Los Pinos Conditions June 2024

Los Pinos Trail is a rocky and technical backcountry hiking and mountain biking singletrack that descends from Los Pinos peak in the southern part of the Santa Ana mountains. You approach the trail as a loop by ascending San Juan Trail to Main Divide and then going north on Main Divide to climb up to Munhall Saddle. This is known as the Los Pinos Loop.
The 9 miles of Los Pinos Trail, like all the Cleveland National Forest Trails, are primarily maintained by volunteers and trail work organizations like The Warriors Society (www.warriorsso....
This video shows the current conditions on Los Pinos in June 2024. Last year the trail was not nearly as bushy as it is now, so this is just one year of growth. This goes to show how quickly the forest reclaims trails and that our trails need trimming every year. Without maintenance, a good trail quickly turns into a bushwhack.
This footage was taken on June 9, 2024, the day after I rode the VisionQuest I was pretty pooped after quickly riding the 50 miles and 9000' vertical of the VisionQuest the day prior, had not been on Los Pinos at all this season, and as you can see in the video, was battling challenging bushy trail conditions, so I was riding very conservatively.

[@DevinDeVore]

Epic buddy! Santa Ana's deliver!!

[@darshahlu]

Yeah! Chunky bushy steep Santa Ana’s!!

[@mw_nippa5447]

I’m full of questions. 1) Would you ride this trail again? It looks punishing. 2) what do you ride, and with what travel? 3) how did you decide on the bottles and phone holder cockpit? (Btw: Your skill on the Joplin video makes it look way too easy.)

[@darshahlu]

@@mw_nippa5447 Thank you for your comments and questions. 1) Yes, I would ride Los Pinos again. I have ridden it many times. Today I rode to the summit but not down the ridge. Right now it is very overgrown, and that is the nature of these back country trails: without maintenance they become overgrown. If you are interested in helping maintain trails, please join the warriorssociety.org mailing list and come out with me and others to do some riding and trimming. I have a few videos on my channel about trimming, check them out. Also, here is the Los Pinos Ridge crux when it was in good condition (I walked it in that June 2024 video): ua-cam.com/video/SI83GOCHKuE/v-deo.htmlfeature=shared 2) I ride a 2019 Giant Trance Advanced 29 Pro 0. Its a 130/115 front/rear travel bike. Short travel aka downcountry bike. Next year, when it goes on sale, I plan to buy the 2024 Specialized Epic EVO which is actually a little more down-oriented than my current one (slacker headtube angle and 130/120 travel). 3) The bottles I heard about on bikepacking.com . They are Rogue Panda brand. The phone holder I don't remember how I selected it. It is Nite Ize brand, $20 bucks from REI. Works great, just replaced it with another because the rubber strap finally broke.

[@mw_nippa5447]

@@darshahlu Thanks Darshan. I just read your tribute to Brandon. ❤️