|   A Secret Mission to Northern Calinoia | Fast Eddy
Mar 7, 2002 9:52 AM | | Moschika, my friend Mike, and I snuck out Saturday to explore some new dirt we heard about up north. It wasn't so great that we expect an MTB gold rush, and there're enough clues to it around, but I'm not sending you a map. Find it yourself if you want to go. Or send me an email with a plan involving camping, riding and tequila, and I may be available.
We had a couple big maps, and a vague plan as we set off from my mom's place in Windsor at 7am. We refueled about 90 minutes north, and made a right.
The guy in the Jeep is just a coincidence. He wasn't with us. He was much more paitent with the peacocks than I would have been. You can see the shadow of one of them flying away. |
| Up the road a little way... | Fast Eddy
Mar 7, 2002 9:54 AM | | ...we came over a rise, and got a view of the ocean. We were about 15 miles away. My picture's not great, but you get the idea. |
| Our evil plan... | Fast Eddy
Mar 7, 2002 10:04 AM | | ...was to park at this "camp" we had seen on the map, and ride a loop. We didn't read the sign carefully on the way in:
Yup, it was a prison camp. Some kind of honor farm with no fences, but lots of bad-looking dudes in blue jumpsuits and guards with guns. We saw the fire road we had planned to ride on, so we asked at the office if we could park-n-ride. They offered no joy.
Here are some of the boys, out by the office. If you had to be in a prison camp, at least the scenery was nice. |
| Ha ha. I went down there too - during... | Biking Viking
Mar 7, 2002 10:21 AM | | ...my quest for trails three weeks ago.
There was an awsome piece of singletrack to the right of the road at the bottom. Unlike you, I didn't even ask - I just turned around and got the heck outta there.
BV |
| So we had to backtrack a little... | Fast Eddy
Mar 7, 2002 10:08 AM | | There was a tiny singletrack loop shown on the map that we had passed earlier, so we stopped to check it out. It turned out to be just a few hundred yards, and not worth getting the bikes out of the truck.
I'm always wishing I had a picture of my truck with bikes in the back, so here ya go: |
| Finally we found some trails. | Fast Eddy
Mar 7, 2002 10:15 AM | | There was an accessible fire road that intersected with our planned loop, so we drove up and parked at the top of the ridge. At this point there was another short loop called the waterfall loop, and the bigger loop we had originally planned. It was a lot colder up there than any of us had expected. We decided that the waterfall loop would be a good warm-up.
Moschika was apparently in a big hurry (nice singleyspeed too): |
| And the trail was good... | Fast Eddy
Mar 7, 2002 10:18 AM | | ...very good... |
| Good enough for another photo... | Fast Eddy
Mar 7, 2002 10:20 AM | | It reminded me of North and South Leaf trails at Skeggs, if you've ever ridden there. |
| There were some wicked switchbacks. | Fast Eddy
Mar 7, 2002 10:25 AM | | Here's me, cleaning one of them
Here's the boys, showing you it was steeper than it looks:
 |
| About a mile down... | Fast Eddy
Mar 7, 2002 10:33 AM | | ...there were some fast sections. I was back after taking a pictures, and going fast, when I came to a log, buried in the trail with a 12" drop on the other side. The rest of the story happens in about half of a second. I decided I could drop off the other side without slowing down. Moschika was at the bottom, with his camera out. When I finally could see past the log, I saw there was another half-buried log about 2 feet past the drop. I realized that if I rolled it, I would go OTB for sure. So I launched it, and cleared the second log. I'm sure it looked like I meant it, but I came up shaking at the bottom.
Then we came upon the waterfall. Any shore-rider-wannabe with some armor and flats would have ridden the log in the foreground. We didn't. |
| Decent waterfall picture... | Fast Eddy
Mar 7, 2002 10:33 AM | | |
| Good one! | Photo-John
Mar 7, 2002 11:16 AM | | Nice one, Eddy. That's a tough exposure situation. You've got more range between the highlights on the top and the shadows than your camera's sensor can handle. This is digital, right?
Here's a trick for a shot like this:
You have to use a tripod. Shoot two exposures, one for the highlights and one for the shadows. When you get home drop one on top of the other in Photoshop (or whatever software you use) and then delete the bad information letting the good show through. I usually put the light exposure on top and delete the highlights, letting the well exposed highlights in the darker image show through.
But I expect you probably didn't have a tripod, since you were riding. And you can't really do this without a tripod since you won't get the framing the same. It's too much trouble to try an match the two images up, if you didn't use a tripod. If you use a tripod you'll have exactly the same framing and you can just copy and paste.
Blah, blah, blah.....
Looks like a nice trip.
John |
| Actually.... | Fast Eddy
Mar 7, 2002 1:22 PM | | I didn't do it on this waterfall pic, but on the one below ("The views were so-so") I used a similar trick. I suspect you have used the photoshop->images->adjust->auto-adjust-whatever? While I like it usually, it will wash out a nice blue sky, so I select-all and copy, then auto-adjust, then paste the original back as a layer. Then hand-erase all but the sky.
All the waterfall pics would have been much better with a tripod. This was an 8 second hand-hold if you can believe it. I'm pretty good on the rifle range too. |
| Nice! | Photo-John
Mar 7, 2002 2:52 PM | | Yup, same concept, you just do it with two photos instead of doing it all in Photoshop. I do the same thing with scans, sometimes.
It's funny that you mention the rifle range. Sometimes I ask beginning photographers if they've ever shot a gun and know the military breathing technique. I use that for taking pictures at slow shutter speeds - inhale, exhale, squeeze the shutter/trigger.
Love ya! |
| Mos contemplates the falls... | Fast Eddy
Mar 7, 2002 10:35 AM | | |
| The boys... | Fast Eddy
Mar 7, 2002 10:37 AM | | ...trying to be still for an 8 second exposure. Photoshop tries in vain to make up for my shaking.
 |
| There is active logging in the area... | Fast Eddy
Mar 7, 2002 10:40 AM | | ...so it's not all old-growth, beautiful scenery. Here, we're done with the under-two-mile waterfall loop, and onto the fire road section of the ride. This is our first glimpse of clear-cut.
 |
| And motorcycles are allowed. | Fast Eddy
Mar 7, 2002 10:44 AM | | Are you starting to see why I'm not expecting any kind of MTB gold rush? It's also 3+ hours north of the Bay Area. You could get to Downieville or Tahoe in about the same amount of time. |
| At the hike-in camp... | Fast Eddy
Mar 7, 2002 10:46 AM | | ...we stopped for a rest and some food. I realized our bikes are the three colors that your eyes can see, red, green and blue. I just wish I had a better flash. |
| Do you ever feel like crap while riding? | Fast Eddy
Mar 7, 2002 10:47 AM | | |
| The views were so-so. | Fast Eddy
Mar 7, 2002 10:48 AM | | It's a nice view, but they cut a bunch of trees to make it like this: |
| This looked like a picture when I saw it. | Fast Eddy
Mar 7, 2002 10:50 AM | | Pretty nice, eh? |
| Good 'un... | celly
Mar 7, 2002 12:39 PM | | Thanks for sharing, bro.
bc |
| The sad end of the story. | Fast Eddy
Mar 7, 2002 11:04 AM | | We went up there looking for singletrack. We had a loop all planned out that looked like it was more than half singletrack. We had copious maps showing the singletrack that led down the ridge to another singletrack along a creek that was supposed to have old trestles from an old logging railway.
The difference between logging roads and fire roads is that fire roads usually go somewhere. Logging roads go out into the forest where they cut the trees down, drive bulldozers around and leave a bunch of mud and piles of sticks that are too small to sell.
The problem was that there were a bunch of these logging roads that weren't on the map. A bunch. We explored four of them for a total of six miles of up and down, pretty boring muddy road. The very last branch we checked was promising, but it was getting late, and we weren't confident enough that it wasn't just going to drop us down into another dead-end. So we went back via the ridge-top road, never to find any more singletrack. Wahhh. Next time we'll do this loop in the opposite direction. The other end of the singletrack downhill should be easy to find. It comes out at another hike-in campsite.
This picture is representative of the end of each branch of logging road that we explored. Note the strips of clear cut on the ridge in the distance. |
| That's not clear cut... | 2melow
Mar 7, 2002 11:57 AM | | ...but it sure isn't selective cutting either. Not nearly as bad as when I lived in West Virginia. They would take the whole freaking forest down, saplings and everything. At least they left some of the young growth there. West Virginia style was to cut evertthing, then burn whatever was left. What a shame..
Nice pics. Can't wait for the snow to melt and spring to come! |
| Nice pics. (nm) | -Chip.
Mar 7, 2002 11:13 AM | | |
| re: A Secret Mission to Northern Calinoia | Spike
Mar 7, 2002 11:25 AM | | Glad the prisoners didn't get ya. :-)
Spike |
| Good stuff, thanks..................... nm | Rev Bubba
Mar 7, 2002 11:41 AM | | nm |
| Very nice! | mugg
Mar 7, 2002 1:37 PM | | Too bad about the clear cutting, looks like a beautiful place to ride. Thanks for sharing. |
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