Short Version:
A great ride. We learn things.
Long Version:
Dragging ourselves out of bed wasn't easy, but was made much more palatable by the prospect of more illicit trail exploration. And we were rewarded once again by some fairly spectacular balloonrise action in the glorious morning sunshine.
We'd met Ogden* the Alaskan-Jewish Palinist Islamophile over delicous foods the night before, and set off on the bikes from his house late in the morning, in fine spirits and bound for parts unknown. Six hours later, we were back, eating delicious snacks and drinking beer in the hot tub. We figured we'd earned it, having hit slickrock and unslick rocks; soft sand and hard; water-sculpted stonescapes in the midst of the desert; derelict cabins; mesas and buttes; sidehills and steep rollovers and stacked ramps and spiky plants. For the second day in a row Nene nailed a steeply-sloping slickrock sidehill that took some of my skin when I failed to negotiate it appropriately, and for the second day in a row she rolled stuff that looked impassable, impressing the natives and scaring the few remaining bejeebers right out of me.
Picking highlights is a tough ask when the whole ride is that phenomenal, but it would be remiss of us to fail to mention at least a few things:
- The Medicine Wheel: The Doctor*, Renfrew* and Ogden were riding around and around this rock circle when I arrived. Each new arrival on the scene joined the carousel action, and once we were all present and accounted for we peeled off one by one. A seriously cool active way to regroup. And apparently we got luckier and younger each revolution we made, which is a pretty excellent bonus.
- The Steep Thing: It was steep.
- The Snooze: Most of us napped in the sun at the bottom of the steep thing while the Doctor and Ogden and Renfrew repaired trail damage back along the Mescal Mesa traverse. Someone had been performing trail sabotage since the folks last passed that way, and Renfrew's trail-blockage rock removals had become more and more vehement. We felt bad for not helping, but when it comes down to it we (I) would probably have been more hindrance than help. And snoozing in the sun was really, really nice.
- Darch Flies: Darch rides everything, almost always with aplomb, so hearing the tale of the tree-strike from the previous day was pretty special. Seeing him pitch over his handlebars on a minimal drop, with a tiny difficulty level was - once he'd picked himself up and proved he'd survived (relatively, and excepting dignity) unscathed - kind of cool.
- Felix*: Mrs Renfrew appeared about halfway around the Aerie Trail. She was riding solo as she wasn't feeling 100%, and that's borderline scary given how fast and how smooth she rode; not only named after a cat, but catlike in grace and power as well. Kind of like her husband, only with less beardness. And she had a shirt that said "Shit" on it.
- Ogden and the Prickly Pear: The stylish, graceful entirely intentional dismount that landed him on the spiky plant was impressive enough, but the several large chunks of bespined plant matter that then intertwined themselves with the frame of his bike made the whole episode just that little bit specialler.
- Xmas Wash: No, not the annual bathing escapade; rather, an occasional watercourse - dry now - that the hardcore (Ogden, Renfrew, The Doctor) and the stupid (me) rode instead of the fast flowing descent option taken by everyone with an ounce of sense. Right from the (steep, sketchy) get-go, this part of the ride shaped as trouble with a capital everything, and it didn't disappoint. I was inordinately pleased when the Doctor put a foot down, joining me in the Didn't Clear Xmas Wash (Today) Club. Of course, he still rode way more of the head-sized boulder-fields interspersed with evil soft sand than I managed, and we'll not go into how long Renfrew sat awaiting our arrival at the end of the Wash... It was seriously challenging, and bloody hard work, and ultimately really rewarding.
Special mention has to be made of the extreme man-love session partway through the Wash. And of the Lingerie Football League game that Ogden used as a teaching aid whilst instructing us in the joys of Amerikan Football. And politics. And Comparative Religion, the History of the Middle East, the Sociology and Geography of Alaska... This was our first opportunity to hear from the red side of Amerikan**, and we grabbed it with all of our ears.
By the time we left (late!), we were hammered, and learned, and pretty well worn out.
* = Names have been changed to protect the incredibly guilty
** = Those El Bizarro Amerikans have reversed the color scheme in use pretty much everywhere else, so areas controlled by or traditionally associated with their theoretically-left-leaning Democrat party are shaded blue on maps, while the more conservative Republikan party's domains are shaded red. This despite McCarthyism, Reds Under the Bed, all the antipathy towards the former Soviet Union and all their Communist allies, and the fact that they've had not just one Red Scare but two (The First, in 1919/1920 was about worker (socialist) revolution and political radicalism. The Second ran from 1947 to 1957, and was focused on (national and foreign) communists influencing society or infiltrating the federal government, or both)***
*** = Thanks, Wikipedia!
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
The Doctor Will See You Now
Short Version:
Right-wing agitators take us on a crime spree in and around Sedona
Long Version:
We were tetchy about the prospect of riding Sedona again after the over-populated underfunned first attempt, but we'd handed over actual moneys for a trail map, and there's snow in Northern California, so we figured we'd just grin and bear it for another day or two before hightailing it to Vegas and Boulder City for some luxury and some hardcore riding respectively. We certainly didn't expect to spend two days and nights riding the unmapped illegal Sedona trail network - hell, we didn't even know it existed!
We'd met Darch (Hi Darch!) at Gooseberry Mesa, and hooked up again when we arrived back in Sedona from Black Canyon. He'd been riding with the Doctor* and his crew for a couple of days, and they took us with them when they set off for Monday's ride, along with one of the other sets of Canadians we'd met at Gooseberry, Bruce and Ardelle, who we spied riding up the road we were being driven up in a truck. We'd finally managed to source brake pads for Nene, which was just as well given the ride: the aptly-named, mildly scary Hangover. When we'd mentioned the name to the guys at the bike shop** they'd said it was a) illegal and b) not very good. Turns out they were half-right: the Forest Service went so far as to send a crew of volunteers armed with wire-brushes to eradicate the painted bear-paw tracks that had been used to mark the trail. Now riders follow the wire-brush marks. We followed the Doctor up to a saddle, from where the trail drops down and across a rock face and into a narrow gap between wall and trees. Nene rode it with aplomb. I fell off and skinned my elbow. That was to be the pattern for us for the next two days.
Hangover is named for the series of rock overhangs beneath which the trail passes. The fear factor of the trail proper comes from the sheer drop on the downslope side of the trail, and the very real possibility of being shunted off by one's spare tyre or backpack whilst attempting to sneak by. We both survived, with some walkage, and then set off with a reduced group to ride some more of the awesomeness that is the semi- and illegal trail network which threads in and out of the legitimised, mapped system. We know where we went, in a general sort of way, but we'll probably not be leading any guided rides any time soon; there are more non-legit trails than there are mapped ones, they're not signposted, and some of them don't even have bike tyre marks: we carried our bikes on our shoulders in past visible range before remounting and setting off again. Once again, Nene rode incredibly; the only dismount she did was forced by me jumping off in front of her and blocking the trail. I wasn't quite so flash, to the extent that not only did I manage a pinch-flat from riding too fast and with not enough skill, but I didn't even fix it myself; I'd been chasing the incredibly fast, incredibly smooth-riding Canadian Renfrew* down the short downhill section of Baldwin that we hit when I flatted. By the time I had the bike upside-down and the wheel off, he had ridden back up, and before I quite knew what was going on he'd pulled the dead tube without using tyre-levers to get the tyre off, partially-inflated the new tube using his lungs, placed the new tube and re-seated the tyre, and inflated it using a compressed air canister he'd produced from somewhere. He handed the wheel back to me within a couple of minutes of the flat occurring, and I was so discombobulated that I said I was discombobulated, and then I had trouble putting my wheel back on. Impressive bastardo.
Back at the homestead, we took Baxter* up on her offer of showers, and it felt so incredibly good to be clean that we were near dancing on the table. In the interest of not getting kicked out of the house before we got a chance to eat delicious foods and talk with interesting peoples, we refrained.
* = Names have been changed to protect the incredibly guilty
** = Yes, that's the same guys at the bike shop that sent us off on Bell Rock and Templeton on a holiday(ish) weekend.
Right-wing agitators take us on a crime spree in and around Sedona
Long Version:
We were tetchy about the prospect of riding Sedona again after the over-populated underfunned first attempt, but we'd handed over actual moneys for a trail map, and there's snow in Northern California, so we figured we'd just grin and bear it for another day or two before hightailing it to Vegas and Boulder City for some luxury and some hardcore riding respectively. We certainly didn't expect to spend two days and nights riding the unmapped illegal Sedona trail network - hell, we didn't even know it existed!
We'd met Darch (Hi Darch!) at Gooseberry Mesa, and hooked up again when we arrived back in Sedona from Black Canyon. He'd been riding with the Doctor* and his crew for a couple of days, and they took us with them when they set off for Monday's ride, along with one of the other sets of Canadians we'd met at Gooseberry, Bruce and Ardelle, who we spied riding up the road we were being driven up in a truck. We'd finally managed to source brake pads for Nene, which was just as well given the ride: the aptly-named, mildly scary Hangover. When we'd mentioned the name to the guys at the bike shop** they'd said it was a) illegal and b) not very good. Turns out they were half-right: the Forest Service went so far as to send a crew of volunteers armed with wire-brushes to eradicate the painted bear-paw tracks that had been used to mark the trail. Now riders follow the wire-brush marks. We followed the Doctor up to a saddle, from where the trail drops down and across a rock face and into a narrow gap between wall and trees. Nene rode it with aplomb. I fell off and skinned my elbow. That was to be the pattern for us for the next two days.
Hangover is named for the series of rock overhangs beneath which the trail passes. The fear factor of the trail proper comes from the sheer drop on the downslope side of the trail, and the very real possibility of being shunted off by one's spare tyre or backpack whilst attempting to sneak by. We both survived, with some walkage, and then set off with a reduced group to ride some more of the awesomeness that is the semi- and illegal trail network which threads in and out of the legitimised, mapped system. We know where we went, in a general sort of way, but we'll probably not be leading any guided rides any time soon; there are more non-legit trails than there are mapped ones, they're not signposted, and some of them don't even have bike tyre marks: we carried our bikes on our shoulders in past visible range before remounting and setting off again. Once again, Nene rode incredibly; the only dismount she did was forced by me jumping off in front of her and blocking the trail. I wasn't quite so flash, to the extent that not only did I manage a pinch-flat from riding too fast and with not enough skill, but I didn't even fix it myself; I'd been chasing the incredibly fast, incredibly smooth-riding Canadian Renfrew* down the short downhill section of Baldwin that we hit when I flatted. By the time I had the bike upside-down and the wheel off, he had ridden back up, and before I quite knew what was going on he'd pulled the dead tube without using tyre-levers to get the tyre off, partially-inflated the new tube using his lungs, placed the new tube and re-seated the tyre, and inflated it using a compressed air canister he'd produced from somewhere. He handed the wheel back to me within a couple of minutes of the flat occurring, and I was so discombobulated that I said I was discombobulated, and then I had trouble putting my wheel back on. Impressive bastardo.
Back at the homestead, we took Baxter* up on her offer of showers, and it felt so incredibly good to be clean that we were near dancing on the table. In the interest of not getting kicked out of the house before we got a chance to eat delicious foods and talk with interesting peoples, we refrained.
* = Names have been changed to protect the incredibly guilty
** = Yes, that's the same guys at the bike shop that sent us off on Bell Rock and Templeton on a holiday(ish) weekend.
"I Suppose I Can't Blame It Entirely On the Lizard"
Short Version:
Guns in the sun, angry plants, a hard day's ride with real lizards, fried-egg sandwiches
Long Version:
Unfortunately for us, the same semi-official long weekend which had cluttered Sedona's inner trails with day-hikers and -bikers meant that the desert around the Black Canyon Trail's southern trailhead at Table Mesa was far from deserted. In fact, we managed to stumble into the midst not only of an ATV convention, with all the attendant glories of fat sweaty people who talk loud and laugh obnoxious laughter too often and too forcefully; but also a competitive target-shooting weekend outing. Knowing, as we do, that Arizona is gun central, we probably shouldn't have been surprised that an area of desert within an hour's drive of a major city in this firearms-mad state would be populated with shooters of all shapes and sizes, discharging weapons of all shapes and sizes, on a sunny Saturday afternoon on a long(ish) weekend... but we were.
Not as surprised as I was, though, not long after we found a spot not in anyone's firing line and not next to the fattest or greasiest-looking ATV crowds, when a cactus I walked past leaped out and attacked me. I was shocked, and mildly horrified, and in pain, and a wee bit scared, because I absolutely had not touched the vicious plant-like evildoer, and yet there was a big chunk of it attached to my leg with enormous, barbed spikes. It was the exact same type of cactus that had attacked me in the exact same manner down in the Baja, near the disembowelled dog on the outskirts of the horrible shitty city, only this bespiked menace seemed healthier. Maybe fat Amerikans are more nutritious than skinny Mexicanos. It took a while to get the thing off me, and the horror stayed with me afterwards, banished only when Nene managed to turn her butt into a pincushion for a prickly pear, which meant that I got so busy using tweezers and the last of the sunlight that I forgot to keep freaking out about the jumping nasties.
The assortment of weaponry which was being employed in our vicinity was staggering. Not only were we hearing the flat crack of rifles and the deep booming of shotguns, but also semi- and fully-automatic weapons, and an occasional huge bass thud that had us thinking of dynamite and mortars (and not the kind that have pestles as partners). The artillery cacophony carried on well after darkness fell but we figure that people must have gotten too drunk to reload because eventually the echoes of the last percussive reports faded, and we ended up getting one of the best nights' sleeps of the trip so far - maybe subconsciously figuring that no-one was going to be stupid enough to be messing with anyone else in a place where absolutely everybody was armed to the teeth and had spent most of the weekend brushing up on their targetting skills.
They started again early the next morning, but we were already up and about, and were riding not long afterwards; past the fat, greasy ATV crowd (who were just beginning to rouse after what had no doubt been a hard night of carousing with quality beverages and snack foods) and onto the trail. It turned out to be crowded on both sides by plants with spikes: the jumping ones, prickly pears, even cartoon-stereotype giant saguaros. Nene got scratched-up during an encounter with one of the evil kowhai relations, but had a scapelizard handy. Between the undulating terrain, the dry heat, and the mixed-bag of trail surfaces that included sketchy loose-over-hardpack and soft, wheel-eating fine sand, it was a hell of a hard work ride.
We'd both been fantasizing about the fried-egg sandwiches we were going to have when we made it back to the Reaper for a while by the time we saw the lizard. I thought I was hallucinating at first; it was too big, and far too pink-and-brown for unreserved believability. But Nene saw it too, and so did the camera, and then it hid in the bushes so we carried on, back to the trailhead, where we saw a man so fat that I almost rode into a cactus while staring at him, and then we cooked and ate fried-egg sandwiches, and they were really, really good.
Guns in the sun, angry plants, a hard day's ride with real lizards, fried-egg sandwiches
Long Version:
Unfortunately for us, the same semi-official long weekend which had cluttered Sedona's inner trails with day-hikers and -bikers meant that the desert around the Black Canyon Trail's southern trailhead at Table Mesa was far from deserted. In fact, we managed to stumble into the midst not only of an ATV convention, with all the attendant glories of fat sweaty people who talk loud and laugh obnoxious laughter too often and too forcefully; but also a competitive target-shooting weekend outing. Knowing, as we do, that Arizona is gun central, we probably shouldn't have been surprised that an area of desert within an hour's drive of a major city in this firearms-mad state would be populated with shooters of all shapes and sizes, discharging weapons of all shapes and sizes, on a sunny Saturday afternoon on a long(ish) weekend... but we were.
Not as surprised as I was, though, not long after we found a spot not in anyone's firing line and not next to the fattest or greasiest-looking ATV crowds, when a cactus I walked past leaped out and attacked me. I was shocked, and mildly horrified, and in pain, and a wee bit scared, because I absolutely had not touched the vicious plant-like evildoer, and yet there was a big chunk of it attached to my leg with enormous, barbed spikes. It was the exact same type of cactus that had attacked me in the exact same manner down in the Baja, near the disembowelled dog on the outskirts of the horrible shitty city, only this bespiked menace seemed healthier. Maybe fat Amerikans are more nutritious than skinny Mexicanos. It took a while to get the thing off me, and the horror stayed with me afterwards, banished only when Nene managed to turn her butt into a pincushion for a prickly pear, which meant that I got so busy using tweezers and the last of the sunlight that I forgot to keep freaking out about the jumping nasties.
The assortment of weaponry which was being employed in our vicinity was staggering. Not only were we hearing the flat crack of rifles and the deep booming of shotguns, but also semi- and fully-automatic weapons, and an occasional huge bass thud that had us thinking of dynamite and mortars (and not the kind that have pestles as partners). The artillery cacophony carried on well after darkness fell but we figure that people must have gotten too drunk to reload because eventually the echoes of the last percussive reports faded, and we ended up getting one of the best nights' sleeps of the trip so far - maybe subconsciously figuring that no-one was going to be stupid enough to be messing with anyone else in a place where absolutely everybody was armed to the teeth and had spent most of the weekend brushing up on their targetting skills.
They started again early the next morning, but we were already up and about, and were riding not long afterwards; past the fat, greasy ATV crowd (who were just beginning to rouse after what had no doubt been a hard night of carousing with quality beverages and snack foods) and onto the trail. It turned out to be crowded on both sides by plants with spikes: the jumping ones, prickly pears, even cartoon-stereotype giant saguaros. Nene got scratched-up during an encounter with one of the evil kowhai relations, but had a scapelizard handy. Between the undulating terrain, the dry heat, and the mixed-bag of trail surfaces that included sketchy loose-over-hardpack and soft, wheel-eating fine sand, it was a hell of a hard work ride.
We'd both been fantasizing about the fried-egg sandwiches we were going to have when we made it back to the Reaper for a while by the time we saw the lizard. I thought I was hallucinating at first; it was too big, and far too pink-and-brown for unreserved believability. But Nene saw it too, and so did the camera, and then it hid in the bushes so we carried on, back to the trailhead, where we saw a man so fat that I almost rode into a cactus while staring at him, and then we cooked and ate fried-egg sandwiches, and they were really, really good.
My, What a Big Fat Ass You Have...
Short Version:
Sedona: land of affluent tourism. And fat people.
Long Version:
Sedona, Arizona is a tourist town. A comfortably-affluent tourist town, with too many art galleries to count, a bunch of nice-looking restaurants and hotels, and a liquor store which houses a fine collection of bespoke handmade bottles of sage wine, pear brandy and old, theoretically wonderful tequilas. We bought dark, coffee-infused Hawaiian beer from the liquor store, and nothing from any of the galleries (although the huge stone bear looming massively outside one of them was pretty special). We did buy some brake pads and a map from one of the several local bike shops, and picked their brains extensively in pursuit of optimum local ride options.
We settled on a trail combo described by one of the bike shop guys as his favorite local ride, chatted a while with Kumeu locals Logan and Joy (Hi Logan and Joy!), and then set off up the road to the Bell Rock Path trailhead. Many, if not most of the trails we've found on this continent have been mixed-use, which is a definite contrast to NZ's trail systems. Most of the time it's not proved problematic, and we've been edging towards a belief that there really isn't that much need to keep varying recreational interests quite so comprehensively segregated. People have been almost unfailingly polite, and the biggest access issue we've struck thus far has been that comical situation where everyone is attempting to defer to everyone else, and no-one actually moves. This was true of the Bell Rock Path, and of the Templeton, Baldwin, Little Horse and Llama Trails as well, but the sheer volume of other trail users was nightmarish; it got to the point where it seemed like every time we got up some speed, or started to relax into the flow of the ride we ran into one or more groups of people, be they hikers in twos or fours or mores, or bikers on rental machines picking their way gingerly along the trail on foot or on wheels. A couple of times we nearly introduced ourselves vehemently to piles of bikes abandoned mid-trail while their temporary custodians took pictures of large red rocks and/or each other.
Pretty soon we were a-hating, although the downhill section on the Baldwin Loop was pretty cool, and the enormously (seriously, ENORMOUS) fat woman who fell on her enormously fat arse in the river just as we rode past was a definite highlight. The Llama Trails were less occluded and therefore more rideable, but by then we were tired and grouchy, so as soon as we made it back to the Reaper we left town and drove further south towards Phoenix, seeking the more remote ride of awesomeness the bike shop guys had spoken of: the Black Canyon Trail.
Sedona: land of affluent tourism. And fat people.
Long Version:
Sedona, Arizona is a tourist town. A comfortably-affluent tourist town, with too many art galleries to count, a bunch of nice-looking restaurants and hotels, and a liquor store which houses a fine collection of bespoke handmade bottles of sage wine, pear brandy and old, theoretically wonderful tequilas. We bought dark, coffee-infused Hawaiian beer from the liquor store, and nothing from any of the galleries (although the huge stone bear looming massively outside one of them was pretty special). We did buy some brake pads and a map from one of the several local bike shops, and picked their brains extensively in pursuit of optimum local ride options.
We settled on a trail combo described by one of the bike shop guys as his favorite local ride, chatted a while with Kumeu locals Logan and Joy (Hi Logan and Joy!), and then set off up the road to the Bell Rock Path trailhead. Many, if not most of the trails we've found on this continent have been mixed-use, which is a definite contrast to NZ's trail systems. Most of the time it's not proved problematic, and we've been edging towards a belief that there really isn't that much need to keep varying recreational interests quite so comprehensively segregated. People have been almost unfailingly polite, and the biggest access issue we've struck thus far has been that comical situation where everyone is attempting to defer to everyone else, and no-one actually moves. This was true of the Bell Rock Path, and of the Templeton, Baldwin, Little Horse and Llama Trails as well, but the sheer volume of other trail users was nightmarish; it got to the point where it seemed like every time we got up some speed, or started to relax into the flow of the ride we ran into one or more groups of people, be they hikers in twos or fours or mores, or bikers on rental machines picking their way gingerly along the trail on foot or on wheels. A couple of times we nearly introduced ourselves vehemently to piles of bikes abandoned mid-trail while their temporary custodians took pictures of large red rocks and/or each other.
Pretty soon we were a-hating, although the downhill section on the Baldwin Loop was pretty cool, and the enormously (seriously, ENORMOUS) fat woman who fell on her enormously fat arse in the river just as we rode past was a definite highlight. The Llama Trails were less occluded and therefore more rideable, but by then we were tired and grouchy, so as soon as we made it back to the Reaper we left town and drove further south towards Phoenix, seeking the more remote ride of awesomeness the bike shop guys had spoken of: the Black Canyon Trail.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
The Big Freeze
Short Version:
Cold. An aborted ride, re-ridden after caffeine. We leave town in search of warm.
Long Version:
Before we could ride, we needed caffeine and foods. Before we could make caffeiny goodness, we had to turn ice into water, and before we could do that we needed to get the stuff out of the bottle it was frozen inside. It took a while, but we got there eventually, and before long we were on the bikes, blasting down the road to the trailhead. Both of us were complaining about the cold, albeit with reference to differing body parts: Nene's fingers were frozen, and I had serious toe discomfort afoot. On the bright side, we had one fully-functional set of digits between us.
We stopped at the trailhead to try to warm the extremities, but it wasn't working so we gave up pretty quickly and set off up the Schultz Pass Trail. It was pretty nice riding, but it was cold. Really cold. We made slow, heavy going of what should have been an easy ride, and gave up after half an hour when it became apparent that hands and feet weren't getting any warmer, and that their iciness was making what should have been an extremely pleasant jaunt in the forest into a really unpleasant ordeal.
One warming cup of Macy's caffeiney goodness and some eggy deliciousness later we returned for a second attempt, and found the valley up which the Schultz Pass Trail runs much less chilled than it had been in the early morning. It still wasn't tropical though, and we were soon riding past patches of snow and ice-rimmed puddles. One downhill corner was so completely icy that I looked at it and thought: I wonder, if one went too fast and one's wheels slid out from under one, whether it would hurt more than usual when one hit the frozen ground.
The answer, apparently, was yes.
At Schultz Pass we hooked onto the Secret Trail, and from there across to Upper Moto. We tried to ride Anthony's Slutty Sister, but gave up and went back to Upper Moto, where we found a boulder field with lots of tricky technical stuff. Lower Moto was more open and flowing, and we got fast before we got finished. Only two and a half hours out, but the cold made it feel like more. Discussing the ride later we agreed that the trails, like the town, had reminded us a lot of Bend; a nice mix of technical and not; fast and flowing sections contrasting with tight, tricky bits.
We left, with peanut butter sandwiches, and drove through the scenic Oak Creek Canyon to Sedona and Oak Creek Village and a scrubby patch of desert south of town where we parked ourselves for the night.
Cold. An aborted ride, re-ridden after caffeine. We leave town in search of warm.
Long Version:
Before we could ride, we needed caffeine and foods. Before we could make caffeiny goodness, we had to turn ice into water, and before we could do that we needed to get the stuff out of the bottle it was frozen inside. It took a while, but we got there eventually, and before long we were on the bikes, blasting down the road to the trailhead. Both of us were complaining about the cold, albeit with reference to differing body parts: Nene's fingers were frozen, and I had serious toe discomfort afoot. On the bright side, we had one fully-functional set of digits between us.
We stopped at the trailhead to try to warm the extremities, but it wasn't working so we gave up pretty quickly and set off up the Schultz Pass Trail. It was pretty nice riding, but it was cold. Really cold. We made slow, heavy going of what should have been an easy ride, and gave up after half an hour when it became apparent that hands and feet weren't getting any warmer, and that their iciness was making what should have been an extremely pleasant jaunt in the forest into a really unpleasant ordeal.
One warming cup of Macy's caffeiney goodness and some eggy deliciousness later we returned for a second attempt, and found the valley up which the Schultz Pass Trail runs much less chilled than it had been in the early morning. It still wasn't tropical though, and we were soon riding past patches of snow and ice-rimmed puddles. One downhill corner was so completely icy that I looked at it and thought: I wonder, if one went too fast and one's wheels slid out from under one, whether it would hurt more than usual when one hit the frozen ground.
The answer, apparently, was yes.
At Schultz Pass we hooked onto the Secret Trail, and from there across to Upper Moto. We tried to ride Anthony's Slutty Sister, but gave up and went back to Upper Moto, where we found a boulder field with lots of tricky technical stuff. Lower Moto was more open and flowing, and we got fast before we got finished. Only two and a half hours out, but the cold made it feel like more. Discussing the ride later we agreed that the trails, like the town, had reminded us a lot of Bend; a nice mix of technical and not; fast and flowing sections contrasting with tight, tricky bits.
We left, with peanut butter sandwiches, and drove through the scenic Oak Creek Canyon to Sedona and Oak Creek Village and a scrubby patch of desert south of town where we parked ourselves for the night.
Coffee!
Short Version:
The Reaper harvests snow, a cold night and a colder morning. We find seriously good coffee and shitty decorative craft.
Long Version:
The snow that had been falling on us as we hiked up out of the Grand Canyon was unevil, mellow snowfall. It was kind of like being in one of those knick-knack snowstorm globe things after someone feeble has given it a gentle shake, and things are settling down agan after the mild turbulence. Up at the top it was a different story, and once we were a-Reapering at speed it was downright scary. Kind of neat though, especially the way the snow flew up past the windscreen without actually hitting it. It seemed very much like how hyperspace travel might manifest itself, should we ever crack that long-held dream tech, although the prospect of entering hyperspace in the Reaper is at least mildly bemusing.
It wasn't particularly warm, either.
We skipped the Visitor Centre and set off downhill, towards the I-40 and Flagstaff. The snow stopped as we dropped, and we had clear skies by the time we reached the fringes of the Kaibab National Forest, where we set up camp not next to the dead thing and slept the intermittent sleep of the not-warm-enough, waking to icy everything. Water bottles were frozen solid and shut, the tarp covering the bikes was a rigid sheet of white, and in the end it came down to a bladder-control contest to see who got fed breakfast in bed.
Once her ladyship had finished her repast and deigned to exit her down-filled coccoon into the chilly, sunny Thursday morning, we set off for Flagstaff, which appeared to be in the process of waking up. Counter-culture kids were everywhere, meandering about the place with hair of all colors and cuts and stages of mattedness. They seemed to be centred largely at a place called Macy's. It had wi-fi and a laundromat next door, so we decided to use our current bedraggledness to full advantage and infiltrate the joint.
Best coffee in North Amerika.
Better than the Back Porch Cafe in Bend. Better than... nope, there hasn't been anywhere else good. Seriously, coffee in Amerika is total pants. The stuff we make in our nifty stovetop espresso thing is umpteen times better than the filth that gets doled out at cafes and diners across the continent. It's so bad that Starbucks is actually not shit, comparatively speaking.
But not at Macy's, on Beaver St, in Flagstaff, Arizona, Amerika. The food was really good too: cheesy eggy goodness. The people-watching was excellent, interwebs were robust, and the only downside was the owner's or owner's spouse's or spawnlet's blithering shite arty photography plastered all over the walls. I will never regain the minutes I spent looking at the one in front of me while Nene booked us a Vegas hotel; they are lost forever, burned wastefully on a piece of pretentious craft masquerading as art. That last bit is a flaw with photography in general, not with Mr. Macy's stuff in particular. Mr. Macy just added a personal crime against discerning humanity by posing subjects abysmally, tritely, and phonily. Horrible.
60% of the Australo-British Grand Canyon band put in an appearance; they'd managed to espy a cougar in the snow as they left the Park the previous day. We were jealous. We weren't jealous of their next mission, though: a Greyhound bus trip. We went thrift-store shopping. All over town. Didn't buy much, though; everything was, again, just not-quite. Nene bought a hat. The beer and the food at the Flagstaff Brewing Co were excellent, and it was a happy pair who hooked off into the woods and camped up the road from the trailhead from which we were to ride the next morning, although the evening was ominously chilly...
The Reaper harvests snow, a cold night and a colder morning. We find seriously good coffee and shitty decorative craft.
Long Version:
The snow that had been falling on us as we hiked up out of the Grand Canyon was unevil, mellow snowfall. It was kind of like being in one of those knick-knack snowstorm globe things after someone feeble has given it a gentle shake, and things are settling down agan after the mild turbulence. Up at the top it was a different story, and once we were a-Reapering at speed it was downright scary. Kind of neat though, especially the way the snow flew up past the windscreen without actually hitting it. It seemed very much like how hyperspace travel might manifest itself, should we ever crack that long-held dream tech, although the prospect of entering hyperspace in the Reaper is at least mildly bemusing.
It wasn't particularly warm, either.
We skipped the Visitor Centre and set off downhill, towards the I-40 and Flagstaff. The snow stopped as we dropped, and we had clear skies by the time we reached the fringes of the Kaibab National Forest, where we set up camp not next to the dead thing and slept the intermittent sleep of the not-warm-enough, waking to icy everything. Water bottles were frozen solid and shut, the tarp covering the bikes was a rigid sheet of white, and in the end it came down to a bladder-control contest to see who got fed breakfast in bed.
Once her ladyship had finished her repast and deigned to exit her down-filled coccoon into the chilly, sunny Thursday morning, we set off for Flagstaff, which appeared to be in the process of waking up. Counter-culture kids were everywhere, meandering about the place with hair of all colors and cuts and stages of mattedness. They seemed to be centred largely at a place called Macy's. It had wi-fi and a laundromat next door, so we decided to use our current bedraggledness to full advantage and infiltrate the joint.
Best coffee in North Amerika.
Better than the Back Porch Cafe in Bend. Better than... nope, there hasn't been anywhere else good. Seriously, coffee in Amerika is total pants. The stuff we make in our nifty stovetop espresso thing is umpteen times better than the filth that gets doled out at cafes and diners across the continent. It's so bad that Starbucks is actually not shit, comparatively speaking.
But not at Macy's, on Beaver St, in Flagstaff, Arizona, Amerika. The food was really good too: cheesy eggy goodness. The people-watching was excellent, interwebs were robust, and the only downside was the owner's or owner's spouse's or spawnlet's blithering shite arty photography plastered all over the walls. I will never regain the minutes I spent looking at the one in front of me while Nene booked us a Vegas hotel; they are lost forever, burned wastefully on a piece of pretentious craft masquerading as art. That last bit is a flaw with photography in general, not with Mr. Macy's stuff in particular. Mr. Macy just added a personal crime against discerning humanity by posing subjects abysmally, tritely, and phonily. Horrible.
60% of the Australo-British Grand Canyon band put in an appearance; they'd managed to espy a cougar in the snow as they left the Park the previous day. We were jealous. We weren't jealous of their next mission, though: a Greyhound bus trip. We went thrift-store shopping. All over town. Didn't buy much, though; everything was, again, just not-quite. Nene bought a hat. The beer and the food at the Flagstaff Brewing Co were excellent, and it was a happy pair who hooked off into the woods and camped up the road from the trailhead from which we were to ride the next morning, although the evening was ominously chilly...
The Grand Canyon. It's Quite Grand.
Short Version:
Mormon knowledge, a walk in a bloody big ditch. A band that wasn't, a crippled meatophile, color-coded geological history, snow. And it's all OCD-friendly!
Long Version:
Neither of us had heard of Pipe Springs National Monument, but we were passing, and had a pass, so we stopped. We were glad we had, because we learned more about the Mormons (in whose State we'd been frolicking for the past month) in an hour than we had in all the time we spent in Utah*. My favorite thing was the revolving shelving unit; Nene liked the horse. I didn't get to feed a peppermint to the shelving unit though. There were Texas Longhorn cattle in a pen (they have long horns) and some seriously crazy ducks in the tree-lined pond, and then there was cheap gas at the Indian-owned station and we were off again, through Fredonia and Kanab and on into Page, where we ate uninspiring fast-food burritos sold to us by an incredibly enthusiastic young chap with quite bad skin.
Weird stuff had been happening on the road, with several mouse-like critters attempting crossings with varying degrees of success. The chaos ratcheted up a notch just after Antelope Pass when a pickup pulled out in front of us as we blasted along at just under the 65mph speed limit. We managed to not die, then disappeared off into the Kaibab National Forest to camp in a grove of somewhat bedraggled trees, with a planned early start for Grand Canyon day.
And an early start it was, although "early" is not the thing it'll be remembered for: it was COLD! Frozen windows and water-bottles.
The watch-tower at the Desert View Lookout hadn't opened for the day before we moved on to the next spot, and it was still chilly as we wandered aroud the ruined Indian village. Eventually we found a lookout with sun, and with minimal wind, and we breakfasted while looking out over what really is an amazing spectacle. Pictures don't do the place justice. The canyon is absolutely immense: it averages ten miles across and is over a mile deep in places, and the rocks in the lower reaches have been dated as being over 1800-million years old. They're dark grey. The geological history of the place is exposed in the cliff walls, and color-coded for your convenience: a band of cream amongst the orange here; a series of dark stripes a few hundred feet lower; a giant green shelf halfway down where harder rock has arrested the effects of erosion and has been colonised by hardy scrub.
We weren't the only early risers already on the move; others included:
- The Amerikan couple who emigrated to Williams Lake (for goodness' sake, why?). They were turned away at the US border last time they came back for a visit because they had their pet cockatoo with them.
- The Anglo-Amerikan couple from North Carolina. He spent twelve years and fifty-thousand dollars jumping through immigration hoops in pursuit of US citizenship. They told us about the Horseshoe Mesa hike, a few stops further along the way, and said that they'd been told it was worth exploring.
Having now done the Horseshoe Mesa hike, we concur.
There was an incredible amount of signage at the top of the trail, much of it safety-oriented, and geared towards making people not die as a result of heat- or water-related issues. We had plenty of water, and the chill wind was still blowing so we had our packs full not only with delicious foods but also with numerous hard-weather garments.
We set off at 11:11, down a steep and sketchy path. It got steeper and sketchier. We met a group of men on their way out from a multi-day trip. From all across the southern States of the US, they've been doing an annual hiking trip for thirty years. We told them they should come hike in NZ. We also met some interesting folks from non-Chicago Illinois (I never knew there was anything else there), and then we met the not-band.
Two Australians and three Brits, dressed in an assortment of styles appropriate for pretty much any urban setting you could name. They didn't look very much like hikers, but did look very much like a British band out filming a video, albeit one that's several hours long and doesn't change much. As one of the Australians said when it was mentioned, they must be a prog rock band.
We hiked about halfway down into the canyon, past the orange and the cream and the brown sections, and the light grey and the crimson-and-yellow. Not long after the translucent green, we were on the flat, and making our way out along the western arm of Horseshoe Mesa to the end, where we found wonderful, awe-inspiring views in all directions, including not only along and along, but also up and down. And then we got to walk back up.
As we'd hiked down, we'd turned occasionally and looked back up at what we'd clambered down. It looked cool. Once we'd turned at our end point and started walking back up, though, it no longer looked quite so excellent; it looked, more than anything, like a bloody hard slog waiting to be done. The path was visible only very occasionally, but what was plain at all times was that it went up. And up. And up. The signs at the top had told us to budget 2-3 times as long to do the return climb as we spent hiking down, which meant we were looking at 4-6 hours of climbing. Yikes.
Then it started to snow.
Then we met the carnivore. He was haranguing the Australians about being anemic because of their vegetarianism. He was bemused when told that we were vego also: "But you have color in your cheeks!" he cried. He was then left far behind on the climb up out of the canyon; a fact which was originally upheld as exemplarising the power of eggplant, but which we suspect may actually have had something to do with the fact that he was mildly twisted, physically speaking, and incapable of striding or even scuttling with any great speed. Didn't stop him yelling "MEAT!" at us every time he caught sight of us as we made our way up through the switchbacks on the steepest part of the climb. We yelled "BEANS!" back at him.
The more obsessive-compulsive among you will be pleased to note that, having set off at 11:11, it took us 2 hours and 22 minutes to get to the end of the western arm of Horseshoe Mesa, and we arrived back at the van at 16:11, exactly five hours after we left. In addition, our last gasoline purchase, back on the Paiute Indian Reservation at Pipe Springs, was $55.55. Feel better now?
* = Apparently the Mormon Church wanted to call the state Deseret, which may or may not have a meaning to do with honeybees of some sort, but the Federal Government, which didn't like the Mormons much at all, overruled them and named it Utah after the Ute Indians who'd lived there before the polygamists moved in
Mormon knowledge, a walk in a bloody big ditch. A band that wasn't, a crippled meatophile, color-coded geological history, snow. And it's all OCD-friendly!
Long Version:
Neither of us had heard of Pipe Springs National Monument, but we were passing, and had a pass, so we stopped. We were glad we had, because we learned more about the Mormons (in whose State we'd been frolicking for the past month) in an hour than we had in all the time we spent in Utah*. My favorite thing was the revolving shelving unit; Nene liked the horse. I didn't get to feed a peppermint to the shelving unit though. There were Texas Longhorn cattle in a pen (they have long horns) and some seriously crazy ducks in the tree-lined pond, and then there was cheap gas at the Indian-owned station and we were off again, through Fredonia and Kanab and on into Page, where we ate uninspiring fast-food burritos sold to us by an incredibly enthusiastic young chap with quite bad skin.
Weird stuff had been happening on the road, with several mouse-like critters attempting crossings with varying degrees of success. The chaos ratcheted up a notch just after Antelope Pass when a pickup pulled out in front of us as we blasted along at just under the 65mph speed limit. We managed to not die, then disappeared off into the Kaibab National Forest to camp in a grove of somewhat bedraggled trees, with a planned early start for Grand Canyon day.
And an early start it was, although "early" is not the thing it'll be remembered for: it was COLD! Frozen windows and water-bottles.
The watch-tower at the Desert View Lookout hadn't opened for the day before we moved on to the next spot, and it was still chilly as we wandered aroud the ruined Indian village. Eventually we found a lookout with sun, and with minimal wind, and we breakfasted while looking out over what really is an amazing spectacle. Pictures don't do the place justice. The canyon is absolutely immense: it averages ten miles across and is over a mile deep in places, and the rocks in the lower reaches have been dated as being over 1800-million years old. They're dark grey. The geological history of the place is exposed in the cliff walls, and color-coded for your convenience: a band of cream amongst the orange here; a series of dark stripes a few hundred feet lower; a giant green shelf halfway down where harder rock has arrested the effects of erosion and has been colonised by hardy scrub.
We weren't the only early risers already on the move; others included:
- The Amerikan couple who emigrated to Williams Lake (for goodness' sake, why?). They were turned away at the US border last time they came back for a visit because they had their pet cockatoo with them.
- The Anglo-Amerikan couple from North Carolina. He spent twelve years and fifty-thousand dollars jumping through immigration hoops in pursuit of US citizenship. They told us about the Horseshoe Mesa hike, a few stops further along the way, and said that they'd been told it was worth exploring.
Having now done the Horseshoe Mesa hike, we concur.
There was an incredible amount of signage at the top of the trail, much of it safety-oriented, and geared towards making people not die as a result of heat- or water-related issues. We had plenty of water, and the chill wind was still blowing so we had our packs full not only with delicious foods but also with numerous hard-weather garments.
We set off at 11:11, down a steep and sketchy path. It got steeper and sketchier. We met a group of men on their way out from a multi-day trip. From all across the southern States of the US, they've been doing an annual hiking trip for thirty years. We told them they should come hike in NZ. We also met some interesting folks from non-Chicago Illinois (I never knew there was anything else there), and then we met the not-band.
Two Australians and three Brits, dressed in an assortment of styles appropriate for pretty much any urban setting you could name. They didn't look very much like hikers, but did look very much like a British band out filming a video, albeit one that's several hours long and doesn't change much. As one of the Australians said when it was mentioned, they must be a prog rock band.
We hiked about halfway down into the canyon, past the orange and the cream and the brown sections, and the light grey and the crimson-and-yellow. Not long after the translucent green, we were on the flat, and making our way out along the western arm of Horseshoe Mesa to the end, where we found wonderful, awe-inspiring views in all directions, including not only along and along, but also up and down. And then we got to walk back up.
As we'd hiked down, we'd turned occasionally and looked back up at what we'd clambered down. It looked cool. Once we'd turned at our end point and started walking back up, though, it no longer looked quite so excellent; it looked, more than anything, like a bloody hard slog waiting to be done. The path was visible only very occasionally, but what was plain at all times was that it went up. And up. And up. The signs at the top had told us to budget 2-3 times as long to do the return climb as we spent hiking down, which meant we were looking at 4-6 hours of climbing. Yikes.
Then it started to snow.
Then we met the carnivore. He was haranguing the Australians about being anemic because of their vegetarianism. He was bemused when told that we were vego also: "But you have color in your cheeks!" he cried. He was then left far behind on the climb up out of the canyon; a fact which was originally upheld as exemplarising the power of eggplant, but which we suspect may actually have had something to do with the fact that he was mildly twisted, physically speaking, and incapable of striding or even scuttling with any great speed. Didn't stop him yelling "MEAT!" at us every time he caught sight of us as we made our way up through the switchbacks on the steepest part of the climb. We yelled "BEANS!" back at him.
The more obsessive-compulsive among you will be pleased to note that, having set off at 11:11, it took us 2 hours and 22 minutes to get to the end of the western arm of Horseshoe Mesa, and we arrived back at the van at 16:11, exactly five hours after we left. In addition, our last gasoline purchase, back on the Paiute Indian Reservation at Pipe Springs, was $55.55. Feel better now?
* = Apparently the Mormon Church wanted to call the state Deseret, which may or may not have a meaning to do with honeybees of some sort, but the Federal Government, which didn't like the Mormons much at all, overruled them and named it Utah after the Ute Indians who'd lived there before the polygamists moved in
Gooseberry
Short Version:
Hard rain, hard ride. Hard, awesome ride. With hard rocks to land on, and cacti without spikes. Lovely stuff.
Long Version:
Cold. Rain overnight, and we could see more coming. When it arrived, we discovered that some of it was hail.
We rode anyway: South Rim Trail, Cattle Guard and God's Skateboard Bowl sections; Hidden Canyon; North Rim Trail; White and Yellow Trails to the Point; South Rim Rattlesnake section; Hidden Canyon; North Rim and White back to camp. No idea how much ground we covered, and all the backtracking and re-riding we did means that working it out would be onerous. We were out for just over five hours, and pretty much all of it was demanding, rewarding, difficult technical riding. A lot of it followed the edge of a more-or-less long-way-down cliff, which was occasionally scary. We were pleased that the strong, gusty wind was coming up over the rim, pushing us away from the edge instead of towards or over it. One of us (not Nene) face-planted on some rocks at one point - ironically, on the easier-than-most North Rim Trail. We both rode stuff we didn't know we could ride, had a bunch of fun, and ended up blimmin tired, and really really happy after some of the best riding we'd found on the trip to date. We'd seen heaps of prickly-pears, including many carrying startling crimson fruit and some with no prickles (unprickly pears? smooth pears? nubby pears?). We also met lots of Canadians, including a bloke from Merritt, a woman from Canmore and one from Golden, and two chaps from Victoria, including the business partner of one of the guys with whom we rode the Mckenzie River Trail back in June. Small, small world.
The trails were great, so we stayed the night and rode again in the morning. Tentative arrangements to meet some of the Canadians in the morning were thwarted, at least temporarily, by the end of Daylight Savings - no wonder I was grouchy; I got up at six! - but we did eventually hook up with Merritt Darch for an hour or so towards the end of the three and a half hours we were out. We re-rode some of the stuff we'd ridden the day before, and some new stuff, including an easy roll out to a derelict windmill and back. The wind was substantially weaker than the day before, and the sun was shining. Hidden Canyon the opposite direction was awesome, as was God's Skateboard Bowl. We met another set of Canadians, then ate reconstituted mashed potato mixed with tinned sweetcorn back at the van before setting off south and east into Arizona, home of the Grand Canyon.
Hard rain, hard ride. Hard, awesome ride. With hard rocks to land on, and cacti without spikes. Lovely stuff.
Long Version:
Cold. Rain overnight, and we could see more coming. When it arrived, we discovered that some of it was hail.
We rode anyway: South Rim Trail, Cattle Guard and God's Skateboard Bowl sections; Hidden Canyon; North Rim Trail; White and Yellow Trails to the Point; South Rim Rattlesnake section; Hidden Canyon; North Rim and White back to camp. No idea how much ground we covered, and all the backtracking and re-riding we did means that working it out would be onerous. We were out for just over five hours, and pretty much all of it was demanding, rewarding, difficult technical riding. A lot of it followed the edge of a more-or-less long-way-down cliff, which was occasionally scary. We were pleased that the strong, gusty wind was coming up over the rim, pushing us away from the edge instead of towards or over it. One of us (not Nene) face-planted on some rocks at one point - ironically, on the easier-than-most North Rim Trail. We both rode stuff we didn't know we could ride, had a bunch of fun, and ended up blimmin tired, and really really happy after some of the best riding we'd found on the trip to date. We'd seen heaps of prickly-pears, including many carrying startling crimson fruit and some with no prickles (unprickly pears? smooth pears? nubby pears?). We also met lots of Canadians, including a bloke from Merritt, a woman from Canmore and one from Golden, and two chaps from Victoria, including the business partner of one of the guys with whom we rode the Mckenzie River Trail back in June. Small, small world.
The trails were great, so we stayed the night and rode again in the morning. Tentative arrangements to meet some of the Canadians in the morning were thwarted, at least temporarily, by the end of Daylight Savings - no wonder I was grouchy; I got up at six! - but we did eventually hook up with Merritt Darch for an hour or so towards the end of the three and a half hours we were out. We re-rode some of the stuff we'd ridden the day before, and some new stuff, including an easy roll out to a derelict windmill and back. The wind was substantially weaker than the day before, and the sun was shining. Hidden Canyon the opposite direction was awesome, as was God's Skateboard Bowl. We met another set of Canadians, then ate reconstituted mashed potato mixed with tinned sweetcorn back at the van before setting off south and east into Arizona, home of the Grand Canyon.
Huge, Variously-Colored Monoliths
Short Version:
We are a blockage! Huge, variously-colored monoliths.
Long Version:
We're getting our money's worth from our US National Parks Annual InterAgency Pass: Yellowstone; Grand Teton; Fossil; Arches; Bryce Canyon; and now, just down the road from the Thunder Mountain Trail, Zion. We spent enough time chatting to the chatty Ranger lady at the entrance that:
- We found out what we should see and do in the Park
- We found out how to get from there to our next actual destination, Gooseberry Mesa ("I'll tell you so long as you don't tell anyone else about it.")
- We caused a entrance gate queue to form from nothing and grow to at least six vehicles. Ha ha! [shakes fist] Did you feel that, vehicles?!?!?
Once into the Park proper, we found awesome things to look at on all sides; huge, variously-colored monoliths, looming to our left and our right. We spent so much time driving on the wrong side of the road that it was like being back in NZ, only with huge, variously-colored monoliths all over the place. Eventually we got a bit tired of all the adrenaline that we were getting from all the near-miss head-on incidents, and decided that maybe Nene should look at the cool stuff and I should make us not die. Then we reached the tunnel.
We've driven through tunnels before, in several countries and in a variety of vehicles, but we've not seen anything like this one before. It had corners, for a start. And viewing portals, through which one could see out through the cliff wall and across the ravine to whatever huge, variously-colored monoliths happened to be in line with the window. There were signs all over the place demanding that we refrain from stopping in the tunnel, and we obeyed them mercilessly. A bit. Not at all.
Pretty soon we were at the main canyon, where we joined the other vehicles - including several tandem bicycles, which all seemed to have a bloke at the front, pedalling hard, and a woman perched on the back, sitting up and smiling and looking around and taking photographs - driving from viewing spot to viewing spot up into the gorge. The huge, variously-colored monoliths were spectacular, and often bore little or no resemblance to even their closest neighbours in either size, shape, or color. Pointed red peaks stood shoulder-to-shoulder with rounded, bulbous cream entities; mottled red-and-black behemoths towered over narrow burnt-orange fingers. Threaded through it all were trees exhibiting a similar variety of hue in their leaves; colors from the vivid green of baby crocodiles to the red-brown of dried blood, and hit every shade of yello and orange along the way.
A stop at the Visitor Centre yielded encounters with stupid people, 3-dimensional topographic represeantations of the Park and its huge, variously-colored monoliths, and some rather nifty architectural features. But no internets, so it was off to the Publc Library we toddled! Apart from the fact that we didn't know where it was, and had so far overshot it by the time we stopped for a small amount of overpriced gasoline that we decided to just go play up on the Mesa instead.
Ranger lady had told us that rain was forecast for the morning, and that if it did come we should stay up there rather than trying to make it back down the access road, which she said was dangerous when wet. Turns out it was pretty gnarly when dry too, but the Reaper handled it with aplomb, even passing another vehicle on the way up. Admittedly it was a 1974 Mercedes UniMog which had been painted yellow and stuffed full of tourists, but it was still an uphill passing success. Once at the top we still had several miles of shitty dirt/rock road to negotiate to get to the trailhead, and to an excellent campsite, fifty metres away from the start of the infamous Gooseberry Mesa Trails. With views of the now-distant huge, variously-colored monoliths.
We are a blockage! Huge, variously-colored monoliths.
Long Version:
We're getting our money's worth from our US National Parks Annual InterAgency Pass: Yellowstone; Grand Teton; Fossil; Arches; Bryce Canyon; and now, just down the road from the Thunder Mountain Trail, Zion. We spent enough time chatting to the chatty Ranger lady at the entrance that:
- We found out what we should see and do in the Park
- We found out how to get from there to our next actual destination, Gooseberry Mesa ("I'll tell you so long as you don't tell anyone else about it.")
- We caused a entrance gate queue to form from nothing and grow to at least six vehicles. Ha ha! [shakes fist] Did you feel that, vehicles?!?!?
Once into the Park proper, we found awesome things to look at on all sides; huge, variously-colored monoliths, looming to our left and our right. We spent so much time driving on the wrong side of the road that it was like being back in NZ, only with huge, variously-colored monoliths all over the place. Eventually we got a bit tired of all the adrenaline that we were getting from all the near-miss head-on incidents, and decided that maybe Nene should look at the cool stuff and I should make us not die. Then we reached the tunnel.
We've driven through tunnels before, in several countries and in a variety of vehicles, but we've not seen anything like this one before. It had corners, for a start. And viewing portals, through which one could see out through the cliff wall and across the ravine to whatever huge, variously-colored monoliths happened to be in line with the window. There were signs all over the place demanding that we refrain from stopping in the tunnel, and we obeyed them mercilessly. A bit. Not at all.
Pretty soon we were at the main canyon, where we joined the other vehicles - including several tandem bicycles, which all seemed to have a bloke at the front, pedalling hard, and a woman perched on the back, sitting up and smiling and looking around and taking photographs - driving from viewing spot to viewing spot up into the gorge. The huge, variously-colored monoliths were spectacular, and often bore little or no resemblance to even their closest neighbours in either size, shape, or color. Pointed red peaks stood shoulder-to-shoulder with rounded, bulbous cream entities; mottled red-and-black behemoths towered over narrow burnt-orange fingers. Threaded through it all were trees exhibiting a similar variety of hue in their leaves; colors from the vivid green of baby crocodiles to the red-brown of dried blood, and hit every shade of yello and orange along the way.
A stop at the Visitor Centre yielded encounters with stupid people, 3-dimensional topographic represeantations of the Park and its huge, variously-colored monoliths, and some rather nifty architectural features. But no internets, so it was off to the Publc Library we toddled! Apart from the fact that we didn't know where it was, and had so far overshot it by the time we stopped for a small amount of overpriced gasoline that we decided to just go play up on the Mesa instead.
Ranger lady had told us that rain was forecast for the morning, and that if it did come we should stay up there rather than trying to make it back down the access road, which she said was dangerous when wet. Turns out it was pretty gnarly when dry too, but the Reaper handled it with aplomb, even passing another vehicle on the way up. Admittedly it was a 1974 Mercedes UniMog which had been painted yellow and stuffed full of tourists, but it was still an uphill passing success. Once at the top we still had several miles of shitty dirt/rock road to negotiate to get to the trailhead, and to an excellent campsite, fifty metres away from the start of the infamous Gooseberry Mesa Trails. With views of the now-distant huge, variously-colored monoliths.
Thunder Mountain (is Good)
Short Version:
Outlaws, #113, snow, hoodoos.
Long Version:
We'd heard some great things about the Thunder Mountain Trail, both from people we've met and from faceless anonymities on the interwebs. We did a minor navigation fail before we even arrived, and camped at the wrong trailhead, but given that camping was disallowed at either location and the "right" trailhead was right next to the Ranger Station, our fail was probably actually an accidental win. And the place we camped was once the hideout of famous outlaw Butch Cassidy, which is pretty cool.
We set off up the paved Red Canyon cycleway to the top end of the canyon, then bailed into the woods on the #113 Road, although not without some debate over whether the #112 Road on the other side of the highway was actually the one we were seeking. Victory for the #113, and then not far past the Horse Camp we hit the Coyote Hollow Trailhead, which heralded the advent of singletrack. Not all downhill though; the first half hour or so was a series of descents into lateral ravines, each followed by a climb back out the other side. Nene managed to flat on the way in to the deepest one, which had snow still covering the ground in the shadowed sections; we figured the tiny rain we'd had overnight down low had translated to some snowfall up higher.
Satisfactorily unflatted we set off again, and found ourselves climbing onto a ridgeline that afforded some pretty stunning views down into Red Canyon and several subsidiaries; there were Hoodoos galore, and if we hadn't seen a bunch of them already at Bryce Canyon we'd've been totally gobsmacked. As it was, they were still well cool, but there was a chill wind blowing across the exposed ridge, so we carried on, dropping down a series of loose-surfaced switchbacks into Red Rock Canyon, where we found scenic variants on what we'd appreciated from above, along with a few technical ride challenges, although most of that came from the surprise factor of high-speed post-corner feature discovery. The last mile and a half out to the road was flatter and smoother - except for the washes where there'd been some obvious recent flash-flood action - and we hit some extreme speeds before popping out of the side-canyon mouth and back onto the paved trail for the last mile and a half back up to the Reaper. Two hours well spent, and we could see why folks from all over had been complimentary.
Outlaws, #113, snow, hoodoos.
Long Version:
We'd heard some great things about the Thunder Mountain Trail, both from people we've met and from faceless anonymities on the interwebs. We did a minor navigation fail before we even arrived, and camped at the wrong trailhead, but given that camping was disallowed at either location and the "right" trailhead was right next to the Ranger Station, our fail was probably actually an accidental win. And the place we camped was once the hideout of famous outlaw Butch Cassidy, which is pretty cool.
We set off up the paved Red Canyon cycleway to the top end of the canyon, then bailed into the woods on the #113 Road, although not without some debate over whether the #112 Road on the other side of the highway was actually the one we were seeking. Victory for the #113, and then not far past the Horse Camp we hit the Coyote Hollow Trailhead, which heralded the advent of singletrack. Not all downhill though; the first half hour or so was a series of descents into lateral ravines, each followed by a climb back out the other side. Nene managed to flat on the way in to the deepest one, which had snow still covering the ground in the shadowed sections; we figured the tiny rain we'd had overnight down low had translated to some snowfall up higher.
Satisfactorily unflatted we set off again, and found ourselves climbing onto a ridgeline that afforded some pretty stunning views down into Red Canyon and several subsidiaries; there were Hoodoos galore, and if we hadn't seen a bunch of them already at Bryce Canyon we'd've been totally gobsmacked. As it was, they were still well cool, but there was a chill wind blowing across the exposed ridge, so we carried on, dropping down a series of loose-surfaced switchbacks into Red Rock Canyon, where we found scenic variants on what we'd appreciated from above, along with a few technical ride challenges, although most of that came from the surprise factor of high-speed post-corner feature discovery. The last mile and a half out to the road was flatter and smoother - except for the washes where there'd been some obvious recent flash-flood action - and we hit some extreme speeds before popping out of the side-canyon mouth and back onto the paved trail for the last mile and a half back up to the Reaper. Two hours well spent, and we could see why folks from all over had been complimentary.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)