Last Saturday's ride started with 5 miles of flattish neighborhood laps with a neighbor getting back on his
Aventon for the first time after spine surgery. He wanted some company just in case.
Then I split off for 8 more miles of hills with 800 ft of climbing. They say that climbing starts to get serious at 100 ft/mi, and it certainly felt serious to me.
A World Tour mountain stage can average ~150 ft/mi overall, but individual climbs — e.g., Mt. Ventoux in the French Alps — can easily exceed 400 ft/mi.
Stopped briefly at an entrance to the Batiquitos Lagoon Ecological Preserve. Zoom in to see the lagoon's upstream end at the top, just to the bike's right. A green-fringed white sand island takes up most of the channel here.
Appropriately, no bikes of any kind allowed on the trails, and no shortage of signage to that effect. But that doesn't stop local kids on their fat-tire ebikes and e-motos.
A large horse property occupies the floodplain to the east of this overlook.
View to the SE. In the center skyline, Denk Mountain — at 1,042 ft, the highest point within Carlsbad city limits. In the distance to its right, Woodson Mountain at nearly 3,000 ft. Lots of great mountain biking on these uplands, but not much for my hybrid road/gravel bike.
These odd "piles" of wood-like material almost look man-made, but they're actually dead palm trees that collapsed without falling over. This kind of low-slung palm dots the lagoon's noth shore. Beautiful when alive, but for some reason, about half are dead now.
Varmia Gravel 2026.
