Lower Chiquito: A Rocky, Technical Santa Ana Trail

This is Lower Chiquito which holds some of the most interesting and technical terrain the Santa Anas has to offer. If you want to get an idea of what Chiquito is like to ride or view the current June 2024 trail conditions, this video is for you!
This is a continuation of a ride starting at San Juan Trail. See that part of the ride here: • Biking San Juan, Viejo...
A little background about this ride:
This was my last long training ride leading up to the VisionQuest, a 50 mi/9k vertical ride in the Santa Anas hosted by the Warriors Society. This was ridden one week prior to the VQ on June 1, 2024. (View the VisionQuest ride here: • VisionQuest 2024: Moun... )
I had a big day planned with a few different ways to finish the ride depending on how I felt. I started at San Juan Trail, planned to link into Viejo Tie and Chiquito and then ride the Main Divide all the way over to Bear Springs where Holy Jim intersects Main Divide. From here, I envisioned a couple options:
Option one, which was rather ambitious, was to descend Holy Jim and then return Main Divide to finish on Los Pinos Ridge. This would have amounted to 50ish miles and 12ish vertical.
Option two was to descend Holy Jim, go out Trabuco Canyon and return on trails and roads through Casper's Regional Park for 60ish miles and 10ish vertical.
What I ended up doing was slightly less ridiculous than either of these rides but unique and proud in its own right: I rode up Santiago Peak to finish on Joplin for a San Juan-Chiquito-Joplin ride through! This amounted to 45 miles and 9k vertical.
I changed plans because I met another rider training for VisionQuest, who, after he learned I was parked at San Juan Trailhead, offered to shuttle me back to my car. Frank's kind offer spontaneously created this unexpected and uncommon link up. I took Frank's offer as I knew I probably wouldn't get a chance to do Chiquito and Joplin in day without an extraordinary amount of effort. Thanks Frank!