Bookend adventures

Over Thanksgiving weekend, I joined six other women for a wonderful three-night bikepacking trip around the White Rim, a 100-mile loop around Island in the Sky within Canyonlands National Park. Of course I'll write about the ride, but it was bookended by other fun adventures from which I have an equally obnoxious number of photos that I'd like to post to my ever-expanding blog archive. 

 I packed my bike at the last minute, meaning 10 p.m. the night before I left for Moab. Overnight lows were predicted to dip into the teens, and we expected at least one day of rain and snow. I wanted to bring my tent, stove, favorite comfort foods, rain gear, puffy jacket, a bulk of warm clothing, etc. As I loaded up my bike bags, it was becoming clear most of the weight would be on the handlebars, which is awful for handling. Beat suggested putting a rear rack on the bike, and I agreed. I appreciated this pannier set-up when I used it to cross Alaska in 2016 — low profile, easy access, lots of space. It also meant I didn't have to strap any weight on the front. A recent conversation with Jay Petervary about his Salsa Blackborow has left me more convinced that this is probably the way to go for long-distance touring on mostly nontechnical terrain (i.e. snow and dirt roads.) Of course racks are just one more point of failure, and this much space is usually not necessary, so this isn't my new "race" system. But it did prove comfortable.

 Before I embarked on a four-day ride into a remote desert, it seemed prudent to test the system at least once. I stopped in Fruita on my way west.

There were only about two hours before dark, but it was enough time to justify veering off the freeway toward the 18 Road trail system. The parking lot was packed at 3 p.m. on a random Monday, and I felt a little silly pulling a pannier-laden touring bike out of my car next to riders decked out in knee pads and full-face helmets (which also are overkill on 18 Road. Probably beginners.) The bike zipped effortlessly up the road, as though it was naked — apparently if you can't see all of the extra stuff, it doesn't matter. I turned onto Frontside trail, where the bike managed well on tight curves and sudden dips into washes. Having all that extra weight on the back wheel noticeably improved my traction in the sand. And as I dismounted to push up a steep incline, the effort felt strangely different yet familiar. Less like pushing a bike ... and more like dragging a sled. It is more comfortable when you don't need to wrestle with the front end. JayP was right!

 The sun dipped below the horizon and suddenly the temperature shifted from 44 degrees to something much more Arctic. I had all of my extra clothing in my bike, but I felt too hurried to stop and put on more layers, so I shivered my way back to the trailhead. There were miles to go yet.

 It was difficult to fit in travel around my work schedule, so I ended up in Moab for an extra day before our Wednesday start. On Tuesday I usually work all day, but it's hard to justify staying in Moab and not going outside at least once. So I stayed up late on Monday to bank a few hours that I could spend hiking at the crack of dawn. It was a frigid 18 degrees when I arrived at Devil's Garden in Arches National Park.

 I attempted to run in an effort to cover ground more quickly, but I kept on veering off route and getting lost. I haven't visited this part of Arches since I was 19, and I'd forgotten that much of it involves picking your way across sandstone fins and sandy washes, rather than follow any sort of trail. There wasn't another person in sight, probably because it was a random subfreezing Tuesday morning in November. Still, all I hear about in regard to Arches is unbelievable crowds, so the lack of humans was eerie.

I began to wonder if I'd wandered off the edge of the park into a hopeless wilderness. I was continuously confused, waiting for one of these narrow canyons to wall me inside forever.

 Dark Angel ... apparently this is a dead-end side trail. I did some more wandering around, looking for a continuing trail that doesn't exist. I realize this confusion is my fault for not bringing a map, but who gets lost on trails in national parks? I do! After this point, I finally started seeing trail signs. But they didn't necessarily help my effort to close the loop.

I found my first human about a half mile beyond Double O arch — an older gentleman with an enormous camera dangling from a neck strap, as he hesitated at the base of a narrow fin.

"Is this the way to Double O?" he asked.

I looked back. "It probably is, because I came from there. You just follow this fin, and drop into a basin. It's about a half mile away."

"I don't know about this. Seems sketchy. Is it worth it?"

I shrugged. "Sure. It's a beautiful arch. Even though it's still in the shade right now."

The prospect of a bad photograph seemed to be the excuse he needed, because he muttered a gruff "thanks" and stooped to crab-walk off the fin. He was done.

I thought since this man had found his way to this point, it must be easy going from here. But I still wandered into dead-end canyons and had to crawl back out. The nine-mile "run" turned into two and a half hours I didn't necessarily have to spare. But was it worth it? Yes.

 Our final night on the White Rim was Friday, and I had to rush north through a whiteout blizzard on Saturday to arrive in Salt Lake City in time for a professional photo shoot my mother had scheduled with the entire family. I felt guilty enough about missing Thanksgiving, so I was going to do what it took to be in that photo. Happily I made it with plenty of time to spare, with a few more days to spend visiting my family. I did sneak out Sunday morning for a hike on my favorite trail near my parents' house, because it gains 1,000 feet per mile for as long as you want to march along (well, until you eventually reach the top of Lone Peak), with endless views and not too many rocks to trip over.

The whiteout that I drove through on Saturday had deposited two to eight inches of snow (at the higher altitudes) that had yet to be packed. So it was a capital-S Slog. I wasn't wearing gaiters, so my turnaround point came when my feet were too wet and cold to tolerate anymore. Somehow I still managed to do this for 3.5 miles/3,500 feet of climbing one way, since a capital-S Slog is still my number-one weird compulsion. It was a gorgeous morning, with near-freezing temps and a snow-dusted Salt Lake Valley. I was enjoying myself, admittedly the alone time more than anything.


 Nearly every recent year on Black Friday, my dad and I have climbed Gobblers Knob, a 10,000-foot summit above Big Cottonwood Canyon. It's become a tradition, enough so that as I weighed missing Thanksgiving, I also had to contend with skipping out on Gobblers Knob. As it turns out, the weather here was terrible on Black Friday, but pretty amazing on Cyber Monday. It was frigid in the morning, though. We opted for a late start to beat the chill. It was still 14 degrees when we set out at 9:30.

About 1.5 miles into the climb, we encountered an unnerving moose infestation along a small ridge. Two young bulls crashed through the alders and crossed the trail between my dad and me. Then we had a short standoff with a cow and yearling calf. Then we saw this big bull, with another two cows close by. They showed no signs of agitation and mostly ignored us, but my heart was pounding.

We followed the moose trail toward the saddle. We were the first humans to venture up here since the weekend storm, which dumped as much as two feet of snow on top of mostly bare ground. So the snowshoeing was a Capital-S Slog made even harder by the endless obstacles hidden by heavy powder snow. We tripped over rocks and logs and we trudged along, lactic acid burning through our muscles at 1.5 mph.

 Dad insisted on breaking trail, since I've been complaining about my breathing again. I'm actually feeling pretty good right now, but admittedly I didn't object.

 Finally, after more than three hours, we reached the summit and sat down for a well-earned break with Dad's signature summit lunch — Nutella and butter on pita bread. We were roasting in the sun, and I still had my coat on because I'd expected wind. This was probably the most calm I've ever seen this peak, including summer months.

I'm thankful these adventures came together so well. It was an incredible week.

Time capsule

This weekend a bike shop in Littleton hosted an event called "Winter Bike Expo." When my friend sent a link to the calendar, the whole thing seemed so odd to me. A whole expo dedicated to winter cycling? When did this become a thing? I seem to reside in a bubble where it's perpetually 2007, I own the only fat bike in a 50-mile radius, and hikers still scream and jump out of the way when they see a bike inching toward them on a trail. The reality of 2018, where there are dozens of fat bike models in production, a dizzying array of tires and wheels and pogies from which to choose, and hundreds of cyclists who ride such bikes in the far-away land of the Denver metro area... that reality is still so odd to me. So, of course I had to attend this version of bizarro world.

The Winter Bike Expo was a lot of fun. The day itself was terrible — gray and gloomy with freezing rain at 22 degrees and hard ice clinging to every surface. It was much better to sit inside a warm shop, drool over gear, eat pancakes, and talk about winter cycling. Jay Petervary gave a presentation about his 10 years on the Iditarod Trail, and I laughed knowingly at his Purple Puglsey antics in the long-ago era of 2007. This is my era! I'm not even exactly sure what I've been doing for the past 11 years.

I had a chance to chat with lots of local cyclists. One man and I talked for several minutes before he recognized me ... "Hey, aren't you Jill Up in Alaska?" My blog hasn't been called Up in Alaska since 2010, so I was intrigued. He recounted the post where I introduced my Pugsley. He shared details about rides that I could barely remember, but looking back through my archives, his descriptions were accurate. He lost track of my blog after that, which is understandable, because who reads the same stranger's blog for 12 (cough, 13) years? But the adventures of Pugsley were part of his inspiration to take up fat biking when it became more accessible to him, nearly a decade later. 

I forget that I have this persona online, capturing snippets of my life in these virtual capsules that stay frozen in time. I'm still a real person with this dynamic life who has changed a lot since 2007. But for someone who last read my blog in the late-aughts, I can still be Jill in Juneau, enthusiastic owner of the one fat bike in a 50-mile radius, wide-eyed newbie to all things Alaska, dedicated cyclist riding daily through the cold and snain. This version of me has faded into the past, and yet she lives on through archives and memories. It's a romantic notion — enough so that I didn't tell the man I was still blogging, because I didn't want him to catch up on my somehow less romantic stories of the present day.  

And if he does find my blog, well, look — I'm still riding fat bikes! Not as avidly or frequently, but I'm definitely rediscovering the love for winter cycling. A finisher of last year's Iditarod 130, Dennis, invited me to join him for a jaunt along the South Sourdough Trail on Friday evening. The ride sounded arduous. I admit I avoid riding bikes with others because I'm actually pretty bad at riding bikes, I know I should be a lot better by now, and I don't want them to discover my secret shame. I expected I'd fare poorly on the Sourdough Trail under current conditions — a steeply undulating singletrack that's been furthered narrowed to the width of two skis, surrounded by wheel-swallowing fluff, but the snowpack is still thin enough that if you fall into it, you will smack rocks.

A ride like this is not something I would seek out on my own, but it's good to venture outside my comfort zone. So I huffed and puffed to keep up with Dennis, pushing my heart rate into the 160s even though my bike was moving at walking speed. Soon both of us were wading through knee-deep, mashed-potato snow. We'd traveled a mere 4.7 miles when my two-hour turnaround time arrived. We didn't even make it to Brainard Lake Road. Despite this truth, Dennis was cheerful the whole time. His attitude surprised me ... even among the endurance crowd, I rarely meet somehow who loves a good, pointless slog as much as I do. It was fun to meet another kindred fat-bike spirit in a land far away from Alaska.

The evening was beautiful, with orange lenticular clouds stretching across the sky and a pink glow on the snow. Dark settled in and we switched on our lights, swerving and bucking downhill through the rutted snow. I crashed into a number of times, always hitting something hard and unseen on the ground. That evening I limped home with fist-sized bruises on my knee, hip, and butt cheek. My elbow was still stiff from Monday's crash. Everything else on my body was sore, too.

"I am getting way too old for this," I told Beat. Ten miles in four hours. Geez, I could walk that distance and speed with considerably less effort and pain. But in my head, I was grinning. That ride was great fun. 

 On Sunday, I returned to South Sourdough with Beat and Jorge and without my bike. The morning was gorgeous, with fresh snow and a temperature of 22 degrees.

We strapped on the snowshoes and set a fresh trail to Niwot Ridge. Niwot was our go-to spot for winter training last year. It's close to home, generally free of avalanche danger, and consistently — and I mean always — unbelievably windy. On a calm day in Nederland, the wind rips across Niwot at 45 mph. The ridge-top weather station recorded a 90 mph gust on Nov. 10. It's virtually impossible to venture up here and not have at least a small epic.

What better training for Alaska can there be than a subzero windchill while slogging along punchy drifts, exposed tussocks and sastrugi?

 The windswept plain at 12,000 feet was colder than it looks. I bundled up but neglected to bring goggles, so I had a continuous ice-cream headache from the wind hitting a thin strip of skin along my eyebrows.

 Jorge and Beat together again, where we took shelter beside the weather station. The arms on the windmill were shredded to pieces — clearly another victim of the Niwot wind.

Someday, maybe 10 or 11 years from now, I will look back on these trips to Niwot Ridge. The memories are going to all blur together in a cloud of blowing snow, but I know I'll sigh longingly with an affection only the past can contain. Or maybe I'll still be up on Niwot 11 years from now, and all of these memories will feel like a movie reel that spins years away in moments. I might be grateful I have this archive to scroll through, projecting my wistfulness with images frozen in time. 

Impressed with the winter so far

Halloween morning

Beat and I are winter enthusiasts. That was one of our incentives for moving from the Bay Area to Boulder — I mean, living near big mountains is okay and all, but winter. We weren't going to see the dark, cold, constant barrage of ice and snow that we might find in Interior Alaska. But I envisioned crisp, sunny, glittering snow days similar to those I enjoyed during my youth in the comparable climes of Salt Lake City.

Of course it was unrealistic to believe that after three decades of climate change, any winter could resemble my childhood nostalgia. But the winter of 2017-18 effectively never happened. I trained for my Iditarod race by towing a water-jug-loaded cart up and down a dirt road. I rode my mountain bike while wearing shorts up to 10,000 feet on the winter solstice. Beat and I dragged sleds across rocks well above treeline. There were bouts of snow and cold, but they were little more than whispers on the relentless wind. The day before we left for Alaska in February, we got a half foot of snow and temperatures dipped to -11F.

"This feels like the first day of winter," I thought at the time.

It's far too soon to guess how the winter of 2018-19 will turn out, but it's off to a great start. Our first snow at home come on Oct. 7, and there have been weekly storms since. In the past month I have probably ridden my fat bike through more miles of Colorado snow than the last two winters combined (considering I didn't take my fat bike out even once last season, which I know is a terrible thing to confess.) There have been plenty of warm days, too. Of course I don't mind. Colorado is its best idiosyncratic self when it's 60 degrees and sunny one day, 15 and snowing the next.

 We were able to enjoy the 60-degree weather on Saturday with our friend Daniel, who dropped in for a visit and a late-morning run. The sun beat down as we descended the rocky trail through Eldorado Canyon, scrambled a climber's access trail, then ascended the grassy foothills toward Shadow Canyon. This grassy section never fails to spark a mild asthma episode ... even now that pollen season is long over and I'm not as allergic to grass as I once was. But it's always like this here. I can sense my airways tightening, like tiny fists, and feel pressure building through each exhalation. This sensation is notably different from my more persistent breathing problems, which is why I don't believe exercise-induced asthma is my main issue. This is just my less frustrating, "grassy field problem." Here I can use my inhaler and instantly feel much better. I wish it always worked that way.

Still, besides the short bout of wheezing, I felt refreshingly good on this run. Beat and Daniel maintained a reasonably brisk pace and I was able to keep up with them, at least until they dropped me like a hot rock on the final descent. I think I'm starting to come around. I wish I could be more excited about this, but I fear it's just the upswing in an interminable pattern.

 On Sunday we woke up to temperatures in the teens and snow. I love just being at home on days like this — nowhere we need to go, nothing we need to do besides stoke the fire and enjoy the silent dance of snowflakes against a black and white landscape.

 We did go out for a hike in the afternoon, descending into South Boulder Creek canyon. 

 This is one of my favorite nearby destinations. We didn't stop long, though ... it was 10 degrees and the early evening twilight was rapidly approaching.

On Monday, Betsy and I had tentatively planned a mountain adventure. But the timing didn't work out — there was so much new snow that the roads were a mess and trails were likely to be buried. Our official snow total, recorded by the nearest NWS weather station, was 14.2 inches. The Denver Airport only saw two inches and even the local ski hill — 2,000 feet higher — reported eight inches. Clearly, this storm saved the bulk of its goodness just for me. Temperatures were still in the mid-20s, but the harsh Colorado sun was decimating the snowpack quickly, so I set out in the morning before it was all gone.

 Thanksgiving turkeys on the road.

 Sampling the trails at Walker Ranch. I took this photo after retreating from my go-to climb, which is sheltered in the shade and held onto a heavy layer of shin-deep snow. Pedaling near my limit netted maybe two miles per hour, which is one of my favorite aspects of snow biking: So much work, so little reward, which paradoxically becomes its own reward. I'd stripped off all of my insulation layers and still managed to drench my base layer in sweat. After about twenty minutes I decided that this glacier pace was perhaps too little reward, and turned around. The descent was steep enough to reel me in with the thrill of speed, then grab the front tire and whip me into the ground. My left elbow absorbed most of the impact, and continued throbbing painfully for the rest of the ride (and is now even more swollen and sore.) Grumble grumble grumble.

After crashing I didn't go home right away, even though that probably would have been best. You just can't waste a day like this. It might be the last big snow this season. Who can know?

Walker was a huge slog, though. Any uphill required bike pushing with a sore arm. Lots of effort. Some pain. Grumble grumble grumble. Still, it was a gorgeous outing. I was exhausted after 17 miles, and fairly bonked because I wasn't expecting my quick neighborhood ride to take nearly four hours, so I had no snacks. But I did feel strong. I'm trying to harness this feeling to shore up optimism — that it will be a cold, snowy, fierce and strong winter after all.