Late, late Spring ride around Camp Far West

A pause at Camp Far West Reservoir.

 I decided to try the loop around Camp Far West, taking advantage of an unseasonably cool weather pattern. It was a pretty nice ride with no real issues. Camp Far West Road was not in the greatest condition with heavy washboard on a lot of it. Long Ravine was a little bumpy too. Things smoothed out somewhat on McCourtney and beyond, probably because there tends to be less traffic on those roads.

This is a repeat of a ride I discovered last year, see:  Roads north of Camp Far West. I adjusted the route just a little.

 Not much commentary this time, I'll supply some info in the captions.

On McCourtney Road, heading to Camp Far West.

Camp Far West is pretty low this year!

At the intersection of  Camp Far West Road and Long Ravine Road, looking down Long Ravine Rd.

On Long Ravine Road, the irrigated fields on the right added some greenery.

At the junction of Long Ravine Rd. and McCourtney! This end of McCourtney is cut off from the lower, (southern) section by the reservoir.

A pretty solid bridge on this stretch of McCourtney!

Coming to the intersection of McCourtney and White Oak Road. McCourtney goes straight but becomes a private road and dead-ends; You need to go left on White Oak.

This is the sign on McCourtney that's on the right side of the picture above. It also has a handy mileage indicator!

You follow White Oak for a couple of miles until you reach Perimeter Road. At this point, Perimeter is graveled but eventually becomes paved.

A view from Perimeter Road, looking west.

This year, I took MacDonald Road off of Perimeter to reach Garden Bar. Here. I'm approaching Cabrera Road, (coming in from the left), which is the route I took last year. In either case, you're on a private drive so you have to be...discreet!  

Eventually, MacDonald reaches Garden Bar and now the rest of the ride will be on pavement.

Equipment notes:

Of course I took the Ritchey for this ride. I used my new 650b wheelset, tubeless with 48mm Gravel King tires. I kept these at about 45 lbs pressure and didn't bother to lower the pressure for the gravel. The slick tires performed nicely and I only had them slip on loose stuff maybe once or twice.

Having indexed shifting is really a benefit on a ride like this where you encounter conditions that demand concentration on bike handling and not shifting! The old Ultegra bar-ends worked great with the STX rear derailleur! 

Really no issues this time. I did miss having a handlebar bag, I may look into getting a front rack and "Rando" style front bag some day.

Post-ride shot of the Ritchey, a little dusty but no worse for wear!