Ride Report #19: Hollister Hills SVRA

Hollister Hills SVRA is the oldest and largest off-road park in California. I’ve been itching to go check it out, after having been to Metcalf and Carnegie. Unfortunately, HH is about 75 miles from home — a solid hour and a half on the super slab. Anyway with baby #2 due in less than 4 weeks, I thought the New Year break would be the ideal time to go check it out. I’m not going to have any time starting Feb. The forecast for Jan 1st 2012 was an awesome 73 F (~23C). Now that is nice for January in the Bay Area.

So I took 880 and 101, gassed up at Hollister and reached the park a little after noon.

Hollister is much bigger compared to the other two parks. And being a holiday, it was packed with riders. The parking lots were full and I could see kids buzzing around in their high pitched two strokes almost everywhere.

As a cautious newbie, I decided to try out the greens. I rode Rancho Road, Harmony Gate Trail and Field Road (all three greens). The trails here are long (longer than the other parks, i.e.) winding and certainly a lot of fun. A lot of tree cover makes for a picturesque ride. This winter has been unusually dry and so there was a lot of dust being kicked up.

I also tried a couple of blue trails (tighter, narrower and steeper), but nothing too adventurous. The good part of the Hollister Hills is that almost all the trails (the major ones for sure) are one way. So there’s little danger of running into someone at speed — a thought that makes me wince.

The DR did awesome — and I’m getting tired of repeating myself here.  It is however, heavy and a handful to manage. But it takes you where you want to go and has no complains doing so. In fact if you listen to your DR closely, it is begging you to go explore it’s limits.

I took the slab back home for the boring ride home and kept up a brisk 80mph speed. The DR did not skip a beat from being abused on the trails to grinding down the freeway miles.

Last evening I washed off the dirt. Now would be a good time to clean the air filter and chain. Maybe next week 🙂 Adiós!