Category: Foothills

Countryside, Foothills, GPS, MTBing, Photos

Pedaling Through The Pandemic

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    The year 2020 will go down in history as the year of the coronavirus pandemic. Since late February the whole world has been turned topsy-turvy by news of and reactions to the latest esoteric virus to come out of China. As of this writing (30 April 2020) 3.2 million people have contracted Covid-19 world wide, and there have been over 225,000 deaths. Citizens in countries around the globe have been ordered to stay at home and national economies are tottering toward collapse. Thankfully, the health situation is not so dire in Oaxaca, though the local economy, which is heavily dependent on tourism, is reeling. These are tough times, indeed!

    Happily, mountain biking provides a welcome respite from the coronavirus crisis. It is not difficult to maintain social distance while pedaling through the countryside; and spending time in the saddle is both great exercise and a big psychological boost. So it is that small groups of friends, including a number of retired expats who call Oaxaca home, meet several times each week for rides on nearby mountain trails or around the central valley. On this particular Thursday morning, four amigos rode 21.6 miles from Oaxaca up to San Felipe del Agua, then over the mountain ridge to Viguera and on to San Pablo Etla before returning to town along the abandoned railroad line that once linked Oaxaca with Mexico City to the north and the Pacific coast to the south. The relative lack of vehicular traffic on city streets is a side benefit of the pandemic, as is the better air quality.

Countryside, Foothills, GPS, MTBing

Lobera Loop

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The world is in the grip of the coronavirus pandemic in mid-April of 2020. The city and state of Oaxaca are yet to be hit with significant numbers of Covid-19 infections, but people are on edge. There are virtually no flights in or out of Oaxaca; tourists are non-existent; most businesses are closed; and large numbers of citizens are out of work. Folks are hunkered down in their homes and social distancing is the norm. All the more reason, then, to climb aboard our mountain bikes for a rejuvenating morning ride through the countryside of the Zimatlan valley. Fresh air and exercise are great antidotes for feeling depressed. So four expats living in Oaxaca set out on a pleasant 26.7 mile (43 kms) loop ride on a bright Saturday morning, aiming to pedal to the little village of Lobera and back. The outing took just over three hours, with riders gaining and losing a total of 1203 feet (367 meters) in elevation along the way.

Countryside, Foothills, GPS, MTBing, Trail Info

San Agustin Etla Aqueduct Trail & More

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Albi and Larry, two retired biking buddies who live happily in Oaxaca, set out one Monday in early March to test their strength and agility by riding along the aqueduct that carries water from a stream well up a mountain valley down to the water treatment plant in San Agustin Etla. This route is a perennial favorite among participants in the “Hoofing It In Oaxaca” program of weekly hikes and is equally prized by local mountain bikers. After registering and paying a nominal 50 peso permit fee, the two set out from the water plant and headed up the valley. The grade of the trail is quite mild, so the pedaling uphill was easy enough. More challenging were the narrow places where the trail balances on the edge of the aqueduct. There are also a number of spots where the trail jumps from one side of the aqueduct to the other. Most of these are bridged by planks of lumber which can be ridden over. The aqueduct terminates at a small water diversion dam in a mountain stream near the grand ruins of a hydroelectric plant built about 1900. From that point our intrepid duo continued onward, exploring a single-track trail that ran further uphill, generally following the stream. The trail had been recently groomed and marked for a mountain bike race, but even so the pair wished they had brought tools to prune back overhanging tree branches and clear brush from the trail. The riders decided to accomplish their return to San Agustin on a service road rather than retracing their uphill route, which made for a fast descent. All told, the ride covered 8.3 miles (13.4 kms), with an elevation gain and loss of 957 feet (292 meters).  The outing began at the water treatment plant, which sits at an altitude of 6371 feet (1925 meters), and topped out at 6897 feet (2102 meters). The elapsed time for completion of the loop was just over two hours.

Countryside, Foothills, GPS, MTBing, Photos, Trail Info

La Muneca and Santo Domingo Tomaltepec Presas

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Four biking buddies hit the trail to climb the La Muneca trail in the hills near Tlalixtac and then coast down to the two presas in Santo Domingo Tomaltepec before looping back to their starting point near the Tlalixtac town center. All told, they spent about four hours in the saddle and pedaled 12.5 miles (20.1 kms) on this leisurely ride on a lovely May morning. The climb to the monument at the top of the La Muneca trail took the riders 1477 feet (450 meters) up the hillside. The trail was sufficiently steep to cause some hike-a-biking going up. But that was rewarded with some great zinging downhill. One of the riders had never visited the two lovely presas in the valley above Santo Domingo Tomaltepec, so those were included in the day’s itinerary. The group wrapped things up with a lunch of tasty Mexican food upon their return to Oaxaca at mid-afternoon. 

 

Countryside, Foothills, Hiking, MTBing, Photos

Clearing Brush on the Trail

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Late last October a small group of friends went for a hike on the trails in the foothills above the village of San Pablo Etla. Their objective was to follow the same loop trail used for a mountain bike race held there annually. To their dismay, they found the vegetation so thick at the end of the rainy season that in places they could not even find the trail! So on this Saturday in mid-March several fellows set out with machetes, hedge clippers, pruning shears and tree saws to clear away the brush from the trail. They were in for a couple of pleasant surprises. First of all, after five months without rain all the greenery was gone. The trees and shrubs were bare of leaves, which made it much easier to prune back branches that hung out over the trail. And secondly, it was obvious another work crew had passed this way in recent weeks, as much of the vegetation had already been cut back. So what was expected to be a hard day of heavy work turned out to be much easier and faster than anticipated. Now hikers and mountain bikers will be able to pass freely on the network of intersecting trails that criss-cross the hillsides near San Pablo. For more information on these, see the various entries under “San Pablo Etla” on the “Rides” page of this web site.