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TR- San Juan Trail (San Juan Capistrano, Orange County, CA)
Thought I would share some photos of a recent adventure. This trail is in the mountains of Orange County, CA, and is quite spectacular. Most of you Utahans will never ride this trail, or know where it is at, but I figured that I would share anyways. You get to it by driving down the Ortega Hwy from for about 10 miles from Interstate 5 in San Juan Capistrano. You make a left at the first Ranger/Fire Station and drive down the dirt road behind it for about 2 miles. The first parking lot is the trailhead for San Juan Trail. I have ridden it many times, but this is the first time that I rode it climbing up. We normally shuttle it (because most want to) but I wanted to climb it this time. It has around 30 switchbacks on it, and many are right on the edge of a gnarly cliff...and many are very difficult to make. In some of the pictures can see some of the switchbacks towards the end. The penalty for failure can be high in certain areas. On my climb up, it was a death march of 7.5 miles of pretty much non-stop climbing (over 2000 ft according to my GPS), then I went for extra credit and went another 2 miles past that. You can make this a loop and keep riding this trail all the way around until it comes back to the "cocktail rocks" break area. Then comes the fun part. I turned around and bombed down all of the uphill that I climbed. Miles and miles of it! It is one of my favorite rides and really tests your skill on the switchbacks and gnarly corners. You will have a extremely pumped arms/hands, and a huge sh*t-eating grin about a mile wide once you reach the bottom. You can see the ocean in some of the pictures as well.
Here are some photos. Enjoy! :2thumbs: