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Santa Ana River Trail (variation)
23 reviews
4.65 of 5
The trail is predominantly sinle-track, and some fine single-track at that. After dropping in from the first sign, you will ride down about a mile and come to a clearing with another 2E03 sign. Enjoy your last little bit of sunlight as it's going to be the last you see for awhile. The trail takes you under the tree canopy for an awesome ride of technical single-track,tight switchbacks, and breath-taking views of the valley. The trail is steep on the downside, so be careful, It's A Long Way Down. The trail will then skirt a steep canyon wall with a waterfall. You will do a water crossing across the top of the waterfall here. Continue around the canyon and the trail will connect with a fireroad. Take a right on the fireroad and enjoy a long, tedious climb up. The fireroad comes out right where you parked your car. Everybody that rides this trail just absolutely loves it. You can read other reviews by going to the trailhead section of www.socalmtb.com
Take 10-East to Yucaipa Blvd. North on Yucaipa Blvd To Bryant Street (app. 7 miles). Take a Left on Bryant St. and go to Hwy 38 (app. 5 miles). Go right on Hwy 38 towards Big Bear and after 10-11 miles, you will come to the town of Angelus Oaks. You will see a store on the left. Continue past the store app. 1/2 mile and you will see a large turnout on your left. Park here. Make sure to have an Adventure Pass as they do patrol heavily. (Ranger station is at the corner of Bryant and Hwy 38). Get on your bike and ride back to the store area. To the right of the store, you will see a road that passes a tiny post office. Continue up this fire road app 3/4 mile and you will see a large sign with Forestry Info. Sometimes there is, and sometimes there isn't, a sign that says 2E03. Te trail is somewhat hidden behind the forestry sign. Drop in and you're on your way.
Summary: This is a very nice ride. I'm not from SoCal, and just got to ride it while on a business trip.
Recommended Route: What I don't get is how many people talk about riding up the single track and returning downhill on fireroads... Crazy. If you must ride the fireroads (which I didn't) then I'd ride them UP and ride the single track back down.
I rode up the singletrack to the turnoff for Barton Flats Campground and then turned around and returned via the singletrack. It was an AWESOME downhill.
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Summary: This was my first ride on SART this year. Took my 12 yr. old son yesterday morning. We drove down Mill Creek Rd. and parked at the bottom across the bridge. We rode back up a mile to the trail and did the middle section of SART over to Glass Rd. and then back to the truck. Thunderstorms this weekend have tore up the road and trail a bit, but nothing major. No wash-outs, but watch for rocks and trees in road/trail. This section of trail is ridable, excpet for one creek crossing and scramble up the muddy embankment. Not sure about trail conditions on other sections of SART (behind Angelus Oaks or past Glass Rd). Saw several groups on the trail (big smiles by everyone). The weather was perfect during our whole ride. We started getting rain as we headed back down the mountain, so got out of there just in time. Would not want to be down there during a thunderstorm as the soil is very clay-like when wet. Another big storm system went through their yesterday afternoon, so lets hope it didn't do too much more damage.
Recommended Route: All sections of this trail are fun an offer multiple options. My favorite ride is riding up behind the store and down SART towards the 7 Oaks Dam. This particular section I just reviewed is probably a 3.5 in difficulty, except for the mile up Mill Creek to trail, there is very little climbing and there is a lot of tree cover so during summer it provides lots of shade. Other sections of SART are more difficult.
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Summary: I'm a beginner in Mountain Biking and this is my first trail ride aside from fire roads and asphalt streets. This review reflects that, as I've nothing else to compare it to.
I met up with the guys from the 3F bicycle club at the Barton Flats campground in the morning and after getting everything ready, we rode up I38 to the edge of the South Fork Campground. To them it was a warm up and to me it was a sign that I'm very out of shape. I was out to push myself and see what I was made of so to me it was fun either way.
The single track at that point was not very small until we reached the beginning of the trail. At that point it got very narrow with lots of steep dropoffs. I was boardering on scared to death at this point but kept pushing myself. I found it to be very tight singletrack with lots of loose dirt on the sides and the leaves that dropped into the loose dirt didn't help either. I found my front end washing out quite a few times in areas that I would have chosen for it not to. To me, difficult riding but fun and challenging.
Some of the single track on the steep hillsides were a little washed out in places but totally passable, you just have to hug the hill side. There were a few places in the first third of the ride that I was told to walk it and some of the veterans I rode with walked it as well.
The middle part of the ride was as described above, very fast singletrack on some rolling hills. There were some very fast sections wiht some gear changeing happening with some switchbacks in some areas. This to me was the most enjoyable area as I could concentrate on riding and not on thoughts of falling and being injured or killed.
The last portion of the ride was back to tight single track on hill sides again with the most beautiful views of the ride. I couldn't get over how nice it was there and combined with the riding it was perfect. A lot of steep runs down the sides of these hills with again, more loose stuff on the side but not as sketchy as the first part. It was here that I started to "bonk" due to me just plain being out of shape. I rested in some shaded areas and when we reached a small waterfall I got some nice cold water to cool down with and get refreshed.
Toward the end of the ride you get dumped onto a small fire/access road that is pretty fast. Then a 3 mile climb out to the main road.
Recommended Route: (South Fork Campground to Post Office)
This is the route we took that day and to me was the best route. It involved some climbing but nothing too crazy. Definately a challenge but less so than doing it in the reverse order. There really wasn't any place you could get lost as the route, while not marked very well, was obvious in which way to go. This route took my out of shape self a little over 4 hours to complete.
For those who are gung ho and up for torture, you can go from the Post office up to the campground and come back all in a day.
Other recommended trails in the same area: None.
This is my first trail ride as well as my first ride in the EPIC catagory.
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Summary: This trail was a blast to ride. The way we did it was a bit different though. Instead of doing the loop we shuttled it from Redlands. The trail was not too technically challenging but it was still very fun single track riding. With the trail being on the side of such a steep mountain for a good majority of it, there were a few sketchy spots and there were definately opportunites to go off the side. At the fire road where you are supposed to go back up, we went down which was a few miles of ultra fast fire road. We took the fire road up to Morton peak and made the grueling mile and a half climb. From there we continued on a single track that dropped us off in Mentone. Over all the trail is one of the best i've ridden in the area, although there are some extremely soft spots on the trail. Go ride it.
Recommended Route: We did a shuttle from Redlands which was a very long and exhausting 23 mile ride that was a total of 5500' of descent and 1500' of climbing
Other recommended trails in the same area: Snow summit has some good stuff there, the m-trail, sycamore canyon.
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Summary: The first time out we were with a buddy familiar with the area, and we parked off Glass Rd. and took the ST off to the left of the road. We descended that, climbed up a bit, came out at the lot off of 38, rode past the PO and restaurant, descended, and eventually looped back to climb up out to Glass Rd. Last weekend we were short on time and took the single track to the right. Made it almost back up to the camping area, I think (did not take Barton Flats offshoot), turned around and rode back. Almost 10 miles.
Great singletrack out here and it seems really well maintained. Never super crowded, and temps have been decent.
Recommended Route: Not super familiar with the routes, but see above. Or follow trail directions mentioned.
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4.65 of 5
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