Hair of the Dog

It's really easy to forget all about Water Dog park. Come the weekend hitting our familiar Marin destinations or heading south somewhere always seems the obvious choice for a decent shred. However, right on our doorstep we have an awesome singletrack network and some genuinely gnarly jumps. So this weekend myself, Chris and Eric decided to head to Belmont and explore the dirt treasures nestled amongst suburbia.

It's a little difficult to figure out a logical loop at Water Dog, however the place is small enough, and the climbing easy enough that you can explore and figure out a route that satisfies. Exploring is a part of mountain biking yet we rarely do it. We're too busy riding familiar trails over and over, the same way each time trying for faster Strava times. So it felt good to eek out our own route and stop and session certain areas to help figure out how to find our flow.

The actual trails are awesome. Often short, but clearly built for bikers. Names like "Rambler" suggest something sedate but nothing could be further from the truth. Every corner is slightly bermed and the bits in between are fast, tight and full of little boosters and interesting features that encourage pumping and fast lairy riding. There's also lots of fairly challenging stuff too like steep, rutted trails and tight switchbacks. Plus, one trail even has you riding over an ancient sunken car!

We rounded off the ride with a session at the nearby jump park next to the high school. Much of the jumps are insane gap jumps that invoke chills just by looking at them. But there are plenty of smaller jumps to have fun with too. I felt somewhat rusty but I had Oscar's words of wisdom rattling around somewhere so felt confident boosting off the smaller stuff.

We'll definitely be going back. In the meantime, if you want to see a video of the three of us hitting some really gnarly shit, watch.........

>>>>>THIS!<<<<<