Like a Phoenix

Fox Park is back!

It's not quite burning as bright as it has in the past but its well on its way. At the end of last season I wasn't very optimistic, I thought we had lost a great place to ride locally. But MTBers die hard and the locals have spent what must have been 100's of man hours cutting reroutes around logging damage.

Most sections need to be ridden in a bit, but its only April, plenty of time to get things squared away. I even think some of the reroutes use the real estate better and might even add a bit of mileage as well. I'm not sure how sustainable some of the trails they cut are, there are some sections with some hilarious switchbacks on very steep terrain. Very fun to ride but I can see it getting washed out at some point. I guess part of the good thing about blazing trails in a location like Fox Park is you dont have to worry as much about sustainable trails because chances are they will be logged out within a few years and you'll have to start over anyway.

For early season I am really pleased with my fitness. Naro and I didnt push the pace by any means but my legs were more than there when I needed them and my average heart rate stayed low for the ride at 146. I was on my 9 speed so that probably helped. I didn't get to ride the 9 speed much before the season ended last year and it was great to get out and let it rip. Of course it took me a few miles for my muscles to remember all the subtle coordination needed to operate a mountain bike correctly but it came to me slowly. It was hard to remember to shift, I have def become a SS rider at my core.

It was also my first ride on my new Cane Creek Thudbuster ST (thanks Dad!). I am pretty pleased with it so far. I think I may try playing around with using the different elastomers but I could definitely feel a difference in ride quality. Not so much on the downhills because the travel isnt huge but on the flats and false flats when you are putting the gas on a bit and little rocks and roots kill the rhythm of your powerstroke and make you bob out of the saddle...thats gone and I can keep the power going to the pedals. Thats gonna make a huge difference and save me a lot of energy in the long run, def worth the added weight in my opinion.

Unfortunately towards the end of the ride I blew my chain up riding through some logging debris. I think something got jammed in the drivetrain for a second and the chain torqued past the point of no return. At least it wasnt my derailluer that went. Luckily we were at a good spot to just continue out back to the car almost all downhill. I can't wait to get back in there and explore more...I should probably get into doing lunch rides. Possibly more on that later.

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/8021198

Back to Commuting

Let me apologize to my 3-7 readers for the recent lapse in material. Early Spring and Late Fall are traditionally my 'down' periods. Weather isn't ideal for either of my preferred outdoor activities and homebrewing is on a holding pattern while our home situation is still up in the air...hence Manarea has gone dormant.

I have still been getting out there though, I have done a few road rides but they were more uneventful type base mile rides without much intrigue so I figured they didn't warrant a post, just a tweet.

BUT! one thing I can do in early Spring is get back on the commuting horse and start biking into work again. I had forgotten how nice it is to get 7 miles in the morning. It's a great way to start the day, gets everything rolling nicely (PUN intended). I was a tad frantic this morning running late trying to make sure I hadn't forgotten anything. It takes me a bit until I get into the autopilot mode packing routine for the commute. Gotta make sure you have underwear and your keys to get into the office, everything else is luxury or just added weight.

It became apparent within about 5 mins that I have somewhat forgotten how to layer properly for real cold weather riding. Some parts were too cold, some too hot. I had it down last year, it will come to me I just have to experiment again a bit. I also forgot how to pack a bag correctly, I very quickly got a hot spot on my back either from my shoes or the tupperware holding my lunch (mmmmm lasagna). The bike was running great though...new Crankbrother Smarty pedals are nice but they have A LOT of float. Might feel nicer if I dial the retention up a bit, but they are only gonna be for commuting and off and on ice riding so whatever. New cassette is nice and smooth and has a nicer gear range than the 'frankensette' I had on there before.

It's good to be back to saving on gas and getting more miles in AND they installed new massaging shower heads in the HUB! SCORE!

Here are the goods from the Garmin:

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/7963890

I was hoping that when I turned the device off when I got to work that it would commit that ride to history and reset the data tracking so the to and from portions of my commute would be recorded independently. Unfortunately that's not how the Edge 205 works and when you turn it back on it continues from where it left off unless you upload the data off the device apparently. I'll have to look into that more but I'm kinda bummed about that, not a huge deal but it would be nice to have the option. So you'll see the Garmin tracked the whole time I was at work as 'stopped time' so this activity came in over 10 hours total haha. I learn more about this thing every day. Pretty soon I will be a pro.

Gulf of Slides

Boo Yah Achieved.

In a big way. Yesterday was rare. A perfect storm of sorts, but with good conditions, not bad. Low 40's, blue bird, no wind, soft(ish) snow. Doesn't sound all that amazing but considering we were on Mt. Washington in March it's pretty damn awesome.

Bill made the call last week that we should try and get on the Gulf of Slides for this weekend and we immediately jumped on the chance. No one had been on that side of the Boot Spur to date and everyone was anxious to check it out. It can be more dangerous at the Slides when conditions are bad, but avy danger was low for the weekend, the only thing you had to watch out for was ice. Thanks to the abundant sun, ice wasnt too much of an issue.

The Usual Suspects (minus Irwin who took the shot)

The hike up was tough in spots, but to be expected when you are hiking up a trail designed to be skied down. I developed some hotspots on my heels about halfway up that ended up turning into some sweet blisters that I will be nursing for the next few days, but the pain was manageable and I was having too much fun to care. We made pretty good time getting to the basin in just over 2 hours. The closer we got to the basin you could start to see the signs of avalanches past...trees snapped off halfway up, piles of brush. Pretty cool to see first hand but also kinda sobering / scary.

You can see some of the broken trees in this little Gulley

Main Gulley. Where are the crowds? Oh yeah, they are all on Tucks. All 800 of them.

After a quick lunch at the basin we suited up for the hike up the headwall. We had about 1000 vertical feet to go. It was somewhat slow going, the slope wasn't scary steep but we all wanted to make sure we had solid footfalls and for awhile we were setting our own bootpack, which can be scary (Thanks Bill!). We took our time and topped out after about an hour.

The Final Ascent

Snow conditions at the very top were semi-boiler plate but we were able to traverse a bit to the main gulley where the snow was more manageable. The actual snow conditions were kind of hard to explain...hard in spots, softer in spots, a bit crusty. It was more mental than anything else, edges were holding, but you had to stay strong through the whole turn and really make sure you had your balance in control...one lapse and the snow would grab you for sure. No one had any issues and we all had great runs back down to the basin.

Looking South, Attitash/Bear Peak in the Distance.

And that wasn't all! After our run on the bowl we still had a 2 mile ski back down the Gulf of Slides Trail back to the cars at Pinkham Notch. Luckily we started heading back down before things had a chance to harden back up. A perfect long easy run out after a perfect day on Washington.

I also took my Garmin along, unfortunately I screwed up all the data. I had been planning to track our hike up to the basin and then stop recording there and start it back up for our ski back down to the cars. All was going well until I accidentally bumped the start timer button half way up the headwall. So in essence the device though we shot up 500 vertical feet out of nowhere, and then shot back down to the basin when I turned it back on for our ski out. So basically the data isn't accurate at all...the elevation graph is pretty funny, it is very easy to see where things get a bit screwy. Oh well, live and learn.

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/7842583

Hamlin-Eames Conservation Area

Gina, myself and the pooch went to scope out the Hamlin-Eames Conservation Area in Meredith Sunday. We wanted to get the lay of the land seeing as this trail network is within a mile of the house we are in agreement to buy. And after this little walk in the woods I am happy to say that, in my mind, the property value of of our potential new home just skyrocketed...and Wylee loved it too.

if she had opposable thumbs they would both be up.

As you can see here there are lots of little pond / marsh areas and some really cool ledge lookouts to Lake Wicwas. We hiked out to Crockett's Ledge and then came back via the Pond Loop trail. Biking here will be interesting, a decent amount of short steep climbs and it looks like most of the trails weren't really cut with biking in mind but it is permitted in the area so I will check things out once we get through mud season.

Crockett's Ledge

Big 'ole dead tree

In other hilarious news, I decided to get to this area by cutting through some back roads in the region we are moving into. I found out recently that we are moving into what the locals call 'Chemungville'. It is a small region bounded by Rt. 104 to the North, I-93 to the West, Lake Winnisquam to the East and Rt. 3 to the South. Once you get into Chemungville things get pretty remote pretty fast. They also get very less paved. If you will be visiting us in the Spring, bring your rally skills or your mudding jeep.

TURBO.

Hubbard Brook revisited

I returned this weekend to Hubbard Brook with more appropriate gearing AND a GPS device to track my every move. This was the first field test of the garmin on a bike for me and I can quickly tell that I am going to love this little piece of gear.

I didn't bring the camera along this time but for pics of the area check my original post here. Conditions were similar to my first outing, sun was out, temps were cold but manageable and the snow/ice was perfect.

So without further ado...the goods.

So much awesome pertinent data and so easy to collect. The auto pause feature worked awesome while on the bike no issues like we had while walking the dog. I really like that it keeps track of avg speeds while ascending, descending and on the flats. Its also really cool to see the avg grade, seeing as this was a giant out and back climb...11% average, pretty gnar. Not sure I believe the 34.5% maximum though, probably some errant signals.

Unfortunately it can't measure how many sweet fishtails I did on the descent but I can tell you that there were a lot and they were all sweet.