The terror of Jamison Creek
BOULDER CREEK, May 12, 2012 (Menafn - Santa Cruz Sentinel - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --Throughout the Santa Cruz Mountains, there are roads you probably wouldn't ride on a burro, let alone a bicycle.
Yet organizers behind the 2012 Amgen Tour of California decided to put America's best-known bike race on one of those byways. New to the course this year is a trip down Jamison Creek Road, a winding, wooded, steep downhill connector between Bonny Doon and Boulder Creek that will be one of the most closely watched sections of this year's Stage 2.
"It's a bad descent, that's for sure. You have to be careful," said Jim Langley, a local cycling journalist and aficionado. "It's not like the Alps where you can see what's around the corner."
The Alps, of course, host part of the world's most famous bike race, the Tour de France. The race that runs through Santa Cruz on Monday makes riders climb nearly a mile in altitude, and when it sends them downhill does so by basically slapping a blindfold on them.
Those who've ridden Jamison Creek say it can be scary because you never know when a car is coming. But with the course closed to cars, it actually will speed things up.
"It'll make an already fast descent fairly significantly faster," said Brandon West, a local cyclist who's ridden down Jamison Creek several times. "I see some potential in a few spots [for crashes]. If anybody's going to lay it down there's some real tight left-hand corners."
Other than at the top, the pavement on Jamison Creek Road is in very good shape, distinguishing it from other local mountain roads and offering a clue why race organizers, presumably of sound mind, chose it as the way to get from Bonny Doon over to Summit Road.
With two climbs in this year's stage -- the other being Bear Creek Road -- many speculate that riders won't pull away in Bonny Doon, as they have in past years. That means the peloton could come flying down Jamison Creek in tight formation.
But Langley wonders whether the lieutenants who bark out instruction to their teams would tell riders to take it easy on the descent, not wanting to risk too much on the second day of a eight-day race.
Rather, he said the bottom of Jamison Creek, where it flattens out but is still serpentine, is where riders might try to open it up and run into trouble.
"I think there's a good chance that if there are crashes on Jamison Creek, it'll happen on the bottom," Langley said.
Follow Sentinel reporter Jason Hoppin on Twitter: @scnewsdude
___ (c)2012 the Santa Cruz Sentinel (Scotts Valley, Calif.) Visit the Santa
Cruz Sentinel (Scotts Valley, Calif.) at www.santacruzsentinel.com Distributed
by MCT Information Services
Copyright (C) 2012, Santa Cruz Sentinel, Calif.
