I have some friends that have a cabin up there, right near Snow Summit (where the MTB Park is), so I ride up there with them a reasonable amount.

My favorite trail in Big Bear is Skyline Trail. There’s a number of ways to get up there but a good route from Snow Summit is to take the doubletrack road called Bristlecone east from the Snow Summit parking lot. From that climb Fern trail up to Skyline and then ride east to west on Skyline and get off at the intersection of Skyline, Pine Knot and Grandview. Descend the upper part of Pine Knot to Knickerbocker fireroad to Town Trail, which will dump you back into the Snow Summit parking lot. It’s a 15ish mile loop.

Pine Knot all the way to the bottom is also a really nice trail but it kicks you out a little distance from Snow Summit and you’d have to ride back to meet your friends on the road. Nice trail but not worth it in your context.

On the other side of the lake, in Fawnskin, I like Grout Bay and Hannah Flat as an out and back. You can ride there 20 min or so from the Snow Summit area, mostly on the bike path. But it’s hotter and drier over there, not fun if you want to sleep in til 10.

I don’t know much about the trails in the bike park. I climbed up Fern once and down Pirates & Fall Line (in the bike park). Those trails were so chewed up that I found it no fun. So I’ve never ridden in the park since.

You can ride around the lake on a road bike (I guess on a mtb too but that would be a slog). There’s not really any shoulder on the roads though, and lots of vacation-headed drivers. I personally don’t care much for the road riding options and would avoid it during prime summer season. Just too hairy.

Have fun, I love the mtb trails in Big Bear.

@TMonk, glad you weren’t majorly hurt. Hope you still get to do your MTB trip.

Re: all the talk on whether racing is worth it, funny I had that same thought process a few months ago. I have zero peers in my town- no one my age and gender- who race. My non-racing friends want me to ride with them and I often can’t. My teammates (all younger, stronger, men) want me to ride with them but honestly is no fun just riding max effort all the time and getting dropped anyway and then rolling through the regroups to try to not slow down the show. I’m pretty independent and don’t mind riding solo for the most part, but it’s hard to feel like you’re missing out on fun social stuff a lot. I also increasingly like mountain biking but I’m so slow twitch that those little bursts of power you need to put out repeatedly while mountain biking really sap my legs for the TT work later in the week, so I have to keep the mtb under wraps a bit when I’m in full TT mode. Obviously it’s a lot of work to train for these things and I give up a lot. Then with the USAC promoter-runs-the-races model, the races are always in danger of being cancelled or the dates changed and that really doesn’t work for TT training. Racing out of USAC works better, but it’s nice to have a big aspirational goal for the season, like States or Nationals, to punctuate a season. When you take the big USAC races off the table for logistical reasons, you’re just kind of left with a endless succession of races of equal “value”, makes it harder to define a season.

Then what women race TTs in their 50s- physiologic freaks with tons of experience (who I realistically probably can’t beat), clueless newbies (easy to beat), triathletes (water bottles in cages for a 20k TT!), crit specialists who think a TT will be a piece of cake (often beatable, not always), and oh yeah pro world champion TTists because most women’s TTs are open category. So winning can’t necessarily be the goal, because I’m not gonna beat Amber Neben.

But in the end, I look at it like @Hermes does. I like TTing- the equipment choices, the quest for aeroness, the technical aspects of trying to ride a perfect TT for conditions on race day. I like the training process. I like that it also requires working on strength and flexibility. The whole package is a positive for me. Fortunately too, there’s a lot about TT that is intrinsic- there’s much more to be satisfied about than the external results of where you place in the race results.

So for now, I’m still in the game. Goal event next year will be National Senior Games because the date and location of that are fixed, and short of the entire thing being cancelled, I can build a season around that without being frustrated.

I’ve taken it easy on the mtb the past two days because I’m going to try for an epic mtb loop up along the Wasatch Crest tomorrow. So I think I’m sitting at around 600 TSS for the week so far, TSB today is a little negative but I’m not riding today and think I’ll be rested enough to get it done tomorrow. The only thing which could scuttle the plan is thunderstorms, the Wasatch Crest trail is at 9500ish feet, above the tree line and we’ve had some storms rolling through. I’ll just have to look at the weather forecast in the morning, and get an early start. We’ll see how it goes.

Anyway, easy-ish rides. A short loop on Monday, 4 mile climb and then a little cruise along rolling terrain and a fun descent. Yesterday, I took the gondola up at the next ski mountain over and then rode back to our condo. In theory an easy ride but the rocks were killing me, I still bad at anything technical. And some of it I have no idea what’s going to happen when I ride over it- a long section of trail, for example, was a huge rock slide of flat (flagstone-like) rocks. What’s the bike gonna do when I ride over that? No idea (answer: roll over it all but slow down a lot, shoulda been in an easier gear). Whatever, though, that’s how you figure it out.

Around 25 miles of single track over the past two days, 2500 ft climbing, 200ish TSS. The trails here are a cross country dream. We are actually likely to sell our timeshare in Hilton Head and buy one at this exact location instead. So incredibly logistically easy to be able to ride right from the timeshare every day. Husband can sleep in, I‘m back most days by 11am and we can enjoy the rest of the day like normal people.

Vacation volume riding chapter three: up to around 800 TSS for eight days of riding, I am currently that delicious type of cycling tired.

I got my Wasatch Crest ride in today and it was possibly the most beautiful ride I’ve ever done. Right up there with an epic ride I did with @Racer Ex on the Tahoe Rim trail.

I went to bed last night thinking the ride was off, thunderstorms in the forecast but I got up early anyway to check the forecast. Lucky break, forecast was for perfect weather and that’s what I got.

So I climbed up 8 miles of single track to the Wasatch Crest Trail and rode 7 miles of that over to the next ski resort, descended over there and then rode back on the bike path. Lots of riding at high altitude (9800 ft), which is killer for me. But so worth it: riotous wildflowers all over the mountain right now, dense pine forests, open aspen forest, alpine meadows, epic views. Overall 22 miles of single track with 3300 ft climbing (felt like way more).

We leave tomorrow for Bryce Canyon NP so no bikes again until Monday unless I go out for a wee ride in the morning. Right now I’m planning on it, we’ll see if I actually get up early and get out.