Table of Contents > Dirt Biking > Older Dirt Bike Rides
Prev: Divide Peak
Next: Figueroa Mountain (Catway)
East Camino Cielo
This album starts out with pictures of great importance: it’s Matt’s first dirt bike ride (2007:10:07), just after we got the Honda! You can see I had no equipment at all: no proper dirt biking boots, and I’m entirely in road-riding gear (and the bike itself is basically still a street bike, except for the tires). Followed by pictures taken two years later in the same place (2009:09:12), as a kind of dirt-bike-riding anniversary celebration; the bike now looks much more like a dirt bike, and I’ve got good equipment except that I’m still using the road helmet. Then followed a year after that (2010:10:23) by a different kind of celebration: Matt now has the Yamaha! But it wouldn’t run properly, so that ride was abortive. We came back when the bike was fixed (2010:11:05) and had a nice ride. You can see that the Yamaha is still largely unadapted for dirt: it has no bark busters, and it has the annoying massive tail light and huge turn signals. All of that is stuff that I would fix later on. For more recent photos along the same route, see also this set.
I’m smiling because I made it to the Big Caliente hot springs on my first dirt bike ride.
Oct 7 2007, 15:42:39
A different ride, about a year later. I look much more like a dirt biker, but the helmet is a dead giveaway. The bike looks more like a dirt bike too.
Sep 12 2009, 14:36:23
Look at all the changes in how I’m dressed and how the bike is set up, compared to the earlier pictures from a year ago in this set.
Sep 12 2009, 14:36:55
These next pictures are from an abortive ride: my new bike wouldn’t run. The fuel line was gunked up.
Oct 23 2010, 16:55:18
Further up Divide Peak trail. We actually stopped here because we were tired of wrestling with the rocks, and headed back down and so on down the Romero-Camuesa road.
Nov 5 2010, 13:39:38
Pausing at the Juncal water crossing. This is about as autumnal as Southern California gets! The guy with the beer is, uh, some guy with a beer.
Nov 5 2010, 15:05:08
At the far end of the road! This is the parking spot at the trailhead before Little Caliente. We’d never been down the road this far before. Gorgeous.
Nov 5 2010, 15:40:59
On the way back we paused for photos one more time at an overlook where you can see the river valley.
Nov 5 2010, 16:08:14
Map showing the ride from the preceding photos: from the start of the dirt at the end of East Camino Cielo, up to the ridge on the Divide Peak trail but then back down, down to the water crossing at Juncal, along the river and to the end of the road at Little Caliente.
Prev: Divide Peak