Tour de Los Padres 2022
The last few years as I’ve looked for spring bikepacking events to do, the Tour de Los Padres has caught my eye. It’s a ride/race¹ in and around the titular National Forest, an area I’ve spent basically no time in, and ending in Santa Barbara.
There are two routes for the Tour de Los Padres, The Proper route and the Tour route. The former is longer and changes pretty much every year. The latter is shorter and is relatively stable. The Proper Route this year was like 400 miles and went from Arroyo Seco to Santa Barbara. I have a new job and don’t have that much vacation stored up, so I opted for the shorter Tour Route, which winds for 170 miles from Frazier Park to Santa Barbara.²
In the weeks running up to the event, I tested out some setup combinations and worked to pare down my kit to try to keep my load as small as possible. I ended up going without a stove, with a bivvy sack instead of a tent, and with a seatpack instead of a rear rack.
Because I am short, I don’t have room on the bike for a big water bladder or something so I end up carrying a big hydration pack (not shown) with a 3-liter bladder. I also stuffed it full of food.
The course has relatively few resupply points and none for anything but water in the last 100 miles, so I packed enough food for the 3 days I figured was the worst case.
I’ll spare you the logistics of getting to the finish line to drop my car and catch the shuttle (arranged by one of the local riders) to the start. Instead I’ll cut to 7 riders stumbling blearily out of a minivan at the start location in Frazier Park (basically the top of the Grapevine).
I’ve only ever been to one of these Grand Depart type events before, and that was 8 years ago in Oregon, so I expected something along the lines of a group picture or someone saying “go!”. Instead, as we late arrivers struggled to get our satellite trackers attached to our kit, the first riders started trickling out onto the course. I was one of the last people to start and I had to stop like 100 yards in to make some adjustments.
Still, starting last means you get to pass people, and over the opening few miles of pavement I picked off people one by one. I passed through the gate to the first dirt section at Mile 8 with a couple guys right behind me, and anyone ahead well out of sight. As I got onto more established sections of trail I realized I was only seeing one set of tire tracks ahead of me. Could I be in second?
Obviously, it didn’t matter particularly, and I kept cranking up the side of Mt Pinos, as the day grew hotter, and the air thinner. Not to foreshadow excessively, but I’ve gotten out of the habit of eating while I ride, and so had trouble eating on this climb. This would not contribute to my success later.
Once I hit the top, I started down some pretty great singletrack.
It was still snow-covered in places, but overall was a great rip down. Once onto pavement, there were some steeeep descents. I hit 45mph, easily the fastest I’ve ever gone on a mountain bike.
Once the road turned back up, though, things started to get harder, and I struggled into the gloriously-named town of Pine Mountain Club and to the general store, where I grabbed a 1.5l bottle of water and a lime-cucumber(!) Gatorade³. In retrospect the fact that three plus hours in I didn’t have space for all 1.5 liters of water in my pack and bottle should have been a sign. As I was leaving, Julie Kanagy rolled up, the first other rider I’d seen in hours.
The next part was pretty great. Some bland but pleasant singletrack, some rowdy dirt road wailing, and some heavily-shaped moto track ended up on a long dirt drag into Ventucopa, the second-to-last town on the route before Santa Barbara.
A tailwind blew me into New Cuyama with minimal fuss, and I swung into the diner there eager for the advertised falafel. Alas, it was not to be, and I settled for the most mediocre tuna melt I’ve ever had. As I was struggling through the sandwich, another rider, Ton, came in, and we agreed that it’d been hard to eat, given the heat. Unfortunately, the attached market didn’t have anything I wanted either, so I headed into the hills without an infusion of fresh food.
I should say that this was already the longest ride I’d done since the Pandemic started, at about 70 miles, and I was by no means done.
Julie passed me on the road into the foothills, and I wilted pretty quickly in the 5pm 90 degree heat. A short time later, Ton passed me huddled in the shade at the side of the road, trying to get it together. Eventually I got going again, and with one more shade stop I made it to the bottom of the infamous Aliso Trail hike a bike. This trail is probably only marginally ridable at the best of times, and in the shape I was in, as it was getting dark, it was barely wide enough to push my bike without it or me falling off the trail. I started bargaining: 100 feet of elevation more and you can take a drink. 250 feet and you can take a break. 500 feet and you can eat something. It turns out the regular eating and drinking started to help (who knew?), and the top came sooner than I expected.
At this point, I knew the next dependable water source was 10 miles away, and while I wasn’t running dry, I knew I’d want water before crashing for the night. So, feeling moderately spunky at this point (eight pm? nine?), I started to grind out those miles. Things went pretty well, with the occasional animal dashing in front of me, until at the bottom of a descent I glimpsed something ahead. Slamming on my brakes, I skidded to a halt less than a foot from a barbed wire fence strung across the road. There was a gate off to the side, but this scare was surprisingly effective at waking me up!
As I finally got to the Painted Rock cabin, behind which we’d been assured there was water, I ran into Ton just leaving, having filled up. He told me he was going to try to make it another 30 miles before stopping for the night. I was pretty sure I wasn’t gonna make it there, but wished him luck.
The cow trough behind the cabin was (literally) an oasis. Plenty of water for the filtering. note that there’s actually a trickle coming in via that pipe on the lower left, so I didn’t have to filter from the algae-filled pool. There were at least two kinds of frog hanging out, though, and once they got used to me they were loud!
The next section was pretty frustrating. It was somewhat uphill, but not at all steep. However, someone had run a herd of cattle along the road when it was wet, and the resulting hoof prints made it extremely choppy and unpleasant to ride on. Finally, it became increasingly clear that I needed to sleep, and that I wasn’t gonna make 100 miles for the day. Instead, I set my sights on 10,000 feet of climbing, and dragged it out before stopping with 10,015 in the books along with 93 miles.
My bivvy and quilt setup worked quite well, and I awoke at dawn, before my alarm. The day was crisp but not cold, and I got on my way reasonably quickly.
The climb up to the top of Big Pine Mountain went pretty well, and before I knew it I was bombing down a pretty challenging trail. It was one of those fire roads that gets slowly eaten up by falling rock and erosion and ends up feeling much more like a trail than the road it’s marked as on a map.
Still, that’s the kind of riding I love, so I wailed down in short order. I may have even let out a whoop and/or a holler in the process.
While refilling water at Bluff Cabin I saw a bobcat, the last of the wildlife sightings for the trip bar a large number of lizards. The next few miles were a tough up and down. Still smarting from the day before, I nervously watched the thermometer on my bike computer creep up into the 80s, but fortunately it never got above that.
Eventually, I started seeing people on mountain bikes, riding what I’ve seen called the “backcountry trails” of Santa Barbara (if you people only knew!). There was an optional singletrack turnoff here that I’d planned on taking when I set out the day before, but at this point I was smelling the barn and continued on the most expedient way to the finish. I rolled along the Camuesa Creek and then the Santa Ynez River. The mountain bikers I saw then were mostly people doing overnight bikepacking trips, and I stopped to chat with a few of them.
The last climb was hard, but pretty much all ridable, even in my current state. I found myself riding the shady side of the road, but even in the completely sunny patches it wasn’t bad. I will not deny, though, that I was not unhappy to crest the final saddle and get my first view of the ocean.
As I was reveling in the cool ocean breeze a couple approached me saying “I bet you’re doing the Tour de Los Padres”. We chatted for a few minutes (I’ve already forgotten your names, sorry) and then I headed down what I thought to be the final trail, Romero Canyon. This is another reclaimed fire road and it’s a nicely spicy six mile descent into town. By this point my rear brake was squealing like crazy and every time I used it I’d hear it echo off the canyon walls, making it a surround sound of suck. Mostly, though, I couldn’t believe how long that trail went on! Such a great way to finish off the wilderness part of the trip.
At the bottom of the trail the course took us through a construction site, and I had to explore the area before figuring out how to scramble around it. The rest of the time was a pretty uneventful cruise through town (with one surprise urban trail thrown in!). I started out hammering to try to get in under 34 hours, but once I got routed onto the beachside multiuse path, restraint was clearly the better part of valor. So I ended up at the end point (conveniently a brewery!) at about 34:10.
I think I ended up 3rd⁴, and as I was eating fish tacos and having a beer on the patio of the brewhouse, Ton walked up, letting me know he’d finished about 15 minuted before.
I’m not sure that this kind of racing is really my cup of tea, but the culture Erin has built around this event is really great, and I very much enjoyed the route!
¹ Figuring out what to call these bikepacking events is tricky, cause they aren’t officially races, but riders’ times are recorded, and there is definitely a competitive nature to them for some people (e.g. me, at least this time). Like many bike races there are people who take the competition part seriously and people who are there to challenge their own abilities, not other people. This event skews somewhat to the latter, but in talking about what I was gonna do, I tended to talk about it as “a race” because I was planning on trying to go fast and because I couldn’t figure out how to footnote my side of a conversation (and also because it captured better the ridiculousness of what I was setting out to do).
² From here on out when I talk about “the event” or “the route” I’ll be talking about the Tour version.
³ Is it good? Not really. But it’s better than the more common Nuclear Green or Dehydrated Yellow flavors.
⁴ NOT THAT ANYONE IS COUNTING.