Why are my knees bleeding?

A common question! I don't know about you, but in my case it's because I was jogging down the Old Mount Wilson Trail earlier today and, after getting a little out of control running down a rock I stumbled over another rock and fell forward. I had hiked up a couple miles and around 1500' (to around the unnecessary rope handrail) and then jogged back (total time: about 1:45, but I wasn't in a big rush). While I've been concentrating on biking and haven't been doing nearly as much unassisted hiking or "trail running" as I used to, I've just recently been doing the hike-up/jog-down in Griffith Park. While that's been at dusk or at night, the trail is not as narrow or rocky.

The OMW trail isn't washed out in any places, however there were a couple small sinkholes due to the recent "storm", and the outer edge of the trail had crumbled away or was about to do so in a couple places.

Unfortunately, there were four mountain bikers using the trail, and in my estimation, while it wasn't muddy, it was too wet to be biking there. I tried to point that out to them in turn, but as they sped past they didn't seem to understand that my concern was not with their safety but rather with the trail itself and also the fact that by riding a wet trail they were making the rest of us look bad. Even after it was dark the marks they made in the trail were quite visible. All it takes is a few activist Sierra Club member types to get front range trails like that closed to bikes.

OutdoorSports · Sun, 12/09/2007 - 21:18 · · Importance: 1