2010 Tour Divide

While I was interviewing with the good folks at Adventure Cycling, one person expressed his concern that I seemed to be very mountain-bike-centric, while the bulk of their organization was dedicated to road touring. I pointed out that my roots in bicycle travel - and, indeed, my roots in cycling itself - were firmly planted in the pavement and panniers culture of the open road. And today, while sorting through a box of old photos in my latest effort to purge, I found picture proof: Standing on the banks of the Colorado River near Moab in September 2002, just before embarking on a 600-mile loop tour of Southeastern Utah and Southwestern Colorado. I love finding (and making fun of) old photos of myself. For starters, I have no recollection of owning that jersey and can't fathom where I obtained it, but I do hope it went straight to the trash can after that trip. Secondly - zip-off pants? Really? Thirdly, I bought that Bell handlebar bag at K-mart and I still own and use it. Fourthly, four panniers and a tent and tarp strapped to the rear rack? Who needs all that stuff? Fifthly, that was the first time I had ever traveled fully loaded and I still vividly recall the 35 miles we pedaled out of Moab as one of the toughest days of riding in my entire life. Seriously. It's still right at the top in terms of end-of-day shock and fatigue. But the fact that I managed to rally for the next 565 miles proved to me that determination runs deeper than physical strength.

On that note, I'm taking off for a short tour of my own on Tuesday, but I wanted to write a quick post about this year's Tour Divide before I go. This year's race begins Friday morning in Banff, Alberta. Forty-eight people have committed to starting this year, including four women. I'm sure at least one of those women is going to absolutely shatter my TD race record, but it was fun to hold it for a year. Many people have asked me if I feel envious or sad that I won't be lining up for the Tour Divide this year. My answer is a genuine "no." Even before I started planning this huge move and job change, my head has been far away from the needed discipline and desire it takes to embark on a long, solo grind across the Divide. I have really enjoyed my unstructured time to have random adventures, and not having a big event on the horizon gives me the freedom to do what I want - go for a hike or join a group for a leisurely ride, rather than put in hours and hours of necessary training miles. I'm not saying I'm never going to train for anything epic again, and I'm not saying I'd never ride the Divide again. It remains one of the most incredible, self-affirming experiences of my life. But for now I'm content to do my small stuff and enjoy an armchair-adventurer stance in this year's race.

Race updates will be posted starting Friday at www.tourdivide.org. If you're interested in reading more about the experience of riding the Divide, Eric Bruntjen put together a collection of Tour Divide stories, interviews, poems and photos in a book called the Cordillera. I actually have not had a chance to order it yet, but I contributed a chapter for the project (full disclosure: it's an excerpt of a book I am working on.) The proceeds from the Cordillera actually go to Adventure Cycling, which I'm all for, since I'm going to be joining the payroll soon.

And just in case AC is still worried about my dedication to the organization, look what else I found:


It's a vintage Adventure Cycling map, from my Salt Lake City-to-Syracuse, N.Y. tour in fall 2003. We actually only followed a small portion of this particular map, dropping into the route about 100 miles west of the Missouri-Illinois border. Finally joining Adventure Cycling's TransAmerica route basically saved me from calling it quits on the cross-country tour, because in northern and central Missouri we found nothing but narrow roads, nonexistent shoulders, heavy traffic and belligerent drivers - i.e. "Misery." The TransAmerica route took us to our saving grace of farm roads and bicycle-friendly towns. I finished that trip happy and hooked on bicycle touring. Now I have a whole set of Great Divide Mountain Bike Route maps still caked in mud. Adventure Cycling really does do good work.

Sub-48 hours on the Kenai Peninsula

I am officially in manic mode. Never mind that I've dangled near the precipice of exhaustion since my second day of six hours of mountain biking in the Fairbanks heat ... and that was before the 140-mile gravel grinder and before staying up until 2 a.m. every night and before the big hikes and rides and runs and whatever else I did last week. It's all blurring together now. One churning mass of summer sickness. No matter! There will be time to rest when that ferry and/or plane turns south. Time is finite and demands the bender to end all Alaska benders.

My friend Sharon has a cabin off the Seward Highway, so on Friday a small group of friends met up for an overnight mountain bike trip. I didn't have time to shop for groceries beforehand so I frantically scooped up piles of calories at the gas station on the way out of town, the way I used to when I was riding the Great Divide. I checked the clock as we left Anchorage city limits: 6:11 p.m.

We settled in at the cabin and then took off for an evening ride on Johnson Pass, whose trailhead is only a couple of miles from Sharon's cabin. My mountain bike is still in the shop, so I had to ride my 37-pound Pugsley. It was a real grunt to keep up with three fresh, fit, experienced mountain bikers with a fat bike on singletrack, coping with sluggish steering, wide tire clearance, jarring descents and general engine fatigue. I think we were all expecting a short "night" ride, because we thought we would hit impassable snow lower on the trail. But 10 miles and two hours later, we had only seen short patches of snow. Instead, the low-light twilight was chasing us. Even though we had nearly reached Johnson Pass at that point, we opted to turn around before dark came. We returned to the cabin just before midnight.

The next morning we were up at 7:30 a.m. and making giant blueberry pancakes and copious cups of coffee in preparation for the Saturday fun, Resurrection Pass. Again, we didn't know how far the snow or weather would let us climb.

By some stroke of amazing luck, a small patch of sunlight seemed to follow us up the pass. The mountains were encompassed by blurry streaks of rain showers, and we later learned that it rained the entire day at Sharon's cabin, but we managed to creep through a sunlit window with hardly a sprinkle for more than five hours.

Two of the riders split off early and Sharon and I continued on to see how far we could make it up the pass. We talked semi-jokingly about pushing our bikes over the pass and descending into Hope, where we would have ~65 miles of road riding to get back to the car, or we could "shortcut" by just climbing back over the pass for a 90-mile singletrack ride. And the best thing about Sharon is, if we had actually brought enough food for such an endeavor, we probably would have talked each other into it. I love Sharon. She's just like me, only faster and crazier.

There really was still a fair amount of snow at the pass, though. We had already committed to at least making it to the high point, so we pushed our bikes through at least a dozen large snowfields. (I was really hoping Pugsley could take on the June slush, since that would at least give me some reward for powering the beast up there. But, yeah, not so much. Big wheels = slower pushing.)

Pugsley poses at the trail junction just below the pass. There was lots and lots of snow up high. Probably a good thing we didn't psych ourselves up about dropping into Hope, because we would have spent half the day pushing our bikes.

Dropping back into Swan Lake was more scenic, anyway. My shoulders and back felt pretty wrecked during the last few miles to the trailhead. I am truly not a fan of rigid bikes on rooty singletrack. Something has to absorb all the shock, and eventually even the tiniest bumps shot electric waves into my upper body. We ended with about 38 miles and ~3,500 feet vertical.

We returned to Sharon's cabin in the pouring rain. I took a brief respite to shower, drink tea and eat chips and salsa, and then I was off again, driving toward Seward. I planned to camp in the Kenai Fjords National Park, so I went for an evening stroll to Exit Glacier. I was hoping to hike to Harding Icefield the following day, so I decided to walk a little ways up the trail to see what the snow conditions were like.

But it was such a beautiful evening, I just kept climbing. It was one of those things where I was wearing jeans and a cotton hoodie, a cheap pair of running shoes and carrying only a bottle of water (I had my small water pack with me, but the bladder was empty. I was simply using it to carry my bear spray.) And suddenly I was traversing up a snowfield, climbing a few thousand vertical feet, and still the siren call of the unknown horizon drove me forward.

It was so peaceful up there, standing on the shoreline of an ocean of ice, bathed in the soft glow of sunset and eternally silent. There wasn't even a breeze, no flowing water, no birds ... a place where it is always winter. I reached a point where the terrain along the side of the glacier began to level out, and in the flat light it was difficult to tell whether the route forward was the snow-covered mountain ridge I had been following, or the icefield itself. I didn't want to wander out on the icefield and its threat of crevasses. Plus, it was 10 p.m. and, while it never gets completely dark here, I also wasn't carrying a headlamp or important warm clothing or, well, anything. I admit it was a reckless way to hike. I wasn't particularly proud of myself for poor planning (Really, I was the worst kind of national park cautionary tale cliche, wandering around in the snow in wet shoes and jeans.) But I also knew what I was doing, and I knew the snow conditions were awesome, and I knew I could be back in less than an hour. I sat down on my butt and ripped down the slush, a controlled fall punctuated with uncontrolled laughter.

Since I had already hiked Harding Icefield on Saturday night, I had to think of something to do with my Sunday morning. I drove into Seward and had a nice leisurely breakfast at a coffee shop, then came up with the idea to climb up Mount Marathon before I left town. Mount Marathon is the site of a famous Alaska race held every July 4. The race gains something like 3,500 feet in a mile and a half. The craziest racers can go up and down the mountain in less than an hour. I admit in a moment of madness I signed up for the Mount Marathon race lottery this year, but my name wasn't picked. I've heard the race route is brutal beyond belief, so I decided to hike around the back way, i.e. the 5-mile scenic route, which wraps around the mountain and climbs into the Mount Marathon bowl. The best part about the long way is that nobody takes it. The route is still mostly snow-covered, and I didn't see another person until I reached the peak, which was quite crowded.

The weather, which had been rainy all morning, really started to clear as I climbed. It's almost as though Alaska knows I am leaving, and so it is putting on its best face as a fond farewell.

I decided to take the race route back into Seward. And it really is as brutal as everyone says - a horrible, leg-sucking scree field that plummets off the face of the Earth. People run down this? All I will say is there is one lottery I am truly glad I didn't win. Mountain running races? What was I thinking?

The afternoon was blue-sky gorgeous by the time I drove back over Turnagain Pass and around the Arm, crossing into Anchorage city limits at 5:34 p.m. for a sub-48-hour trip. What a great two days on the Kenai Peninsula! Did I mention I'm exhausted? Better eat a couple of peanut butter cups so I can rally for tomorrow. I still haven't decided what to do. If I can get out of bed, though, I'm sure it will be great.

Bucket list

I am moving to Montana. I can hardly believe I just typed those five words. That plan was nowhere on my 2010 list of goals, but such is life. Sometimes it whips you around in a flurry of G-Force in a way that's both sickening and thrilling, like a rickety old amusement park ride. You can't wait to get off and then you can't wait to get back on, even as your head spins and stomach churns, somewhere beneath it all, beyond the warbled music and flashing lights, you feel the spark that drives you onward.

I am excited to work for Adventure Cycling. It's a great organization, and there will be many chances to develop my editorial voice while working for the magazine. They're taking a chance on me and I'm ready to prove that I have much to offer to the realm of bicycle journalism. Although I keep a blog that is mainly about my hobbies, the truth is I really value my career. I can't be entirely happy unless I can productively contribute to the swirl of information out there. I came to Anchorage telling myself that I could be happy even if I had to work at Wal-Mart to support my Alaska adventures, but the truth is, I wouldn't be. I'm a journalist at heart, and to combine outdoor adventures with journalism is the dream. So I'm taking a chance on Montana.

There is much I will miss terribly about Alaska: the Chugach, Denali National Park, the Alaska Range, Fairbanks, the Kenai Peninsula ... but even more than the places, I will miss the people. They say people come to - or stay in - Alaska for a reason. These are people after my own heart - people who don't just enjoy the landscape; they love the landscape, in a deep and lasting way that connects us intimately even if we live many hundreds of miles apart and see each other only a couple of times a year. I hope to still visit Alaska at least that often. My family in Salt Lake City is so excited that I will finally live "close" to home again. They don't yet realize that I'm going to spend all of my vacation time up north. ;-)

Since the decision has been made, my mind has been inundated with a panic of details and logistics. How will I move my cat and my belongings? What am I going to do about the 1996 Geo Prism? Take the ferry? Purge, ship and fly? Take a chance on the old car and the Al-Can, knowing the financial backlash will be huge if it gives up along the way? Where will the cat and I live? Where will I ride my bike? How will I make new friends? And what will I do before I go? My time in Alaska is now quite short. I wish I could do all I had hoped to do this summer, but the truth is I won't have the time or space. I have to start thinking up my bucket list now, knowing I won't get to do a fraction of what's on it. This week I mostly had to deal with annoying logistics. I had to spend nearly all day Monday and Tuesday moving from my old apartment into a new one, something that had been planned before the move to Montana cropped up. I did manage to get out for a hike with my friends Dan and Amy. The couple moved to Alaska from Colorado about a year and a half ago. They both urged me to go to Montana. I was a little incredulous. "How come no one up here is willing to tell me to stay?" I said. "Don't any of you people like me enough to try to keep me around?"

It's all in good fun, though. Dan is a freelance photographer and took this awesome photo of me prancing down the snowfield beneath False O'Malley Peak. (I already received Facebook criticism for holding my ice ax in my hand while running down a steep hill. I will just say that it was much less likely to impale me there than it would be when dangling off the side of my Camelback, which is where I usually store my ice ax when hiking.) Anyway, Dan and I had a good discussion about self-employment and freelancing. He does great work! His Web site is http://www.danbaileyphoto.com/.

On Wednesday, another fun group of women who call themselves the Trail Tramps invited me out for their "Bikes and Bangers" Wednesday night ride (Some singletrack, much intake of meat byproducts.) They showed me around the Hillside trails, a network of singletrack that is right in town that I had not yet explored, because I have been so busy getting out of town since I arrived in Anchorage. I finally took my Karate Monkey into the shop for an extensive overhaul, so I had to ride Pugsley (my snow bike). On the bright side, everyone gave me an automatic handicap for powering a 37-pound rigid bike up the steep hills (and for being fresh off a 140-mile mountain bike ride, from which I'm still feeling the effects.) But the real difficulty was the downhill trails, clogged as they were with thick tree roots and hairpin turns (Pugsley has the turn radius of a tractor.) I took a solid beating. Oh well. If you return from a group ride with bleeding legs, everyone knows you earned your hot dog.

Then on Thursday, it finally rained. I went for a run on some of those same Hillside trails (I was looking for the Wolverine Peak spur, but got lost in the looping trail network and never found it.) I was loving the weather - the cool, moist air and intense smell of wildflowers and fresh grass. Since I moved from Juneau, I have honestly missed the rain. May and June are dry months throughout Alaska, but this early summer has been particularly dry, and after those 90-degree days in Fairbanks I have been feeling a bit sun-baked. It was refreshing and gratifying to see one day of 53 degrees and raining - almost like being "home" again, wherever home is.

I guess home is wherever I go. And that's OK. Life is a wonderful, wild ride.