Recon #3

Recon Results

Honestly, things don’t look great for stealth camping with a hammock, like Cesar is considering. Tent options on the other hand are a little scrappy but doable in the town areas.

Both options should get better after starting the climb up Kitchen Creek.

A hammock is a good idea in theory - travel light and still sleep comfortably! - but in reality there isn’t really a place to pitch it until you’re way far up the mountain and much closer to camp anyway.

Whereas with a tent, there’s an area just south of Descanso that I’m already familiar with through a friend that shared his usual spot, plus I spotted a few others when driving around.

I also used ChatGPT to scout out areas using satellite map images and it said that it would be hard to find anything hammock-friendly below 4,000ft in elevation, after which point things get much greener and forrest-like.

In short, a tent gives you flexibility for whatever kind of ride you plan on or conditions through your way. Want to go epic with big climbs up Veijas but end up pooped, so you want to crash before trying Kitchen Creek the next day? Cool, no problem. Whereas if you have a hammock, you’re locked in to having a big ride the first day just to get high enough in elevation to see enough trees and have open non-residential space so you can set up in discrete locations.

Ride Options

Different ride schedules:

• Some people are doing one shot rides up on Sunday and then back on Monday (Melissa. Arturo? Sammer? Anyone else?)
• Cesar and Al are doing a two nighter - riding up on Sat and Sunday, back on Monday (after a great recommendation from Will, Jesse, and Chris about their first time)
• And of course all kinds of fun peeps that are driving up, then MTBing around

Also different start locations:

• People doing an out and back from a single location, either their home or parked car.
• Al’s doing something a little different - start out closer to camp and then ride home.

My Plan

I’m in the overnighter group but I won’t be doing an epic route to get up there. Instead I’ll be saving my energy for a big day on Monday to get back home in one shot.

I’m planning on doing different mileage going up vs down because I’m not driving out to a start point, I’m getting dropped off Saturday morning along the route somewhere, whether in Alpine or further along in Descanso or Pine Valley.

The reasons are:

• I’m already slow up hills and adding a full load on our first test ride put me into turtle crawl mode. It took me 2-3X as long to get up Viejas Grade as everyone else and I was shattered for a day or two after. I need to pace myself the first two days because…
• …my return ride back is going to be my epic long day. Although it looks downhill in theory, it’s still 3.5k ft in elevation gain. More importantly, it’s 60 miles and I’ve only ever done 30 miles with a full set of panniers before.

Also, I just want to have fun around camp instead of showing up shattered. This weekend’s totals are already going to be a new stretch goal for me as it is. It’ll be two days of elevation gain and one day of long mileage, all fully loaded.

My previous overnighter was a two day tour around LA and Santa Barbara. I did 30 miles the first day and was so tired that the next day I could only eke out 20 miles, for a measly total of 50 miles. Riding fully loaded is so much harder than you think! This one is 3 days and 80-100 miles total, plus 6-10k ft in elevation and some light off-roading.