Colnago Gran Fondo - St. Tropez

As I mentioned in my last post, the night before the Gran Fondo I had put in some earplugs before going to bed, in an attempt to try and make sleeping easier in the presence of jet lag and the noisy hotel. The Gran Fondo started at 8:00am, so I had planned on arriving at 7:45am. Allowing for 30 minutes to ride the 10km to the start (the Gran Fondo started in St. Tropez, I was staying in Cogolin) and 45 minutes to have breakfast and get ready, I had set my alarm for 6:30am. Needless to say I was quite tired when I went to bed, from having arisen that morning at 4:00am to catch my flight to Nice, and from not having fallen asleep until 3:00am two nights before due to jet lag. Eventually I drifted off to sleep, dreaming of the next day's ride.

As my eyes gradually opened the next morning before (so I thought) my alarm had gone off, I thought "Wow, it sure gets bright early in France! It's not even 6:30am and look at how bright it is!". I then tried to force my eyes open further so that I could make out the time displayed on the clock radio, and as I did so, through the muffling of my ear plugs I began to make out the incessant ringing of my wake-up alarm. Sacre bleu! That meant I was running late. I frantically rubbed my eyes and read the time: 7:36am. That meant I was running REALLY late. Normally I like to have breakfast before I go on a 6 hour ride, but at this point there was no time for that. I frantically pulled on my jersey and shorts (which I had thankfully laid out the night before), applied sunscreen (nobody likes skin cancer, even when running late), grabbed two bananas and half of a fruit cake that I had bought the day before (I love fruitcake, even when it's not Christmas), and bolted out the door.

I had been planning on riding the 10km to St. Tropez at a really easy pace to warm up for the day ahead, but it had now turned into a frantic 10km team time trial done in conjunction with two Brits that I picked up along the way who had also slept in. As I rode I crammed fruitcake into my mouth while checking the time and realizing that the only way we would make the start was if they were running behind schedule (after all, we were in France, not Switzerland). As we rolled into St. Tropez at 8:05am things were looking good as the police were still blocking the roads, and we finally came around a corner to the start area and everyone was still there (see below). Bonne chance!


There were cyclists stretching back as far as the eye could see, so I rode back until the barriers allowed me to squeeze into the start area and join the throng of cyclists. I just had time to put on my arm warmers (it was a little chilly but until that point I hadn't noticed) when the gun fired and we were off!

This was the first Gran Fondo that I have done, but from what I had read about them I was under the impression that it was more or less a big group ride/tour done with a few thousand other cyclists, with perhaps a few sporting individuals at the front of the pack who would push the pace and see how fast they could go. For this reason I hadn't placed too much emphasis on any sort of training, with most of my preparations coming in the form of downhill and backcountry skiing. Well, it turns out that a Gran Fondo is a lot more like a race than a tour. This first registered immediately after the gun went off, as everyone around me took off at a frantic pace through the narrow streets of St. Tropez, and once we were out of the town and onto wider roads we continued to maintain a 40-45km/hour pace. "What's the hurry guys? I thought this was just for fun?!?". Maybe this impression was accentuated by my having started closer to the front, but I had a lot of people steam past me (and I mean A LOT), and everyone seemed to be going all out.

Eventually I drifted far enough back that I could hold the pace without fear of blowing up in 20km (there had been three ride options: 77km, 121km, and 161km; I had of course registered for the 161km version) and we continued to cruise along the roads. Everything was closed to traffic, so I felt like we were in the Tour de France as we went zooming through the roundabouts in a giant peloton.

After about 20km we came to the base of the first climb and things began to break up, and I began repassing some of the old men and children who had passed me on the flat section. It was a nice long gradual climb, and given that we had about 7,500 feet of climbing to go it was good ot get some of it out of the way. Eventually we crested the summit and continued along a ridge before descending back down to the valley below. By this time I had started to recognize the people going more or less the same pace as me, and there was a common thread that everyone seemed to be about 30 years older than I was. One conclusion to draw would be that in Europe many old people ride Gran Fondos; the second, and more accurate conclusion would be that everyone who was my age was up the road by about 20 minutes at this point.

So, either European cyclists are intrinsically fitter than your North American protagonist, or perhaps they just train by riding their bikes instead of slaying mad pow in the Cascades. It didn't matter too much, but the upshot was that the small group that I found myself riding with consisted of myself and about 10 other riders who could have been on leave from their retirement homes, and one of them didn't have legs. Don't laugh, it's true: one of the guys had two prosthetic limbs from the knee down, and he was one of the stronger riders in the group (he had been ahead and only came to join our group when he stopped to change the padding on his legs).

We came to the first rest stop after 60km, some continued on through but I knew that I needed to eat as much as possible since I hadn't had the leisurely breakfast that I had planned on and because from past experience I know how important it is to stay fueled up when riding long distances with little preparation. I ate a few sweet loafs of something or other, grabbed some apricots, filled my water bottle with some strange European mint drink, and was on my way.

I'll apologize now that there aren't any pictures, I had planned on having a leisurely ride where I could snap lots of photos for nicely illustrated blog post (I even brought along a small tripod, which speaks to how miscontrued my impressions were of what the ride would be like) but everyone around me was going so fast and treating it like such a race that I had no choice but to do the same. Needless to say, when you are on the rivet with your forehead nailed to the stem trying not to let any daylight in between your wheel and the guy in front of you, there aren't a lot of oppurtunities to get out the tripod, set the 10 second self-timer, pose, and snap a photo. Hopefully the verbal description of the comedy of errors in my first Gran Fondo will keep my gentle reader adequately entertained. Here is one photo montage from the event photographer:


From the first feed station we headed up another big climb, and I passed some more people who would immediately catch back up as soon as we hit a flat section (that is the hallmark of my cycling abilities, not just something that happens when I am out of shape). Apparently it is okay for triathletes to ride Gran Fondos, there were a number who had on triathlon jerseys (e.g. Ironman Switzerland) and some who were even on triathlon bikes with aero bars. As expected, though they were quite fit and usually passed me on the climbs, on the downhills they took the corners so slow that you might have thought they were still ascending and they were easily dispatched with. I have come to realize that wearing triathlon gear while out on a ride is akin to driving a car with one of those "New Driver" stickers in the rear window; you are advertising to all those around you that your bike handling skills are nonexistent and that it would be prudent to leave a wide berth when passing.

We continued along, and after 115km we arrived at the second feed station. This one was similar to the last except that it had baguettes and pieces of Brie cheese (after all, we were in France) that were quite appealing as I was starting to get sick of sweet food (the upper threshold on my sweet tooth is quite high, but it does exist) as the only food that had managed to grab while rushing out the door that morning were some Dutch "stroop vvvaffels" (I'm not sure how this is spelled, I am trying to phonetically spell out the pronunciation that my Oma taught me when I was 5) which are thin sandwich sort of things with a rich syrupy filling. In retrospect, as I saw those around me chewing on energy bars and downing power gels, my nutrition choices of fruitcake and dutch waffles began to seem a bit strange but it had seemed like a good idea in "Le Supermarche" the day before.

Thus satiated we rolled out from the feed station and continued to wind our way through the French countryside. Periodically we would come upon a sign for the race (which I could identify because they said "Le Cycle" at the top before their message below); some of them I could understand or guess at but others I had no idea. For those that I was baffled by, I would usually find out a few seconds later when I encountered whatever hazard or obstacle they were warning about. Apparantly some of them meant "potholes ahead", as in one case soon after the sign I found myself dodging between holes in the road. Not knowing how to properly warn those behind me in French I just yelled out some gibberish (just various sounds in a loud voice); from the chorus of cries that propogated down the line after me I learned that I should have yelled "attention!".

Between 120km and 130km I finally began to feel confident that I was going to make it to the finish, so while up until that point I had mostly tried to hide in the pack and avoid exerting myself on the front (except for the downhills where I couldn't help but going all out and it was safer to be on the front for slaloming around the triathletes) I decided that it was time to stop shirking my responsibilities and do some work on the front. There wasn't any sort of formal rotation in place and everyone was happy to avoid doing the work (confirming the obvious truth that despite their fitness, Europeans are very lazy), so it came down to myself and one other wizened old guy to set the pace for the next 10-20 km. Things were going well until we hit the next climb, at which point I blew up and was spit out the back of the group. Oh well, better to try to "make the race" and explode than to just sit in and finish as an also ran.

As I now found myself riding solo I decided that since it had been 5 hours I might as well stop for a nature break. After relieving myself and climbing back on my bike I noticed a strange periodic bumping in my rear wheel. At first I thought my brakes were rubbing (which would have also conveniently explained my getting dropped by a bunch of French retirees), but after looking back at the clearance from the brake pads it appeared to be fine. My next hypothesis was that the bearings in my hub were on the way out; on my warmup ride the day before I had noticed some disconcerting noises when descending at speed and a later inspection had revealed that the hub had a lot of play in it and likely needed some servicing. I couldn't prove or disprove this guess, so I continued on with the looming expectation that my rear hub would detonate at any moment.

I slowly began counting down the kilometers to the finish (luckily I had my GPS telling me how far I had gone), and eventually I was motoring along the final flat section into Cogolin, passing the 20, 15, 10, 5km to go signs. I found myself pretending that I was in a solo breakaway and powering along to a stage win, the only part missing was the "giving it everything and flying along" bit, as by this point I was completely empty and giving it everything didn't yield very much.

No matter though, I soon rolled into the "Place de la Republique" in Cogolin, zipped up my jersey and crossed the finish line as the tifosi went crazy, against all odds completing my first European Gran Fondo. Tres bien!

After sitting down for a bit to recover I cashed in my meal ticket for a delicious lunch of pasta, salad, cake, and apple sauce which I savored while watching the few people who had actually finished behind me straggle in. Here is a shot of the finish area:


And here is a shot of me and my mustache, happy to be finished with our exertions for the day:


And here is a shot of the Ritchey Break-Away fresh off his first century:


I had finished the 161km in 5 hours and 50 minutes, and although I didn't have any goals going into it (who sets goals for a casual tour?), to go under 6 hours would have been a good goal so I'll say that I acheived that and am very satisfied. I checked the results board and the winner did it in 4 hours and 24 minutes, not too bad. Apparently I can train all winter for skiing and still manage a better time in an early season bike race with no training that in my winter ski races (in the Wasatch Powder Keg my time was 3:35 and the winner did it in 2:06). I had read that ex-pros commonly raced Gran Fondos for the prize money, the only name on the leaderboard that I recognized was that of Phillipe Gaumont, a former pro who rode with Cofidis and left the sport in the same doping scandel that ensnared David Millar about 5 years ago. He only managed a 5th place, so apparently he has reformed his wayward tendencies.

I milled around the expo area a little more, taking in some of the sights such as the Colnago that Anthony Charteau rode while leading the KOM competition at the Tour de France last year:


I then decided to go have a shower and relax in my hotel room. On the way there I decided to finally investigate my mysterious rear wheel problem that thankfully had not manifested itself into anything more serious than the annoying bumping that I could feel. A cursory inspection of my tire revealed that I had worn a sizeable hole in my tire, and that a bulge had been created by the tube trying to press its way out of said hole:


Yikes! That could have ended badly! My saving grace had been a set of "Mr. Tuffy" anti-puncture plastic strips that I had installed in this wheel set a while ago, as seen in the photo below where the rim strip can be seen poking through the hole in the tire:


When I got back up to my room I removed my rear wheel to inspect the situation in more detail, and upon taking the tire off I realized that I was doubly lucky, as the hole in the tire had occured in the short section of wheel where the puncture strips overlapped one another to provide a double layer of protection. As seen in the photo below, I had worn entirely through the first layer of puncture strip and had gotten a good start on the second, next up was the tube! If the hole had occurred in the 95% of the tire circumference without a double layer, I would have flatted as soon as the first layer of puncture strip wore through. Bonne chance encore une fois!


So, this is a lesson to me that I shouldn't use worn out tires. I really like wearing right through a set of tires because it shows how much I have ridden on them, but I am less excited about such an event when it occurs during a 160km loop ride in a foreign country. I have no idea how I would have gotten back to Cogolin from the middle of the french country side, stolen a horse from a field perhaps? Thankfully I never had to find out, that might have been a little too much adventure for one day.

Below is a link to our route as recorded by my GPS:


And for those too lazy to click on the link (though you can't be too lazy if you have gotten this far into my trip report) here is a view of the route in Google Earth:


I headed to bed early that night, and the next morning got out for a good 90km ride (after further reinforcing my rear tire) before making my way back to Nice where I stayed one night before heading back to Seattle the next day.

Cogolin, France

In mid-April I once again found myself headed to Europe for a business trip (this time to London, or more accurately, Slough). It had been an intensely difficult problem to try and decide what I should go and do after my meetings finished, because while we are on the tail end of ski season, cycling season is up and running now (the spring classics are in full swing) and the cliffs are warm and dry enough to climb also. Too many options! After much consternation I finally settled on a cycling adventure, and after exploring my options I settled on a plan to participate in a Gran Fondo (Italian for "big ride") that was being held in St. Tropez, France on the weekend after my meetings.

I would love to do more cycling-related travel, but a big problem with it is how expensive and cumbersome it is to take a bike on a plane (bike boxes are huge and airlines charge up $175 each way for them). So, with this prompting, in mid-March I obtained a Ritchey Break-Away frame which has couplers in the the middle that allow the entire bike to be broken down and stored in a regular piece of luggage. I built it up a week before I was due to depart, and thus equipped I boarded a plane in Seattle and headed for London.

The two days of meetings went fine, it was good to see the crew that we have been working on this project with over the last year or so as I have gotten to know them pretty well and they are fun to hang out with. We had dinner at a pub beside Windsor Castle one night, but didn't manage to spot the Queen so that was a shame. Friday afternoon the meetings wrapped up and I rode trains and the tube to Gatwick Airport, where I would be catching a flight to Nice, France early the next morning (really early, 5:55am).

I arrived in NIce at 9:00am the next morning, and after a series of buses and a train I finally arrived at my destination of Cogolin at 12:30pm, and made my way to the Hotel. My hotel turned out to be right across from the "Place de la Republique" where the finish area for the next day's Gran Fondo was set up, so that was a fine stroke of luck. After checking in I spent 30 minutes building my bike up, and then headed out for a ride.

I wanted to go really easy since I would have lots of opportunity to go hard the next day (the Gran Fondo was 161km with 7,500 feet of climbing) and I didn't want to add to my state of ill-preparedness for such a long ride by putting in a hard ride the day before. From Cogolin I rode the 10km to St. Tropez where the start of the Gran Fondo was, and explored the town a bit. Here is a shot of the port:


I had planned on doing an entirely flat ride, but after looking at the map I noticed a nice little climb that I could do that would take me through a few villages and make a nice loop back to Cogolin. I headed along the coast a bit and then up a climb to the village of Ramboulet, where I stopped to take a picture of me and my busher looking out at the Mediterranean:


I then continued up to the Col, where there was evidence of recent French progress in developing their alternative energy resources:


I headed down from the Col through the lovely town of Gassin, then down another really fun descent to the valley floor where I made my way back to Cogolin. Along the way I encountered a nice row of Vespa's that I would like to have stored in my garage:


Back in Cogolin I signed in for the Gran Fondo and picked up my race packet, and then headed back to my hotel room. One other recent acquisition (along with the Break-Away frame) is a Garmin Edge 500 GPS cycling computer. Here is a link to the recorded info for my 40km warm-up ride:


And here is a Google Earth view of my route:


I wanted to give my bike one last check before heading to bed, and upon doing so I noticed that my front tire was flat. Stinker! I have "Mr. Tuffy" tire strips in these tires to protect against flats, so I was a bit worried that I had still gotten a flat. Upon changing the tube however, I realized that it was an old patch that had failed so this put me at ease. I then showered, and climbed into bed, and initially had trouble falling asleep since the walls in the hotel were quite thin and the people on the floor above me seemed to be doing fatigue testing on their door hinges by slamming it shut over and over again. I put in some earplugs which helped a bit, and eventually drifted off to sleep dreaming of the next days adventure.

Red Mountain

On one of my first backcountry outings of the year we climbed Cave Ridge from where we could look across at the West face of Red Mountain, and it looked so awesome that it was clear as day that I needed to ski down it. A couple of months later I made an attempt on it with Jesse and Fras, but we turned back about 600 feet from the summit due to concerns about avalanche danger. I vowed to go back and finish the job when conditions were better, and this past weekend I finally got the chance.

Ryan and I met at my house at 6:30am on Sunday morning, wanting to get an early start in case it was sunny since sun-warming is one of the main causes of avalanche danger at this time of year. We made it to Snoqualmie in good time, and after suiting up we headed up the Commonwealth Basin towards. I was somewhat familiar with the route have just tried it a month or two earlier and we made good time initially, but at some point got turned around and had to do multiple unnecessary stream crossings with various levels of acrobatics depending on the state of the snow bridges at our chosen crossing points. We eventually got back on track, and found ourselves on the ridge leading up to the West face of Red Mountain.

It was overcast and snowing reasonably hard as we left the trees and gained the face, here is Ryan heading up:


At this point there was about 4-6 inches of pretty sticky snow on top of consolidated layers, so the going wasn't too bad. As we continued to move higher on the face the snow became drier and deeper, which made for slower progress as we were slipping a bit, particularly when doing kick turns on the steep terrain. Here is Ryan working his way across the slope:


By this time the snow had tapered off which was nice, and as we continued up we were overtaken by a group of 3 who were making good use of the track that we were setting (there was a very faint track that we had been following, but it was mostly drifted over). With about 300 feet to go to the top we decided to try our luck boot-packing to see if that was any easier (and also since we had packed in our ice axes and didn't want to do the entire trip without ever using them). We chose a suitable spot to remove our skis and I headed up:


Ryan waited and took a few pictures, and unfortunately once I was about 20 feet above him I touched off a small slough of snow which swept by him and carried away one of his gloves. We watched it proceed down the hill and come to rest about 100 feet below, and decided that we would get it on the way down (Ryan had some thin gloves that he could use in the interim). So, we kept chugging up the slope kicking steps which was a little tough since the snow was reasonably deep which made for a swimming technique when things got steep (which was most of the time). Here is Ryan cresting one of the last steep parts:


We reached the top just after the party of three who had overtaken us (they had skinned up the whole way), and chatted with them as we prepared to head down. They decided to stop for a snack before heading down so we did the same; I recently read a book on avalanche safety, and one of the main tenets of survival technique espoused by the author was to always send other people down first. With this in mind, I wanted to try and postpone our descent as long as possible so that we could have three slope testers head down in front of us.

Eventually they finished their snack and headed down, the first guy in particular was a really good skier and made the foot or so of fresh powder on the steep face look really fun:


An added bonus was that somehow the sun had just emerged from the snow and clouds that had enshrouded us during the entire climb, so we had perfect visibility and sunshine to aid us on the descent of the steep face. Here we are getting psyched for some fresh tracks in mad pow:


Before the sun could disappear we clicked into our Fritschis and dropped in, oh man was it ever awesome! It is a super consistent steep slope, and with the fresh snow it made for some really fun turns. We stopped to retrieve Ryan's glove on the way down, and then skied down the rest of the face and back into the trees where we played a great game in which the second guy has to follow the tracks of the first until the first either crashes into a snow back (usually intentionally to avoid gathering too much speed) or hits a tree at which point the second becomes the first and gets to lead the chase. Fun! After some fun with this game, a few more creek crossings and a bit of sidestepping we were back at the car at about 1:15pm. Not bad for a morning out! Here is a topo of our out-and-back journey:


And an elevation profile, we had about 3000 feet of climbing to the summit of Red Mountain which is at 5720 feet:


And finally, the Google Earth view of our exploits:

Chair Peak Circumnavigation

On the first day of backcountry skiing that Roanne and I did this year we headed out to Pineapple Pass from Alpental and while we were there we met a group of four who were headed out on a circumnavigation of Chair Peak. I thought that sounded like a good adventure and put it on my tick list, so a few months later in mid-March we found ourselves headed for Snoqualmie Pass with that objective in mind. Before I begin recounting our adventures, let me put in a quick plug for a book that I discovered recently: anyone who has aspirations of backcountry skiing in Snoqualmie Pass should consider buying this book, it is really good and I wish I had happened upon it earlier.

We headed to Alpental to start the day, reasoning that we might as well make use of our season passes to gain 2000 feet of elevation and speed up the trip out to Pineapple Pass. We headed up to the top of Denny Mountain on Chair 2, and then headed down Upper Nash and through the Nash Gate and set out along the Great Scott Traverse. This was a little sketchy in parts, with the track pretty blown in with all of the new snow making for some precarious inching along over a steep drop while hoping that our skis wouldn't slip out. All drama aside we finally made it out to the bowl beneath the tooth, where we donned our skins and started headed up for the col between Bryant Peak and Chair Peak. Here is Roanne heading up the slope with Snoqualmie Mountain in the background:


There was a party of two ahead of us initially, but we soon passed them while they were busy trying to retrieve a dropped glove. After negotiating a steep traverse that seemed a little precarious due to the drop below we rounded a corner and the Chair-Bryant col came into sight, here I am continuing towards the col:


The going got pretty steep towards the end so we removed our skis and booted up the last 50 feet or so, which was quite fun since the wind-packed snow was really amenable to kicking good steps (I like to have at least one booter on each backcountry outing). It was pretty windy at this point, but as soon as we dropped over the other side we were sheltered which made things a lot warmer. We removed our skins here and descended down to Melakwa Lake on snow that could best be described as variable, ranging from sun crust to wind pack to powder in the trees. Here is Roanne heading down one of the better patches:

We skied right down onto the frozen surface of Lake Melakwa, and then after a short snack we resumed skinning, heading up towards Melakwa pass. This was a nice and gradual ascent which made for pleasant going. Here is Roanne heading down a short drop off a wind feature midway along the climb up to the pass:


And one more of her nearing the top of the pass. At this point we were following an existing track from two skiers who were in front of us, and the keen observer will notice that there is an unused skin track to Roanne's left in the photo below. This is the diretissima track that I had established; when I am following a track that is not up to par in my view I like to correct the error by setting a track of my own. This could be for various reasons such as not doing kick turns, but it is usually due to the pre-existing track using too many switch backs when a direct line is possibe, as it was in this case. Roanne, however, has a different definition of appropriate skin track gradient, and as such throughout our trip she shunned the aesthetic direct lines that I worked to establish in favor of the rather pedestrian low-gradient track.


We eventually reached Melakwa Pass, where we could peer over the edge of a very large cornice down to the frozen Chair Lake. Luckily at one point the cornice was small enough that we could comfortably drop into the bowl and head down to the lake, here is Roanne headed down for the lake and practicing her one-leg ski technique (on tours like this which are so far below her physical bounds she tries to stay entertained by doing drills like this):


From Chair Lake we initially thought that we could just keep heading down the drainage to Snow Lake, but after ascertaining that this would involve skiing off a cliff, we realized that we needed to ascend to a shoulder above Chair Lake before traversing a bit and continuing our descent down to Snow Lake. Here is Roanne on that climb with Chair Peak in the background:


At our high point we removed our skins once again, and before we started the descent we were treated to some really neat looking light on the snowy bumps to one side of Chair Peak above Snow Lake:


We headed down to Snow Lake, skiing partly down a slide path that had wiped out a skin track that looked like it had been set the day before. The snow was again variable, but we managed to find some decent powder hiding in the trees. Upon reaching the surface of Snow Lake we skinned up one last time to head across the lake and up and over the Snow Lake Divide:


The trip across the lake was pretty fun since it was so flat and expansive, and after reaching the top of the divide we headed down to Source Lake and out the bobsled track to return to the base of Alpental. At this point the chairs were still running (the tour had taken 6 hours), so I proffered the idea of doing a few lift-assisted runs, but Roanne politely declined so we headed to the car and back to rainy Seattle. This was a great tour that I would highly recommend, here is the topo of our route:


And an elevation profile, there wasn't all that much climbing since we did a lot of it by riding the lifts at Alpental before traversing out into the backcountry:

And finally, the Google Earth view of our route around Chair Peak:

Wasatch Powder Keg

After skiing slush in the cascades all winter, in early March Roanne and I decided that it was time to head to Salt Lake City for some dry Utah powder. We cleverly planned our trip to coincide with the Wasatch Powderkeg backcountry ski race, and on Friday afternoon we headed to SeaTac and caught our flight to SLC. Our friends Mike and Laura were kind enough to host us for the weekend (Mike was doing the race also), so after meeting up with them at their place we all headed to the pre-race meeting that took place Friday evening, the night before the race. There was nothing too interesting revealed in the meeting, except that they had made the course longer and harder than last year by adding an extra climb (which seemed strange since it had seemed pretty stinkin' hard already last year). Oh well, I had no illusions of actually doing well in the race, having just flown in from sea level (the race started at 8800 feet of elevation and had a high point of 10,600 feet) and being a terrible skier to boot. Misery + more misery is still just misery, so it wasn't too disconcerting to get this news.

After the race meeting we grabbed some dinner and then headed back to Mike and Laura's place where we packed up our gear for the next day before heading to bed in advance of our 5:00am wake-up call the next morning (the race started at 7:00am). Our alarms went off the next morning and after grabbing some breakfast we headed up Big Cottonwood Canyon to Brighton Ski Resort where the race was starting. Here is a shot of Roanne and Mike suiting up in the pre-dawn light:


After getting geared up we walked over to the lodge for the gear check (probe, beacon, shovel, jacket, and helmet) and then headed over to the parking lot where the race was starting. One strange thing this year was that the race was starting with people running a few hundred yards with their skis strapped to their packs, then putting their skis on and starting to skin. If you think walking in ski boots isn't awkward enough you should try running in them, and if you still would like to feel a little more ungainly, do with with some heavy skis strapped to your back. Here is a shot of everyone waiting to start:


The only saving grace for the start was that they had a bagpiper blasting away getting everyone in the mood for the ensuing battle:


At 7:00am the gun fired and we were off, shuffling across the parking lot towards the snow so that we could put our skis on and start having fun. I had made a conscious decision not to completely slay myself on the first climb (or any of the climbs for that matter) since it was going to be a long haul (10 miles with 5500 feet of climbing), so things went according to plan as I chugged up the hill at a good tempo, passing some people but not going crazy. It was perfect weather, calm with no wind but overcast so that it wasn't too hot. I would say that I felt a little better in the race than I did last year, since I am more comfortable on skis now and I knew the course which also helped. Roanne was doing the Recreation Division version of the race (I was, of course, doing the Race Division) which cut out a few climbs, so at one point in the race we got to hang out briefly as I re-passed her after our courses merged again. Here is a course profile for the Race Division:


You can see that there are two big climbs with some smaller ones mixed in; by the start of the second big climb I was really starting to feel it, and by the start of the 700 foot booter to the top of Mount Millicent (the top of the second big climb) I was REALLY starting to feel it. Nevertheless I managed to hold it together during the final descent, though I had some serious leg cramping issues and a few near missed going through a section where I had taken a digger last year.

I was pretty happy to see the finish line come into view as I made my way down the final slope, 3 hours and 35 minutes after the gun had gone off. Roanne had just finished 15 minutes prior (her course was about 3 miles and 2000 vertical feet shorter) so it was nice to congratulate each other and enjoy the post race barbeque. Here we are celebrating our successful races:


Mike finished a little while afterward (he was in the Telemark division, Roanne and I were both in the AT divisions), and we headed out to watch the awards ceremony, where it was very humbling to find out that the winner had done it in just over 2 hours. Holy smokes! That was almost twice as fast I went. I know I have a heavier set-up than most of the people there (Fritschi Freerides and BD Havocs; most people were on Dynafit bindings and many had short and small skis) and that I just came from sea level, but those excuses combined are probably only good for about 20 minutes at the most, that doesn't even get me under the 3 hour mark! I guess I'll just have to spend more time skiing and less time working next winter. Here is a shot of the crowd gathered for the awards:


After the awards and the raffle (where I won a nice green shovel) we headed back down into the valley where we snoozed a bit for the afternoon before heading out to a birthday party in the evening for some of Roanne's book club friends. The next day we woke up feeling a bit sore, but, being in Utah, unless I couldn't stand up there was no way that I wasn't going skiing again. I met up with one of my former graduate students, Ondrej, and we headed up to Alta for an awesome day of riding the lifts and exploring the resort. Here we are the chairlift up:


It was strange to see the sky that color, in Seattle we don't have that (ours is gray if it can be seen at all) and I was also unfamiliar with the glowing orb that moved across the the sky. It was fun to catch up with Ondrej, and we made plans to hang out again in Seattle when he makes a trip out here in the summer. That night we made a good dinner at Mike and Laura's, and the next morning Roanne and I packed up our stuff and headed up Big Cottonwood Canyon one more time for some skiing at Solitude before packing it in around 3pm to head to the airport and catch our flight back to rainy Seattle. What a great weekend, I'll definitely be back for the PowderKeg in 2012 and you should too if you are reading this!

Apples!

Ever since I moved back to Seattle I have been meaning to plant an apple tree, and this past week I finally got around to it. We had an apple tree at our place in Salt Lake City and I really liked having fresh apples, so I wanted to have something similar here in Seattle. Roanne and I headed to Swanson's Nursery in north Ballard and picked out a fine young specimen, with four different types of apple varieties grafted onto it. This way you don't need more than one apple tree to pollinate each other. Here I am breaking ground:


And here is the new inhabitant of our front yard:


So far it seems to be doing well, though we won't know for a few weeks how it is really doing when it (hopefully) develops some leaves. Apparently we won't have apples this fall, but there is a good chance that we will the year after. I'll post some more pictures once it gets some leaves.

Mount St. Helens

This past weekend Roanne and I had decided we needed to ski something worthwhile, so after considering a few options we settled on Mount St. Helens. We decided to try it on the Sunday, and began negotiations on how to approach the logistics. It would be a pretty full day (over 5600 feet of elevation gain) and it is a 3.5 hour drive from Seattle so we needed to head down the night before. I was advocating heading to the trail head the night before and pitching a tent in the parking lot to get a nice and early start, while Roanne was advocating heading down the night before and setting up shop in a hotel room in Woodland, an hour from the trailhead. I protested that since getting married I feel like I hardly ever get to sleep in parking lots anymore, to which she replied that I should have married someone who was more adventurous. I replied that I had thought she was adventurous, to which Roanne conceded that, yes, she was indeed adventurous at certain times, but I should have married someone who was more consistently adventurous. I recognized the truth in this, conceded the point, and we booked a hotel in Woodland.

We headed down Saturday night, and after stopping along the way for dinner at "Happy Teryaki #4" (surprisingly good, I can't even imagine how good #1, 2, and 3 must be), we eventually made our way to Woodland Motel 6 which was located about 100 meters east of I-5. After forcing the desk clerk to interrupt his game of Warcraft to check us in, we managed to get a pretty good sleep until we were awoken by an idling truck in the parking lot at 6:00am. We had planned on getting up at 6:30am anyways, so we hopped back in the car and drove the rest of the way to the Marble Mountain Sno-Park where the route started, stopping along the way to sign the climbing register and pick up our permits in Cougar at the Lone Fir Resort.

We arrived at the Sno-Park by about 7:30am, and started gearing up for the days adventures:


I was surprised at how many other people were there, apparently this is a popular winter objective. After we finished sorting out our gear we headed up the trailhead, which was well packed from numerous skiers having been on it previously. The trail gradually climbed and wound through some dense forest, but before too long things began to open up a bit and we could see the expansive white slopes of Mount S. Helens looming ahead of us:


As we continued we eventually emerged out of the forest and things opened up even more:


We eventually reached an open area where we now had a really good view of our objective. Things always look so close when you can see the entire route in front of you, but there was still a lot of elevation to gain before reaching the rim!


It was sunny blue skies ahead, so we appeared to be free and clear from a weather perspective until we looked back behind us and saw some clouds building from the south:


Yeech! Those don't look good. It still looked good ahead though, so we hit the gas and started heading up a ridge. The trees were quite thin by this point and only present on the ridge that we were ascending, here is a shot of Roanne as she heads up this final treed section before gaining the open slopes of the mountain:


The going had been really fast up until this point so we were optimistic about reaching the summit on a good schedule, but once we gained the open slopes we found that the snow was a really hard windpack that made skinning quite difficult. It was too steep to ascend straight up the slope, and too hard to set an edge to traverse, but after a bit of flailing (and wishing that we had brought ski crampons) we finally progressed onto some better snow higher up and resumed our rapid rate of progress. The next landmark was Monitor Ridge where there is a small weather station set up, here is Roanne taking a breather:


After a short break to consume some delicious sandwiches we re-motivated and continued on up the open slopes in front of us:


We had been passing a few parties throughout the day and making good progress, and continued to reel a few people in as we progressed up the mountain. There were a bunch of existing skin tracks, but they had largely been trampled into oblivion by herds of mindless snowshoers (and they weren't direct enough anyways), so I eschewed those in favor of the diretissima line until Roanne informed me that she was going to stop following my track if it kept going straight up.

Having sorted out our philosophical differences on skinning we continued up, with the clouds chasing us up the mountain:


We continued to make good progress in the better snow higher up, and before too long we neared the summit, having moved up above the cloud layer:


After the final stretch we were on the top, though it isn't a very impressive summit, being just the high point on the crater rim. I'm sure it was a lot nicer before the top blew off, but we were feeling a bit tired by this point so we appreciated the fact that those last 1000 feet of climbing are now distributed around the countryside. Here is a shot of the happy adventurers on the summit, with Mount Adams (you're next!) in the background:


We didn't get too close to the rim since we didn't want to fall off the cornice and into the crater, but looking to the north we could see down into the bottom where the dome was steaming, with Mount Rainier visible further north:


Having planted our metaphorical flag and eaten some delicious Safeway cookies (chocolate chip, holy smokes are those things ever good) it was now time to head down, especially since the clouds had resumed their upward progress and it now looked like we would be skiing down through them. Without further ado we descended down into the clouds, here is Roanne making her way down through the variable conditions:


The snow wasn't great, varying between wind pack, crust, and ice, but it would take really really bad conditions before I would stop having fun on skis (like maybe skiing on dirt?) so it was still a good time. We did manage to find some pockets of good powder in some small drainages where spindrift had accumulated, so we savored that before heading back out into the crust. Part way down the sun emerged so we had a break to sit down and eat something and soak up the mountain vibes:


We then continued on our way, and were able to run it all the way back to the car without needed to re-skin or do any appreciable double poling. Roanne was pretty gassed by this point and each time she arrived to a point where I was dutifully waiting for her she would flop down onto the snow and would only regain the upright posture necessary for downward progress on skis with considerable cajoling and discussion of additional cookies waiting in the car.

We did eventually make it though, and celebrated our successful ascent by changing out of our ski gear and driving back to Seattle. Definitely a fun trip and highly recommended for anyone who likes going up and down on skis. Here are the stats, first the topo (we climbed the Worm Flows route which seems to be the most popular winter route) which shows our relatively straightforward out and back:


Next the equally straightforward elevation profile, which shows that we climbed and descended 5600 feet over the course of about 11 miles round trip:


And finally, most aesthetically pleasing, the Google Earth view that shows our trip up and down the mountain: