Archive for the ‘mtn biking’ Category

In search of trails…

Monday, July 5th, 2010

When you go somewhere on vacation, inevitably, you’re forced to pick just a few things to do/see…barely scratching the surface of whatever area you’ve travelled to. With that in mind, Tom and I are making a point of trying to explore and search for new trails every chance we get. With the 4th of July holiday weekend, we find ourselves at the cabin in Sierra City and the search continues…

Friday we scrambled up an abandoned mine trail to the Hilda Mine, which is just above Sierra City. The mine has been bulldozed and is entirely invisible at this point. My guess is that mines on forest service land are actively closed when no longer in use but BLM lands (typically of the area around Bishop) don’t spend much effort managing such mines…who knows? Anyway, the trail itself was beautiful, albeit straight up, and looks like a good option for future biking…

Exploring on two feet affords some amazing chances to see details otherwise missed when moving along the trail faster but just isn’t quite as exhilarating as travelling on two wheels. We took the opportunity to explore more of the trails the Forest Trails Alliance has been working on…they are simply amazing. It wasn’t until later last night during the fireworks show in Graeagle that the grins from riding were wearing off.

Happy Independence Day!

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Eastern Sierras + long weekend = Adventure

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

As with each weekend in Bishop, we struggle to decide what activity to indulge ourselves in. As spring hits (because clearly summer isn’t here yet) and snow starts to melt in the high country, the possibilities are even more numerous. We’ve literally wasted parts of weekend days debating on what to do because it’s hard to make a choice (I know, such hard decisions). So this long weekend, we tried to fit in a little of everything. The only thing we didn’t add in was a moto ride…which will happen tomorrow. Kicked off with a Friday mtn bike ride and more work on the motos, we rolled through the weekend with multiple hikes (with and without dogs), some backcountry skiing and some fly-fishing. As Tom skied down the canyon to Horton Lake and I hiked down the opposite side, I couldn’t help but look around me and be struck by just how awe-inspiring the Eastern Sierras are. I make the distinction for the eastside because as anyone knows, the west side is a long, gradual run up to the mtns and much more heavily wooded. The eastside dramatically shoots straight up from the valleys to reveal granite crags, chutes, etc. not visible on the west side. We capped off the weekend with dinner in Mammoth last night since it was close to our fishing spot. The mountain still looks like March with how much snow remains. The locals told us the temperature at the top was in the teens on Fri/Sat nights…

It’s sometimes frustrating to be so far from home and the cabin…knowing we’re missing out on time north, not getting as much work done to prepare for fire season, etc. but we’ll look back on this time in Bishop and realize we were lucky to have the chance to explore the Eastern Sierras.

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The Ultimate Road Trip Set-Up

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

For long before Tom and I met, our individual preferred methods of exploring and taking trips was the road trip. I have travelled internationally and there is something to be said for taking in the cultural differences abroad vs. slogging around the US and Canada. The fact of the matter is that there are historic and natural treasures outside the US which make this country look like the infant country it is (in industrialized terms…but that is another topic).

Since Tom and I met, we’ve doubled in people, he gained two dogs, and the amount of gear…well, it’s ridiculous to quantify. We started out with trips in our respective Toyota trucks but clearly that was not enough room for two pack rats like us. We then bought a small utility trailer…after all, I now had a dirtbike to join his. That last for about a year before we decide for more size/comfort for our extended road trips. What followed was the purchase of a double-cab Ford F-250 and pop-up cabover camper. We could now travel with a trailer (motos) or without (bike racks for the mtn bikes) and sleep comfortably in any weather conditions. We were living the high life with a heater, kitchen and pop-up shower/toiler combo.

Life was good…and then we got tired of not being able to use the kitchen table…it was chronically converted into another bed area for the dogs. They are too big to lay on the floor and we’d have no way to manuever around. We also had no room for gear…every time we wanted to stop and quickly crash overnight somewhere on the road, a production followed to pop-up the camper, move all the gear to the front of the truck, etc.

Last year we decided to do our part to support the economy and traded our camper for an upgrade…a slightly ridiculous upgrade given our age and activities we like to participate in. We bought an RV. There, I’ve said it. Yes, we do had visions of elderly folks zipping around in golf carts or worse, the movie RV and families like the Gornekes. But this was something we spent months researching…what was the right configuration for us given all the toys to bring along and the two mutts? We ultimately decided on the Damon Outlaw…now this isn’t one of those crazy, over-the-top RVs the Nascar folks are hauling around in, this fit our budget and best of all, it has a garage! 8 x 10ft of rubber-coated goodness to roll dirty bikes and motos into. On board fuel station, rear flood lights, etc. and plenty of room for cleaning products…those of you that know Tom, know that things can’t be dirty for long.

The only thing missing (if you can believe it) is a transport vehicle. This thing is 37′ long…once it’s parked somewhere, you don’t want to have to move it too much. We’d been trying to sell the Ford for sometime and finally added a trade option. We figured maybe we could trade for something like a Jeep Wrangler that could be towed behind. Then we park the big rolling turd, throw the bikes on the Jeep or the dogs in and we’re off to the trailhead somewhere. Last week, the planets aligned and we were able to trade the Ford for a Jeep Wrangler that is newer, with less miles. After we get the towing mechanisms in place, we’re in business…never in our craziest imagination did we think we’d be set up like this (or want to be.) Moab in April…here we come…

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Tahoe Sierra 100 Recap

Friday, September 25th, 2009

So last year Tom and I signed up for an inaugural 100 mile mtn bike event. It turned out that the event overlapped with activities around buying our cabin and we postponed our entry to this year’s event. We’ve been riding alot this summer and thought we had a good shot at finishing…

With our crazy location schedule (house, cabin, Tom in Bishop) lots of driving is always part of doing anything. I dropped the dogs in Sac at my parents’ house and then headed to set up camp near Truckee. Tom got a late start from Bishop and didn’t arrive until 11pm that night…not so good with the 6:30am race meeting and a 25 min drive to the start…

Wisely knowing about the Sierra “moon dust” as it is often called, we opted for bandanas since the race started with 7 miles of downhill. We started at the back of the pack and made our way down the hill…it was about 7:15am when we reached the bottom and had the first 7 miles of 91 (course wasn’t quite 100 miles) done. A bit of gentle climbing started which then got steeper…steep enough that we walked part of the climb…no sense in burning out so early and we’re not totally warmed up yet. We reached the top and spectacular views of Granite Chief and the wilderness around it. The first aid station was about 10 miles in and now we’ve been on course for over an hour. We top off our water bladders, eat PB&J sandwiches and some other snacks and continue on. A mile or so of rolling terrain was followed by another DH section. It was about 12 miles to the next aid station and I knew another long climb was coming, albeit less steep. Tom didn’t have a chance to study the course map with his busy week…

The fun little water bar jumps gave way to the long fire road climb. I thought it was a nice pitch, not so severe that you couldn’t just crank along…but Tom was struggling. His busy week, long drive the night before, etc. left him not feeling so great. We finally made it to the top of the climb and the aid station after several stops. We’d only gone about 22 miles and had been on course for nearly 3 1/2 hours. The aid station marked the split in courses…100 milers go one way, 50 milers go the other. Tom looked at me and said he had 50 in him but not 100. The course sweep noted that we would not finish on our current pace…

We now became 50 milers…instead of going down the singletrack, we now had more climbing…about 8 miles of rolling fireroad…up, down, up, down. We kept passing racers going the other way and begin to figure out that once we reached the next aid station, we had to turn around and ride all this back to the turn home. We finally reached the aid station at about the 31 mile mark. Again we filled bladders and ate as much as we could. I’m guessing we spent 5-15 minutes at each aid station…

As we feared, we turned around to head the same way we just came…it was now mid afternoon and the winds were picking up. Fortunately it had been cloudy much of the morning and never got too hot. On one of the hills I was waiting for Tom only to see a racer quickly approaching…it was Tinker Juarez, leading the 100 milers. He would go on to finish the race in something like 7 hours 20 minutes…crazy! At this point I was passing time with my iPod since Tom and I were rarely riding together. Again we reached an aid station, the last one with water. We had about 12 miles to go…

What we thought would be mostly DH turned out to be more up and down…with only slightly more down. While on this section, a little thunderstorm rolled through and we got rained on…it felt really good but with the wind, it almost got chilly. Tom’s energy had actually picked up as the day wore on…I knew he was in fine shape to be riding but was probably just generally fatigued. I felt fine other than a little knee pain starting to flare up. We reach the last aid station over 7 hours into our ride. More food and drink and we started the last 7 miles back. Now we’re just excited to reach the end, we alternate walking and riding…my knee hurts.

We start to see spectators as we get close…you can hear people cheering (which makes such a difference at this point!) I slow and wait for Tom so we can cross the finish line together. We rode almost 53 miles and were on course for more than 9 and 1/2 hours. I guessed that Tom was done with endurance events (since he usually does event at my goading.) The next day he says, “Next year I’m wearing a smaller pack…” We’ll see if next year brings us closer to completing 100 miles…

DSCN0996

Details of our ride…

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/13490977

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Sierra mountain biking at it’s best…

Sunday, June 28th, 2009

One word, Lavezzola.

The Lavezzola Creek trail is a seldomly used, much more remote part of the many trails that can be accessed from the Packer Saddle area and ultimately lead back to Downieville.  Tom had ridden the trail many years ago on his mtn bike and once or twice on his moto since…I had never been.  So, in the spirit of spending a long day out in more remote parts of this section of the Sierras, we set off yesterday to do the “big ride.”  We drove from the cabin to Downieville, parked a car and took a Yuba shuttle up to the saddle…what followed were about 7 hours of spectacular scenery, endless ups and downs, lakes, wildflowers, Jeepers, creeks, etc.  The topo maps and GPS came in handy a few times but unfortunately I forgot to bring a proper camera…the one of the phone yielded the only photos from the trip…

The riding to the proper singletrack involved about 13 miles of fire roads followed by 1.5 miles of steep, rocky descent, a creek crossing and then several miles of buffed out (by motos) singletrack swooping through forest.  The last few miles are on the Lavezzola fire road, the First Divide trail and then you’re back to town.  28+ miles later we were tired, dusty, out of water and nearly out of food.  Anyone looking to break away from the traffic on the other popular Downieville trails should definitely try this alternative…

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