TheFoothillsForum

Just wondering if anyone has made it up to the Lightning Point/Mt. Gleason area or Mt. Pacifico since the fire?
The gates are of course always locked these days and I'm not up to doing that length of hike these days to walk the road or PCT up.
If anyone has a dual sport bike and is willing to venture past the gates, I would gladly send good karma and positive vibes your way for a report.
Thanks

LOL..

I wish they would open up the local area again. I have a dual sport bike, but have to ride out of the area to get a taste of dirt. I'm not gonna get caught by going on an Outlaw ride. Even though it makes me sick, that more and more areas are closed to us.

Yeah man, I hear you. Pacifico is easy though and honestly civil disobedience is going to be the only way to access those areas again. I'm sure you know how the Forest Service works. Once they find a way to close an area to the public they will tend to keep it closed. There is an awesome motorcycle trail that is in Upper Big T and heads across Angeles crest and the down the other side. So many people put their love and labor into that trail. It was never opened because it may endanger the toad that lives there. Typically you will only find camp crews up top of Pacifico when the gates are locked and you would be long gone before anyone could respond, plus the camp crew guys really don't care. We were up there once in the parking lot getting ready to ride, the gate was locked up to Pacifico and we were doing mostly the roads down into Monte Cristo. CHP rolls up and starts talking to us. He wished he was riding and encouraged us to go past the gate and head up to the top.
As far as Mt. Gleason side, once you get into the area where the dirt roads are and then past that out to lightening point the Forest service radios don't work very well. Just sayin.

I'm not a dirt biker (if that's the right term) but I think you guys pay taxes and deserve a piece of the 'commons' too. Wouldn't participating in the Rim of the Valley Corridor Study and arguing for a designated area be a better plan? Civil disobedience could be plan b.

Were getting pushed out farther and farther. Seems like Cal city is about the only dirtbike friendly city around these days. It's not bad out there when you get away from the flatlands. However, but it would be nice to ride right outside my driveway. really sucks that We are getting boxed in. Ridiculous and dangerous. They give us a limited space ohv parks, where unskilled or crazy fools cross your path. another bogus deal is, the fireroads are closed off. geez, I had to buy a plated bike because more and more OHV routes disappear. now, plated dirt roads are restricted as well. There used to be some nice single track through out our mountains, but now we are restricted from riding them. yes, I guess I could disregard the signs, blow past them and ride. most likely no one is gonna catch a dirtbike up there. Maybe only a skilled dirtbiker LEO, or a helicoptor support could. Yeah. many places are closed off by various endangered frogs, fish, boogieman and or conditions. Maybe I will have to grab a buddy or two one day and do an outlaw ride for fun.

We do pay taxes most definitely but as in many other aspects of our life in this country, just because we are taxed does not mean we reap the benefits of that taxation.
I rode dirt bikes for many many years and fought for land access. In all cases the motorcyclists lost. I am an outdoors person. I am very environmentally conscious. Many dirt bike riders are, in fact, most are.
But there are a lot of knuckleheads attracted to the sport as well. They are truly stupid people who don't realize that the damage they do with their bike will last hundreds of years. When educated to this fact, they don't care.
These are who the politicians see when the environmentalists want another area closed to off road vehicles.

When I suggest going on an illegal ride, it is by going past a locked gate onto a dirt road, not riding across a virgin hillside or across cryptographic soil in the desert. There are several areas in the local mountains closed to all access, human included, due to the endangered southwestern arroyo toad. I am all for saving this toad. One of the areas closed is a fire road which parallels Little Rock creek. The road is well above the creekbed and is dry dry dry. Toads don't need much water, but I guarantee they aren't spending much time on that hard dry fire road.
Now after the fire lots of places are still closed even though the forest has been reopened to the public. The areas that are the subject of this post were a very special part of my life, if I still had a motorcycle I'd be past those gates today.

I have been off the bike for about 4 months now, just getting back on after knee surgery. It's killing me as I was hitting dirt a couple times a week for years. I love going out riding. I'm in my 50's and ride with all ages, 20's to 70's. I love hittin a good single track, cliff side exposure, switchbacks, hill climbs, sand, and even a hard packed fire roads. Being in the saddle is friggen great. The group I ride with is stays on existing routes. We don't cut new ones. some of the routes may be closed off these days, but, dang, they have been dirtbike trails for many decades, and now, taboo. We pick up trash that we run across. We take videos and pictures of our adventures, and have a good ole time. We don't tear up the land. What's cool, is that a dirtbiker can see some beautiful areas that others will never see. Yes, there are boneheads in the sport. just like any other activity. Those guys need to stay in the ohv park, showing off the super cool donuts and wheelies to their girlfriends, and annoy their buddies with their noisy pipes. Stay away from the rest of us. Our group is environmental conscious.

I would love to ride up some of these fire roads I hiked as a kid.

Yeah, I could tell from previous posts that you were a responsible person. We are the people that try and present a positive picture, do trail maintenance, pick up trash (bet you've picked up pounds of mylar and latex balloons just like I have) and be good stewards of our land. Somehow we always get ignored and the politicians only see the knuckleheads.
One really fun ride we used to do was go up Little T to Bear Divide at night and ride all the way across to Angeles Forest Highway with a stop at the Lightning point group camp for a hot beverage and a snack.
Riding that road at night was so completely different, there would be kangaroo rats and these little burrowing owls out on the road, we never hit them, they always scattered with our headlights. I had absolutely no idea before then that there were so many burrowing owls. One night we came around a corner 10 O'clock at night and some really bent over dude with a hiking stick taller than his bent over self scurried across the road and into a side canyon. This was well away from Little T road or Angeles forest road. We stopped at Lightning point and were probably just as freaked out by this as the guy we had startled was.