Mountain Bike Bill, The Dirt on the Dirt

Category: Travels

Seattle Area – Surprises On Day Once

So yesterday, I left SoCal bound to Seattle for a few weeks of work and if I got lucky, a little bit of play.  Of course there is a mountain bike involved.   I decided that the 6.6 would make this trip with me.  It is the first time I have flown with this bike and I was a little surprised when I went to put it into my handy dandy bike box.  It did not fit!   Being a long wheelbased bike both the bottom of the fork and back of the rear triangle were pushed against the ends of the box and flaring it out a little.  This was not the way I wantws to travel with this thing.  After many permutations, I finally had to take the fork out of the frame and lay it next to the down tube.  

After this the rest of the box packing when smooth.  Now there was absolutely no way to keep this bike and box under 50 pounds and avoid the overweight charge.   So I put a bunch of other stuff in there as well to get my money’s worth.

The flight went as planned and I was surprised to see awesome weather in Seattle.  Sunny and in the upper 60s, low 70s.  Freaking killer.    From the airport I went right to the job site, and did all my start day stuff: Check-in with folks, chase down equipment that was shipped here, smooze and talk up with the folks I will be working with the for the next three weeks, yada yada yada….   Several times when I was walking between buildings I was thinking this is too awesome of a day in Seattle to be working.  Surprising enough, before I knew it all of the stuff I needed to do and pretty much everything I could get done that day, was done.  

I get back to my hotel and looking out the window I could not help but think, man the sun is mighty high in the sky for this time of day.  Then it dawned on me,  the further north you are in summer the longer the days are.   Cool, I might just have enough time to squeak in a ride.   So off I went to whip the bike back together.  Before long, the big was built back up and I was rolling away from the hotel towards a perspective trail I had got some e411 on a few months back.

Well what do you know, there was a trail after all and I was surprised that it was not at all bad.  While on the short side, it was still dirt.  Dirt that I had not planned on being on today.   After riding this trail, I decided to poke around the various neighborhood streets. 

I was once again surprised when I managed to find a few neighborhood trails that meandered through the woods between the various streets and neighborhoods.  It was nothing you would want to drive but it was an incredible spring day full of sunshine, blooming flowers, green woods and I was on singletrack.   What a killer surprise.

When I got back to the hotel room there was still some daylight left in the day.  I was once again surprised when it did not get dark until around eight.   You gotta love the northern lattitudes heading into summer.  This was a mighty fine start to this trip.

“Hangover” Video from Sedona

I finally got the video for the Hangover Trail in Sedona completed.   It was pretty interesting to look at the video footage of my spill over the edge.  Man, things I remembered happening so slowly “in the moment” went by in the blink of an eye.   As with all videos, things are steeper than look, but I did not realize just how exposed some of the sections were until reviewing the footage.

Ahh, enough yapping. 

 Right Click Here to download the 128MB WMV format file that runs 9 minutes and 10 seconds.   

While you are waiting for the file to download you can check out some of my other pages and posts on Sedona

Blog Posts   Arizona Summer 2006   Arizona Winter 2007    Arizona Spring 2008

Sedona Day 3

Today started off a little earlier than the day before but not by much.  We had a couple of locals to show us around today and they showed us the goods that started right from our Condo.  We started off the on-the-map trails, but later in the ride we transitioned onto some “Locals Only” stuff that I was asked to keep off the air.   Since talking about the on-the-map stuff we did would give some hints about the “other” stuff I am going to refrain from talking about them as well.    

So you won’t see any explainations of the  pretty selective pictures posted here.   I ended up having to bailing out on the last little bit of trails on the return trip to get packed up and rolling towards home.   I managed to make good time and was back at home at around 10pm. Trail names or not, I have yet to find a trail in Sedona that I did not like.

 

 

 

Hangover in Sedona

Day two of the Sedona trip started off real leisurely with a respectable wake up time and a casual breakfast as we were not meeting the Over The Edge crowd until around 11AM.  

The group ended up running a little behind schedule and Bryce from St. George got into town early, so we entertained ourselves at the trailhead with a bit of “Coon Hucking”.

I wanted to shoot some video today, but I have not completed my new helmet cam setup for my XC helmet, the only thing I had setup was my full-face rig.  I was also not interested in carrying two helmets with me, one for videoing and one for climbing/non videoing. Since it was quite cool to brisk out, I decided to just do the ride with the full-face ride. 

Once everyone arrived, we soon started off on the Munds Wagon Trail which was a pretty nice climb mostly following along a creek drainage.  It did not take long to realize that the full-face helmet was not a good choice.   The slow speed of the climb was not venting the helmet well and I was often rebreathing a portion of my own “dirty” CO2 rich exhales. This sorta sucked and I soon myself hanging near the tailend of this large and extremely talented group of riders.  

We eventually worked our way up to the Damifino trail for a bit of slickrock climbing and some occasionally exposure. At the top of the saddle on Damifino (Mitten Ridge Saddle) we had a nice regroup and bit of lunch and some hangout time before hitting up the Hangover Trail.   Hangover is a pretty new trail, and while neither on the maps nor fully “in the fold” of the official trail system, the cat is certainly out of the bag and the officials know about it.  

This a pretty freaking amazing trail that is etched into a small ribbon of dirt high up on one of the monuments in the Sedona Valley.   It gets its name from the signature rocks that hangover the trail in numerous spots. Some of them force you to crotch way down and use a little body English to clear them. 

One of these such hangovers gave me a real life “Over The Edge” moment.  The left end of my handlebar was going to clip an inside rock.  Now this did not look like a particularly exposed section as there were bushes to my right. I went into a trackstand to see if I could figure out a way to get around it and decided to put a foot down.  I even looked where my foot was going to go. I put my foot down and all of the sudden the outer six inches of the trail crumbles underneath me. I tip over into the bushes and go right through them!   At this point, everything went into that freaky “I’m so screwed” slow motion.   As I go through the bushes an expansive view suddenly opens up in front and below me.  The narrow strip of vegetation that this trail was built on was ending within a few feet.  Below that were hundreds of vertical feet of the gorgeous red and white banded slickrock which is part of what makes Sedona such an incredible place. However, at this particularly moment in time, I can assure you that this is not the preferred viewing angle of these formations.  In those brief microseconds I could see that the slope was moderate for the first 30 feet but after that, things get quite steep. 

If I started tumbling this was going to end somewhere between bad and lethal.  It was at this point that I believe my brain went into full survival mode and what happened next I contribute to instinctual DNA programming and not really any high-level cognitive process on “my” part.  I remembered a moment when my butt was on the ground, my back to the down slope, and my legs going up in the air.  I grabbed at the brush, then dirt, then clumps of then the most incredible desert scrub grass that I have ever had the pleasure of touching that arrested the start of a tumble and somehow allowed me to get fully prone.  My final position had everything above my armpits on the grass and dirt, while everything else was on the rock below.   I was quite thankful for the extra belly chub that I can’t seem to loose as it was a good source of friction on the rock.  I could also feel my bike laying on my left leg. I certainly did not want to move that leg as I’m sure that once that bike got going it was not going to stop.   The full-face helmet also came in handy here as I had wedged the chin portion into it into the dirt to provide a little more resistance to the pull of gravity that I could so intensely feel now.  I was stopped now and I was quite content to hold my own and not move as I knew folks were behind me.  Within seconds I could hear Jason, Quentin and others screaming and heading my way.   I was afraid that if they rushed to yank me up, they would dislodge my bike laying on my leg and send it sliding away, so in true MTB Addict fashion, I told them to get my bike before me.  (The pictures would later show they the bike was in much less danger of sliding away than I thought at the time)    Soon there were hands and arms pushing and pulling on me to get me back up onto the trail.   When the first person went to pull me up, it took a couple of “manual override” mental commands to convince my hands to physically let go of the grass that I was clinging to. Once back up on the trail and looking down at where I had been I realized I could have climbed back up on my own, but in that moment while face down into the dirt, I was happy to wait for help.   One thing is for certain, I cashed in a truckload of Karma Points with this one.

After a couple of hoots and hollers at the sheer joy of being alive, we were back to riding.   Before long I realized that my front tire had gotten whacked by a cactus during the fall and the sealant could not take care of everything. So I stopped at top of a large steep slickrock section to pick out the thorns and put in a tube.   Kevin hung back with me, while I spent a good 20 minutes getting the dozen plus cactus needles out.  The rest of the group waited at the last saddle a good chunk of time before running on ahead.  I think most people talk about loosing of some “Mojo” after an incident on the bike, but for some reason the opposite occurred today.  Maybe it was joy that comes from cheating death relatively unscathed or just plain stupidity, but I had a great ride down the rest of hangover and straight up flew down the Munds trails back to the trailhead.  We arrived back just a couple of minutes after the rest of the group got there.  

The rest of the evening would be spent enjoying pizza, yummy beers, and hanging out in a stupidly huge hot tub built for about 50. While chilling in the hot tube I discovered that I too had gotten whacked by a cactus during the fall.  I ended up picking out about 15 needles from my leg.  A small price to pay indeed.   It is good to be alive!

Sedona Weekend – Day 1

O-DAMN Early came at O-DARK:30 this morning.    Things seem to come together fairly quickly for this weekend getaway.   It was not until earlier in the week did was I able to give the green light to meet some friends from Arizona, Utah, and Colorado in Sedona for some dirt time.

Today’s rides was just going to be a few of us as the rest of the hoodlums would not arrive until the following morning.  I thought I was making really good time and when I pulled up to the trailhead about 10 minutes before the meet time.  Kevin and Greg then informed me that I had forgotten about that pesky little time zone thingy, so I was an hour late.  DOOOH!   Oh Well, we ride!

We spent the remainder of the day playing on some fun and often technical trails that were for the most part between Soldier Pass Road and Dry Creek Road.

I am always amazed at just how pretty this place can be.   It is one of those places were the scenery can be its own hazard.

I should have known by now, but whenever you ride with Kevin,  there is a pretty good chance you are going to get in some technical climbing. 

So while some may do a trail this-a-way Keving is gonna take you that-a-way. 

I love the way the Arizona flora helps keep the singletrack single. Come off line, or dab in the wrong spot and there is a fair chance the trail is going to complain to you.  

Once we reached our turn-around spot which was based more on daylight than mileage we enjoyed the fruits of some of our technical climbing efforts. We flowed, we bobbed, we weaved, and we had a really good time back to the trucks.  We did not use up quite all of the daylight, but we did not leave much.   Besides there was a hot tub and cold beers just down the road with our names on them. Why further delay things? While I did not have major party plans for the night, I felt a hangover was in my near future.

In the Land of the Rising Sun

This week started off with a flight from Seattle to Tokyo.  I spent the week here in Japan meeting with clients (so to say) and scoping out some projects coming up in the summer of next year.    I spent the better part of 2004 working and riding in the area so I was looking forward to reconnecting with some old friends and possibly sqeaking in a ride.   I had a very productive week and managed to catch up with my core group of Japanese and American friends here.   It is nice having locals for friends.  Work hard during the day and enjoy friends and off the beaten path cuisine in the evenings was the routine.   There may have been a beer or two involved as well 🙂   I was not sure if my schedule was going to allow me to get in some trail time or not and early in the week the weather was not cooperating either.   Near the end of the week the skys cleared and while generally brisk throughout the day it was nice.  

Friday morning it was clear enough that Mount Fuji was visible in the distance.  By Friday afternoon the skys hazed up enough that the mountain was hidden, but my to-do list was complete and I found myself with some daylight left to burn.  A couple of phone calls revealed that all my buds were tied up so this would be a solo affair.  This was cool as I have done this trail system many times and I was looking forward to some trail solitude. I grabbed a rental hardtail and headed for the trails.   It is about a 3 mile street ride to the Ogsuyama trail system.  It is uphill most of the way as you head away from Tokyo Bay.   It did not take long to click back in the routine of riding on the other side of the road here.  More importantly you have to remember that most of the danger comes from the opposite direction that you are used to glancing at.  I did have one exciting moment two blocks into the ride that drove the message home. 

The street ride was great as it was just as much of a cultural experience as it was a good warmup.   I was soon off of the main streets and into the back streets and the more rural communities.  It is common to see small gardens in these areas right along the dimunitive streets.  I always enjoy looking at them as they provide such contrast to the cities below.

I was soon onto singletrack and I had forgotten just how slick the clay soil can be with just a little moisture. Often times this clay was combined with roots and leaves.   Even with the tire pressures somewhat low it was often really tricky and it some spots hoofing it was the only way to get up.  Going down was a bit easier but still it was mongo tricky. 

This picture does a poor job of depicting the grade or slickness of this stuff.

The trails are not all a slick rooty mess,  sometimes it is incredibly buff with mucho flow.   Most of the trails I rode today have seen some debrushing work in the last year as they were much less crowded with brush than I remembered.   I also ran into a few hikers and they were always very polite and often they would say something to the effect of “Wow” or “I’m amazed to see you here”.   This trip was also good to brush up on my very rudimentry Japanese.

The route today involved going over the top of Ogusayama and taking an often steep singletrack down the other side of the mountain (and pennisula) to Sagami Bay.   I remembered a bunch of log steps but I forgot it was something like a thousand or so steps.   The rental hardtail was beating the crap out of me on this stuff and I had to take a breather after every 100 or so steps.

 

Those steps and log fencing you see in the pictures are not wood but carefully crafted concrete logs made to look pretty natural. 

Once I got down near Sagami Bay I popped out onto a street and rode about half a mile to pickup a service road to go back up the mountain.    It starts out as narrow pavement, then gravel then dirt.  Many of the local riders call it the “Seven Steps to Heaven” as it is quite steep but flattens on seven occasions on the climb.  You are pretty shaded on most of the climb so the views are limited with the exception of a few spots were you can peek through and get a good appreciation for the general steepness of the Japanese countryside in this area.

After getting back on top of the mountain, I picked up another trail that would take be down the southeast flank of the mountain and back to my side of he pennisula.   This trail is one of my favorites in this system and it did not disappoint.   I have not been in Japan at this time of year before, so I was enjoying more autumn colors that I had not seen before.

This section of trail has a very Pacific Northwest feel to it

I soon popped back out onto surface streets and starting making my way back.  I made a stop at local store to grab a snack.  I forget the name for these but they are rice triangles that are stuffed with different things and then wrapped with seaweed.  I think of them as Japanese Clif Bars.    They have all types and some of the are a highly acquired taste.  I typically stick to the light blue ones as they are filled with tuna.   These are yummy, a great ride snack and only costs 105 yen (About $1).

After the snack it was mostly of series of downhill street cruising back to where I started.

After returning the bike and cleaning up, I spent the evening having dinner with friends in a tiny Mom and Pop resturant near the town of Zushi.  After hitting the post button, I will packing up the laptop and headed for the airport to go home.  Ironically, due to the the international dateline, I am technically already home 🙂

Tiger Mountain, WA

Okay, I need to learn to pay attention to the fine print in trail reviews and guidebooks.   Work was done early yesterday and I was heading east with bike, gear and good weather all around.   The destination was Tiger Mountain State Park about 30 miles outside of Seattle near the town of Issaquah.   The plan was to get in about a 3 or so mile dirt road climb and then start hitting up some singletrack.   I got to the trailhead, suited up and started peddling my rather portly rent-a-piggy up the mountain.   Just like me this bike could stand to go on a diet.    It was all good as I need the excercise.  I was not to far up the road when I passed the Northwest Timber Trail on my right that I was planning on coming out on at the end of the ride.  To my non-engrish reading surprise, there was a barricade and a sign saying it is closed from October 15th – April 15th.  WTF?  So I pull out my guidebook I had stashed in my pack and actually starting reading those pesky little details (you know the section that does not include stuff like turn here/there, this is cool, that is cool.)  Yep right there in the guidebook it tells me that all the bitching singletrack I was looking forward to was CLOSED.    What to do now?   So I read around and find out there is dirt road loop I can do up there that will get me a good heaping of excercise, some scenery and a tiny bit of singletrack.   So I was off up the mountain on Plan B.   

The dirt road climb up Tiger Mountain had some steep sections but  overall it was not too bad as there were spots where you got a reprive from the climbing.   There was plenty of forest all around but there were a few spots were distant views could be seen.    

Mount Rainer was the dominant landscape feature, and I could not help but stare at it whenever it was in view.   There was nothing wrong with the weather today that is for sure.   The view of Rainer reminds me a great deal of Mount Fuji in Japan the way it just towers over the surrounding landscape.

The rest of the ride included some bombfest fireroading and as well as some steep up and downs.   There was not just cool stuff to see off in the distance.   There were lots of small streams crossing under the roads that were quite pretty.

I used up the better part of the day up in my loop out here.   It is ashame I don’t have any pictures I can show you of the Preston Railroad Trail, the Northwest Lumber Trail and the Fat Hand Trail which are touted as really killer singletracks.    Oh well, I’m going to be back at some point when they are open.  For now my time is Seattle is over so,

Sayonara Seattle

Seattle’s I-5 Colonnade MTB Skills Park

The orginal plan for today was to pickup and rental bike for a shop in Seattle and go for a ride on Friday and get the bike back Friday evening.  Well things went smoothly and I am pulling out of the bike shop and I have maybe two hours of light left.   What is close by?  After a minute or two of Googling I found out that Colonnade was sorta close by.   Before you know it I was there.   For those that have not heard of the place, Colonade has gained national attention due to novel concept and the excellent use of land.   This model is starting to find it’s way to other parts of the country.  Read more about Colonnade

Once I saw how cool the place was I had to get to riding.  I had not checked into my hotel yet, so all my stuff down in my suitcase.  Screw it, forget changing I grabbed just my helmet, shoes, and gloves and hopped on the bike.  Polo shirts and MTBing, thing could be a new fashion trend.

 

Blah Blah Blah,  I rode a bunch of it, I got nervous ticks looking at some of it and if I lived up here I would make this a regular stop.   On with some pics:

Wall Ridage

You don’t measures technical trail features per trail here, it a per foot thing.

 

 

Pick your poison

More Wall Ridage

It is not all about getting in the air and steeps, take a look at the skill stuff near the bottom.  There is stuff for the newbs and dews.

Check out Zelik riding this log,  can you say excited?  Zelik’s Dad was nearby and watched his kid giving the smaller stuff a go for well over an hour.   It is so awesome how the mountainbikers here took an underbridge eyesore and turned into a killer skills progression park and a wonderful place for young kids to learn about mountain biking and develop some skills other they video games.

Banner Forest, Washington

  I’m spending this week in the Puget Sound/Seattle area. I have been here about four or five times but it has always been during July or August which most folks will tell you is a pretty glorious time here.  The rest of the year is known for a lot of overcast and rain.  The weather was just that when I arrived Monday evening and all day on Tuesday.   However, just as I was finishing up work in the afternoon the Sun made an appearance.   I had not planned on grabbing a rental bike until later in the week so here I am off work with sunshine and no bike.  The time involved with chasing down a bike and then getting to a trailhead would eat up most of my daylight so what the heck, I’m going for a hike.  So straight to one of the Banner Forest trailheads located near Port Orchard I went.


This place is known as a mountain biking area with about 10 miles of singletrack.  I only scratched the surface of the trails here on my hike which may have been 3 miles at most.      

Most of the stuff I hiked was twisty  with some small ups and downs that looks to just be a hoot to ride.

I love the the flora of the Pacific Northwest.    Green green green and very mossy.


I saw a few log rides as well as few spots that have oppurtunities for some minor air time.

This was a pretty cool log ride.  It is optional as the trail runs about half way down it’s long length.  Then the log is cut where it crosses the trail.  Log riders have to come of the log and immediately get back up on it on the other side of the trail,  ride the next section the make turning roll off the log where you merge back onto the trail.   Very Cool!

While I have been up the Pacfic Northwest and B.C. before, I had forgotten how the thick foilage in places can really make for pretty dark shade.  I was enjoying my hike and I traveled back into the woods a little further than I thought so the waning light and thick foilage made for a couple of spooky spots near the end of my loop.  

I’m going to be spending a few weeks in Seattle Area in few months so I have a feeling I’m going to get back over here with a bike. Oh, two minutes after I got in my car it started raining.

Freedom Park

I got a chance to ride Freedom Park near Williamsburg Virginia a couple of days ago and took it.  This a county park that encompasses about 700 acres of mostly hardwood forest set on rolling terrain.   There is about 10 miles of of pretty nice single track. Compared to the other places near hear this trail network has some elevation change.   Nothing like what we deal with in Southern California, but my do they use the terrain to its fullest here.  Flowing and swooping is the theme throughout most of this trail network.  

Flowly Singletrack

I can’t tell you how many flowing turns like this one I went through

Sometimes the humidity is not a bad thing 😉

It is hard to describe but because the wonderful contouring layout of this trail system, you just don’t seem to “remember” the short climbing portions of the trails.   These leads to to a feeling like you have been gradually going downhill for more than half the ride and somehow managed to end up at the same spot.   Pretty Cool.

I did all of the trails in one direction and went back and did about half of them going the other direction.  I would have loved to ridden more but I ran out of daylight.  

There are some optional line that provide some technical features and small stunts

teeter-totter

This is a pretty short teeter-totter, you have to pretty much have to get all of to the end of the teeter, before it will tip.   Ride up, wait, wait, wait, ride off.

 

The Eastern Virginia Mountainbike Association are the prime stewards of these trails.  I happened meet the President, Vice-President, as well as a couple of highly involved members of the association and for our conversations, these folks are doing really good stuff in the area.    Freedom Park is a good example of thier work and the county and park are already on-board with thier plan to bring the Freedom Park trail systems up to 25 miles of singletrack.     I had a good time here with 10 miles of trail, boy what a place this will be when there is 25 miles!