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Road trip to Marin County
Your in Marin County now.
Author: Chris Armstrong | Created: 2008-02-06 08:46:40 | Location: Mill Valley, CA
Gloves? Check.
Helmet? Check
Riding Shorts? Check.
I was set and ready to hop onto the plane for San Francisco to beat the cold and do some riding at the birthplace of mountain biking, Mt Tamalpais.
The whole region of San Francisco has been pretty interesting to me, but as I have never set foot outside of the airport so I know that I was going to be rewarded with a bunch of new experiences! After landing and hopping on a bus to the north bay region of Mill Valley my tour guide Dain Zaffke from Wilderness Trail Bikes (WTB) picked me up and gave me the abbreviated tour of the area. Mill Valley isn’t very large town and it reminded me of home where people will stop to talk at the grocery store.
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WTB’s offices are in an unassuming building on the main strip right in the middle of town and Unbeknownst to the passersby’s the office has a small collection of classic old bikes hanging from the ceiling that are older than most of my friends. All of which has seen some duty up on Mt. Tam. Most of the staff at WTB are fanatical riders and can cash in on a $3/day reward if they ride to work. With a bike wash station outside and two full showers there is hardly a reason not to ride in.
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The day was grey with a little rain (ah just like home) but it didn’t stop us from cracking the bikes out and going for a ride. The +8c felt completely balmy compared to the -10c temperatures that we have been subjected to in Whistler recently.
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Most of the riding in NorCal is illegal since the land is either privately owned, part of a watershed or federal land. There are certain areas that we had to stay away from and other ones that were acceptable to ride on, but if you are coming down please make sure you talk to someone or drop in to a shop before you go so that you know which ones are which, either wise it could cost you a large fine & or your bike.
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The differences in terrain compared to the northwest are stark. NorCal has smaller rolling hills with lots of small shrub trees, sandstone formations and small sharp shale rock sections. Surprisingly the sandstone had amazing traction in the rain due to the water being absorbed easily by the rock. NorCal has been in the middle of some serious storms recently so there was some excess surface water that was trickling down the trail, which made for some fun lines on the trail. The trails that we rode featured some technically sections sprinkled around high speed flowy stretches that we were begging to hit over and over again.
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But it wasn’t all that much different from home when we hit the greasy root section near the bottom. No matter how far you travel it seems like the shore is never far away.
By the time we made it down from the first run the rain had decide to call for reinforcements and was bucketing down. We called it a day.
Check back for part two, where we visit Marin Bikes and go for rides in FairFax & Woodacre.
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