I wouldn't do it if I were you.
Anyway, you'd start a fight in my neighborhood by suggesting that you're saving MTBing for freeze-thaw and rut up the trails season. That might not be a problem for your part of California.
If I had to do it over, I would get a nice cyclocross bike and try my hand at that discipline. I think MTBing sucks out loud right now because I had the worst epic disaster of a ride this week. But YMMV.