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Photograph by Paul Myers
On the Coyote Ridge Trail in the Fremont Older Open Space Preserve, park rangers have raised their presence on trails to slow down bicycle traffic after a string of accidents, including the death of Eric Hobart this past spring.
Biking community recovering from friends fatal fall in hills
By Oakley Brooks
Fifteen years ago, Eric Hobart found a deal on some mountain bikes and convinced some of his closest friend to go in with him and buy them. The four of them started a regular Tuesday evening ride through the Fremont Older Open Space Preserve during the drier summer months. It became a pastime and workout; the crew alternately charged up hills and stopped to admire views of the South Bay.
Over the years, the Tuesday group added regulars and its numbers swelled into double digits. And on the first and last outing of the season, the bikers would gather at Jake's in Saratoga to do a little celebrating.
Following a Tuesday night ride in the first week of June, Hobart headed out on his own the next morning in Fremont Older, near Saratoga. He never came back.
Hobart, a 58-year old Campbell man, tumbled over his handlebars on a dirt road on the north side of the preserve--apparently after his breaks malfunctioned--and died of head injuries despite the helmet he was wearing.
For the group he left behind, Tuesdays and biking in the preserve are now anything but regular.
They gathered at Jake's following a ride three weeks after the Hobart accident, out of sync with their normal summer celebration schedule and still a bit out of sorts. Around a large wooden table sat a dozen middle-aged men and women, many of whom worked with Hobart at the defense electronics company, Condor Systems.
Fremont Preserve ranger Phil Hearin dropped in to talk with the group about tangible ways to remember Hobart; they explored a helmet hand-out and a safety checklist program in Hobart's name.
When Hearin left, they made a toast in the name of two riders' birthdays. And they settled back down to the jarring idea that the one rider who rarely crashed wasn't among them any more.
"Hoby was the unbreakable one," said Strether Smith of Cupertino. "We're all going about 5 miles per hour slower now. I was already a chicken, now I'm even more of a chicken."
Hobart's death also spooked the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, which manages Fremont Older. Mountain biking on district lands--Fremont in particular--has risen steadily recently, accompanied by an increasing regularity of biking injuries. But Hobart's accident was the district's first mountain biking fatality.
"The rangers were as upset as anyone," said Smith, adding that rangers allowed him to place flowers near the scene of the accident despite the district's strict ecological rules.
On the night before his accident, Hobart had joined Smith and the other Tuesday regulars on their normal ride from the end of Prospect Road to Hunter's Point, then over towards Maisie's Peak and back to Prospect.
Along the way, they had crossed paths with Phil Hearin, who mentioned that mountain bikers were having trouble negotiating a section of the Coyote Ridge Trail, in the northernmost section of Fremont Older. "He described it as a water bar," said Saratogan Logan Deimler, a member of the biking group.
Later, district officials would identify the troubled spot as a two-inch deep, 40-inch wide drainage dip along the wide Coyote Ridge Trail. Two riders had been seriously injured at the drainage gulley already that spring.
The group did not head down the Coyote Ridge Trail, which was well off their normal route.
But the next morning, riding on his own, Hobart decided to pedal out along Coyote Ridge and descend the trail through the problem area. The route drops over 200 feet in three-quarters of a mile before flattening out in Steven's Creek County Park near the reservoir. Smith says that Hobart probably planned to cruise down the hill and then climb back up through the same section.
Somewhere near the middle of the drop, just past the gulley that had given other riders trouble, Hobart's front breaks apparently disassembled. That caused one of the brake pads to slip up under the rim of the front wheel and lock it into place. Hobart was thrown over his handlebars and knocked unconscious.
That was how four other riders found him around 12:30 p.m. that day. Two riders stayed with Hobart and attempted to resuscitate him, while the other two sped down the hill to the county parks ranger office near the Steven's Creek Park entrance off Steven's Canyon Road.
Courtesy of Condor Systems
Eric Hobart
County parks Ranger Bernie Garrison called for emergency medical help and then met workers and open space district staff up the Coyote Ridge trail at the scene of the accident. John Maciel, operations manager for the open space district, says that emergency workers could not revive Hobart and after 15 minutes pronounced him dead.
A county coroner's report later determined that Hobart had died of multiple blunt injuries to his head.
Deimler said he found out about Hobart's death the next morning.
"I was in a funk all day," he said. "It wasn't supposed to happen this way."
Recently retired from Condor Systems, Hobart had completed the Wildflower Triathlon near King City in May. Smith says that while camping out during the triathlon weekend, Hobart was in vintage outdoor mode. In order to break up wooden palettes for campfire fuel one night, he cranked up a chainsaw.
In the winter months when rains closed mountain bike trails, Hobart would fire up his dirt bike and head out on other trails.
"He just loved being active," said Judy Earlandson, 58, who lived with Hobart in Campbell's Central Park area for 28 years.
Several times during their long relationship, Earlandson and Hobart threw parties using the tax money they saved from remaining unmarried.
But just four days before Hobart's death, he and Earlandson decided the tax savings weren't worth it any more and they were wed. Earlandson says that after nearly three decades together, the marriage seemed a mere formality--they kept the ceremony small and private.
Just three days after her husband's accident, Earlandson could only watch fondly as 350 people poured into his memorial service. She had barely spread the word.
Friends and open space district officials say they'll never know exactly what happened as Hobart descended the steep section of the Coyote Ridge Trail on June 6. They don't know if he was going excessively fast and they say the drainage ditch likely had nothing to do with the fall, though Maciel says the district studied that issue. "Nobody's pushing anything other than it's just a piece of bad luck," said Smith.
As a precaution, Maciel says the district has re-graded the trail to diminish the drainage dip in question even further.
He says the agency had been more vigilant in the area ever since they began having problems there several months ago. Extra district rangers were reassigned to the area with radar guns to control mountain bikers' speed. The agency also added another caution sign along the trail.
But Maciel says even the most comprehensive of safety efforts wouldn't stop the weekly accidents in popular Fremont Older and El Corte de Madera, above Woodside.
"There's only so many things you can do," he said. "In riding bikes, the speed is part of the thrill."
Hobart's biking buddies continue to talk with district staff about adding another safety measure--a pre-ride equipment checklist--in Hobart's name in Fremont Older.
Already they've carved out a piece of the preserve to remember Hobart. Since the beginning of their Tuesday night rides, Smith has called a steep uphill section of the Toyon Trail at the south end of Fremont Older Hoby's Hill.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
