Soquel Demonstration Forrest is the one place in the SF Bay area where the land managers aren't trying too hard to make the trails safe for the no skill/no balls posers that seem to be everywhere out here. Try and find a simple log pyramid on most Bay Area trails and you come up short. "Multi-use" is the standard trail buzzword around here - bike, hike, and horse.

Multi-use: Equality in design that ignores the fact that 85% of users are two wheelers. Got to accomodate everybody. It's all a big compromise, and like all compromises, nobody wins but the compromised. The bar gets lowered so nobody trips and we end up with pretty, unchallenging, "low tech" trails. Of course, if you like your trails "buffed", then I guess you get to be happy a lot.

Soquel is different because it's, well, built for bikes first, everybody else second. The best singletrack in the woods is a formerly illegal downhill slam called Braille Trail. It's got steeps, twisties, log piles, log rides, log jumps, and a couple of small teeter totters thrown in. I heard it was actually way more technical before it was made legal last winter, but I'm not complaining. It's a blast.

Cheers,

CWB