Bike Path Ride - Scottsdale, AZ

While everyone else is complaining that it's not cold enough for snowmaking, I got the hell out of town.  Here's what I did on Saturday:

Yeah, I took my brother's mountain bike and cruised the unbelievable bike path network of Scottsdale, AZ.  I rode from Scottsdale down to Tempe, past Sun Devil Stadium:

All of the riding was on bike paths.  And the paths are amazing.  They have water fountains, bathrooms, and interpretive signs along the route. There were people running, biking and even rollerblading (I didn't even know people did that anymore).  On the way back, I got on some dirt:

It was mostly flat fire road riding, but I'm hoping to get on some singletrack tomorrow and Thursday before Thanksgiving festivities.  Then, when I get back to New York, I can start praying for snow like everyone else. 

Last Weekend's Hike

So, we had this plan . . .

We were going to park at the Garden Trailhead in Keene Valley on Saturday, check out the Bennie's Brook Slide for a possible winter adventure, hike it up to the top, and come down the Lower Wolfjaw Trail, and chill out back at the car with a couple of beers. Sounds good, right?

Well, The Garden parking lot was full, so we decided to attack the mountain from the W.A. White Trail via the Rooster Comb and Hedgehog Trails.  This was a lot more difficult than we anticipated.  Still though, it was a good workout, and a good way to get in shape for the ski season.  We felt good when we saw our first glimpse of the slide:

Like a freaking ski run!!!  And it looked even better once we were on the slide:

The snowy, icy, rocky slide was pretty tough to walk down, but we just took our time and made sure that we didn't do anything stupid. There were some nice terrain features further down:

Rocks, drop offs, natural knolls: This is going to be SWEET this winter.  We hiked down to the sunny spot in that second picture and ate our lunch.  It was a nice view back up the slide:

Anyway, the slide looks a lot different than when Jeff went last August.  And it now goes all the way down to the Southside trail (on the south side of John's Brook).  We took that back towards Keene Valley (having to take a few reroutes due to parts of the trail that were washed out in the hurricane).  

All in all, it was a pretty sweet adventure. 

TR: Pico 10/30/11

Remember when I said that the recent snowfall wasn't quite enough for an early season turn-earning session? I lied.

We got a late start after Saturday night Halloween festivities, finally rolling out of the house around 9:30. We just wanted to head up to the Killington area, decide if we wanted to pay for a ticket or not, and have a lazily awesome opening day. We did a little recon at Pico on the way by, checked the snow depth, scanned the ski tracks looking for deep gashes down to dirt, etc. We needed supplies anyway, so we pressed on towards Killington. After a quick stop at the deli for sandwiches and water, we pulled into the dropoff area for the K base Lodge, and I was already not feeling it. There were a lot of people milling around, there was a cattle line at the Gondola, and looking up the mountain, there was a steady stream of people going towards the North Ridge Triple. And when I say "steady", I mean "neverending".

We got the hell out of there. The parking lot at Pico was a ton better. There were a couple chill guys coming down that gave us some beta: "a little bit of everything". Sounds like fun.

We started hiking while the clouds were still sticking around.  The skin track was sweet:

The hiking was easy and fun.  In the picture above, you can see that the upper mountain blacks were in "questionable" shape.  We hiked all the way up to the point where the high grass started.  Did I mention it was easy?

And fun?

Yeah, I was rocking the stache (left over from my Halloween costume).  It took us an hour and a half to get up to that point just below the top.  After that, the fun started.  Sorry I don't have any sick action shots.  I was just having too much fun skiing.  Here's what the snow was like:

It was freaking great.  I don't know if it's because we were all rocking fat skis, or because we followed some sage advice to stick to the mellow blue square pitches, but none of us bottomed out at all.  After tooling around for a while, we headed down.  Here's a semi-action shot:

The untracked stuff was fine as long as you had enough speed to get your skis to plane, enough power to be able to move your skis where you wanted them, and enough ability to make the necessary balance adjustments for the snow and occasional water bars.  Simple!

The whole day was really fun.  We saw a bunch of mellow people, a lot of dogs, and a few hardcore kids (9-10 years old, I'd say) with their parents who hiked all the way up to where we were (and then skied tele down!).  And if you hadn't noticed, the sun came out:  

We finished with a couple of beers on the deck (I had some Keystone Light left over).  Perfect end to a perfect day:

As you might have noticed, I played with the color saturation on these pictures, so they kind of look like Technicolor.  I thought it was fitting because the whole thing was kind of surreal.  All those people crowding Killington, and this (relatively) untapped Shangri-La was right down the road.  Crazy.  Not only that, as we drove through Rutland, and back to the ADKs, we went from the deep snow depths of winter to the leaf covered grass of fall.  There wasn't any snow on the ground at all by the time we got back to Queensbury.  The only signals we had from the official beginning of the 2011/2012 ski season were the droplets of water on our skis and the pictures on our cameras:

Winter's Coming

Sorry I've been a little lax on the blog lately. I've been dealing with some stuff. You can follow me on Twitter @mattchuck2, or on my twitter feed that appears on the right, and I have been posting a lot of cool links, internet videos, and other interesting stuff on there.

I just really haven't been able to get out anywhere lately. That'll change soon, though, as I finally got my mountain bike light back. That means I'll be able to start night riding again (which is awesome). And, as you can see from this picture of my street, winter is right around the corner:

Don't think it's quite enough for a early season turn earning session (I'll leave that to FIS), but it's definitely getting near that time. I can't freaking wait . . . If there was ever a year that I need skiing, this is it. Let's do this.

Mountain Biking - Otter Creek + Floodwood 10/9/11

Did a lap on my normal mountain bike route up around the Fish Creek Pond Campground. It's about 8 miles or so, and it takes me about an hour an a half when I stop to take pictures.  I took a lot of pictures on this trip:

The ride starts out on the road towards the campground, but you don't mind because of views like this:

I cruised into the campground and it was pretty empty.  Half of the sites were closed and only about half of the remaining sites were filled.  There is a nice gravel path that I rode on right next to the main road:

But eventually I had to cruise back to the road so that I could get to the Rollins Pond Campground.  Doesn't matter.  It was still beautiful:

Once you get into the Rollins Pond Campground, you just have to keep going all the way to the end.  It's really nice this time of year because the park is closed, the sites are empty, and the roads are covered with fallen leaves:

Make sure that the campsite numbers keep going up, and eventually you reach the end of the line and this sign:

Once you turn on to the Otter Hollow Loop, the singletrack is sweet:

Once you hit this bridge, you head over to the Floodwood Pond Trail (which we did earlier this year):

Neither trail is very technical. This is about as tough as it gets:

It was a fun trip, but it would be better if I had someone to ride it with.  If anyone wants to rip around, on mountain bikes or skis (soon), let me know because I have a lot of free time all of a sudden.

More Adventure, Less Ennui

I spend a lot of time reading people’s stories. Trip reports, race summaries, adventure journals. The internet is an incredible thing. I wanted to talk a little bit about why I fill my hours examining other people’s stuff.

Every once in a while, I come across a great blog post. The kind of post that makes me want to be a better person. When I read this post the other day, I definitely felt inspired. I mean, how could you not be affected by sections like this:

I joked yesterday about what I’ve learned on the bike. Well, the single greatest thing I have truly learned on the bike is what Ken Chlouber from Leadville preaches every year.

You are better than you think you are. You can do more than you think you can.

I have not ridden Leadville. I could not. Yet. I have done nothing like it. A lot of you have not, and could not. But…

We can all DIG DEEP. We are all better than we think we are, we can all do more than we think we can.

This is an absolute truth. I have not ridden Leadville, but I have experienced exactly what Ken preaches – I have learned from the past year and a half on the bike that I can do WAY more than I thought I could. I am WAY better than I thought I was.

And so are you.

I want to be better. I want to do more. Sometimes, especially when it rains for 3 straight days, I feel like I’m not living my life to its fullest potential. I’m making more excuses than memories. It’s raining. My rear rotor on my car needs to be replaced. My bank account is down to the single digits again.

I need to develop a more positive attitude. This is a better example of how I should be thinking, from the South County Cyclista blog:

A few weeks ago on a Friday night I was trying to figure out where I was going to ride the next morning. My friends all had to ride later in the day or were out of town. Then it hit me. Why not finally make it up to the radio tower? I pulled up the map I had studied many times looking at the dirt road switch backs climbing up the steep contours of the land. This would indeed be a solo adventure.

Usually adventures like this need to be done solo or you risk ending friendships if the adventure turns sour.

I remember one time this past summer when Ace was away, it was a beautiful sunny day, and I wasted it inside watching golf on TV. Ugh. To be fair, we did a 20 mile road ride in the morning so it wasn’t a complete waste. But I still felt like I could have done more. Wasn’t there a little part of my area that I hadn’t explored yet? Wasn’t there someplace to go?

That’s why this idea from the Adventure Journal really intrigued me:

I once spent four years cycling more than 40,000 miles round the world. It was a heck of an adventure. But one of the things I learned during that trip was that you don’t need to spend four years cycling more than 40,000 miles round the world to have an adventure.

Adventure is only a state of mind. 
Adventure is stretching yourself; mentally, physically or culturally. It is about doing what you don’t normally do, pushing yourself hard and doing it to the best of your ability. And if that’s true then adventure is all around us, at all times. Even during hard financial times such as these. Times, I believe, when getting away from it all and out into the wild are more invigorating and important than ever.

That is why I began a series of ‘expeditions’ that are close to home, affordable, easy to organize, and designed to encourage other people to get out there and do stuff! I call them microadventures.

Right. I didn’t need to sit at home watching golf. There were all sorts of other things I could have been doing – new places to explore, new things to try, and new experiences to be had.

I think my real problem is that I wasn’t thinking outside of the box. I really did want to go somewhere, but for some reason, I was only thinking of places that I had been before. I wasn’t really into repeating something I had done hundreds of times (see my post on Adventures vs. Sessions), so I had a hard time motivating to get off my couch and do anything at all.

Ridiculous. Some of the best adventures are the ones that are unplanned, spontaneous, and completely improvised. Thinking only of the places I had been before made my decision really uninteresting, unexciting, and uninspiring. It’s no wonder I chose to sit at home. Because really, to take one more snippet from the South County Cyclista blog:

"It is only an adventure the first time."
- Dan Z.

Exactly. Time to start racking up some first times.

Maine Mountain Biking

We did a little mountain biking in Maine while we were up there relaxing (full pics on my Facebook Page). On Saturday, we just rode the Carriage paths around Acadia National Park More specifically, we did the "Around the Mountain" Loop. Here's some pictures:

On Sunday, we did the Camden Snow Bowl/Ragged Mountain Recreational Area.  We didn't have any idea where we were going, but there was one of those big trail maps at the bottom that gave us a few options. Here's the map:

We started off going up the Yellow Trail, then we wanted to keep climbing, so we hit the Red Trail.  After a little descent on the blue trail, we hooked back up with the yellow trail and rode that to the bottom.  It wasn't the longest mountain bike session in the world, but we spent the entire morning drinking beer on a sailboat, so we weren't really in the greatest condition for doing a ton of laps.  Anyway, here's the pictures:

It wasn't an epic trip, but here at the end of summer, the mountain bike stoke is kind of waning.  Soon, we'll start night riding (which will be fun), but on this vacation we weren't really in the mood to go super hardcore.  I can see this place becoming really cool, though.  If I was from the area, I'd do everything I could to support the Midcoast Maine chapter of the NEMBA.

As far as the pictures go, I'm experimenting with shooting in RAW mode, then adjusting all of the levels afterwords.  I think these pictures are a little oversaturated with color, but I kind of liked the effect.  I'm still trying to figure out the best levels for everything, so images on the blog might look weird for a while.

Last Chair: 9/2/2011

I've been dealing with some things lately, so I haven't really got around to posting much. Or Twittering. I did want to take this time to post some of the stuff that's been happening on the web while I've been away from the blog.

Phil Brown at the Adirondack Explorer has been doing exceptional work documenting the aftermath of the Hurricane. He was the first to report that the bridge over Marcy Dam was washed away, the first with pictures of Duck Hole after that dam breached, and he took this excellent picture of the Keene Valley FD clothes outside of their makeshift headquarters (after their building was obliterated).

If you haven't seen it yet, Adirondack Backcountry Skiing chartered a plane to check out new slide paths resulting from the drenching rains. There's a discussion going on over at the Harvey Road Forums about new skiing opportunities. At least something good might come out of this hurricane.

And there was a mountain bike photo competition in VT. Sick.

I've never surfed, and I'd imagine that a lot of people who read this blog don't surf either. But the video this week was too sick not to post. Here you go:

Change

I've been feeling really down lately. I don't know if it's the Month of August, some personal problems, a pay cut at work, or just the soul crushing ennui of suburban, middle class life. I can't help but feel like I'm just frittering time away, waiting for something to happen to me. Which is really the wrong attitude to take. The better approach is more like this (from holstee.com):

I'm trying to get past the "If you don't like something, change it" part of the slogan.  I know something isn't right, I know I want to change it, but I have no idea what it is or how to change it.  Besides, "change" isn't really always the easiest thing to pull off. Ask Barack Obama. Or Tupac. Or the millions of people who want to change their employment status. 

I feel like I want to go somewhere, or do something, or make something happen.  I'm not depressed, but I'm not happy either.  Maybe I just need a long walk to clear my head. Or maybe I need to start making plans for the winter. 

"Do what you love, and do it often."

Okay, maybe I'll try that for a while.  

Last Chair: 8/12/11

From time to time, I post some interesting links on my Twitter account. These posts appear on the feed on the right. Occasionally, I aggregate these tweets into a "Last Chair" post. I try to do it every Friday, but sometimes I'm too busy, or I'm travelling somewhere, or I'm too lazy. So here's a little update post for the couple of weeks I missed.

It's teaser season, so here's a new one from Meathead Films, a new one from Sweetgrass Productions, and a blog post with a collection of every trailer by the big boys (MSP, TGR, etc).

Someday, I really want to ride the Great Divide Route from Banff, Alberta to Antelope Wells, New Mexico. Here's a couple of blog posts listing reasons why: Part 1 and Part 2.

I didn't tweet this story, but I really liked this analysis by Drew from Wicked Outdoorsy of the decision to move Garmont from Vermont to Portland, Oregon.

The video this week is from Log Majal Productions. I don't know what it is, but as I get older, I find straight up Ski porn to be a little boring, and I'm looking for stuff with more of a story. This looks like it might fit the bill pretty well:

"The Source" Trailer from Log Mahal Productions on Vimeo.