Home            Back to Rides

The San Juan Trail is located in San Juan Capistrano in southern Orange County, CA.  There have been numerous write-ups on various sites so I won't bother with my own here.  Just suffice it to say that this trail is fantastic.

The day we rode this trail a bunch of us from San Diego met up with several Orange County people who frequent the Alt.mountain-bike newsgroup.  We started early because we knew it would be hot and we weren't wrong on that one.  After only 30 minutes of riding (about 8:15 AM) we knew it would be a scorcher.

We all rode at our own pace for the opening 6 mile climb from the cars to Lunch Box (a.k.a. Cocktail) Rock.  After re-grouping some people chose the slightly easier route to the left from Lunch Box Rock on their way up to Blue Jay Campground where we would regroup again.  Others in the group decided that a much more fun way to ride is to turn right at the rock and continue on Old San Juan trail to where it connects with Viejas Tie trail and from there connect to Chiquito Trail, back to Old San Juan and on up to the campground.  Our return trip would basically retrace the same trails but we would not leave Old San Juan at all between the campground and Lunch Box Rock.

Although I know it's not tremendously accurate, one of the riders had a thermometer on his cycling computer and he stated that it reached 107 degrees during the ride.  It was definitely a toasty one!

Because it's just darn hard to break out 4 minutes of video from a 4 hour ride, I have chosen to create three separate videos of this ride.  The first one is simply to capture the trademark feature of this trail, the switchbacks, in all their glory.  This is just one uninterrupted clip of single-track highlighted by the many switchbacks that a rider must ascend in order to descend later.  I actually cut out a couple at the top of this section in order to get the clip to finish with the music.  I've counted before, and I recall that there are 31 total, although only 20 or so exist on this opening section of trail.  the other 11 or so are scattered throughout the remaining four miles to Lunch Box Rock.  There are a couple on the way up that I can't make because they're either too rocky or too sandy depending on how the trail conditions are.  I've never made only one but on any given ride there are usually two or three that I mess up.  I can make them all on the way down but there are a couple that will mess you up if you aren't ready for them.

The second video is a compilation of the riding from Lunch Box Rock to Blue Jay Campground and back to Lunch Box Rock.  The third video is depicting the descent with the many places to literally fall off the trail between Lunch Box Rock and the switchbacks.