Last Sunday's ride started as typical one. We planned to take our usual route via Pangarap -> Licao-licao -> Tungko. Nothing technical, we surmised the Mahogany 1 and 2 trails would be too muddy for our biking pleasure (don't get me wrong, we love muds on our bikes hehe).

There was something atypical about our typical ride, the Pangarap route is a favorite Sunday morning trail for mountain bikers but there were no other groups except us. Or so we thought.

While taking a pit stop in Kapitan's place in Mahogany another group arrived. (Kapitan's place is a favorite rest stop for bikers. You can have meals cooked there.) Three of the 5 bikers in that group were old acquaintances, and of the three, 2 were well known (popular, notorious maybe hehe) trail masters among the PMTB folks. So our bordering to boring "I already know all the turns and bumps" ride headed to some new promising trails.

After taking our lunch in Licao licao terminal, we proceed to the real "Jackhammer trail" - 1 km or so of pure fork pounding fun. The one I referred to before as the "Jackhammer trail" is just an "extension" of the real one.


The we hit the downhill rush of Daang Diablo (Devil's Trail). Its my second time to take that trail and my first time to do an "endo". I overestimate by fork's capacity and my ability to do some tricky balance. Good thing I was not going too fast. Nothing's hurt, except my pride hehe. Not even a scratch ... on my bike :D.

The best part of the day was doing the scenic downhill single track in Tungko. You are greeted with a wide open space - a sea of cogon grass.


But don't let the nice scenery suck you in, the single track has some nasty sections that can produce "tumble downs" if you are not careful. Good thing the track was not slippery with mud.


I couldn't resist on doing some ethereal effect post processing on one of the photos :


The last segment of the Tungko downhill single track was a muddy, a real "mud up to your knee" muddy trail.


At the end of the ride we got mud in every imaginable parts of our bike and maybe in some unimaginable parts of our body :D. But mud is good. The more mud, the happier we are :).

Till the next ride...

A little rain (or even a heavy downpour) could not stop us on our Saturday bike runs. Weather forecast last weekend as grim: dark clouds, heavy rains, and thunderstorms. We decided to bike anyway. The trail : our favorite Litex -> Macabud -> Licao-licao -> Tungko -> Fairview loop.

The first leg of our bike starts from Caloocan to Novaliches Bayan to Litex. We started at 6AM (1 hour late of our usual 5AM ride off) and the rains were unceasing. By the time we got to Litex I was already soaking wet. One of us even got his rear derailluer out of commission. His rear wheel locked up for some reason, busting the locks. Along with it some parts for his derailluer. Good thing a bike shop in Litex was already open (he was 500 pesos poorer when we continued on).

We took pictures along the way whenever possible (when the rains eased up).



After the concrete section of the road in Macabud starts a nice rolling hills terrain. If you are heading to Licao-Licao the barrier wall of the La Mesa Eco Park is to your left. When we got there it the fog started to thicken, reducing the visibility to a few meters.




From Licao-licao we proceeded to Tungko via the private road passing through the "Brick City" - an old deprecated bricks factory (Manila Brickwords Inc).




From Brick Town its mostly downhill to Tungko. There is a portion of the trail called the "Jackhammer trail". You have to ride it to know why its called the Jackhammer Trail :).

Our MTB trip last weekend took us through the provinces of Rizal and Bulacan. No GPS, no maps. Just pure MTB fun in discovering back roads and mountain trails.


Here's a run down of our trip:

1. Caloocan to Litex (via Nova Bayan, Commonwealth Ave) - paved road, rolling hills
2. Litex to crossing San Jose - Montalban (paved, treacherous downhill)
3. San Jose to Macabod (paved steep uphill, then rough rolling hills)
4. Macabod to Licao-Licao (rough rolling hills)
5. side trip Licao-Licao to falls in Mt. Balagbag (punishing rough uphill portion then rolling hills)
6. Licao - Licao to Tungko (very rough road and then there is about 5km very treacherous downhill in Pangarap)
7. Tungko to Nova (paved road)

Total distance for the trip is 72.89 km.

We found a small brick village smack in the middle of an acacia forest somewhere midway between Licao-Licao and Tungko. Its a small community (with a brick courtyard and brick houses) detached from civilization. It was like being transported into another time and place. Unfortunately our camera was out of juice.

Here's some photos we took along the way:


Enjoying the downhill. I was going down nice and fast on this downhill section only to encounter a huge truck in the opposite direction (going down the opposite hill) hogging the small road. So much for using the downward momentum to attack the next uphill :).



We cooled down at Balagbag falls (Mt. Balagbag has great killer uphill sections) with some delicious suman (rice cake) we bought in a small store at our pit stop. It was a short walk downhill to the falls and Mother Nature decided to give us a welcome shower 5 minutes after we arrived in the falls. We were too tired and hungry to care. Rain was a welcome respite and our meager lunch was a feast.



So how punishing were the trails really?

1. Owen blew his rear interior tube. He also has to replace his brake pads. We all have to use our brakes heavily.

2. Raymond (the youngest in our group) went over the handle bar.

3. My left pedal needs to be replaced.

4. Elias' left and right pedals have to be replaced.

5. George cut his left knee. He also has to align both his front and rear wheels. All his rear spokes are loose.

But unlike our two previous MTB trips we didn't have really bloody cuts (last two indicents involved me hehe).