On November ninth, two-thousand thirteen, my friends and I had planned an epic ride that went up Arroyo Burro Trail to the top of the mountain from my house on the Southern, “front side,” to the “backside.” All but one of my friends decided they couldn’t come at the last minute, so my sole riding partner and I set out on a trail that we weren’t sure had been ridden in four years.

The climb was epic, we started out on some crazy steep fire road in the blazing heat. We gazed up at the ridge of the mountain where we knew we were heading, and we wondered how we were going to make it. Soon we hit singletrack, and the trail started getting steeper and rockier. We came up to a massive boulder, hiked our bikes over it, and found ourselves on 6 miles of unrideable, extremely overgrown, steep and sketchy joke-of-a-trail.

We hiked for a bit through the brush, one shrub actually grabbed the loop on my waterbottle, and pulled it right off my bike without me knowing. After the trail had claimed my bottle we reached a flat section that looked almost ride-able. By then we were completely exausted, but we knew we weren’t even half way there yet. We pushed on, literally, through the overgrown trail that was so dense we had to press our fingers into the backside of our brake-levers, to keep the bushes from depressing them and stopping us.

I had the time to snap this pic of my friend before we descended into the valley. Our legs were stinging from thousands of micro-cuts from the grass and shrubs that seemed to attack us with every inch we moved forward. We reached a valley with a few scattered “No Trespassing” signs, and, much to our relief, a trail we could see more than ten feet through. We trudged up the steepest climb I had ever encountered, too steep to ride and extremely challenging to hike our bikes up. We could see the sun dropping closer to the horizon, yet knowing that we had started at eleven o’clock, I realized we must be behind schedule.

When I saw the other side of the mountain, I was relieved beyond imagination. My buddy and I cruised down past the gun-range, passed a few cyclists who were on their own adventure, and after a bit of confusion we found the trail that would take us down the 3,700 vertical feet we had climbed over the course of five hours. I turned on my GoPro that I had strapped to my chest, and we bombed down to beat the sun. I added the highlights of the footage I had shot below:

This trail was more frequently maintained, yet was slightly overgrown as well. Every bush that whacked against me set my legs on fire, and dealing with the technical descent was much harder after I had used my legs so hard for so long already. However, once we reached the lower section, the bushes cleared out, and we hauled so much it made up for every foot we climbed. It’s an important life lesson to realize that no matter how bad the trail might seem, you must believe that the downhill is ahead, and once you reach it you’ll realize the worth of you’re struggle.

If anyone dares to ride the front-side of this trail (unless a fire burns the whole mountainside clear of shrubs) be warned!

P.S. despite all the overgrown plants brushing against me, I only found ONE tick, and it hadn’t even bit me yet!