In this issue of the paper, I will be reviewing a mountain bike trail (More on hiking trails next issue). The mountain bike trail of the month is called Magic Carpet. It starts on the Pipeline trail at UCSC (Look on any trail map and you should find Pipeline.) It shoots off of Chinquapin fire road off of Empire Grade road). When you turn onto Magic Carpet it will seem simple at first but as you progress further down the trail it starts getting much steeper and much more technical. If you don’t know where to turn off of Pipeline trail it will be pretty hard to find Magic Carpet as it is kind of hidden. One of the things that is soooo exciting and fun about this trail is all of the drops! From log drops to rock drops this trail has it all. It has no shortage of jumps either! It ends down at Highway 9 along with many other super steep trails. It is like a maze down in that section! Magic Carpet is divided into two parts. Upper Magic Carpet and Lower Magic Carpet. Lower Magic Carpet starts when Magic Carpet Return crosses Magic Carpet Trail. (More on Magic Carpet Return later) There are a few alternate routes to Magic Carpet that turn off of the trail then meet up with it soon after. But they are all considered Magic Carpet. Once you drop down to the bottom to Highway 9, you have a couple options. You can ride on Highway 9 and then hop on to Rincon fire road and drop down Emma McCrary trail and into town (I wouldn’t recommend this because riding on Highway 9 is super dangerous and to be honest, extremely terrifying), you can ride on highway 9 and hop onto Rincon and go up U-con trail back into UCSC, or you can turn around and go up Magic Carpet Return (which brings you right back up to the top). This is the only trail of all of these steep trails that you can go up. All of the other ones have people hauling down them at very high speeds that they wouldn’t be able to stop if you came around a corner going up. It is just too dangerous. Not to mention that  you would have a lot of trouble climbing them anyway because they are just so steep! Overall I would give this trail 4 stars and rate it as an advanced trail.