3F Bike Club

Bull Fire Overtakes the Cannell Plunge

Mark Warrick — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 21:31:11 +0000

The Bull Fire, which began July 26th, 2010, has overtaken a popular mountain biking trail near the town of Kernville, CA and destroyed 16,074 acres of brush and pine trees with only 12% containment.

The nearby Cannell Trail (Forest Route 22S19) begins over 20 miles away where it intersects Sherman Pass Rd (Forest Route 22S05). As it descends back to Kernville, it passes through pristine pine forests and giant grassy meadows that are now at risk of complete devastation. The final 5 miles of the trail, known to mountain bikers as the “Cannell Plunge” drops a full 5,000′ of elevation into Kernville, making it one of the steepest and most popular cross country mountain biking rides in Southern California.

The Mountain & Rivers Adventures tour company in Kernville, which offers river rafting, kayaking, climbing, hiking and mountain biking adventures, has been posting frequent updates on their Facebook page. As of Wednesday, they reported that their team is okay and that thanks to the work of fire crews, only a small portion of their campground burned.

Map of the Bull Fire Perimeter and the Cannell Trail:

View Larger Map

Red line: Bull Fire Perimeter as of 07/28/2010
Blue line: Cannell Trail

Latest News from InciWeb about the Bull Fire:

July 29, 2010: Bull Fire Evening Update (Bull Wildfire)
July 28,2010 6:00 p.m.Location: Kern River Ranger District, Sequoia National Forest, CaliforniaDate of Fire Containment: 12 Percent Start: July 26, 2010 Cause: Human Caused, Under Investigation Size: 15,982 Acres Containment: 12 Percent Management: Unified Command: California Interagency Incident Management Team 4and Kern County Fire DepartmentCooperating Agencies: Bureau of Land Management, California Highway Patrol,Kern County Sheriff, Tulare County SheriffFire Status: The fire continues to burn in grass and brush on both sides of the Kern River, north of Kernville. Fire growth today was minimal. Residents of Riverkern were allowed back into their homes this morning due to the reduced threat from the fire. Fire personnel will continue to work within the residential areas to ensure any remaining hot spots are extinguished. Today's Actions: Today, fire activity was significantly quieter than yesterday, allowing crews to make excellent progress constructing fire line directly...

Nirve Beach Cruiser to Mountain Bike Conversion

Mark Warrick — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 04:22:45 +0000

A while back, I found a great deal on a Nirve Night Owl Beach Cruiser. The first thing I did was to replace the giant cruiser seat with a mountain bike seat just to give it a little more style. With those BMX-style bars, I knew I had something out of the ordinary.

I found a post online from a guy that swapped out the tires and then tried his Nirve Night Owl on some local dirt trails here. Needless to say, I was inspired. So after a few months of collecting parts, I finally turned my cruiser into a single speed mountain bike. I swapped the BMX-style bars for regular mountain bike bars and put some locking grips on them. I realized though that even with the seat pushed as far forward as possible on the rails, I was still stretched out on the bike, so I switched out the stem with a 90mm 30 degree adjustable angle stem. I also swapped out the crank set with a Shimano LX set with a single 34 chain ring, added clipless pedals, and of course, removed the chain guard. (Not to drop weight persay as the bike is still a bit heavy, but more more or less so I didn’t have to listen to the chain slapping against it.) The hardest thing to do was to remove the kick stand, which requires a special tool. I took it to a local bike shop to have that done. And finally, I swapped out the front rim so that at least that would be quick-release and I could then get the bike in the car without tools! I would have swapped the rear rim as well to match them up, but the hub in the rear isn’t a standard width (it’s much more narrow). Oh well, one all black, one all silver – no biggee! I guess I could put my all black Mavic CrossTrail on the front. Hmmm…

So here we have it folks, my single speed Nirve beach cruiser conversion, which I’ve named “The Beach Bruiser”. Oh, and in case you’re curious, the gearing is 34×20 (I counted the teeth on the rear sprocket).

After my first ride on the Beach Bruiser at Irvine Park, I have to say, it’s not easy to climb with, but it does climb and I didn’t have to walk anything! I look forward to taking this bad boy out to all the other local parks. It’s like starting over with mountain biking again since it’s so different than my Trek Fuel EX8 full suspension XC bike and so much harder. I’ve always wondered why people like single speed bikes. Now I’m inspired to build up a light weight single speed bike as well! For now though, I’ll tough it out and build some strength on the Beach Bruiser because it’s FUN!

Garmin Stats:
Most surprising was that I was able to keep pretty much the same overall pace as I normally would at this park. Check out the Garmin stats from my first single speed ride:

Snow Summit Downhill Fest 2010 #1

Mark Warrick — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 22:55:23 +0000

We headed on up to Big Bear’s Snow Summit ski resort to do some chair lift-assist riding this weekend. In all we had about a dozen riders join us. Some people did three runs, others five, and I did four. My routes included the Fall Line, the 2N10 > Meadows > Towne Trail, the 2N10 > Pine Knot and the 2N10 > Fern Trail.

Check out a panorama shot I took along the 2N10 between Snow Summit and the Pine Knot trail (aka Grand View Loop).

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Of course, no trip to Big Bear would be complete without a stop in town for some grub and margaritas at the Jacalito Grill. There are a few reasons we love this place:

It’s on the route back to Snow Summit.
18 oz. Cadillac margaritas are only $8.50.
You can park your bikes right outside of where you’re eating.
Oh, and the food is pretty good too.

After the ride, we had a BBQ and spent the night at one of our 3F member’s cabin which was conveniently just a mile and a half away from Snow Summit. By the way, if you ever want to stay in Big Bear near Snow Summit, the cabin rents out for $250/weekend in the summer. It has 2 bedrooms and 5 beds including 2 that can sleep 2. So if a couple guys brought their girlfriends there could be as many as 7 people sleeping comfortably. This deal is only good for 3F members. Contact me for info at mark@3fbc.com.

Idyllwild Fun Zone

Mark Warrick — Sun, 30 May 2010 22:02:35 +0000

Special thanks to Siren Bicycles for showing us around what I’ll call the Idyllwild Fun Zone.

This area just outside of Idyllwild is a collection of local-built single tracks that rush through numerous boulders and tight switch backs in a pine forest. I was able to clear everything on my first try and I think with some more practice I could fly through this section and have a lot more fun on the obstacles. Being a somewhat technical downhill section, some people may have some troubles getting through the tight rocky sections and dropping off the many boulder drops.

Here are some stats from my Garmin for the ride:

And some photos:
http://photos.3fbc.com/20100530_Idyllwild_Fun_Zone/

And a couple panorama photos:

A few from within The Fun Zone

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Alvin Meadow

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It should be noted that this ride begins with the downhill sections and ends with the climb back up to the cars on a combination of fire roads and single tracks. Where you park, take note of the Forestry Service Road Sign. The 5S24 heads west, and then south to a dead end. The 5S06 heads north, and then west. This fire road, also known as the Old Control Road on Google maps, is nearby for the entire ride. If you would rather not climb back up to your car, it is possible to do this ride as a shuttle, parking a car near the turn around point at approximately 3.64 miles into the ride where the single track dumps out onto the Chimney Flats Road. Don’t count on signs beyond the parking area to guide your way. You’ll need the route programmed into your GPS or an experienced guide to help you find all these off-the-map single tracks.

Hurkey Creek Camping and Riding with ShareMTB

Mark Warrick — Sat, 29 May 2010 22:39:24 +0000

When a good camping deal comes along, I just have to take it. My all weekend trip at $70 included three nights of camping, food, and all the beer I could drink until the beer was gone. I stayed for two nights. There was plenty of food and there was still beer left when I took off! Many thanks to the Share Mountain Bike Club for making this happen. (Check them out at http://www.sharemtb.com)

Check out photos of our Hurkey Creek Ride Here

For our Saturday ride, the plans were a little vague, but being the adventurous sports we were, we said OK. The basics: 20 miles or so with a few thousand feet of climbing at starting elevations near 4,400′ up. I thought, OK sounds like maybe an EPIC, but who knows. We all rolled with the flow. I know the basic Hurkey Creek loop (aka the 24 Hours of Adrenaline loop) but had never really ventured out past that before.

After the first 1.5 miles of climbing over 550′ we had pretty much figured out who was going to ride in the “A” group and who would be in the “B” and “C” groups. Silly me decided to stick with the “A” group. After the average 8 mile an hour warm up (think middle ring front, top ring back the whole way) the pace actually increased. While I stopped for some photos in the first meadow, the Clydesdales on their single speeds continued through the meadows without breaking so much as a second to reach the next ridge line.

Check out this panorama of the first meadow:

Spring Johnson Meadow

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Once I arrived at May Valley Road, I was so far behind that nobody wanted to wait, so off they went again at 8+ mph climbing speeds up May Valley Road. One of the guys was nice enough to stop a mile or so up to wait for me, but given no breaks and a pace about double what I’m used to, I bid him a farewell and the group and decided to go exploring on my own.

I checked out my TOPO map, looked up, and had this goal in mind: I’m gonna go to the top of that 6,200′ mountain right in front of me. I reached 5,800′ when the road just well.. stopped. And there were no foot paths either. It was pretty clear that nobody had been up this way in quite a while. So I took a picture of the view and started my way back down.

Take a look at the panorama view of May Valley / Hurkey Creek area from the Big Cedar Spring area at 5,800′:

Big Cedar Spring Area

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On the way down the hill, I found a little single track near a bunch of piles of wood which I later was told is called “Log Pile”. At the end of this trail I ran into the original group of folks that I started the ride with. Altogether again, we descended into a myriad of trails in the May Valley / Hurkey Creek area. Here are a few panorama shots I took on the way down.

May Valley Road Meadow

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Indian Grinding Stone Along Hurkey Creek

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Interesting Scene in the Hurkey Creek Area

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The Fishery Above Hurkey Crek Campground

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Check out photos of our Hurkey Creek Ride Here

3F Main Website Recovered (Mostly)

Mark Warrick — Thu, 27 May 2010 20:54:50 +0000

I found a backup copy of the entire http://www.3fbc.com website from late 2008. So I got all the functionality back as of that time and all the events from 2006-2008. I also found a backup of the 3F Blog from that point in time, but that will take some more time to recover and merge with the new blog.

3F Members are Racing?

Mark Warrick — Wed, 26 May 2010 22:38:40 +0000

Who would have thunk it? A few diehard mountain bikers from our sweet little 3F Bike Club decided to put their skills and endurance to the test yesterday at the first Over the Hump Race of 2010. No, they weren’t wearing 3F jersey’s, but they were there in spirt.

Check out the race results from May 25, 2010 here. (PDF)

Michael was happy to not get a DNF in his first ever MTB race.

Will performed about the same in his age group.

But the real star of the day was Deborah who narrowly missed a 3rd place podium spot by a mere 15 seconds. I’ll bet she’ll be turning up the after burners next time she’s that close!

Hats off to the racers, and hope to hear about mroe of us 3F’rs enjoying the races. OH yeah, and I guess that means if I’m gonna talk, I better go give the race a shot myself huh? There’s always next week.

—mark, 3F

Big Tujunga Canyon Post-Fire Photos

Mark Warrick — Sun, 23 May 2010 15:42:07 +0000

Today I joined a few other volunteers and a representative of the Angeles National Forest Service for an introduction and planning meeting about what will be a many-years long photo documentation project of the post Station Fire burn areas.

For you out-of-towners, the Station Fire, which began on August 26, 2009 and continued for a month, devastated 160,577 acres of forest land; essentially ALL of the forest. You can read more about that fire here:

http://www.inciweb.org/incident/1856/

Our goal is to match up current photos with those taken over the past decades, and some which were taken over a hundred years ago. We plan to employ advanced techniques such as 360-degree photography and GeoTagging to supplement the Forestry Service’s GIS data.

Below are a few samples of what may result of this project.

Wildwood Picnic Area

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Big Tugunga Canyon Road Near 3N53

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3N27 – Near Big Tujunga Cyn Rd

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We’re back online (sort of).

Mark Warrick — Sun, 16 May 2010 14:56:03 +0000

On May 16, 2010, we suffered a catastrophic loss of data, all of it in fact. We had years of events, trail reports, trail guides, photos and a plethora of resources for the mountain biking community on our site. While some of those things can be rebuilt, others cannot. It’s like losing your house. You can rebuild the house, but the photos you lost in the fire, all the little trinkets you collected in your travels, all of that is gone. All you are left with is a memory of the years gone by.

We started this group in January, 2006 and are now reborn on May 16, 2010.

If you’re looking for trail guides, take a look at all of the trails we uploaded to MapMyRide:

http://www.mapmyride.com/community/groups/view_group_routes?g=571613417059

Go here for to view our upcoming events:
http://www.3fbc.net/calendar/list/

Socialize with us on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=2249136397

Check out photos of our past events:
photos.3fbc.com