Steve's Mountain Bike Page
Turlock, California

Wilder Ranch

July 13, 2002

Wilder Ranch, Santa Cruz, July 13, 2002. Today I met up with Dennis of the Ogre's Guide Mountain Bike web site. It is not evident from his site but he bikes four days a week, he is very strong, and he has excellent technical skills. It was a beautiful day, even cold due to fog at the start. But it was a welcome relief from the 100 degree plus temperatures we left behind. It had been about 18 months since I last rode Wilder and I knew it would be my toughest post surgery challenge, and it would really test the knees. I knew the start was tough but I don't remember going up for the first 30 minutes before! Fortunately, the knees felt fine and Dennis pulled me along when I might have rested if by myself. We took the Englesman Loop to the Wild Boar, down the Old Cabin, and down the southern Eucalyptus to the south end of the Enchanted. Two days before I had purchased a helmet cam so we wanted to get some footage going down the really gnarly Enchanted loop. It was much gnarlier than I recall. I had done it many times on my own before but for some reason I hesitated about a third of the way down (I think I was too close to Dennis). I went over the handlebars, hit the same shoulder as last week, and landed down a steep bank. Dennis had to pull me out since it was too steep for me to get up by myself. Since I was shaken we switched packs and helmets so he could film the entire descent. He did a really good job going down. However, later on we discovered that I had pulled the A/V cable out of the camera while placing it in my pack! I'm really disappointed that my fall wasn't at least recorded. We then did the two mile climb up to the Woodcutters loop, all the while flies landing on the bloody scabs I had opened up on my shoulder. At the top I eventually put on a T-shirt I started out wearing due to the cold at the start. We did part of the Woodcutters but the cool singletrack was much farther out than I recalled. We then went back down to the Enchanted because Dennis wanted to film it. He got though all the tough parts but fell towards the end. I was still gun-shy and took the easier loop around it. We then went quite a ways down the Baldwin Loop before realizing it was not the Wilder Ridge route we had wanted to return on. We backtracked and then took the southern Wilder Ridge via the Zane Gray cutoff. At nearly 5 1/2 hours (including fiddling with the camera time) this was two hours more than I've ever done post surgery. My aerobic capacity was surprisingly good, I stayed in very low gears to protect the knees and I felt great and able to do a couple more hours at the end. We'll see how the knees feel in a few days. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to us, the bullet camera lens fogged up after about 55 minutes. However, I got a couple good short videos. I'll look into the camera fogging and I'll also have to come up with a better system to carry the camera so I don't get an hour of blank tape again.  Be sure to visit Dennis's site for his take on the trip. I took nearly the same route in the past and posted photographs of most of it. I definitely fell into some Poison Oak. I washed with Technu three hours later and basically bathed in it when I got home. I'll know in a day or so how bad it will be. Here is the route map, green is the good stuff (singletrack) red is fire road/doubletrack. 

Update: Sunday - my neck starting breaking out early in the morning, and given my hypersensitivity to poison oak, I rushed in to a clinic and got a strong shot of Prednisone as well as a one week oral dose. Monday - the rash is subsiding so I dodged a bullet this time! Prednisone is nasty stuff but when you need it, you need it.

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