Regular Climbing

For some reason I haven't mentioned on my blog that Alison and I joined the indoor rock climbing gym here in STP: Vertical Endeavors.  It's been great to have regular easy access to climbing.  We can even go after work, which is pretty hard to do outside in MN considering the drive required.  It's given me the chance to actually improve, rather than remain at the same climbing ability for the reason that it was so infrequent for me to get the chance to go.  I'd say I was comfortable climbing up to 5.9, with the ability to pull out a 5.10a once and a while when I got ambitious.  Not particularly impressive considering I've climbed over a decade now.  I'm now occasionally onsighting a 5.10d, and working on breaking the 5.11a barrier.  If you're not familiar with climbing grades, here is a descent description if you're bored sometime.  5.11a is certainly not among the grades being considered "hard" by good climbers these days, but for a guy with a job and a wife and bills and a biking habit who doesn't climb that much, 5.11a is pretty hard.  I'll be quite please to accomplish that grade, and I think I will pretty soon if I keep at it.  Plus, it should be noted that grades are completely subjective to who set the route, local opinion, type of rock (or gym), type of climb (steep face, crack, dihedral, roof, chimney, etc., blah blah blah), so yeah, it depends.  But 5.11a is still hard for me.  :)  Sweet.

A goal...

For several years, I've been tossing around an idea in the back of my mind.  One of those "dude, it would be sweet to actually do that" things that an outdoorsy guy thinks about when it's dark and cold outside and he's dreaming of the next few trips to put together.  It may not be the same type of trip that many dream up, but it's something I've wanted to do based on my background.  I'm from North Dakota, and I'm a slightly obsessive cyclist.  I have a touring bike.  I love to camp.  I love covering a lot of ground on two wheels.  One only has to connect the dots to see that I need to cross my home state on my Long Haul Trucker.  I think 2009 will be the season.  It's an odd time for me to decide to tour across a state, seeing as it just started snowing to commence the long nasty St Paul, MN winter, but it's never bad to set a goal, even if it's a ways out.  I think as far as touring goes it will be a fairly easy one to put together.  I'd really prefer to cross epic miles going coast to coast, or UT to AK, or something of the sort, but work is just always there ruining those types of semi-rational thoughts.  So, something simpler, yet still noteworthy, such as crossing a state is a start.  I haven't begun to plan any routes or made any official plans, but I've decided to give it a real go this next year.  Hopefully whatever life has coming will allow the goal to materialize and be met.  That's all for now, just needed to write it down.  Goals work better if you write them down and people can harass you about them.  :)  

Afternoon of one-speed wanderings...

The past couple days I've spent indoors, working, relaxing, and taking in the Banff Film Fest.  It was time to get outside before the work week interrupts again.  I called up Nate and we headed out for an urban singlespeed ride, as the local MORC-maintained mtb singletrack is going through a lot of freeze/thaw cycles and is too delicate to ride without tearing it up.  We started by rolling down the center boulevard of historic Summit Ave here in STP, which actually does have dirt singletrack, and it wasn't muddy at all.  From there we turned south, dropped down to the Mississippi River bottoms and rode the rocky shoreline, taking a breif stop to check out Hidden Falls, which wasn't falling enough for a picture, then ended up cruising the gravel roads of Fort Snelling State Park.  We ate, then took off for Minnehaha Falls on the way up the Minneapolis side of the river.  It was running slowly, and has started it's process of icing over for the long winter.  Paved bike path, (and some secret singletrack that was also dry enough) brought us back to Summit and then home.  Seeing as we made an awful lot of stops to try riding over obstacles we found with our 29 inch wheels, and took a lot of round about explorations of paths/singletrack/backroads along the way, and just generally gawked at the beautiful early winter day, we managed to spend four hours out.  So in other words, a good singlespeed ride with no where in particular to go and no real time constraints.  Yup.  

The KM and Minnehaha Falls...

Mississippi River...

Secret Singletrack...don't bother looking for it, it's probably a whole .2 miles long.  :)

Surly and River.  Good afternoon.  

Karate Monkey!

Yeah, so ever since I moved to UT and sold my Surly 1x1 which I used to live on, I've been missing it.  The decision to see was based on the fact that riding a singlespeed in UT is nothing short of painful.  Everything involves long climbs, followed by rocky fast descents.  Riding rigid and singlespeed is a poor choice.  Not saying it can't be done, I just saw a one-speed Surly on Porcupine Rim (on the trip discussed two blog entries ago), but it takes a special kind of crazy (I have it on some days, but then I just look at my full suspension rock-eating efficient FSR and come back to the real world.)  At the time it made sense to switch to geared riding.  It did, and it was a good choice.  But then we quickly moved back to the midwest, and my lack of rigid steel  singlespeed (read- winter ready stead as well) has been driving me nuts.  I had the perfect rig for the Twin Cities- heck, Surly is headquartered here.  Well, I surfed and surfed craigslist and eBay for a loooong time, and I'm happy to say I found the perfect deal.  I'm the smiling owner of a barely (seriously- it's in great shape) 22" Surly Karate Monkey.  Mighty fine bike.  The guy I bought it from pretty much gave it to me, as he works for Quality Bike Products, and built the thing for cost I'm sure.  So yeah, be jealous of my find.  :)  It's set up as the single speed 29er it is popularly found as, but the guy also just threw in (here, have a bunch of free money) a nine speed drivetrain if I choose to gear it.  I may, the further into the winter headwinds we get, but I'm enjoying simple riding and little maintenance.  Plus, I found I'm able to hit Ramsey Hill (local lung buster- it's way wussy compared to UT though) on it single, so I can't really say the gears are necessary.  I have to say it took me back riding it the other night in the cold temps singlespeeding through the dark.  Felt like years past on the 1x1.  Good.  Many an adventure will be had atop the Karate Monkey.  I'm not selling it if I move to the mountains.  :)  Keep your paws off.  

The old 1x1, shown in a common storage place, a messy Grand Forks apartment full of bikes and gear. 

The end of my grieving :)  -the new Karate Monkey, enjoying a lap at Lebanon Hills...

Banff Mountain Film Festival

Last night, Alison and I attended the first of two nights (going again tonight) of the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour, currently visiting Midwest Mountaineering in Mpls.  Makes for a sweet night out.  It's a collection of award winning outdoor films from the main festival in Banff.  If you've never checked anything like this out before, it's totally worth the cost (which really isn't the worst considering what we all pay to go to the friggin' Olive Garden without blinking an eye).  Go sometime, enjoy.  It's entertainment even if you aren't the running around outside yourself type.  Cool to see what people are doin' out there.

MTB'ing Moab, OCT '08

October brought a long awaited return to Moab.  It’s not that I haven’t been there within the past couple years, cuz I have, but not to mountain bike, which was the purpose of this latest venture.  One might say that riding fat tires in Moab is the principle reason to go there.  Probably, but I’d say the climbing is mighty fine too.  Didn’t do that this time, but didn’t find the trip lacking either.  Seeing as it’s so damn expensive to fly with my bike (NWA will let me bring 100lbs of crap between two checked bags plus a carry on and personal item as an employee, but a 50 lb bike case by itself is apparently unacceptable), I rented from Poison Spider Bicycles, a local bike shop in Moab, and I think one of the best (although Moab is small there are somewhere around 7 quality shops due to the enormity of riding culture there.)  I rented a Trek Fuel EX7, which I’d have to rate as adequate for the job, but not as cool as my Stumpjumper which was hanging up at home wondering why.  The West is what it’s made for.  Sad.  That aside, the riding was as I remember it- stellar.    We (myself, Kelly, and friends from MN- Nate and Emily)  rode Amasa Back the first day, and took it further than I have in past years.  We didn’t just top out on the initial climb as normal, but continued along the top of the Mesa that leads out above the Colorado river and eventually overlooks the mines of Potash, which in my visit two years ago Alison, Ty, and I rode out to via road bikes.  It was a different view from what I think was a couple thousand feet above.  You never can quite tell unless some topo map or local can tell you for sure.  But you can surely tell it’s damn high and straight down.  I enjoyed the climb up, having been without long, technical climbs that I got used to living in Northern UT.  We sessioned a few hard rock piles, mostly failing but loving each try.  The biggest challenge for me this trip was breathing.  I’m am again a Midwesterner that can’t breath at altitude.  It really hits you.  The descent was a blast, but I’m going to have to say that Poison Spider didn’t watch the pads on my disc brakes very well, as they were less than ideal at high speeds.  Not what you want on technical rocky terrain.  I was pinching my fingers between brake lever and bar before getting enough stopping power.  Not comfortable.  I compensated the next day by moving the levers in so as to pull on the very ends, and it did the trick.  Still, give an expensive rental pad that aren’t super worn.  Come on.   They’ve always been wonderful shop so I’ll let that one go.  I still bought a t-shirt.  J  The next day brought the biggest push.  For the first time (since we all have jobs now), we took the shuttle van far up into the La Sal mountains to ride down from Hazard to meet up with Porcupine Rim, which I’ve blogged about before as my favorite trail ever ridden.  Still is, but I have even more respect for it’s harshness after this trip.  The La Sal trails (which I don’t even remember the names of) were a reminder of Wasatch riding- fast high altitude (translation, lung busting) gravely singletrack with lots of baby-heads (small round rocks protruding from the ground, which I know is horrible term, but it is what it is) and sharp rocks as well.  Basically, a great place for suspension and the right tires.    I miss that feeling of getting tired from descending.  Not possible in MN.  Maybe in the ND Badlands, but probably not.  The day saw over 6,000 vertical feet of downward travel on two wheels over many many rocks.  To use a slightly overused term in most mtb circles- epic.  After the alpine singletrack of the La Sals, we transitioned to the Upper Porcupine Singletrack, or UPS trail, which is technically not supposed to be ridden (BLM disputes I think), but if you know where it’s at, which one of us did, and you follow that person, no one’s around to see you ride it.  And you have fun.  It’s basically an extension off the top of Porcupine Rim, and way worth the ride.  But be careful, there’s a lot of places you could disappear and not be found for a while, the trail follows the Rim, which is quite tall, so don’t try to be a hero.  No when to walk your bike, as is good advice in Moab in general.  Also, if you crack yourself along the trail in general, it’s a helicopter ride or a long long super miserable hike out, which will end in the dark for sure.  Porcupine Rim in and of itself was still there, the same trail I’ve raved about.  But I’ve never ridden it after already descending so far and thus with already blistered hands.  I looked down at one point to see blood coming through my glove.  One blister decided to open up.  Didn’t hurt until the next day, but looked pretty ugly.  My blister was not the injury of the day.  The trail bit hard at only 1.75 miles to go till the finish at the Colorado River.  Emily had the biggest endo I’ve seen to date in person.  Her front tire washed out to the left on some sand, and she fell to the right, and over a 12 foot cliff onto rock upside down with bike on top.  Bad news.  15 feet in all after starting atop her bike.  She was super tough through the whole thing; not a tear shed.  And Kelly, being an EMT from his ski patrol experienced was able to figure out her condition.  It was lucky.  She could have easily broken her pelvis, which out in the backcountry can lead to death by way of internal bleeding, but did not.  She came out with a badly bruised sacrum (the end of your pelvis).   We did get a walk-out search and rescue ordered, and the trip from crash to ER was around 4 hours.  Not bad for coming off the Rim.  But it was a bummer for her to have to close out such as great ride with a huge crash.  We’re all glad she’s ok though, to state the obvious.   Moab does at least have to tasty eats, and we were able to shake off the excitement with some good food and brew.  We hoteled it for the night so Emily didn’t have to put up with tents and 35 degrees injured, and drove back to SLC in the morning.  Getting back to MN was an adventure too with reduced flights and non-revenue status; it took two days and we missed a day of work.  Well, in the words of Office Space, “I wouldn’t say we were missing it.”  J  Long story short, wonderful trip with a sting in the middle.  Go to Moab.  Ride huge, but respect the wildness of UT.  Do your best to stay upright, and don’t take the battle with gravity too far.   

Pictures, in pretty much reverse chronological order...

At the top of Amasa Back...

"The blister"...now that's descending till it hurts...

Bummer...hey, that's a sweet Intense 5.5 you crashed...

SAR walk out...

There's a Christmas card shot...Nate and Emily

There's the Castle Valley mesas and Casselton Tower down there (usually you're saying up there)

One UT hardman and three MN heavy breathers at 9,500 feet.  :)  No, I'm not as fat and my jacket blowing the wind eludes.  :)

Shuttles and a whole lot of money in full suspension bikes...

The "stairs" at the beginning of Amasa back.  I've sucessfully ridden down them a few times, and believe or not, Kelly has nearly successfully ridden UP.  Nice.

Chillin' above Potash...

Resting on top red rock and below the La Sals.  I love Moab.

Sessioning on Amasa Back...

More of the same...makes for an excellent afternoon.  Screw cubicles.  

Yeah, so you may be thinking- "Ben, your blog sure has sucked lately."  Your right.  But it's not due to my lack of having anything to write about.  I've had quite a bit of fun the past month, including a Moab trip and a bike purchase.  You'd think I'd have updated on that.  I haven't though, because of my addiction to fun.  You see, I've been working a lot of hours at my job too, and during the time I actually have off I tend to bike or climb, or travel to bike or climb.  This ends up meaning that I don't write.  Bummer.  I do intend to update you all with the latest adventures soon, but as of tonight I still have to keep you waiting.  That is if you haven't abandoned the habit of checking treadnorth already.   Stay tuned...