If you enjoy riding up and down ranges in the ‘wood, or tearing down fire roads, then Santa Cruz is heaven. There’s even great road riding but this trip, we stuck to the trails. USCSC has a ton of trails on its campus, all of which cross, zig zag, ascend and descend around neighboring systems. When I initially headed down from SF with Brian Vernor, my cross bike was in the car, which would have been a fine vehicle for the day but I made a few phone calls and ended up demo’ing an Ibis Ripley instead. Let’s just say the day was probably a lot more enjoyable (hopefully I’ll be able to review that bike extensively in the future).

Garrett from Strawfoot, Vernor and I did a series of loops, ranging from relatively technical, loose and sandy descents to wide-open, no fucks given blast-fests down through Wilder. None of us had a Garmin on our bikes, so I have no idea how long we were out there, or how far we traveled, but my legs told me around 30 ish miles and in trails, that’s a long afternoon, especially when Santa Cruz was spiking into the 90’s and no, that’s not a reference to the vernacular style of the town.

Santa Cruz was heaven for those few hours and people often ask why I don’t shoot photos of the more technical, beautiful singletrack when I ride MTB. It’s because we’re going too fast and no one wants to stop! Except when someone wrecks…