This past Sunday Dave, Scott & I met up to take a ride through Noble Canyon located up by Laguna Mountain outside of San Diego.  I have not riden Noble in at least 10 years.  Back then, it was a on a hard tail mountain bike with 1.5″ of travel.  I was also 10 years younger!  Since we were starting out at 3 PM we dropped off Scott’s truck down in Pine Valley and drove mine up to the meadows right off Sunrise Highway.  The first part of the ride takes you through Big Laguna trail which I’m very familiar with after the last two camping trips.  You start out peddling up a decaying paved road and then get to ride down Los Gatos Ravine.  Very fun downhill, and this late in the day there was nobody out there.

It is getting dusty and dry up there.  Most of the lake is now gone, and the grass is turning green.  But there are plenty of cows to be found!  After taking the east side of the Big Laguna trail we met up with the beginning of the Noble Canyon trail.  I have to admit, I’m not completely happy with my current fitness level, but I’m a hell of a lot better than I was two months ago.  Scott says he only gets to ride once a week, but he’s in awesome shape.  And Dave must have a turbo system installed or something.  The trail is in way better shape than I remembered so it was a total blast.  Once getting done with the climbs the three of us stopped and put on our pads.  Safety is generally a good idea up here. Which, we’re going to find out about 15 minutes after we donned our gear.

The top of Noble is a fast section that crosses back and forth over an access road.  Total blast.  Towards the end of this section we hit some switch backs and then cross over the road one last time dropping into the trees.  This part of the trail I remember being a total rock garden and very hectic.  Not so much anymore.  As we dropped into the tree area I heard Dave in front of us yelling “WHOA WHOA WHOA!!!”  Since that usually indicates something isn’t right, we slowed down.  As we came around the corner we saw Dave with two people, one of them a young woman on the ground holding her leg up.  She had crashed further down the trail and her front chainring had gashed her leg open.  I personally think that was an understatement.

Our new friends were Cong and Amanda.  They had wrapped her ankle up in a hankerchef to cover it and slow down the bleeding.  Scott and I both had first aid supplies on us.  I always carry a pressure dressing with me, a habit I carried over from the Army.  We started to help unwrap her ankle and it became apparent this was a pretty bad gash.  It was about six inches from just above her ankle bone down to her foot.  And bone and tendon were fully exposed.  My first reaction was “I better just talk to her and keep her distracted.”  Scott and Cong applied some gause, and I showed them how to use the pressure dressing while making small talk with Amanda to keep her mind off of what was happening.  Amanda said “We don’t have any money or anything to give you guys.” I replied with “Bah! I hope someone would stop and help me.  If you feel obligated, heal up and go for a ride with us and we can have beers after!”

After getting her ready to move Dave and I headed back out to the road to get some help while Scott and Cong worked together to get her out to the road.  Dave and I got up to the road, and realized it was late and very unlikely anyone was going to be coming through here.  We yelled back down to the crew and told them we were going to head to the highway to get some help and they should wait where the trail crosses the road.  That little road has a huge hill that is no fun to ride up.  It was like climbing the hill that heads north out of Qualcomm Stadium.  Once out on Sunrise we waited for a while for anyone to come by.  I heard some voices back on the trailhead so I shot over there to see if it was someone who had a car nearby.  It turned out to be Tim and two others we ran into when we were getting ready to ride.  Their car was back with ours.  Meanwhile, Dave was trying to flag people down and people just drove on by.  Finally a man with his whole family in their minivan stopped to help.  (Sad state that people will just drive on by someone who is obviously looking for help).  Since he had his family we asked if he could go down to the volunteer fire department and let them know about the situation.  Then, 30 seconds after he pulled away a CalFire truck came by and we flagged him down.

We went the Calfire truck off to help Amanda, then realized after he pulled away we should have told him to have Scott start riding out towards us.  DOH!  So, we pedaled in to find Scott.  Just after we came down the huge ass hill we run into Scott. Haha!  The truck with Amanda and Cong caught up with us here.  The fireman said he could take her out to the road but we’d have to find transport from there.  Scott Dave and I made our way out to Sunrise Highway (climbing the huge ass hill again!) to find Amanda now had about 15 guys all there to take care of her.  They splinted her up, made sure she was ok, and gave her and Cong a ride to my truck.

The three of us hopped back on our bike and cut back through Big Laguna Trail to get to the truck ASAP.  At some point the sun was in my eyes so I was keeping my head down to keep from going blind.  I thought I was cruising along at the same pace, but after we got out of the sun Dave and Scott were waaaaay ahead of me.  After catching back up with them (and they riding a little slower) all of a sudden Dave screams, throws his legs up and bails off the bike.  Then, I hear then see the rattlesnake.  All I could think was “Oh shit, he got bit!”  Fortunately, it turns out Dave is just deathly terrified of rattlesnakes, and he wanted to warn us with the utmost fanfare.  I was very relieved to find out he just ran it over and he wasn’t hurt.  I don’t know if the snake was hurt, I hope not, but I wasn’t going to go up and ask him.

We made it back to the truck to no Amanda and Cong.  Fortunately they had found a ride back to their car and left us a note.  “Hey guys, we got a ride.  Please call us.  And forget the beers, you guys deserve a whole keg!”  Knowing they had made it back we packed up and headed on down to the Liar’s Club in Alpine for delicious hamburgers and beer.  The first thing we saw walking in the door was the New Belgium beach cruiser.  Which, I must now have one.  The burgers and beer were great!  Satisfied, we made our way home pleased with our ride and our good deed for the day!

Update!

Cong called me last night and let me know Amanda was heading into surgery.  Due to the exposed bone and a lacerated tendon they needed to do a deep cleaning and stitch things back up.  Should be a minor surgery, but she’ll be off the bike for a while.