Purisma

purisma My adventures of riding new dirt continues this weekend with a dive into the forests of Purisma, an epic network of single track and fire road straight down to the bottom of Kings Mountain and back up, back all the way down, loop around a peak, and back up. I didn't get enough, and met up with my friends riding at Skeggs for another hot lap, climbing close to 8000' over 37 hard-fought miles.

Purisma is fairly buffed out trail. While not nearly as technical as Skeggs it makes up in pure fast and flow fun. The views of the ocean below and ridge-line are pretty amazing. Once you get to the bottom you have a few options, loop around Purisma Creek before the climb home or climb all the way to the top. I plotted a route that had a section of trail off-limits to bikes, which wasn't aware of. This forced me to go to the top, drop back down by climbing up Skyline for a bit, and dropping down at the second parking lot. By this time I was nearly spent, but was having so much fun exploring new ground.

I did the Purisma loop at the bottom of the ridge, which was really dark and dense like Skeggs. I passed a few riders making their way up the fire road before dropping into some sweet single track. My brakes have been giving me some trouble, most likely due to improper bed-in time. The back brakes howled through my entire ride. Very annoying. From there it was a long 1300' ascent back to Skyline.

I probably should have called it a day from there, but pressed on and rode to the Skeggs parking lot to met up with my friends Josh and Ryan. They're both fast, and had fresh legs. Along the way we picked up another one of Josh's friends and bombed down Blue Blossom. When we reached the bottom I knew I was done and needed to climb my ass out of there. They continued on as I slowly made my way back along the Sierra Moreno trail and onto Skyline.