Cross Country Rambler

There is this article in the Salt Lake Tribune about a itinerant cyclist whose been traveling cross country for the last 8 years by way of three-wheeled recumbent and a trailer. He's seen 41 of the lower 48. He has no plans to stop after he's seen the last 4.

Fortress of Solitude

My basement is set up as a training facility where I find new levels of "sensations" in my legs, or so Justin would call it. I sooped up my magnetic resistance trainer by adding extra magnets. Because I am heavier than the average cyclist, I pump out more Watts, and it throws me outside the calibrated linear power band of the resistance unit. I can get plenty tired, but the only way to redline myself is with high cadence speed work. All low-cadence out-of-the-saddle climbing on the thing is fairly mellow till I figure out a way to add more resistance.



Pedaling in a basement is sometimes boring though. I parked a laptop with speakers and either pop in a DVD, or blare music.



For variety, once a week I go to a spin class, where I can do a more power oriented workout on the big bikes that do big resistance. I am lucky enough to live down the street from Cyclelogik, a bike store/coffee shop/art gallery that caters to racers and triathletes, selling bikes, hosting spin classes, providing coaching, and biometric assays like lactate threshold and VO2max-type stuff.

Non Supportable Crust

In the morning everything was still icy. The best way to go fast was to stay upright, and if you wanted to pass someone, you waited for them to crash while trying not to crash yourself. This, of course, took supreme focus. If you could stay on the hardpack you could go far and fast. Otherwise, game over.

As time went on the ice turned soft. Corners could be taken faster. Grip was perfect. The challenge then was dealing with lapped riders. To pass you went off the line and became a fishtailing snow plow.

By the end it was warm and the crusty snow became twice-baked mashed potatoes on Thanksgiving. Lap times went up again as perfect grip gave way to slop.

At the finish I was rewarded with fifth place in my category, a season best at season's end.

Cross Update

I was bummed to be financially unable to come down and race south of the border with Justin, but I've been keeping busy crossing in Ottawa. I race in the masters A category (now that I am in my 30s), which races along side the elite men and women, and the extremely fast juniors. Since giving my bike two gears, I don't think I've gained much of an advantage. It has made riding a bit more fun though. The high gear I had on was painful on the accelerations, and I really feel the difference there. However, on the bad weather days I keep it in the low gear almost all the time, a de facto single speed. Ottawa cross is a great scene. Very friendly people. I have a fan base consisting of two guys I bumped into at the Madison event who yell "go Utah, go Utah" when I roll by, in reference to my yet-to-be-changed license plate. I finish each race somewhere in the middle of the pack. Every race I aim to not get lapped by the leaders, and so far I have been successful, in part because the laps are Looooooong, like 10 minutes or more. The courses are awesome. Check out the run up on that hill people (photo credit to bobotron)!

The Great Western Trail: Salt Lake to Boulder--The Gauntlet Thrown Down

I am throwing down the gauntlet. I've been researching and compiling a Great Western adventure. The last one was Mantua to Layton on the worst of possible game trails (see link on sidebar). This new version starts from Salt Lake City and heads into the mountains on single track trails, ATV paths, four-wheel drive roads, and gravel roads, all the way to Boulder, Utah. The route should take 4-5 days with two resupply points.

The first leg of the tour goes through the northern Wasatch via Mill Creek canyon to the Crest, over Brighton and down into Provo Canyon, back up to the southern Wasatch at Vivian Park through motorcycle paths. Camp somewhere in the mountains and head over a pass and down on forest service roads to cross highway 6 at Trucker, Utah (ghost town), and then south on the famous Skyline Drive (see below Google Earth image).

Ride the Skyline drive till you want to camp somewhere, and ride it the next day for about 100 miles, till you meet the fork for the Great Western Trail ATV (GWT) route. Take the route down a huge elevation drop till you run into I-70 and ride about 10 downhill till you are out of the mountains to the town of Salina, Utah. At Salina get a motel, buy a whole pie for yourself at Mom's Cafe, and watch crappy cable TV for as many days as your legs need. When you are ready, head back into the mountains via the I-70 frontage road till you meet back up with the GWT. Head south east on the GWT ATV trail network for 80 miles or so till you roll into Teasdale, Utah. Rest. Go south of Teasdale on 4wd roads up Boulder mountain to Donkey Reservoir and take various forest service roads and trails that rim Boulder mountain till you drop down onto the highway 12 and ride it out a few miles to the Hell's Backbone Grill in time for dinner.

There are a few mystery sections that sources say there is a trail/road there, but I could not spot it on Google earth. And there looks like there are two passes that may include some helacious cross country bushwhacking for a mile or so. More research needs to be done. I have already ridden about 1/4 to 1/3 of the route, and for some of the other places I have a good sense that they are going to be great riding. From Boulder, one could easily ride on Hell's Backbone road all the way to Escalante, and from there keep going on the recently devised Trans Utah Escalante to St. George route listed on bikepacking.net and the brainchild some St. George riders at 2-epic.com.

Two-Speed Cyclocross Bike

The cross courses around Ottawa ironically have more hills than the ones in Utah. As the weather is getting worse, I needed to take down my rather steep 48 X 18 gearing, which is good for flat courses, to something more middle range for bad mud and steep hills. I had recently got a hold on a Paul Components Melvin chain tensioner that can be used not only for single-speed, but also as a "dingle-speed" two-speed set up, where you employ two chainrings and a single cog. One of my principal and primary reasons for switching to single speed for most riding was because I hate rear derailures. Front derailures on the other hand, I have no problem with, as I've never had one brake on me (in the middle of a 90-mile ride in the middle of nowhere, with no chance of fixing it. Long story, whatever...). The original reason I converted my cross bike over to SS years ago was due to a crash during a race: I broke my rear shift-lever. Shift-levers are obscenely expensive, so I spent a modest amount of money converting to SS (see previous post).

First of all, the Paul Melvin is far better than the Surly Singleator for chain tension. As per my cited post above, the Surly unit needed the help of a Voile ski strap to actually keep my chain from falling off. The Melvin, with its two chain wheels keeps everything real snug, no problem. I had the other still functioning rear shifter and all the cables and housing so it didn't have to take any trips to the bike store. While I was attaching it I said "what the hell" and went dingle. I had mixed feelings about doing it. I did like the simplicity of SS. But purity didn't win out. I am a competitive person, and nobody around here rides SS, and it was getting frustrating racing in a different world from everyone else. I am also somewhat an iconoclast to a fault, and now I have a bike that matches. Also, it was fun setting it up. Now is have a high/middle-end 48 X 18 good for cruising, but still a tad slow for pavement flats, and I have a middle/low-end 38 X 18 for acceleration, bad mud, and hills. The Melvin is supposed to fit a 20-tooth difference between chainrings. With my set up I only have a 10 tooth differential. Paul Components only mentions a two chainring setup, but I wonder if it would work on a mountain triple 44-34-24? That would be a nice maintenance-free set up longer mountain bike rides in remote places...

Regarding single-speed riding, my friend Bobby Hanson once said, and I paraphrase "when I had gears on my bike, I always felt I was in the wrong gear, with my single-speed, now I know I'm in the wrong gear." Now that I have a two-speed, if I feel I'm in the wrong gear, I can go to the other wrong gear.

Take That Bitches

Gatineau Loop

I did my link up again. This time with no mechanicals and so I was much faster. It was also much colder. I wore neoprene booties and a skull cap much of the day, but it warmed up enough in the afternoon to melt my GORP. While most of the trail is smooth fire road, there are some noteworthy technical climbs, and after six hours of riding I can actually get in about 4,800 vertical feet, which is comparable to the vertical X time profile of the Wasatch Crest to Mid-Mountain loop in Park City. After this second visit, the rustic equestrian path section that rides through the lowland cow fields south of the park is now my favorite place in Ottawa.

Ottawa Madison Event

My first cross race of the season was a madison event: two-man teams, alternating laps. I paired up with a guy (Bob) with a 29er and we blasted around the fast, mostly flat, but long course. The field was about as large as the Utah races I'm more familiar with. I have to say though, that the Canadians are a nice bunch of riders, and I think it might have been one of my favorite cross races I've attended as a result. I have also discovered that single speed riding is just not that big up here. I was the only one-gear rider that I could see out of a group of about 150, and I've yet to notice another trail rider sporting one (there are a lot of fixies in town though, which includes a bike polo club, but that goes along with the whole hipster contagion of tattoo, flea market-going lookalike contest). There are eight more races in the season. I'll keep you posted.

charrrrge!

Man, I love this sport.

Skiing Volcanos in May (Condensed Video Version)

Mt. Hood - only 5000 ft above us.



Looking up at the Mazama face. Skiing 3 inches of powder above a massive smoking crater turned out to be pretty fun.



Skiing Mt. Hood.



Retreating from Mt. Adams.



And finally, one of the reasons that we didn't ski Rainier.

Gatineau Tour

I just got done riding in the Gatineau hills. Using my increasing knowledge of the trail network, I pieced together a route through most of the park, riding in a loop, and attempting mystery section on a rustic equestrian path. I got lost a bunch on this section as the trail petered out into open fields every once in a while. However, the section made me a happy, but a bit homesick because it reminded me of the mountain west. About three hours into it I sheared the bearings in my eggbeater pedal. This is the second time this has happened. Those pedals are trash. I think I'll switch to ATACs? Any suggestions on a good pedal would be appreciated. I rode for the last three hours with a removable clipless pedal. On the return leg I snapped my chain as well, but I was able to piece together the remaining strand to get home.

Bike tool fun

I ended up having some interesting bike tool fun in the past week. It all started with the seemingly simple operation of installing a freewheel and rear brake on my cross check so that I could race 'cross this fall.

Removing the cog and lock ring went well - I now know why there is a couple of millimeters of space between the cog and the lock ring on Phil Wood hubs. While it makes it difficult to use a lock ring wrench on a wheel alone, when the wheel is on a bike with a chain, the spacing is absolutely perfect, and the frame makes holding the wheel steady simple.

Installing a freewheel was easily done as well, but things became more interesting when I went to install the brake. One side went in easily, but for some reason the bolt wouldn't start on the other side. I inspected the bolt as well as the post, and everything looked fine; I even tried the bolt in the other side just to be sure. After a few minutes of complete confusion a crazy idea occurred to me. I grabbed a flashlight, and sure enough my hunch was correct - the canti mount on that side had never been tapped.

I went down to Wild Rose with my conundrum, were it came to light that Surly, in measures to keep costs down, also didn't use removable brake bosses (no simple solution here). A while later, I devised a clever solution involving zip ties (safe for the rear wheel in the event of a failure), but still wasn't really that confident in the zip tie solution.

After some research on SheldonBrown.com to confirm that tapping the rear bosses would be possible, I called around to a few more shops armed with more information, but didn't have much luck. Cyclesmith said they would give it a try, but would have to run down to the hardware store to buy a tap. I wasn't about to let them have all the fun, so I went to the hardware store myself. 6x1 mm turns out to be a standard size, so a tap was only $5. Five minutes later (thanks to the late Sheldon Brown's directions) I had successfully tapped my first threaded hole and had a beautifully functional brake mount.

Altitude and Encounters at the End of the World

They always say that training at altitude gives you all these cardio benefits. The flip side, I have found out, is that a good night's sleep near sea level after a big ride leaves you a lot less sore in the morning...



Last night La Lissa and I saw this movie about Antarctica Encounters at the End of the World. Its a Werner Herzog film, the guy who did the "Grizzly Man" movie that I never saw but heard a lot about. The film was really great for a variety of reasons. The film profiled scientists as the McMurdo research station, a 5,000-person NSF station which studies everything from molecular biology of seal milk, underwater ice creatures, volcanos, to high-energy particle physics. But far from being a feature-length version of a NOVA episode, the film avoided the clichés of nature documentaries, and was more like a meditation on the universe while driving 80 Km/hr on a snowmobile over an ice sea on some mild hallucinogenic. Whatever it was, it was really good, and I recommend all rockwallers go see it.

Update

After six days of driving we arrived to Ottawa, which is pronounced in Canadianese with drawn out vowels as "OAuutaawaa." After brisk and stressed out apartment hunting we found a place on I think the third day of looking: big backyard, huge basement for a climbing wall and bike storage, nice molding and old hardwood floors. The only problem is that the move in date is Sep. 1! Hence, we are currently living in a hostel, sharing a kitchen and bathroom with some college guys. Not the greatest situation, but it will do. We haven't spent much time here yet though. I had a conference to go to in Montreal all last week. I presented my paper, which I recently found out got accepted to PRL, and heard a bunch of talks on Theoretical Neuroscience. We also checked out some great restaurants there. After waiting in line we got a smoked ham sandwitch and frites at Schwartz's deli, and had a "nice" meal at the somewhat famous L'Express, a traditional French bistro type place. L'Express was kind of over hyped, but I had a pretty good plate of steak frites... The best place we went by far was Boulangerie Kouing Amman. We kind of missed the Kouings at Les Madelines in SLC, so we gave it a shot. The Kouings were great and so was the espresso and the croissants and the whole damn thing. The place has only three tables and is housed in a rustic log cabin type thing right in the middle of old town Montreal.

I've also been doing some exploring by bike. Today I went on a tour of the Gatenau park. Gentle rolling hills can sap you, over time at least. I still have all my bikes in storage except my steel single speed, so with flip flops and a rain parka I spent about four hours going down every road I got lost on. I must still have some of the Utah RBC count in me because I was going pretty fast. None of the other road bikey dudes passed me, but I passed a lot of them. The bike path system here is very extensive. I traveled on routes with cars only a small percentage of the time.

Well thats enough for now. When I get my gear out of storage and it stops raining I'll give a report on the climbing here....

Why Me?

That's the name of the route.

More here: http://nostartues.googlepages.com/

El Norte

There is a land to the north where people live in peace and harmony, have guaranteed medical care, and commute by jetpacks. After the long dark night that we call the Bush administration, many of my fellow americans have spoke longingly of this land. A shangri la that we all, at times, have threatened to move to out of sheer frustration. A land where the palementary discussions sound more like a PTA meeting. A land where gay marriage was legalized one day with no fuss or acrimony. A land where they put pictures of kids toboganing and playing ice hockey on their money. They call this place Canada.

Truckin

We are in Iowa City currently, which is about half-way there. Yesterday there was a tornado warning and a big storm. Roughly 8 inches/hour was falling and the most beautiful lightning I've ever seen. Today we are picking up Bobby Hardage (Blog name: mark twain) who has been gutting flooded houses in Cedar Rapids with a volunteer organization. We are taking him to Toronto because he wanted to see Toronto.

When traveling across the country you have got to have a good ipod playlist. For Wyoming we had lots of James McMurtry and Sonic Youth. Nebraska: Bruce Springstein and alt country. Iowa is Willie Nelson country. Next up is Illinois, which should be based on Chicago blues. We drive a bit through Indiana and head to Michigan, which seem to me to be good states for Rock and Roll. After that, we have selected a bunch of Canadian bands, like Arcade Fire and Bran Van 3000, both based in Montreal.

The North Woods

For our defacto honeymoon, La Lissa and I went to North Idaho and Washington where the temps were cooler than SLC. On our tandem we checked out the route of the Hiawatha, an old rail line traversing Montana and North Idaho that has been converted to a bike path. The route starts with a two-mile long tunnel, which was cold and dark. After that the route slowly descends through the mountains over many old trestle bridges and smaller tunnels.





We spent a week in Seattle bumming around and doing city things. On our way back to North Idaho we stopped in the western Cascades and backpacked up the middle fork of the Snoqualme River about 12 miles to a hot springs. The upper cascades were totally snowed in still. The ranger said that trail openings are postponed about 1.5 months from normal.

Justin Cox Photo in Dirt Rag

In the latest issue of Dirt Rag I found an add for the Granny Gear races. I saw that old Univega bike, then noticed the single chainring, then noticed the Hup United jersey... Its Justin!!!!!

The Tour Divide or the Great Divide Race, you pick.

Good morning sports racers. Lately I've been following the various and sundry races of the Divide:
The Tour Divide
and
The Great Divide Race
At first I was confused why there was two simultaneous races going on. The difference is that the TD starts in Banff, the GDR starts on the Montana border. For those with less time, smaller legs, or no passport you do the GDR, else you start in Banff...

Depending on how work goes, I am toying with the idea of preparing for next year's race. Based on my experience with Elk Mountain, I have verified that PhDs and endurance races don't mix (actually, thinking that going skiing 20 or so times as preparation is not enough). If I were to enter, I would be testing the conjecture that post docs and long races can work. But seriously, I'd have to start focusing now if i do it. Quit climbing, get a coach, ride a lot, ect... I don't want another sad performance like Elk Mountain...

AT race gear and EMGT

The top three teams in this year's grand traverse were on AT race gear - there's a cool write up here:

http://www.teamcrestedbutte.com/page.cfm?pageid=1414

I especially like the part about getting lost in the dark...

Bear Tag

Tag, you're it. My buddy Chad forwarded this set of pictures.

The Land of Milk and Honey

After the defense La Lissa and I went on vacation to the Buttermilks.


I think this is like the 6th time I visited Bishop in last 8 years. Every year I go I think that i've nearly climbed out the boulders at my grade level (v0-v7), but each year I find new gems. After buying the very thorough new Bishop guidebook i'm sure I could spend another 6 years there. Because of the frequent visitations, Bishop has a unique place in my life. Every time I visit the environment is the same, but I am different. I take stock in life, gauging the past by the present, and look to future. This time was no different. With just defending and now done with school (I've been in school all my life, save 4 years before Kindergarten), with getting a job and moving to Canada on the horizon, as well as getting married, I had plenty to think about.

However, mostly I just climbed everyday (i'm still sore), read books (fiction), went on runs and hikes (everyday), and relaxed in the hot springs (once). Here are some photos and a sideways video of me climbing the wave boulder "roof" at the Druid Stones.

Lone Peak

Ski Will and I made the trek up Bells canyon to ski the Northeast face of Lone Peak. Unfortunately we were not aware that there were two chutes down the middle of the face and will be forced to return to ski the other. We skied the climber's left chute (you can just make out the tracks on the apron in the photo), but still need to return to ski the one to climbers right. To make matters worse, there are several other very nice chutes further North along the ridge as well that also warrant a return trip.
Someone snapped a photo from Coalpit of the face with our tracks and posted it on telemarktips, so I stole it to add to the blog. The track from our ascent is visible to the far left.

Defense Onsighted

I stayed up till 3:30 in the morning the night before, getting my talk aced. I bought a nice bakery spread from Les Madeline's and some coffee for the committee. Got my (one) suit on and drilled away at my talk for an hour, dispatched some questions from the committee, then got my hand shook and called "Dr. Will."



I thought the whole thing would be somewhat anti-climactic, but I actually really enjoyed it.

First Craging

Yesterday Dave and I post-holed into the Secret Garden area. There is still some snow. We needed tarps to cover the large puddles forming on top of the ice/slush so our crash pads would stay dry. We saw others out bouldering, and also heard someone crack climbing up higher on what looked like mostly dry rock. I'd say in a few more weeks of good weather and conditions will be perfect.

Rocks and creative skinning techniques

With a bit of a cessation in the snowfall earlier this month and the onset of predictable and stable snow conditions, (ski) Will and I opted for some chuting to break up the powder skiing.

With cloudy conditions up high, we choose a low elevation objective for our first exploit - a memorial couloir on Mt. Olympus. We had incredible luck with the weather, as temperatures that day rose above freezing, but 10,000 foot clouds kept the snow from becoming overheated which would have led to a hasty retreat.

Unsure of the approach, we avoided what looked to be a potential terrain trap in the lower Norths fork of Neff's canyon (it isn't), and instead detoured near the Chadbourne craig and crossed over into the main North's fork drainage via a saddle. Initially we had been planning to ski the shot to the climber's left of the Olympus couloir which was reputed to be the most skiable, but our view from the saddle revealed a very long, very aesthetic couloir beginning just north of the north summit (it was also closer and had already sluffed out, two additional benefits). We traversed in to the top of the apron (a corkscrew gully), and found ideal booting conditions in the gut of the couloir.There was a sandbox of graupel lining the bed surface, but otherwise, we quickly climbed about a thousand feet to a higher section of couloir that had not sluffed. This made a notable difference in our ability to boot, as postholes were suddenly waste deep, so we stomped out a spot above a tree, donned skis, and began some creative skinning. This usually involved about five paces followed by a kick turn (I was often grabbing the tip of my uphill ski while turning to make it easier to get it around - this didn't require bending over...). A few hundred more feet of skinning and a great many switch backs latter, we were at the top of a 50 foot wide 1700 vertical fool long couloir that stayed consistenly near 40 degrees in steepness (with the yet to be discovered apron, the line was to yield about 2,200 vertical).

Will and I leap frogged through the slightly treed upper third of the chute, then skied the beautiful and continuous lower 2/3rds. In lieu of a real picture, I snapped a camera phone shot of Will skiing the main couloir. Despite the soft slide debris, the low angle of the apron was a relief for our burning legs (lack of recent practice meant that it took me a while to get into a good pedal-hop turn groove, and Will briefly paused to point the bases of his skis up the chute at me). The apron also contained a rocky ice bulge, which required 20 feet of tips and tails side stepping followed by hopping and pointing skis straight down over 10 feet of water ice (another camera phone shot). Fun.
With cooler temps and stable snow, we naturally decided to ski the largest slide path in Big Cottonwood Canyon, Stairs Gulch the next weekend (just shy of 5,000 vertical). We approached via Bonkers as we did not want to spend any extra time in the gulch.

I had heard one second hand description of the run as "rocky", and wouldn't turn out to be let down. Stairs is an amazing slide path, underlain but massive amounts of rock which never allow the snow to pile deeply upon them. It's not a consistent pitch, but rather a series of gullies, rocky break overs, and rock slabs, with a creek bed finish. There was about a foot of generally wind effected powder over a crust or rock base (but it was nice and stable). Will snapped a shot of me in the mid section of the gulch, surrounded by some photogenic snow.
Stairs was definitely a unique run - not as good as Coalpit headwall, but definitely a worthwhile endeavor.

Carpe Diem

Yesterday Will-squared paid a visit to Dry Creek. Conditions were perfect for some higher-altitude fun: For the previous five days the Wasatch received 12 inches through continuous very light snowfall. There were a few warming periods that caused the deep faceted weak layers to heal, leaving a very stable snowpack with the benefit of fresh but "packed" powder on top of it all. Over the pass at 10,000 there was some thick clouds early day completely enshrouding the Phiferhorn. We skied down Dry creek to warming temps and clearing skies. On the skin up we kept eyeing the receding clouds on the Phiferhorn. We decided to have a look into Hogum at western base of the Phif where I snapped this photo of the other Will

, showing the very imposing north headwall and couloir. After digging yet another pit, we decided to go for it. With a little rock climbing, some kick steps, and some piolet work, we were on the top.


After a long-ass ski decent from Phif into dry creek. We skined up and back over the pass in the aplpenglow to a dim ski descent into the red pine drainage. Then we had some tree-dodging-by-headlamp fun down to the car.