Today Tim, Adam, Mike and I headed out for a ride.  We left from Tim's house just after first light and headed out into the Lake Calavera area.  We were headed over to the area we call Flightline (in the flight-path of Palomar Airport) and were headed up an access road on one of the farms out near Calavera.  This particular property has a lake up above the road and for some reason this year there is alot of ground water seeping out.

Well Mike had gotten a little ahead on the climb (because of an earlier mud patch that stopped Tim and I) when he hit the next mud patch.  Mike ran into a challenge and needed to put a foot down because the combination of climbing and mud meant he had stopped moving forward when this happened:

Yep, Mike's leg sank down past his knee in mud.  The picture above shows Tim headed up to help pull Mike out.  It's one of those classic moments that happens out on the trails.  The result was we all walked carefully through this section and afterwards I got this shot of Mike's leg covered in mud:

Fortunately Mike wasn't hurt, although I'm sure it wasn't the most pleasant experience moving forward for the remaining hour plus of riding. Just had to post this one since it's the first time we've ever managed to see it occur and of course how often will you sink past your knee in mud in Southern California before the start of rainy season? And yes that is the nice sticky mud that just doesn't want to wash off even in a stream (like the one at the crossing from Calavera to Flightline.   

The remaining question is did Mike just happen to step where a horse sank about two weeks earlier?  The reason I ask is that a week prior Adam and I came upon a couple horse riders who mentioned that they were avoiding the farm side of Calavera because the mud from some ground water made it so their horse sank up to it's knee the week before (two weeks back total).  Seems possible that Mike found the same spot the horse tried and since the horse had already loosened up a spot Mike was able to go right down in the same spot.

Of note however, I didn't think to take a picture of the new trail created to help cross between Calavera farms and Flightline.  There is an amazing new bridge over the second part of the stream and someone has cut the hillside to make a new scary but amazing trail.