Fort Ord

Steve's Mountain Bike Page
Turlock, California

Fort Ord (Laguna Seca), Monterey

May 4, 2003

I bought a new very small camera, a Canon Powershot 230, just for the trails so I had to try it out. I was not aware that it had just finished raining at Fort Ord, so the some of the trails were quite muddy for the first half of the trip. The initial climb up Guidotti Road from the parking lot is always difficult but it was much worse because of the mud. Trail 11 is also a mess just after a rain. The weather for most of the trip was overcast, quite cool, and very windy. Towards the end of the trip the sun came out and dried things up fairly quickly. I had thought about bringing the helmet cam but I figured the still camera was enough. Too bad because as I was climbing up some steep narrow singletrack near the Laguna Seca raceway I looked up just in time to see a rider coming down quite quickly around a nearly blind corner. I instinctively swerved to avoid him but the trail was much too narrow so I tumbled down the hillside. Fortunately the grass was quite thick and I suffered no injury. An hour later I was again climbing, this time on trail 43, when I looked up and faced the same rider coming at me. This time I had enough room and time to get out of the way. Despite the weather the trails were more crowded than I've ever seen at Ord. And it appeared everybody was going in the opposite direction as me. I encountered quite a few groups of riders coming at me on the Sea Otter course. I took the following route: Guidotti Rd., Trails 47/48, Skyline Rd., 11, 43, 41, Oilwell Rd., Skyline Rd., and back down Guidotti Rd. Here is the route map. The color coding on the map is as follows: red - singletrack, green - singletrack/doubletrack, yellow- dirt/gravel road.

Click on an image to enlarge it