni Trail then Fir Trail, the downhill along Resolution Trail started – which was single track and quite technical in places. At this point it became quickly apparent that the ride was going to be a little harder than we had planned for, both in technical and aerobic abilities required. All this downhill meant only one thing – mostly uphill on the way back!

Still, after only about 2.5 miles, we turned left onto El Corte de Madera Creek Trail and descended further toward the creek. A little less than a mile later, and with the realization that much more downhill was to come on the planned 10 mile route, we decided to modify our route to take an alternative trail back to the top, without the additional 500 ft descent/ascent.

At around 1 hour in, we turned around and headed back along Madera Creek Trail back to the Resolution Trail junction. Here we continued on the Creek trail for one epic climb back to the Parking Lot.

This was what we’d accomplished…

This was of course, justification enough for some of these:

Maybe next time, I will try to conquer a longer route. Watch this space….