Now that the recent firest that plagued the San Diego area have been
extinguished, it was time to go out and ride to survey the damage. All of
the national forests are still closed so some of us chose to go out and ride
the Anderson Truck Trail since it isn't actually a part of a park system or
is it on national forest land (actually, one tiny section crosses forest
land but the forest police would have much more important things to do with
their time than stopping the random cyclist several miles from any road
where this trail crosses their land).

The trail runs through and above Harbison Canyon. Dubbwa made a site visit
last week so if you saw that on the news, we were riding nearby yeasterday.
There used to be about 500 homes in this community but approximatley 280 are
now gone.

immediately the ride takes on an eerie quality. Southern California
chapparel usually isn't the most scenic of plants one coudl ever hope to
ride through, but when there's absolutely nothing left but some charred
mesquite bushes and the random stump of something I cannot name, the ride
becomes quite surreal.

the first three miles of the "truck trail" climb what did in fact used to be
a four wheel drive road of some sort. Over the years though, the wide strip
of road deteriorated into what was mostly fun singletrack overlooking a
reservoir. with all of hte brush gone though, you realize that the ST is
now about 15 feet wide. There's still a line through the dust, but it's
much more difficult to see.

The other thing that was very different about this ride was that you can see
so much now. Of course, wtih no brush in the way that makes sense but
sections of trail are visible for a hundred feet or more and that's just
sort of weird. What used to be at rail through the overgrown shrubbery is
now a trail through a wide open expanse.

The ash was thick on the ground and whenever anybody rode through it the
dust clowd promised to choke whoever was following. The descent down the
main truck trail was actually quite different than in the past becuase the
exposure that was always masked by the brush was now very obvious. There
were corners that never seemed that scary in teh past but now that there's
literally nothing to keep you from seeing the 30 or more foot drop on just
feet from the line certainly makes you take notice!

unfortuantely while on the trail we did see the burned carcasses of several
rabbits and other varmint type creatures but all was not so bad. in the
middle of the burn area we saw tracks of coyote and deer as well as sighting
several live lizards and a rat looking thing that wasn't really a rat
scurrying across a rock. His ears were singed but he looked more or less
okay. he actually came right up to us no doubt looking for some food amongs
all the charred brush. The other sort of strange thing we saw was one of
the rabbit carcasses was actually teaming with ants so life does go on even
after the burn.

it will take years for the area to rebuild, but in only a few days sings of
life are returning.

Michael