Wee Bikepacking Trip near Downieville

While the kiddo was off being a camp counselor, Chad and I took advantage of one weekend to do a short bikepacking trip.  This wasn't particularly carefully planned, but we wanted an excuse to try out our new bikepacking quilts -- they are light and small and pack down into teeny tiny pucks that can be easily stuffed into a saddle bag.  We hadn't been up to Downieville for a while, and also had the advantage of knowing that one can ride up Mountain House Roadfrom there and hit a network of dirt roads and trails that are fun to explore even if you don't go far.  So, we drove up on Friday afternoon, briefly said hi to Linda, loaded up our bikes with our new down quilts, and rode on up the hill to find a camping spot for the night.

One nice thing about the National Forest around here is that you can pretty much camp anywhere you find a nice spot.  Once up on the ridge, a nice spot is not hard to find -- as long as you are carrying water.  We were quite conscious carrying spare water, given that the previous year's summer bikepacking weekend was challenged by water sources that were unexpectedly few and far between.

Typical gently wooded, sort of rocky area on top of the ridge, reminiscent of our first night's spot down an old logging spur:

After a restful night, we got started pretty early, as we knew it was going to be hot come afternoon.  After only a couple of miles, we hared off the main road to look at the views from Ruby Bluff.

You can really see how much we climbed up from the river the previous day getting up here.  There were a number of good spots to set up a tent here, but it was too early to stop, so we kept going along Henness Pass Road.  Eventually we hit some pavement, and followed it to the site of the Old Cornish Ranch House.  Built in 1861, Cornish House was a "large and comodious house for the accomodation of the public [which] provided smithing and hay for teamsters" for several years before the transcontinental railroad led to less use of the road.  We ate lunch in the shade and took advantage of the creek to refill our water supply.

At this point, we could have continued on, but decided to head back to the beautiful camping spot back at Ruby Bluff.  On the way, we noted the junction with Galloway Road.  Galloway is the old route into Downieville, which plunges precipitously down the hill into town. It was apparently named after an early inhabitant of the town in the 1850's; I am somehwat amused by the notion of a Gold-Rush-era judge named Galloway.

(Also note the careful packing of gear on the bike -- I made the brown frame pack to fit Chad's bike, and we had spent far too long figuring out how to securely strap all of the various bits and pieces on to the handlebars.)  

After going back to the bluff and spending most of the afternoon lazing around reading and watching birds perform acrobatic tricks as they wheeled around eating bugs, we eventually we got around to setting up the tent and having dinner.

Oh so fancy bikepacking cocktail: dried cherries soaked in a little bourbon.

The sunset viewing from this location was quite nice, as we had hoped.

The following morning brought a few photogenic clouds.

We quickly packed up camp and headed over to ride the fun singletrack in Forest City.  It feels a little different on bikes loaded with gear than it does in our normal unloaded state.  I, for one, found it challenging, perhaps exacerbated by the fact that the stuff I had strapped to my handlebar sort of eclipsed my view of the front wheel whien descending.  It felt sort of like riding by braille.

Of course one can't have an adventure weekend without at least a minor mishap.  In this case, a stick flipped up off the trail at the wrong moment and broke Chad's derailleur hanger off.  Fortunately, he whipped out the spare derailleur hanger that had been kicking around his pack for just such an emergency and rapidly fixed it.  I deemed this item (acquired circa Christmas 2013) to have been the best stocking stuffer ever.

With that, we rolled back down the hill and had an enjoyable dinner with Linda back in town.  It was a relatively mellow adventure weekend, but seemed to be just what we needed at that point!