Canyon Carving

With the good weather only lasting though the weekend before taking a turn for the worse, I’ve been pushing to get as much motorcycling in as I can before then. I’ve managed to revisit as many of my old favorites as I can, and accidentally found a new favorite road.

My old standby, Angeles Crest, is closed past Mt. Wilson due to landslides. That’s two years in a row I haven’t been able to ride it all the way through. The only time I managed to do that was in 2021, on my KLR650 which was not as well suited for pavement as my V-Strom. I’m glad I took the opportunity when I did, though, since I haven’t had it since. The view at the current end of the road isn’t bad, either.

I also rode the narrow, twisty five miles out to the observatory on Mt. Wilson. I can see the antenna towers from Carolyn’s backyard, but I can’t find her house from up there! I can see across Los Angeles all the way to the Pacific Ocean, though — at least, when the smog isn’t too bad, which is wasn’t on Friday when I went up there.

I started heading down Angeles Forest Highway, but the traffic made it so I wasn’t having fun. I was either getting tailgated by people wanting to go faster, held up behind people going 20 in the 55 zone, or more often both at the same time. I bailed down Big Tujunga Canyon Road, followed it all the way to Sunland, then hopped on the 210 freeway back to Pasadena. Traffic was awful due to a crash in the left lane, but this is California, and my lane splitting skills came right back to me to get through it relatively quickly.

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This morning was kind of lazy, until we went to meet Carolyn’s friend Donald for papusas for breakfast on the spur of the moment. Donald rides a BMW R1200GS, and Carolyn has been trying to get us to meet and ride sometime. It looks like that will happen tomorrow. After that, Carolyn had a headache, so she sent me out riding on my own while she slept it off.

I’d intended to ride out to Azusa and up San Gabriel Canyon Road until the point where it closed, but Google screwed up and sent me a different way. It turned out to be an even more fun ride down Glendora Mountain Road to Glendora Ridge Road. This was 20 miles of narrow twisty roads with amazing views and almost no traffic. Most of it was fairly slow and technical, running in second gear. While I enjoy speed, I don’t need it to have a good time.

I ended up following it all the way to Mt. Baldy. It was here that I recognized this road as having been closed during my last visit two years go, which is why I’d never been down it before. I think this is my new favorite road in the area.

I followed the road back to civilization from Mt. Baldy, then attempted to find my way back to San Gabriel Canyon Road. Google acted up again, so I gave up and instead set a course back to the house. It was getting late in the afternoon, which is 3:30 pm on these short days, and I didn’t want to be up in the mountains after dark. Although it wasn’t the ride I intended, it was still fun, and that’s the most important thing to me.