Afternoon ride to Star Lake for the night.

Finally got away from work this weekend. Well not really, I ended up working on Sat morning for a few hours more than I wanted to but dammit if I was working Sunday for the another straight week.
The bike was still loaded up from my failed attempt of riding over at the coast a couple of weeks ago. I was hoping I had the right stuff packed for a Sierra overnighter as I didn't have time to go through the bike again, I just threw it on the back of the truck and hauled ass up to Tahoe Meadows ( Mount Rose).

Managed to get on the bike right about 2 pm, not optimal, but better than staying home. My plan was to head over to Star Lake for the evening and then return the next morning/afternoon. I'm sure if I'd thought about it I would have guessed the mileage.  I was in no hurry, I had lights, and if it took me all day to get there it was O.K, at least I wasn't working.

The ride over to Spooner was just as it always is, a bit drier than the last time I was here a month or so ago, it really is Sept. conditions up there right now, kinda scary.

Looking into Washoe Valley

Sand Harbor masses.

Spooner Lake

I made it to Spooner lake in pretty good time, I figured I had about 4-1/2 hours to make it to Star Lake if I wanted to set up camp in the daylight, probably a bit optimistic, but doable.

I've never really cared for the climb to the bench from Spooner Summit. I'm not sure why, it's not terribly difficult, but I dislike even when I've started out fresh from the trailhead, yet alone coming over from Mount Rose. It wasn't bad, I made the 6 mile climb in under an hour, not record setting by any means, but I didn't hate it at least. I was surprised to see a couple of dual sport motorcycle guys doing a broad daylight/weekend poach of the TRT, pretty ballsy. They were pretty cool with the throttles though, if I hadn't seen them I probably wouldn't have known they had passed through.

Looking West from the bench.

Looking at South Shore.

I'll be camped just below that far peak in the center tonight, about 25 miles as the crow flies.

Now the descent towards Kingsbury is one of my favorites, it makes the slog up to the bench so worth it. I usually clean the whole thing, even loaded, that's why the crash was so unexpected...........
 I wasn't feeling great, just an overall fatigue that's been chasing me for months had me walking some of the more difficult drops. I was just coming into the Kingsbury trailhead when my front tire slid out and sent me highside off the trail, probably a 10' drop. I scraped myself up pretty good, put a deep bruise into my right thigh and broke the right side of my helmet, not good.

 In hindsight it could have been much worse, I landed in a pretty sandy spot and slid into a rock pile, it could have been the other way around.... It scared me a bit. After I did a checklist of all the extremities and drug myself back up to the trail, I sat there for a minute contemplating what "could" have happened.

I landed on the other side of the rocks in the lower right corner of the picture, the trail is built up about 8' here...

I "borrowed" a car mirror in the parking lot to check my face out, not much damage to my already scary face so I was off on my way to Star Lake again.A quick stop at the Summit Store for an ice cream and some water and I was on my way.

I've always loved the Kingsbury section of the TRT, it was my first introduction to the trail way back in the day on our tandem with a huge group of friends. It's a tough haul, but the views are amazing and if you're on your game, a real challenge. I was not on my game today... That's alright, the destination was the goal, not how fast or pretty I got there.

Those jagged peaks make some great shadows on the Carson Valley.

Getting closer, camp is just below the snow field to the left

I was starting to chase daylight a bit but finally rolled into Star Lake around 8:30. There were a couple of others souls on the far side of the lake but I had my side all to myself. It was a bit windy so I crammed myself into a little protected spot out of the wind right at lake level, I could have had a nice huge spot up away from the lake a bit, but I was pretty happy to sit and watch the Lake Trout jump out of the water for a couple of hours.

Yes, I wedged myself right in there...

The view from my bed.

Evening or perhaps moon light on Jobs Sister.

The same view the next morning

I had a pretty decent night. I didn't sleep great because of my fall earlier in the day, it seemed that every time I moved it would wake me up.
 Morning came pretty quickly and I was greeted to geese on the lake right next to me, noisy little guys they were but enjoyable none the less. After a nice breakfast and a walk around the lake to try and loosen up my very sore leg I was off for Mount Rose.

I've always enjoyed riding from camp in the mornings, it's just a nice way to start the day and this mornings views of the lake and the Carson Vallley just added to that joy. I made my way to Heavenly pretty quickly as it's mostly downhill. I decided to head over the the North trailhead on the new section of the TRT that bypasses North Benjamin and the condos of Heavenly Ski Resort. It was a nice section of trail, although the climb back up to the junction with the TRT proper was bit steep and loose in places.

I made my way back to Spooner summit and discovered that my Lefty had migrated it's bearing pretty heavily and I had lost at least an inch and a half of travel and was riding a bike with an 80 degree head angle.

Damn fork, I thought I had this fixed....

I had wanted to head up to Marlette and do the Chimney beach trail but that seemed like a really bad idea with a non functioning fork. It was an odd day( closed to bikes) on the TRT section out to Mount Rose anyways so I headed down the HWY towards Incline Village. It was pretty uneventful, although there were about 6 sheriffs cars blocking traffic at Sand Harbor with some dude in cuffs on the side of the road, bad day for him...

 I made my way to Incline Village for some lunch before I headed up to Tahoe Meadows. Lunch was great at this little hole in the wall spot that looked like it just opened. It was starting to get a little warm as I made my way out of Incline Village, I think the temp at the lake was mid eighties today. That's not bad until you add in the elevation and the fact that there was a tailwind equal to or less then whatever speed I was traveling at. The combo made for complete dead air around me that felt like I was in a sauna.

I'd never been up the old Mount Rose Hwy that had resorted to dirt from lack of use so I decided today was a good day to check it out. It started off well enough, but soon turned into a sufferfest as the heat cranked up along with the grade. Man it was hot up there, all I could think about was laying in the creek in the meadows! The hell that is Old Mount Rose Hwy soon ended and I made my way back to the truck on the pavement with a stop to cool my head off in the creek.

And up we go...

Doesn't get much more exposed...

Only about 95 miles and 15,000' of climbing total, did it in about 11 hours at a fairly leisurely pace. I'm working too much to really do this kind of stuff, luckily I have some residual fitness from my AZTR training!

All in all a great weekend even with the big off, made for a loooong day at work today!

Denied again, fuckkkk!!!!!

Had a great couple of days planned out this weekend. I was going to ride from Ukiah over to Willits via Tomki Rd and then over to Fort Bragg via Sherwood Rd, spend the night over at the coast and then meet the MCC folks for the Fathers Day ride out to Comptche and then head back to the car via Comptche - Ukiah Rd.

Mary was nice enough to come up on Friday night to get Sasha so I could get an early morning start.
I had the bike packed up on Thursday evening so I was ready to roll out at 3 in the morning so I could get over to Ukiah and then have a nice leisurely ride out to the coast. The beginning leg is about 95 miles and I wanted to just chill and have a nice time.

Rolled out at a little after three to a beautiful full moon over the valley and was half way between Williams and Clearlake when the truck developed a slight miss. I drove for a bit to find a place to pull over and see what the hell was going on. I finally got pulled over and was greeted to a cloud of steam coming from under the hood, not good. I popped the hood and discovered that the radiator cap had blown off somewhere.

 God only knows how long I had been driving with no water in the engine.... I'm guessing that the water came out so fast that there wasn't enough water in the motor for the gauges to register a temp since the temp gauge never got above midway. Of course I'm in the middle of nowhere with no cell service. I had a couple of gallons of water with me and was able to limp it for a few miles till I could get cell service, but the damage was done already and the motor was coming apart pretty quickly.

Three hours with a relatively nice tow truck driver put me at Matts shop in Meadow Vista where it sits now awaiting what I figure is a $5000.00 motor next week.

Man, it seems whenever I get excited about something I just get kicked in the stomach and it blows up in my face, costing me not only time, but lately money as well. It's been a bit of a chore to get excited to ride my bike lately, I guess I'm just in a bit of a funk and things like this really don't help. Couple things like this and my AZTR failure this year and I'm having a tough time getting excited about much of anything bike related. Maybe it's time to step a way from this for awhile and see if the love I have for adventure by bike returns. 

I'm grateful I have the money to fix it without much thought, but that doesn't take the emotional sting out of the situation. Man it was tough not to just say screw it and go down and buy a new truck. The thought of a car payment again quickly cleared my mind of that, plus I've become accustomed to being relatively debt free with one house paid for and another with a manageable mortgage.

So, another adventure slips away. Time is so short for me lately that I really hate to think that these types of things are getting harder and harder for me to find the time for. I guess I need to find a bit more of a balance in life, whether it be spending less time on the bike or finding something else that I can find some escape in.

 I took this week off of the bike, mostly due to a horrendous work schedule and triple digit heat, but also because I have so many projects that need to be finished that I really just have to do it this way. It was nice to get some things done that have been going neglected for months.

I think I came to the conclusion that  my life is somewhat out of control and basically just running me into the ground( friends have been telling me this for years) this past weekend. I worked 60 hours during the week and then spent 7 hours on my mountain bike in upper 90 degree temps on Saturday. I got home and spent 4 hours in the shop and decided that painting the back of the house was a good way to put a nightcap on the day. I was totally wrecked the next morning but needed to drive up to Reno to look at a job as I had been putting it off for weeks. I brought my mountain bike and proceeded to crank out 6 hours on the Tahoe Rim Trail in what was probably my slowest and most difficult ride up there in years. Somethings got to give....

I wish I was one of those people who can just block out the rest of the world and find joy in riding their bike at the expense of almost everything else in life. The whole self supported endurance race community is filled with these people, and I suppose at some level you need to be this way to be successful at it, but I just am not wired that way and struggle with the balance on a daily basis.

I look at the two guys I headed out to Arizona this year with. Both really nice guys, and I don't know much of anything about their home life or support structure, but both of them lined up at Tour Divide this week a little over a month after taking two weeks to do the Arizona Trail Race. I'm amazed at the amount of time away from life and family this kind of stuff must take, obviously they feel that this is a balanced life, whether it is or not is open for discussion I suppose.

Man that's a lot of rambling going on right there.....

Time for bed......

Spring overnighter...

Well I'm a little over two weeks out past knee surgery and I was feeling pretty good. I asked Mary to take Sasha for the weekend and she obliged so a plan was set in motion. It had been pretty warm this week but the weekend was supposed to cool down so I decided a trip up the hill was in order. I had a butt load of office work to do on Sat morning so my start was delayed till nearly noon, that put a bit of a damper on my plans but dammit if I was going to let it get in the way.

 I knew I wasn't going to make it all the way out to the Spaulding Lake Trail on Sat like I had wanted to, it's nearly 80 miles of pretty steady climbing, probably in the 10,000 range and it's likely better that I didn't push my knee that much anyways. I just kind of figured I would ride till I didn't want to anymore and call it good at that, a novel concept that seems to escape me sometimes.

I took off from the house on the Flash, which I don't think I've ridden loaded since the Colorado Trail race a couple of years ago, I forgot how fun this bike is loaded, it's not my favorite bike unloaded but it really is a different beast with bags on it.

Foresthill Rd. Overlooking Royal Gorge

Foresthill Rd. Looking South towards the Sacramento Valley

Foresthill Rd.

The awesome hand pump at Robinsons Flat

I made my way up Foresthill Rd. to Robinson Flat where the road turns to dirt and headed left towards Soda Springs. I got to the turn off to head down to Soda Springs and decided to head over to the Tevis Trail at Lava Point to see if the motos had been on it yet.

Eagle Mountain with Grouse Ridge in the background

Lava Point

 It looked like I would have first tracks on the Tevis Trail, I hadn't seen any snow of any significance yet so I decided to head on up. This trail can be very nice if it hasn't been ruined by dirt bikes, it only takes a few motos on it to render it really useless to mountain bikes. Tevis rolled out pretty nice until the trail dropped off the North side of Lyon Ridge where the snow was still pretty prevalent. It took me nearly 2 hours to do the 5 miles of trail to Rd. 52 at Lyon Ridge. I was dragging my bike on 45 degree snow fields, all the while hoping I didn't lose my footing as I would have slid a long ways before stopping with a thud into some rocks or trees.

Tevis Trail crossing Foresthill Rd.

Suckered me in.

More good trail.

Tevis Trail

Some nice views up there.

Cool section on Tevis Trail

And the dragging begins.

More nice views, French Meadows Res. in the distance

Lots of this.

 The whole time I was dragging my bike through the snow it was cool to see that the wildlife also use this trail. Lots of footprints, deer, squirrels, what looked like a mountain lion or large bobcat and bear.

Others have passed this way....

 I finally made it to the fireroad that drops down to the Cedars and climbed my way up Soda Springs Rd. I had often wondered where a little side road off of Soda Springs Road headed. It was getting late and I was already way past the 4 hours of riding I was supposed to do today when I headed down the little side road. It opened up into a spectacular open space with views and sounds of the North Fork of the American River dropping into Royal Gorge. It seemed a great place to spend the night.

Home for the night.

Not a bad view.

Morning light on Royal Gorge.

I usually sleep pretty well on these things, but man it seemed like I only slept for a couple of hours at best. The moon was full and it seemed like someone in a car with their lights on was parked right outside my bivy. Morning came and although it was a bit chilly, it was just a beautiful morning. I really didn't have a plan for the day, I knew I needed to be home at some point, but how I got there was up to me. I made my way up Soda Springs Rd. and headed down Donner Pass Rd towards Cisco Grove where I hopped on the freeway. I had to make a decision here, turn off on to the Fordyce OHV trail or head down Hwy 20 to the Cascade Ditch. Either way I'd end up at the Cascade Ditch, the choice was whether I got there in 5 minutes or three hours via Fordyce/Spaulding lake trails. I actually passed the turnoff for the Fordyce OHV trail and turned around and headed back up the freeway to Eagle Lakes Rd and the Fordyce OHV, there really seemed no reason not to do it.

 Super glad I did, up to that point it had been pretty much roads, both dirt and paved and the super technical trail was a great way to spend the morning and really provided a boost to my energy levels. I was clearing stuff on the hardtail that I would usually flail around on so it was inspiring. 

 Passed a few jeeps on Fordyce OHV on my way to Eagle Lakes and the Spaulding Lake Trail. Stopped to filter a bit of water at the bridge over Fordye Creek and my filter promptly broke. What is it about water filters theses days. I can't think of one piece of gear I carry that's more important yet I've broken one Katadyne and 2 MSR's.

I'm headed to Eagle Lakes

Fun stuff

On the way to Eagle lakes.

Eagle Lake.

Eagle Lake with Red Mountain in the background.

Near Fordyce Creek.

I made my way down the Spaulding lake trail pretty well, I usually have to work pretty hard to keep on this remote trail but for whatever reason I was dialed in today. A few more trees down than last year, but overall super happy I made my way out there. At the top of Spaulding I turned down the Upper Pioneer Trail, a trail I'm happy to have a hand in building.

Fordyce Creek

Spaulding lake Trail

A little of this, not bad though..

Spaulding Lake Trail goodness.

Spaulding Lake Trail

Spring, springing...

Spaulding Lake Trail

Pioneer Trail

Pioneer Trail

At the end of the Pioneer Trail I made my way up to the Cascade Ditch for the trip over to old US 40 and the drop into Alta.

Bad selfie...

Old US 40, the precursor to Interstate 80

Old US 40

From Alta it was Old US 40 down to Norton Grade Rd and up into Colfax for lunch.

Butterscotch milkshake too!

After lunch I headed out of Colfax for the drop into the North Fork on Yankee Jims. I was hoping to keep my lunch down in doing so. I had my vest, leg and arm warmers on in Colfax and by the time I hit the river it was easily 25 degrees warmer. Everything came off and I made my way up to Foresthill. It wasn't pretty, I had been having a hard time keeping my heart rate down for the entire trip and this climb was no different, not sure what's up there.

North Fork of the American River

Yankee Jims Rd.

Lots of flowers out.

Not sure what the yellow flowers are, but they were out in force. 

I finally made my way up the pavement into Foresthill, hit a little trail here and there on the way home and walked in the door about 3 pm. All in all a nice time out on the bike.

 F-Hill, Soda Springs, Fordyce, Spaulding Lake, old US 40, Yankee Jims by seanallan at Garmin Connect - Details