Catching up on 2019 Tour de Los Padres ride report

In the Carrizo Plain 

The Tour de Los Padres route is never easy and funky weather in 2019 made a diverse route even more unusually diverse. 3 days of drying out in heat, 1 day of cold soaking. The average would have been great! But the variation less so. I got to SB around 7 pm on Monday, very cold and wet, just a day after I had been wishing for cold and wetness while counting miles for shade and water at Chokecherry. 

As in previous years, the main route was a point-to-point, starting in Frazier Park and ending in Santa Barbara and going through the Carrizo Plain. I joined the group start, or at least the shuttle to Frazier Park and the group dinner the night before. However, I don't like to stay in a motel, nor in town, so I tend to climb up the dirt road on the backside of Mt Pinos at night and camp on top. I don't roll back down to town in the morning for the group start, though, and according to Erin as a consequence declares me to "hold the record for the most course deviations over the last 6 years, while never actually having to "bail out"!  

The fast riders pass me usually around Ventucopa - as Brian Lucido and Gregg Dunham did this year. Oh, here they come already (at the Pistachio Company in Ventucopa, the green bike is mine):

No fooling around Brian, Gregg is just behind you. 

No fooling around here, Gregg. Brian already left. 

The Pistachio Company is the last reliable water for a long, long time. In fact, it wasn't until about 20 hours later that I found water again, then a rather unattractive cow trough. 

On I roll, up on Highway 33 until Erin finds a very funky way to get into the Carrizo Plain. Not the regular route (which would be annoying: longer on a busy highway, then a dirt road), no, something involving fence hopping, hike a bike, then a harder climb (but certainly worth it). I was wondering where Blake Bockius is, usually he is with the front pack. But this is a hot day, which slows down old people and Blake is almost as old as I am. Sure enough, it wasn't until the Carrizo Plain, seeminly hours later (but maybe just one) that he came by. 

Blake is still much faster than me

The Carrizo Plain is bounded by two mountain ranges, the Temblor, which is to the northeast, and the Caliente, which is to the southwest, and is cleaved by the San Andreas Fault. The fault is often photographed here because movements show up clearly. There is an exhibit along Buckhorn road, which we take. 

I was pretty wiped and camped in the Carrizo Plain well before Soda Lake. Although I've camped in here before, repeatedly, I apparently missed a key resident before. It is the home of the Giant Kangaroo Rat! Some Giant Kangaroo Rats live elsewhere, in small pockets elsewhere in the the San Joaquin valley, but mostly they are here. And I got to see many of them. They are kind of cute, nicer than regular rats, and not really that giant. But their hopping around at night (on two legs, they are like kangaroos in that respect) can get a bit unnerving. 

The next morning is usually nice. There is a fairly hard climb up into the Caliente Range, but it is always pretty. The afternoon, once the sun is at full force and the temperatures are up, are a different story. Especially once you run out of water. It is hard to find. 

The dry stretches help to appreciate the challenges travelers in the Southwest had to overcome in the past - without GPS, waypoints to water, and slower on foot or wagon than we are on bicycles. In my motorcycle blog posts in Mojave, I collected quotes from the 1850 (also a wet winter) travelers across the Mojave desert (Manly and Rogers party, the Jayhawkers) , who suffered much worse and some didn't make it. Comparing our outdoor experience with that from 150 years ago helps to appreciate how easy life is these days even when it feels hard!

"There was now before us a particularly bad stretch of the country as it would probably take us four or five days to get over it, and there was only one water hole in the entire distance. This one was quite salty, so much so that on our return trip the horses refused to drink it, and the little white one died the next day." William Lewis Manly (1894), Death Valley in '49, Ch. 11

TDLP, even with camping, never has more than 30 hours or so without reliable water - and we know where those are. 

On top of the Caliente Range in the morning - but the next sets of canyons will take all afternoon

And the afternoon never is fun. It does get hot in the Caliente Range. And there isn't much water (or at least not very attractive water) until Gifford Springs. It was strangely full, even overflowing, and I got a shower while filling up my water bottles - you can see the water splashing down on the side

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No up on the other side and even though the temperatures have cooled down, the day in the sun took its toll. I found a nice campsite off Sierra Madre road, maybe halfway up the long climb. 

Day 3 was the usual, much of it along Sierra Madre road. Could be nice, but this time too hot and too dry. It reminded me of Manly's book about crossing the Mojave:

"Our thirst began to be something terrible to endure. We were so nearly worn out that we tried to eat a little meat, but the mouth would not moisten it enough so we could swallow and we had to reject it. It seemed as if we were going to die with food in our hand because we could not eat it. We talked a little and the burden of it was a fear that we could not endure the terrible thirst a while longer." William Lewis Manly (1894), Death Valley in '49, Ch. 10

Now, I didn't suffer that much. I never ran completely out of water, but it happened to Gregg I believe, who was so thirsty that he couldn't eat. 

Pretty views from Sierra Madre Road in the morning

It was another long dry day, too hot and too dry to be enjoyable. But as I reached the highest point of the day, near Big Pine Summit, there was lightning, now the goal was to get down quickly. In other years, I stopped for a hike up to the mountain top, but this was clearly not advisable this year. 

Around sunset, a thunderstorm was coming in

The next morning was very different. It was cold and damp and the surface has become so muddy that I even had to walk some downhill stretches as the tires got too clogged with mud. Fortunately, these were short stretches, but frustrating anyway. Couldn't we just get a middle between yesterday and today? 

Rocky roads cause slashed tires

This hadn't happened to me before on a trip, so maybe slashing a tire was overdue. I had spare tubes and a tire boot (the gash would have been too big without closing it up) and I got going within 15 minutes or so. But cold and unpleasant 15 minutes. 

The big dirt road was destroyed during a fire a few years ago and mustard weed have taken over. Usually, such gentle bushwhacking is fine, maybe even enjoyable. Not today: Those weeds were cold and wet and made the descent miserable. 

But eventually the descent comes to an end. There is the fun Camuesa Connector trail and then it is time to cross the Santa Ynez river. The mightiest Santa Ynez flow I've ever seen, but it still is less than knee height. 

There is one long climb left after the river, then there could be the lovely Romero single track downhill. However, my rear tire was too fragile for single track riding and I took a shortcut via Gibraltar road, which is a paved road. Less interesting, but then I had never ridden it and I've gone Romero up and down many times. But Romero is the better way!