Jill Outside

A slow realization about just how limited my time really is, compounded by frustratingly unhelpful research on Web site development tips and tricks, has led me to concede that I wasn't going to be able to complete a new Web site before "Up in Alaska" got really stale. So I settled on a blogger template makeover with the name I wanted to give my new site - "Jill Outside."

In thinking about giving "Up in Alaska" a new name, I decided I definitely didn't want to tie my blog to a region. That mercifully cut out the obvious but rather lame "Down in Montana" (which doesn't make much sense, anyway, since most Americans still think of Montana as "up.") But in the end, I did tie my blog to a region - a rather large and ambiguous region - "Outside."

In Alaska, the term "Outside" is used for anything and everything that is not from Alaska. Therefore, if you don't live in Alaska, you live "Outside." I like the implication of a displaced Alaskan, exploring the wider world.

And, of course, there's the less esoteric meaning, and the overall theme and scope of my blog - being outside, as in the Great Outdoors, playing, thinking, working, suffering, hoping, dreaming - living.

So there you have it - this blog's new name. For now, it will stay at this arcticglass blogspot url. I still have a lot of work to do on the sidebar, but once I am done, it will be even more vast and hopefully just a tad more user-friendly. I could go through and delete links, but I like to have them all at my own fingertips. I believe that's the point of keeping a Web log.

So besides redesigning my Web site, and of course working five days a week now, I have been mountain biking. Yeah, that's pretty much all I do now - mountain biking with new groups and learning new trails and making pasta and going out for pizza and burritos with other mountain bikers. Right now, I am riding a mountain-bike stoke as wide as the Montana sky, which has been incredible for my state of mind during what would typically be a jarring transition to a new place. It is also probably the reason why my legs feel like shredded wheat right now; but that is probably good training for Trans Rockies. The following are pictures from my Wednesday and Thursday rides.

One of the most awesome things about working for a company like Adventure Cycling is that literally everyone I work with is passionate about cycling. It's really quite incredible; I go to work in the morning and there are three cars in the parking lot and a couple dozen bicycles propped around the courtyard. I admit I can be lazy about the process of bike commuting sometimes, but my work environment makes it almost intolerable to drive to work. As it is, I haven't even touched my car in an entire week. But beyond being just transportation cyclists, my co-workers also genuinely like to ride bikes - some quite a lot. On Wednesday, my co-worker John offered to take me on a "tour" of one of his favorite routes.

It turned out to be the tour of bears. While riding up the singletrack of the first pass (oh yes, we climbed two passes), we saw a rather large black bear pop its head out of the brush. It lowered itself and stood back up a couple more times, then crossed the trail and circled all the way around us before sauntering out of sight.

We crested the pass and descended down a long, flowing strip of singletrack before climbing back up a gravel road toward a ski resort, where we saw a smallish bear cub down a steep embankment. We stopped and held our breaths, and watched him dig around in the woods for several minutes, but we never saw mom. You probably can't see the cub in this picture; I'd crop it if I had a photo editor, which I don't right now, but the cub is that black thing in the center.

We crested our second pass right at sunset, to a view of the valley bathed in warm light. I'm 10 for 10 now on spectacular sunsets during evening mountain bike rides. It's enough to give a person a downright unhealthy addiction.

And addicting it is! I only got about four hours of sleep last night, then felt like soggy shredded wheat all day long, but still decided to rally for the Thursday night group ride another friend had told me about. This one was the co-ed crowd full of local racers, so I expected a fast-paced ride, but luckily a lot of the guys were fresh off a 24-hour race last weekend, so the ride was relatively lax.

That didn't stop us from riding 25 miles and climbing more than 3,000 feet in the process. It also didn't save us from the brutal hike-a-bike to connect one logging road to another a couple hundred feet higher.

Missoula mountain bike culture really is impressive. My group had nearly a dozen people show up for the ride. Then just as we were coming down the pass, we encountered another large group going up to another nearby high point. Suddenly, there were nearly two dozen mountain bikers gathered on a fairly remote logging road somewhere high above Missoula, on a Thursday night no less. When I lived in Juneau, I don't think I ever encountered two dozen different mountain bikers over the course of a year. Suddenly being surrounded by so many of my own kind has been nothing short of a culture shock.

Another pretty sunset, another impressive view.

I wonder if this ever gets boring? Somehow, I doubt it.

These perfect evenings

There have been 10 of them since I rolled across the U.S./Canada border into the state of Montana. I haven't missed one yet.

Monday night "intervals" up Mount Sentinal. I wait for the temperature to drop below 90, and rush full-throttle into spectacular golden light.

Reach the peak just as the last sliver of sun slips below the horizon. Cool breeze and warm sky.

Tuesday after-work ride with the Dirt Girls. We squeeze a couple hours between thunderstorms on a little mountain amusingly called Mount Jumbo.

The fast Arizona visitor wants me to take her picture with the "Big Sky," so I have her take mine.

Life is pretty OK right now.

Stuart Peak

I am trying to adjust to my new reality - working 9 to 5, off on weekends, riding a bike commute route, dealing with heat ... I'm realizing that most of my wardrobe is irrelevant here in the summer. Amid piles of rain gear, wool, poly pro and polar fleece, I found only one pair of bike shorts and four short-sleeve jerseys. Montana is dry, with lots of air particles that seem to trigger my allergies, and it's hot. Did I mention it's hot? It's not hot compared to, say, New Orleans, but it's an adjustment after a few years of living in a place where residents celebrate if the temperature rises above 70. I have yet to go on a bike ride where I don't run out of water. But I'll figure it out in time.

But one advantage of moving to a new place is an exhilarating sense of discovery everywhere I turn. Even bike commuting through town is still an adventure to me. Everything is so fresh and new that even small tastes are fulfilling; all the same, my appetite for adventure is more insatiable than ever. I see this green valley surrounded by mountain ranges, and beyond that, bigger mountain ranges, criss-crossed with an endless network of fire roads and trails, and I feel like I could go anywhere, and everywhere, and I want to. Of course time is a constraint, and so is knowledge of the region, and I had limited amounts of both on Sunday afternoon. I was waiting for my friend, Jen, to arrive from Utah en route to Sand Point, Idaho, so I could see her before she continued west. When I received a text from her telling me she was running late, and wouldn't show up until after 10, I realized I had a whole late afternoon and evening to discover something new.

I pulled out the Rattlesnake trail map that I just acquired on Saturday and decided to try an adjacent long trail, Stuart Peak. I didn't know how high Stuart Peak was. I didn't know how long the trail was. I rode seven miles of scorching pavement to reach a smooth strip of singletrack wending through a shady canyon, and knew I was in the right spot. The first three miles were grin-inducing fun, even on the climb, but then the real grunt started. Steep, horse-tromped, loose dirt cut a bee-line toward the sky. I tried with all my energy to ride uphill until I was seeing stars, then took short breaks, which became walking breaks. My lungs burned and my legs throbbed. I thought maybe I burned all my matches, flared out too soon, but the lure of the unknown beckoned, and I couldn't stop following it.

About five more miles of intermittent red-line riding and gasping walk breaks brought me to a wilderness boundary, where I gladly deposited my slave-driver of a bicycle behind some trees. I'm the rare mountain biker who agrees that bikes should be banned from wilderness areas. For me, the view is mostly personal. I just like the idea that there are still places in the country that can only be accessed on foot. It gives them a more mystic quality, like stepping into a place that time forgot. And it forces the relentlessly hurried among us to savor the world at a slower pace.

Bikes allowed or not, it wouldn't have mattered on the Stuart Peak trail, where I quickly hit deep, punchy snow. By this time, I was pretty close to running out of water, so I just filled my Camelback bladder with slush, which was incredibly refreshing.

The final ascent to the peak was a full-on snow climbing, where the north-facing crust was fairly icy and hard despite the scorching weather in Missoula, now far below. I checked my GPS and saw the elevation was approaching 8,000 feet, which meant I had climbed nearly 5,000 feet since leaving town. The number gave me a sense of satisfaction. If nothing else, it validated how much I had suffered up the climb.

And then, just before 8 p.m., I reached Stuart Peak. Gotta do the self-portrait on top of the peak, even though shorts aren't the most flattering look for me. I'd like to say that living Outside might allow me to get something of a tan, but that would be a lie. I'll probably go through several bottles of SPF 70 before I finally just surrender to wearing pants in 90-degree heat.

The topography of this region is significantly different than coastal Alaska, but striking nonetheless.

I bounded down the snowfield and collected my bicycle, giddy about the 4,000 feet I still had to lose. The descent was amazing. There aren't words that actually describe that level of exhilaration and freedom, the smooth, snaking free-fall through a blur of trees. I unravelled more than three hours of sweat-drenched climbing in 20 perfect minutes.

I think I'm going to like Missoula.