Hidden Trails- East Bay

Jesse on the first set

The original plan for the day was to head out to Sandhill Ranch to practice the new Dual Slalom course and get it dialed. The posse kept dwindling, but Chipper and myself held true to the plan. At first. We had a last minute addition to the days group with Chipper's young friend Jesse.

As we started out to Sandhill, it was decided that we would check out some new trails hidden up in the Oakland Hills on the way. Half a dozen phone calls later, we were hiking our bikes up miles of fire road in our attempt to locate them. They were extremely well hidden in a far off location. After a few dry runs, the boys began to session them as I unpacked my camera gear and took a few pics.

To hit the first set, you start by rolling into a nice sweeping berm. Immediately cranking out of the berm, you get about 4 or 5 pedals in before pumping down a roller into the first hit.

The first jump had a nice wide landing you could land a bi-plane on. Although my ankle is still weak-sauce, even the gimp (me) had a go at it- although after I came up a little short I decided to hold off for a few more weeks! -notice the berm in the background-

There are two more sets before you swoop through a second berm and loop back around.

into the second set

After Jesse came up short on one of the doubles his fork pretty much gave up the ghost.

yeah, it's done.

We ended scrapping our plans for Sandhill at this point, and practiced gates at the San Ramone BMX track instead. It looks like the next time we're out at Sandhill we'll be racing. I'm sure we'll get lots of practice in then.