Walker's Pass

This past holiday weekend I drove 3 hours north of me to a town called Ridgecrest CA to hang out and ride with my buddy John Jones. The town is pretty much in the middle of nowhere cali.

Ridgecrest is located in the southern portion of the Indian Wells Valley and in the northeast corner of Kern County, surrounded by four mountain ranges; the Sierra Nevada on the west, the Cosos on the north, the Argus Range on the east, and the El Paso Mountains on the south. It is approximately an hour and quarter from the Lancaster/Palmdale area and approximately two hours from both Bakersfield and San Bernardino. A favorable characteristic of the City is its proximity to two major highways, the 395 and 14. Air travel in and out of the city is provided through the Inyokern Airport. These attributes make Ridgecrest, a central location for shopping and business for the Eastern Kern County area.   Ridgecrest is also easily accessible to the rest of southern California making it an ideal location for industry. ( More can be seen here )

It was a small dusty town with not much to it, well except for some gorgeous open desert and plenty of amazing quiet roads to bike on. On Sunday we went on a 56 mile loop where we pretty much had the roads to ourselves. We headed out late in the afternoon and road back into town in to the setting sun.

 Monday we took another route that took us up a 22 mile climb on Walker's Pass to the summit. I found it pretty interesting to learn about this Pass and the history behind it. More info can be seen here at this website

I had a great weekend and plan to travel back up to Ridgecrest for more riding. Total mileage for the two days was 101.