Saturday I decided that, rather than riding past the beach on the rec trail heading to the Fort Ord Dunes, I would head down (its quite a way down) and ride the more or less remote stretch of beach that is past where the tourists hang out - they're actually blocked off from it by a man-made but natural-looking 'stone' outcrop shaped to look like its a natural formation. So, only about three or four people - two of them fishing in the surf right at the start - seen the whole time.
This stretch of beach is narrow and steep. With a thin band of dry, but very coarse sand running from the cliffs straight down at a sharp angle into surf. Some times I was timing my crossing of the sand so there wouldn't be water there. Swiped this image off Google. It was taken on a much sunnier day, and the band of dry, fine sand you see no longer exists thanks to the recent storms that also punched right up to the cliffs. Once down, there didn't seem to be any way back inland except the way I came. I've got a battery upgrade en route that will let me better test that.
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Aired the tires way down (I keep a small compressor with me that runs off my ebike battery) and made it down the steep sandy dune to the beach. In addition to the crashing surf right next to me and the view, riding on the beach was a real handful. A big challenge because of the steep angle and I couldn't ride on the wet sand given the active surf. I had to stay up where it was - somewhat - dry, which was very deep stuff. I got into my biggest rear cog without even realizing I had done it and was not so happy I had nothing more to work with. Despite the bike being 2wd I had to really work at maintaining forward progress - both in terms of pedal effort and not faceplanting thanks to the shifting ground under me.
When I finally found a flat spot a couple miles down the beach, I decided thats where I was turning around as I wasn't sure I'd find another anytime soon. The ground was low and had been recently wet (also thanks to the rain) so tires weren't really digging in here. But once I turned around and made it back over that hump in the 3rd pic, I stayed high near the cliffs and was halfway up to the rims in sand the whole way back.
I figured the going was so tough I would be using my two walking throttles to help hump the bike back up the steep, deep dune sand slope up to the trail. But my some miracle the bike made it up. In fact I said out loud to myself "I can't believe I just did that" once I crested the top. I totally expected some exhausting payback from Mother Nature for daring to try this. I've always been a big proponent of 2wd but I've never done something like this that - no way, no how - could I have even considered going there and doing that without it.
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I was on the fence as to whether I replace these worn 4.8" Vee Snowshoes with 5.05" Snowshoe 2XLs. Not freaking anymore. Now also seems like a good time to see how the Box Prime 9 drivetrain works on a build, given it will take my 32T max and replace it with a 46T. The Shimano Deore XT has served me well since 2017 on this bike but this terrain is a whole new kind of difficult.
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