Carrizo Plain Gravel Biking
November 2023
Carrizo Plain is known for superblooms. When California receives a lot of rain all winter and the right conditions line up in Spring for this dry and empty section of Central California to turn into unbelievable stretches of wildflowers. Instagram probably made it a lot worse. But this is why we came to Carrizo.
It’s the middle of fall, it hasn’t rained for like 10 months. There’s some ranches and shacks and a national monument and a dried up lake bed. Oh, and a lot of gravel. Perfect for gravel bikes.
I picked up Connor on a Friday and we drove the 3 hours to get up to Carrizo and he was checking an app to see where could be a good spot to camp on BLM land. “Power line with a view” sounded great to us. We rolled onto a dirt trail that wrapped around some hills and up to the power line and a clearing. The sun was about to go down and we could hear gun shots echoing through the hills. I felt like I was going to be sniped from on top of his hill. Oh well. I slept in the back of the tundra and Connor made a tent with an air mattress. I think he was better off than I was. We ate mystery meat burgers from an interesting restaurant where we got to know the owner/cook while we waited. It was a gamble, so I took a pepto pill before trying to sleep.
The next day we got up at sunrise and started to warm up and check the bikes. The temperature was in the 40s at the time, the sky was clear, and there was a breeze coming from the South. I would end up hating that breeze in a few hours.
If you look at he map below, the ride started at the bottom right corner and went counterclockwise. It starts with a steep climb over a ridge and into another valley - right alongside the San Andreas fault line. The entire first 2 hours were pretty fun. There was a lot of washboard to navigate, ups and downs and cattle crossing bridges. We stopped for lunch (PB&J and Clif Bars) before crossing the plain and beginning the ride South to the finish. This is when I bonked, My back, arms, and neck were starting to tingle and hurt because of the rattling of the washboard roads. And we were basically going up a 20 mile long gradual uphill into an afternoon headwind. I hated it, I hated my bike, I hated biking, I hated Carrizo Plains, I hated the sun and the wind. This it was bonking does to you - or at least to me - where physically and mentally I’m just discouraged to continue. But, there was no other way to finish and we couldn’t quit. So pedal on. And on. And on.
Of course, once we got back to the truck and off the bike, and I used my massage gun on my back and legs, all the suffering was forgotten and for the whole drive back to LA we talked about more intense routes to try next.
