Climbing to the end

 I've found it difficult to write my Stagecoach 400 trip report. All of the words seem to boil down to "I was really tired and rode my bike for a long time." During the race, my perspective was muddled by fatigue, which cast a sort of gray wash over my memories of the trip. I experienced beautiful moments, but not to the levels of intensity I expected. I rode fun trails, but not with the same zeal I normally would feel. And I did despair sometimes, over not much, really ... a sore shoulder, another steep hike-a-bike, a turn I couldn't find. This is just the truth; I wasn't super awesome during the Stagecoach 400. I was slightly broken, struggling, sometimes continuing only because there wasn't a viable way to stop. But when I managed to rein in these emotions, I felt surges of relief, even joy, because it really didn't matter. In the end I probably wouldn't have been much faster at a hundred percent. I might not have even been that much happier at a hundred percent. Life moves forward no matter where we stand, but as long as I keep moving with it, I'm satisfied.

Four days is not terribly long for a bikepacking trip, but it's just enough time to make the transition to a different way of existing. I wrote earlier about how these hard efforts can be dehumanizing, in a way. In this context, it's not a bad thing. The more I focus on the state of my body and my biological needs, the less think about abstract ideas and life outside the immediate present. I become more animal-like, driven mainly by migration and the prospect of food and water. My thoughts begin to register less as words and more as blunt reactions and emotions. This manifests in simple ways, like screeching at mice who won't get out of my way, or stopping to observe a dead snake with inexplicable fascination. In the night, I growled at a rabbit who hopped by my camp, and in the morning I woke up with a spider on my face and calmly flicked it away. Interacting with other humans becomes more disconcerting, and the patterns of civilization start to confuse me. At the same time, the wilderness becomes a more comfortable place and the quiet flow of the universe makes more sense. I enjoy embracing my inner animal, from time to time.

Although I enjoyed the urban adventure of San Diego, I was relieved to be back in National Forest lands. I hacked through walls of encroaching vegetation on an abandoned fire road and cut across a field into the Pamo Valley.  The mountains were fog-drenched and green, quite a shift from the desert only a few dozen miles to the east. I was doing one of my favorite things, which is climbing quiet forest roads high into the mountains, and tried to rally my tired legs for maximum enjoyment.

Soon the fog began to clear, the temperature shot up substantially, and the road just kept on climbing. Often the route lost several hundred feet of elevation into drainages only to resume its sluggish journey skyward. I neared the end of my water supply and collected some from a stream that I could drink through my filter. Extracting water from my filter is a chore, involving headache-inducing suction, so I took the first opportunity I saw for treated water — a fire station on the Indian Reservation near the top of the canyon. The garden hose was sitting in the sun, and even after I let it run for a minute the water was still hot. I filled my regular bladder and kept the stream water as a reserve. This day, like much of the trip, I'd ride most of the miles carrying more than a gallon of water.

After four hours of near-continuous climbing, I dropped out of the mountains near Lake Henshaw. Its dark blue surface made me wistful for cool, clear water — not the metallic fire water I was choking down. I also wanted to find a resupply business somewhere in the vicinity. After all, a highway crossed the valley and there was a decently sized town called Warner Springs. Although the cues didn't indicate services, I hoped to find something because my food supply was dwindling. When I stocked up at the Chevron the night before, I believed I was overfilling my supply. But that was before the animal side really took over and left me gnawing mindlessly on vast quantities of food. By the time morning came, much was gone and I couldn't even say where it went. And still I felt almost ravenously hungry, at this point trying to ration my calories because the next guaranteed resupply was still many hours away.

Sadly, Warner Springs only seemed to have one establishment — a golf club and store that seemed to be permanently out of business. I even tried casing the fire station for vending machines and didn't even find a water spigot. I knew I had enough food to last me five more hours, which is probably what it was going to take to get over this next 25-mile hump. But it was already 1 p.m., and the last resupply on the route reportedly closed at six. I was going to have to bust ass to make this next stretch and I wasn't sure I had it in me. My knee-jerk reaction was more despair, and in the midst of these raw emotions I wrote Beat a text admitting I was "scared" and was considering just riding the highway toward Idyllwild. Luckily I calmed down before I sent it and made a better plan — race for the RV park, and if I don't make it, I can always ride off route into Anza, which is certainly better than quitting the whole race over this. Beat even gave me suggestions for good establishments in Anza, and I left Warner Springs almost hoping I'd miss the cut-off so I could enjoy cold root beer and maybe even a chicken sandwich.

What followed was the endless climb over the Santa Rosa Mountains, the acceptance of my limitations, and a joyful if inexplicable surge of energy that reminded me, if briefly, what it was like to feel strong again. A blissful descent brought me into the Anza Valley and I cranked the high gears all the way to the Sunshine RV Park, only to arrive at 6:07 p.m. I expected to find the place closed, but discovered the store's summer hours kept it open until seven. I darted around the tiny room collecting new water, cookies, cheese, and something for dinner. The woman at the counter, Mrs. Singh, offered to microwave a burrito for me and also recommend these corn chips that turned out to be fiercely spicy, as well as a Choco Taco. She told me stories of the racers who came through before me — Jay Petervary who ate "all of the food in the store," and Katherine and the hotelers who rode through here together just a few hours earlier. She urged me not to ride in the dark, promising she'd find a nice spot in her RV park for me to camp. When I insisted I wanted to ride on, she gave me two packages of sour straw candy, free of charge, because "when you're riding you suck on these and they give you power." Mrs. Singh was a refreshing shot of human kindness on this lonely day, even if the chips she recommended nearly burned a hole in my stomach.

I'd love to say it was an easy 25-mile climb up to Idyllwild from there, but I hit one more snag less than ten miles from town when I tried to take the unmarked singletrack that we rode on the way out, presuming that this was the official course now. I found the trailhead but took a wrong turn about a mile up the hill. A mile later, the trail seemed to peter out in the bushes, but I remained convinced this was the right way. I crossed a stream that was much deeper than I remembered it being and pushed my bike up a steep rock-outcropping, which didn't seem right at all. At the top, a larger cliff confirmed that I had indeed hit a dead end. I panicked. Not in a "oh, I guess I have to backtrack now" kind of way, but in a "Oh crap, I'm going to die out here" kind of way. I was beyond processing the situation rationally. I picked my bike up and started sprinting toward the rock outcropping, and when I reached it, tried to half-run, half-leap down to the stream. Predictably, I lost control of my footing and slipped forward, nearly tumbling head over feet, but luckily threw my weight backward in time to land on my butt and slide the rest of the way down, dragging the bike behind me. I bashed my shin hard on the pedals somewhere in the process, and blood was streaming down my legs, but happily I was otherwise not worse for the wear. I backtracked and found a different trail, which proved to be the right one. The adrenaline surge kept me full-on sprinting all the way up the hill and onto the final forest road climb, until it wore off, and I completely bonked. The final three miles were devoid of pedaling. I walked when I couldn't coast. But I made it, somehow, just before midnight on Monday night.

Photo by Matt Slater

I was so tired. I signed in as the 18th finisher out of 42 starters, and probably about 25 to 28 finishers (a final list hasn't been posted yet.) Jay Petervary rode the whole course without sleep in 50 hours, and Eszter was the first woman finisher a mere six hours later. I finished in 3 days and 13.5 hours. The final stats on my GPS were 385 miles, somewhere between 35,000 and 40,000 feet of climbing, moving time 57:44 at a moving average of 6.7 miles per hour. It's been a difficult experience to process, but the final take away for me is this: If I'm tired, and I just keep moving anyway, good things happen. (Map from day four)

Urban jungle

 I woke up with my face in the gravel, cheek pressed into the moist dirt, and my first thought was, "smells like wet cement." I'm not sure where exactly the thought came from; the accumulating hours on the bike were slowly smothering my critical thinking abilities beneath a blanket of basic desires, irrelevant memories, and raw emotions. Now that the moment has passed, I couldn't even tell you what wet cement smells like to me. I guess it's something like a sandy hill above the suburbs of San Diego, enveloped in fog infused with salty hints of the sea. I could hear traffic humming from the distance, but all I could see in front of me was gray mist.

 My head was swimming, pleading for coffee. I had tossed out my chocolate-covered espresso beans the day before, after they melted into an unpalatable blob, so I had no refuge for my cravings. I don't know why I've gotten myself so addicted to this substance, but then again, I think most of our favorite things in life can be called addictions when you look at them from a critical point of view. I'm also addicted to quick-energy carbohydrates, petting my cat, spending time with Beat, and of course riding my bicycle. But on this morning I was not looking to feed that final addiction. I envisioned myself sitting on the couch with Beat and my cat, snarfing bowls of cereal, and drinking one of Beat's deeply satisfying cappuccinos. But no, thanks to bicycle addictions, I instead had to wake up alone with a face full of sand on this damp hill, with an unknown number of hard hours between me and coffee.

 Those early morning hours were rough. The trail out of the rolling hills beyond Bonita contained several more hopeless hike-a-bikes, on washed-out jeep roads that were carved down the center by erosion canyons deep enough to swallow a bicycle whole. I finally dropped out of the fog into a wealthy suburb that made me feel hopeful a Starbucks was near, but never saw an establishment before the route veered onto the singletrack along the Sweetwater River. The trails were fun riding and I tried to put myself into a better frame of mind — "Normally you'd be thrilled to ride buffed singletrack instead of lame suburban roads." But long hours overfeeding my bike addiction had reduced me to basic emotions and desires, and I only wanted pavement and coffee. The trail began to trace the shoreline of Sweetwater Reservoir. Again, fun trail — but if you've ever ridden around a reservoir, you probably know the strain of traversing a seemingly endless string of drainages on a rollercoaster of screaming descents and lung-busting climbs.

 The singletrack finally dumped me out on a gravel bike path along a busy street where the first business I saw was, oh joy, Starbucks! I ordered a venti drip (disappointed that they haven't yet begun to offer the quart-sized cups they've threatened to introduce) and pulled out my phone to call Beat. I saw it was 9:45 a.m., which means the first twenty miles of the day, losing elevation, had taken me just under four hours. Wow, was I setting this course on fire or what?

"There are still a lot of people behind you," Beat assured me. "You're doing well, really."

"It's just, man, why did they make this thing so hard?" I grumbled, and immediately laughed at my own dumb question. "They" didn't make it hard. I made it hard by pushing my own limits to the jagged edge just to remember what that felt like, and really that was the point. If it were easy it wouldn't hold the same interest, wouldn't feed the same addiction.

 Coffee also did wonders to improve my outlook, initially, and I made an effort to hustle myself out of Starbucks and get back on the concrete trail to San Diego Bay. The route was infused with more hidden gems of green-space singletrack, built on packed sand wending through a forest of palm trees or lining the banks of some hidden creek beside the freeways. These sections were clearly steeped in local knowledge and actually a bit difficult to navigate. It's hard to find a flow when you're stopping at every single intersection to assess which general direction you should be pedaling.

 Coffee, like Snickers Bars, only holds a fraction of its normal impact at bikepacking metabolisms, and by the time I reached downtown San Diego I could feel the clutches of the sleep monster closing around me. I was fighting for my consciousness, and the sensory bombardment of the city proved to be a bewildering distraction. "Green light ... Wait, does that mean stop or go? Wow, these buildings aren't nearly as sparkly as I remember them being. Texas barbecue ... what's that doing in California? Does that sound like something I want right now?"

Pedestrians flickered in the shadows of my peripheral vision, taxis rushed past me, palm leaves swayed in the breeze, and I took deep breaths with every pedal stroke, wondering if I could hold it together. I was drunk on my own fatigue and culture shock, and I was frustrated by how out-of-it I felt. This city after two hard days and 200 miles of desert — what a strange transition.

 In Ocean Beach I passed an organic grocery store. I didn't really require a stop and knew I needed to keep cranking to make the day's necessary miles. But the lure of healthy food was already too hard to resist. I went inside for lunch I didn't really feel hungry for, but still managed to scarf down an apple, a half pound of raspberries, an Odwalla smoothie, a spinach salad, and half of a ham sandwich. I also picked up some treats for later — natural fig bars, dried mangoes, whole-grain cookies, sunflower seeds, and Babybel cheese. Take that, horrific gas station diet. I still believe that, at bikepacking metabolisms, the actual source of food — beyond fat, carbohydrate and protein content — doesn't matter all that much. Hostess cupcakes are organic cookies are bananas are Sour Patch Kids (for the most part, give or take a few grams of fat.) But after a couple days go by and my body is sufficiently depleted of nutrients, fruit and vegetables become substantially more appealing than more usefully caloric junk. No matter what I eat, I still manage to drop an average of about a pound a day during these kinds of efforts. For me, that weight never stays off long. But if you're ever looking for a good crash diet, I highly recommend the "Eat What You Want And Still Lose Weight During Punishing Multi-Day Bikepacking Races" diet.

 As I wended around a strange clover-leaf that seemed to be purposefully taking us on a tour of the outskirts of Sea World, Katherine Wallace rode up beside me. Both of us were having trouble navigating these urban streets and trails, and I noticed we both seemed inclined to take the same wrong turns that I usually caught first because I can be GPS obsessive. It was fun to chat with someone else in the race, but Katherine's comfortable pace was about two notches above mine and after a few miles I could no longer hold her wheel. She would actually be the last Stagecoach 400 racer I'd see for the duration of the race. I was sad to see her go. It can get a little lonely out there, even in the urban jungle of San Diego.

 As the route re-entered the suburbs I found myself on more unique and fun open-space trails: River pathways, singletrack along a gorge, fast descending through a maze of "Tunnels" that was also impossible to navigate, equestrian trails in the canyons beneath multi-million-dollar homes. I was surprised just how closely all these trails can link up. It seemed like we'd leave one trail system and within a mile be on another. For all of the annoyances created by the sprawling nature of West Coast cities, at least one positive aspect would have to be the impressive amount of open space woven throughout the housing tracts. I can't imagine riding trail all the way out of, say, New York.

After the sun set, I turned on my lights to hit up yet another fun trail system, the singletrack around Lake Hodges. My headlamp had a wash-out effect on the beige dirt and similarly colored rocks, and I managed to slam head-on into a decently sized boulder that I didn't even see. The jolt turned the front wheel just as I flew sideways over the handlebars, landing hard on my right shoulder. The reason I'm not a proficient technical rider is because I've never learned how to take a crash well. Under the best circumstances, I take crashing too personally and get frustrated and upset. When I am exhausted and muddled and just trying to fight my way from one point to the next, my strung-out emotions interpret crashing as the absolute end of the world. My shoulder throbbed and I was devastated, lashing out, moaning, "I can't ride this. It's just too hard." Yes, I did throw a childish temper tantrum. I worked through it, but it cast a pall over the rest of my evening. After that, timidity took over and I soft pedaled the rest of the singletrack, convinced that my shoulder was injured and I would need to reassess whether I could continue with the race in the next town.

By the time I hit the 24-hour Chevron outside of Escondido, my shoulder felt better, and Hostess cupcakes and more coffee definitely helped. I decided to put in enough miles that night to pedal out of the cities and back into proper Forest Service Land to camp. Sleep Monster got its talons around me and I was lost in my haze, largely unaware of the miles slowly slipping behind me until I was back in my sleeping bag, face pressed into the grass, and the night was bewilderingly quiet. (Map from day three.) 

When the days get long

I woke up to the sound of bicycle tires grinding on sand, so I knew I must have slept a little. I hadn't set an alarm as part of my "let my body do what it needs to do" strategy, and almost felt disappointed when I realized the sky was still cast in pre-dawn violet. It was 5:45 a.m. and my mind was struggling to find the surface in a sea of grogginess. "Oh well. No use in laying around any longer." I packed up camp as color started to creep through the shadows on the eastern rim of the canyon. I was nearly 3,000 feet higher and it was still spring in this part of the desert — shades of green dotted by a bright palette of yellow wildflowers, cream yucca blossoms, and crimson Ocotillo.

I ate a robust breakfast of two flattened Snicker's Bars, having forgotten the day before that chocolate can't survive in the desert. I figured I needed to dispatch of them before they liquefied once again. Having neglected to eat "dinner" the night before, I was surprised how much more spring I had in my step after the Snicker's Bars. Still, as I commenced climbing through the sand, I was disappointed to see speeds in the three-miles-per-hour range. Was I pedaling this slowly last night? Probably, I thought grumpily.

I didn't have much time to be grumpy as the route soon lifted onto one of those famed Southern California 4x4 roads, the Pinyon Drop. The rutted, more-vertical-than-not hike-a-bike would be tough any day, but on this morning I struggled to find the strength I needed to continue basic forward motion. I felt like a vehicle with a faulty clutch. When I tried to engage the high gears, they slipped and I faltered. Gasping didn't feed enough oxygen to my racing heart, but I already had the bike perched precariously on a ledge above me so taking breaks or slowing down wasn't an option. There were several pitches like this and every one felt like a barbell loaded with one plate too many. I'd stand at the bottom, taking rapid breaths like a powerlifter trying to psych myself up, and charge up the hill in an all-out effort to push to the top before it crushed me. Good intervals for getting a lazy body back in shape — but not so good for a long endurance effort amid an already depleted physical state. This wasn't really "letting my body do what it needs to do," but at the same time I didn't have a choice. It was both refreshing (in a "yeah, cleared it!" kind of way) and discouraging (in a, "this race is going to take me a year" kind of way.)

It did feel satisfying to arrive at the top in still-cool morning air, head swimming happily through the endorphin surge and a half-bonked haze. My body had entered the hard end of living, and even two whole Snicker's Bars weren't going to go very far any longer. I pedaled in a drunken stupor and gazed over the Borrego valley, saturated in golden haze that accentuated just how far below it was now.

The jeep road took a dramatic turn downhill as it approached Highway S-2, the remnants of the Overland Stage Route of 1849. It's always fun to travel through historic areas that you know haven't changed all the much in an century and a half. And cycling on these sandy roads really give one a sense of what these stagecoach passengers jostled across in search of elusive fortunes. Today travelers are just looking for quick thrills — or slow punishments.

I arrived at the Stagecoach Trail Store just before 8 a.m., lucky to find the owner opened early specifically for Stagecoach 400 racers, as the place usually doesn't open until 9. I stumbled around the aisles, casing the place for any kind of coffee maker. Beyond that, I hadn't really thought about what I wanted to buy. I figured I would "let my body get what it wants to get." Turns out that was frozen egg and sausage burrito, a package of Hostess cupcakes, and one of those giant cans of Arizona fruit punch. Now, I utilize junk food as much as any amateur endurance athlete, but even I have my standards. All of these foods dip well below these standards. The place had bananas, and I didn't even give those a second glance. When left to its own devices, my instinctive side invariably veers toward all kinds of food my logical side has deemed disgusting. I find this amusing, and maybe a little telling. I usually feel great after I eat this garbage, until a few days go by and I can think of nothing but vegetables and fruit.

As I shopped for resupplies, a large contingent of Stagecoachers trickled in — Brendan and Mary, their friend Carter, a couple from San Diego, and two other guys. None of us were in any particular hurry to start pedaling again, so we enjoyed a leisurely breakfast and talked about the previous day's adventures. Part of the fun of participating in these types of events is meeting the other weirdos who share this strange desire to go out and beat themselves up on a bike for days on end. Everyone seemed so normal while sitting at picnic tables in the morning sun, devouring donuts and yogurt.

Still, there was little time to be social, as we all understood we had to make a break for Oriflamme Canyon before the sun really started cranking. Oriflamme Canyon was the ramp that would take us from the low-lying desert to the crest of the Laguna Mountains. Its name sounds like a brand of wood-burning stove, and its steep walls feel like one. Hurt, hurt, hurt. The couple from San Diego admirably struggled to ride up the steep, loose road in the crushing heat. I gave up early but shadowed them consistently at walking speeds. Still, even the hike was brutal. I again couldn't find my high gears and soon began to see plenty of flowers and vistas to take pictures of during needed "camera" breaks.

The reward for climbing Oriflamme were alpine meadows in the Lagunas. I say alpine although the elevation was only about 5,000 feet, and the climate zone for pine trees was actually still a thousand feet higher. But this terrain had the look and feel of a high mountain meadow, and was wonderful to ride through.

A short section traversed by a flowing ribbon of singletrack nearly made up for all of the heart-bursting effort of the early morning.

We crossed onto the California Riding and Hiking Trail, and the only part of this region I've seen before. This trail serves as part of the course in the San Diego 100, where I paced Beat for 40 miles last June. I remember thinking some of these trails would be way more fun to ride than run, and promising myself I'd come back with my bike. The context under which I'd returned amused me.

I dipped back into my pain cave on the hot climb up the Sunrise Highway, and the cave only deepened after I topped out at 5,500 feet and began the steep descent into Noble Canyon. The early part of the trail flowed but it quickly turned chunky, and then extra chunky. I'm not a good chunk rider even in the best of circumstances, and these were far from the best, given the heat, my fatigue, and the fact I was riding a fairly-new-to-me bike loaded with touring gear. Sections of trail were rideable for me, but after I while I grew tired of crawling off my bike every hundred yards and relented to hiking the whole thing, even the easier parts. Downhill hike-a-biking over boulders is strenuous, and after four or so miles I was the most irritable that I'd be during the entire Stagecoach 400. It was unfortunate that I spent much of this time chatting with a local mountain biker, who would ride a few hundred yards at not terribly fast descending speeds and then wait for me to catch up so he could ask more questions. It was fascinating to watch him ride and realize that at least some people don't just bomb down technical trail, but ride it so deliberately that their pace is almost confusingly slow (as in, why bother?) But I get that chunk riding is fun for people. I admit it has never done much for me and I doubt I'll ever develop enough interest to really learn. Anyway, the local rider was pleasant to chat with but toward the end he insisted that I couldn't get to Alpine via the supposed direction I was heading, and I needed to take this and that shortcut. When I told him I couldn't shortcut the course no matter what, he argued that his way was better, and I should either just race the thing or do what I want (I presume he said this because I was hiking a mountain bike downhill, so I obviously wasn't racing.) Anyway, he was nice, just inquisitive, and I wonder now if I my annoyance with him stemmed from how grumpy I was at the time.

Still, I was annoyed with this guy because I believed he questioned my "racing," so I was happy with the trail split off in another direction after he'd already ridden ahead. The trail immediately turned up this crazy steep chip seal road. I spent so much of the morning hiking that I already had blisters, so I engaged my highest possible non-slipping gear to ride this climb. As I was mashing the pedals, two guys from the Stagecoach 400 motored up beside me. They weren't carrying any bikepacking gear, so I assumed correctly that these were the "hotelers" — fast guys who were touring the course by cranking hard for a hundred or so miles every day and spending longer nights in high-end hotels. A great way to ride this course, really. I approve.

"Awesome riding," one said to me.

"Who me?" I replied and laughed. If only they had seen me on the Noble Canyon Trail.

"Yeah," the other guy said. "We're about to give up and walk."

"Let's do that now," the first said, and they dismounted their bikes and began walking as I drifted ahead of them. I admit it felt good to climb, well, anything faster than the hotelers, so I pressed a little harder on my unreliable accelerator. I may have even beat them to the top of the climb if my GPS battery hadn't died, but I wasn't about to let that thing blank out for a second. They were riding again when they passed, and that was the last I'd see of the hotelers.

After that was more exhausting singletrack, a wicked fun descent out of the mountains, a steep rolling fire road, more descent, and finally I reached the town of Alpine right at sunset. After stopping for dinner and a small restock, I strongly considered staying in town. Somehow I let Beat talk me into continuing for a few more hours after I called him. (Honestly, I don't remember what he said to me if anything. I only know that I blamed him in my mind for coaxing me out of Alpine after I reached a horrendous hike-a-bike right at the end of the night. Sorry, Beat. I don't think you deserved the blame.)

I was so tired. I guess that goes without saying, but it's more difficult to describe the subtle ways in which fatigue accumulates alongside hours of effort. One minute I was inexplicably giddy, and the next I watched crazy-eyed rabbits dart toward my front wheel. I'm not certain these rabbits were real. It was only about ... oh, it was midnight again. The couple from San Diego had told me I'd probably find a good spot to camp at the top of "the hike-a-bike." I lifted my bike over a cement barrier and saw yet another near-vertical wall of a dirt road. I'm not even sure how I managed to keep the bike from rolling back down the hill due to my own inertia, but I think I pushed that climb at a rate of about 0.5 miles per hour — meaning I think it took me an hour to climb it. It probably wasn't that long, but it felt that long. I found a nice flat spot at the top to collapse and unrolled my bivy in record time. I was lucky at the time not to know that I was on an Indian reservation where the tribe didn't take too kindly to trespassing bikers and had already threatened a few who were caught trying to access this part of the course earlier in the day. I say I was lucky I didn't know, because I was going to sleep well tonight. (Map from day two.)