Okay, so last Saturday I went up to Kernville from San Diego to ride the Cannell Meadow trail and the attached Cannell Plunge. The Plunge is named because you drop 5,000 feet in 8 miles and with the exception of a very small several hundred foot gain hike-a-bike section right in the middle, the entire 8 miles is downhill.

I recorded the ride but have not had time to compile the video. Look for it in the next week or so. These are pictures that were taken on the trail by myself, Bill Porter from Mountainbikebill.com and The Ogre from Ogrehut.net

We didn't stop to take many pictures because the riding was just too much fun to stop. What we did take does manage to at least capture the beauty of the area and some of the trail too. The trails are a mix of smooth ST to sandy ST to very rocky ST. There aren't really many difficult technical sections on the trail but the loose rocks and sand made for some sketchy sections at certain times. The good thing about this trail is that none of it came at you all at once. Just when you might have had enough smooth trail, it turned loose and rocky so you had to be on your toes at all times.

This is the elevation profile of the ride. It's deceiving because it doesn't look particularly steep but trust me it definitely was. There was plenty of pushing the bikes up some of the climbs.

I didn't want to mess up the page formatting with such a wide file so just click the link to view the elevation profile

Here we are unloading from the shuttle.

This is the summit of the pass, but there is a trail that actually climbs from the drop off point all the way up to Sherman Peak which is around 9,800 feet. It's an out and back that we took and 90% of it was ridable. The last bit was hike-a-bike though.

This is part of the climb up to Sherman Peak. The trail was a mix of smooth and rocky stuff until the hike when it was a lot of impassable rocks and stair steps. I was a bit worried about the descent but we would find that it was all rideable on the way down and a ton of fun!

These are pictures of the descent from Sherman Peak. Here are Miles Todd, Bill Porter and myself coming down the ST.

Here are Miles and Bill negotiating the trail

Here I am rounding a switchback. Just before this point was a very narrow little stair step with rocks on both sides. I thought it would be much more difficult when I saw it on the way up, but it didn't prove too hard on the way down. Lots of fun though.

After riding through the forest for a bit, you end up in a big grassy meadow. However, looks are deceiving as the meadow is pretty much a bog and the mud was pretty thick in spots.

This is just one short stretch of fire road on the ride. It just connects the trail through some camping and vehicle access areas. Still nice scenery though

I did say that there was some hiking right? It's darn hard to breath at 9,000 feet (at least when you normally ride at about 400 feet so there was a bit of pushing. The soil was loose and rocky in spots so even at a lower elevation I might not have been able to clear it all, but I'd like to think I could have cleared more of it than I did.

These shots are all at various spots through the ride but they are very nice and depict the trail pretty well. It's sort of a treat for those of us who live in the desert to ride in the forest so it was a welcome change.

This is a rock we found to play on for a bit. The rock is almost vertical at the very top but it smooths out to a very nice transition. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, steeper than it looks! .

This is Bill Porter taking a slightly steeper line than I did

Here I am on the same rock. Unfortunately both shots came out with me at the bottom.

This is the top of the Plunge. We've already ridden/hiked about 24 or so miles so the descent was a welcome treat. Plus, I for one had already run out of water so I knew I could survive the descent with only a little loan from my partners. From here, we descend about 5,000 feet not directly to the lake below (that's Lake Isabella) but pretty darn close.

Just a few shots of us riding down the initial part of the Plunge

Here I am. Yes, that pack does get annoying on a long ride. It's not that much heavier than my CamelBak, but it puts the weight of the water and the camera on my back in a different spot and that's what I notice more than the actual weight. You get used to it, but it's a P.I.T.A. to bring along sometimes.

These are shots of the actual Plunge. Like I said before, we didn't stop much at all because once you were in that groove you didn't want to stop. The Ogre took these of Bill Sornson since the rest of us were railing down the trail. From this perspective, you really can see what awaits the rider. WE didn't really notice too much of what was up ahead because we were trying too hard not to crash!

These are just scenery shots from the ride. I just threw them all together at the end here but this ride definitely treats you to some fantastic views along the way. The meadows are a nice treat when you just come around a corner and there's a big grassy meadow. We didn't see any real wildlife on the trail but we did see a herd of wild cows (okay, they were really just free range but when you haven't seen anything else all day it's still something) if that counts!

thanks for reading this as I babbled along. I really have to say again that this is the absolute best ride I've ever done on my MTB. I can't say that I've ridden in the meccas of the sport so maybe there are better places to ride but this has been the best ride yet.