Out of the Blue: Let’s nurture Laguna’s biking culture

Now that our community has opined that we don’t want more cars circulating through our fair city, how do we make that a reality?

One way is to expand on what discerning mountain bikers across the planet already know: Laguna is a world-class place of steep climbs and technical descents, with breathtaking views and coastal breezes.

It’s why two of the most famous cyclists in the world call Laguna home: Hans “No Way” Rey and Brian Lopes. It’s like having Laird Hamilton and Kelly Slater living here. The similarities are striking.

While Rey — who Bike Magazine just called the World’s Greatest Mountain Biker — has eschewed competitions in favor of free-riding some of the most treacherous terrain on the planet (akin to Laird chasing the biggest waves), Lopes has piled up 18 titles and keeps crushing the competition.

Rey says mountain bikers love to visit Laguna in winter, when the heat abates but it is still sunny and dry. But unlike the surfers along our coast, these amazing athletes are mostly invisible as they zip through the canyons of Laguna Coast Wilderness and Aliso and Wood Creeks Park.

Plus we certainly haven’t done much to acknowledge or even market to bikers in the way other destinations like Moab and Marin County have. And we don’t have expanded trails and services that would bring a broader swath of the mountain biking public. This is a big loss to our tourist-serving merchants, who could use the counter-seasonal surge of business.

Nobody understands this better than Rey, who I recently interviewed on my radio show (Thursdays at 9 p.m. on KX93.5). As a global ambassador of the sport, Rey consults with several resort towns to help them become mountain-biking destinations. One such town is Livigno, a famous ski resort in the Italian Alps.

Business is of course brisk in the winter, but the hotels struggled with a precipitous drop-off during the summer months. So the community hatched the idea to become a bike-friendly area, with the goal of being certified (and marketed by) the International Mountain Bicycling Assn. as a destination resort.

According to Rey, “Their bike-related infrastructure goes way beyond extensive trails for any kind of mountain bikers, but also a 15-mile-long bike path, host to many bike-related events (including host of the 2005 Mountain Bike World Championships), bike parks and many related businesses as well as a network of 15 bike hotels.”

A “bike hotel” is not simply a lodging establishment that has a sign and flag on the building. Rey said such hotels provide secure bike rooms, wash and repair areas, overnight laundry service, and special menus for bikers including lunch packages. They offer information about the trails, bike parks, shuttles and places to buy bike parts.

“Some hotels even have their own rental bikes, in-house guides and spare parts available,” Rey said. “The bike hotel association works closely with the city, tourism board and other agencies to expand the trail network and improve other factors that attract bikers.”

But at the end of the day, it all comes down to the trails, and Laguna is bereft of moderate, bike-friendly trails in its 25,000 acres of wilderness. That’s because the trails are existing fire roads and animal trails, and this creates conflicts with other users.

But that can change with some clever engineering. Some purpose-built “flow country trails” can be moderately graded, perfectly pitched switchbacks that traverse our greenbelt from town to the peaks, and then down the other side.

Rey said the country is seeing an increasing number of successful projects beneficial to bikers and a tourist-driven economy.

“Mountain bikers are already a huge and growing demographic; once the trails become better, it will also turn into a family activity,” Rey said.

He said Laguna trails could be built cheaply and with local volunteers who would want to help link our downtown biking routes and the nature that abounds above us. It could be a really great community effort.

I would love to put a spade in the ground for it. And the really good news is that Orange County Parks has begun an initiative to establish so-called bike parks and expand the integration of bikers in open space.

Imagine a future network that could get you and your family easily to Top of the World, where you could ride the ridge and marvel at the spectacular views of the Pacific to the west, and the snow clad Saddleback Mountain to the east, then ride down the east side of the range and perhaps pick up our (someday in the future) bike trail along Laguna Canyon Road for a loop around the lakes before heading along the flats back into town.

Not only is this doable, but we have the guy who’s done it.

So imagine a Laguna with tourists never needing a car. A Laguna with a network of bike rental kiosks that make it easy for all of us to grab a bike for a one-way ride to town or back, through our charming, verdant neighborhoods to our coastal parks to visit landmarks like Bluebird Canyon Farm, our historic architecture, museums, shops and restaurants.

And then renting more technical bikes for the slow, meandering climb up our hills to our breathtaking wilderness, where one would witness the finest mountain bikers in the world flying down hills as if they weren’t touching the ground — which oftentimes they aren’t.

This is not a fantasy. Our visitors bureau, chamber and local businesses should rally behind it. The city can take a fraction of the money earmarked for the Village Entrance Project (probably less than $1 million) and engineer some purpose-built trails.

This would be a giant pedal forward in making our town more charming, livable, healthy, prosperous and smog- and congestion-free.

BILLY FRIED is the chief paddling officer of La Vida Laguna and member of the board of Transition Laguna. He can be reached at billy@lavidalaguna.com.