Stagecoach 400 - Day 8 - The Pacific Coast, San Diego National Wildlife Refuge, and Finish!
Date: March 16, 2024
53.1 Miles
2,837 Feet of Gain
Del Mar, CA to Rancho San Diego, CA
Sleep is deep and thorough, so that by the time we wake up, the soreness in our bones has been abated. Today is planned to be shorter both in elevation gain and distance compared to most of the previous days - which means one thing --> a slow morning to enjoy ourselves. It's also our last day which happens to coincide with a ride along the Pacific Coast. We hum with excitement and the promise of beautiful weather. I open up the blinds to our hotel room and gorgeous bluebird morning light spills in. Janna and I walk down to the complimentary hotel breakfast which sits in a partial-outdoor room. The air is fresh, maybe even crisp, with the saturation of moisture that soaks our lungs in relief. It's looking to be some of the best weather conditions of the trip - a perfect way to finish the Stagecoach 400. We eat, pack up, and push out right along the PCH bike lanes we've ridden so many times over the years on previous trips.
The bike lanes crest the hill in Del Mar while the sprawling wetland of Los Penasquitos Lagoon opens up with a commanding view to its merger with the ocean. It's just gorgeous blue sky with whitecaps and waves and the hazy mist of coastline air ripe with morning sun. I'm freaking alive as we coast downhill towards Torrey Pines State Beach. I park my bike against a sign and walk down the beachhead to the smacking ripples of waylaid waves. Janna and I walk the beach and just sit on the coastal barrier rocks to look out on the ocean.
What. A. View.
There's a cool landward breeze that kicks from afar over the waves. We sit in jackets. But the sun is so bright, and the air so clear, that it's simply lovely. I think back to a few years ago when I sat on this beach on a warm second-to-last day of my previous Stagecoach 400 attempt. This time, however, we're going to finish. It's our last day and we have glorious PCH riding ahead of us. And then it's time to ride. We swing legs over our saddles and decide to head off-route into Torry Pines State Park. The official Stagecoach 400 sticks to the highway shoulder, but one of our favorite places to ride every single time we come to San Diego is this state park. And it'll merge up ahead all the same. The hill to top of Torrey Pines SP is steep but absolutely worth it as you bike into a thicket of highly endangered Torrey Pines that only grow along this local region of the Pacific Coast. Janna laughs at how rideable the hill is in comparison to many of the steeper climbs that made up the rest of the Stagecoach 400 - her laughter also mirroring our past younger selves that rode this in the early 2010s and thought this hill was intimidatingly steep on our first attempt.
We reach the top where Janna runs in to use the restrooms at the visitor center. A palate of clouds drifts in overhead and blankets the sun. Jackets stay on. Then, we pedal fun and fast down the adjoining hillside as the path out of Torry Pines SP merges with the PCH shoulder right where giant eucalyptus trees adjoin the roadway and cast about their distinctive wafts. The two of us continue downhill before jumping onto some smooth singletrack that winds through a eucalyptus forest on the grounds of the University of California San Diego. I stop several times to look at the verdant spring grass that adds neon highlights to the forest floor. We coast out of the woodlands and onto a spread of bike lanes that crisscross the campus, turning for views of the iconic UCSD Library as we pass. The two of us ride with strength but leisure under the shading eaves of the eucalyptus - I want to savor this last day of the Stagecoach 400.
Wheels spit out onto the PCH once more and we merge with the phenomenal protected bike paths San Diego is famous for. The Stagecoach 400 carries us into Mission Bay and some clover loops that take us into Point Loma. Suddenly, we're riding through the neighborhoods of Sunset Cliffs right up against the ocean. Janna and I love this area and have spent many a holiday weekend walking the shores. So we stop, gaze about, and look at the beautiful coastline and cobalt water below. The sunlight just catches off the waves under a bath of warmth - all the right temperatures to savor the feel of a place. We head inland up a steep climb through neighborhoods that makes us hike-a-bike. Then, it's a fast downhill along bike lanes to the eastern side of Point Loma where we pull into Mitch's Seafood for a late-afternoon lunch. It's hands-down, our favorite seafood place in the San Diego region; Mitch's is the restaurant we always seek when visiting. And just like last time on the Stagecoach 400, a slight detour off-route a few blocks is well worth the fish tacos, fries, and shrimp.
Seafood consumed, we head out to finish the Stagecoach 400. We hop on our rigs and start the meandering ride around North San Diego Bay on bike paths that wind through coastal parks before taking us into the heart of downtown. Skyscrapers rise up as we pass the famous Star of India ship and several Navy aircraft carriers docked at the shore. The route heads along Harbor Lane carrying us by the Naval Base and through dense pockets of industrialized infrastructure. That takes us to the mouth of the Sweetwater River where a concrete bike lane heads east and inland. I pedal hard, hit by the feeling of wanting to finish in the daylight and knowing how slow I was two years ago on the singletrack of the route ahead. We leave the bike lane to join dirt singletrack that winds through the riparian Sweetwater drainage. The towns of Chula and Bonita rise up around us. Everyone is out walking today along the now-widened trail that that courses through the parks of the more urbanized areas. The trail takes a bridge over busy HWY 125 and climbs upward to the summit at Sweetwater Summit Regional Park.
Now comes the singletrack that I've been nervous of. Two years ago on my first attempt of the Stagecoach 400, I got completely slogged down by the relatively technical singletrack the route takes to cross the San Diego National Wildlife Refuge. I had to HAB so much that I ended that day deep in the dark. Today, however, we have several hours of light left, and I want to finish proper in the shine. So we start across the singletrack. The recent rains have made the area vibrantly green with utter beauty. But people definitely hiked, rode horses, and biked on these trails when the substrate was soft. The result was rutting it. And now that the trail's dry, the tread has baked and hardened around rivets and ridges making for a difficult and slow ride across the grassy hillsides. We round a corner following the Stagecoach 400 and find the Sweetwater Preserve has closed, permanently, many of the trails ahead. Shocked, I pull out Gaia Maps to start looking for alternates to get to the National Wildlife Refuge. We backtrack to set of doubletrack that climbs the hillside before merging with open trails that give us access to the official Stagecoach 400 track once more. The two of us ride to the iconic Tiki Hut in the hills and take a break. I gaze out over the nearby Sweetwater Reservoir glittering with bright water amid the verdant hillsides. It's absolutely fucking lovely.
Then, we descend the singletrack and find that much of it has been severely eroded to the point that we have to scramble down some banks heaving and pushing our bikes. The grasss has also begun to retake the tread and whips our legs as we pump our pedals. The singletrack eventually joins the Sweetwater Access Road before paralleling the Sweetwater River through a riparian thicket. Janna comments on how she feels like the route is fighting to keep us from finishing this last leg; I laugh immediately recalling riding my bike through this technical section in the pitch black years ago while having the exact same feeling. We push and haul our bikes up several steep inclines, walking them down the same on the other sides. But then it's over as we coast into the parking lot of the SDNWR and pedal up the side of the road back towards Vineyard Hacienda. I can't believe we've done it as we turn the corner into the drive and dip into the sprawling lush canopy of trees on the property. We pull up behind our car, and I just completely celebrate. After scratching two years ago, I've come back and finished this incredible route. And this route is indeed worthy of that descriptor: for the shear biome diversity it traverses, there are few bikepacking routes that compare. We also feel genuinely lucky that we threaded the needle with weather. A day or two after, a series of berating storms come through the region just muddying and snowing it all up. The creators of the Stagecoach 400 reach out and let us know that we indeed were fortunate to hit up the entire route when did.
