All I want for Christmas (long one)

[edit - clicky on the pics for full view. They're hosted by photobucket and are cropped funky]

Since I don't really know where to start, I guess I will start at the beginning. My wife's 2 brothers live in Phoenix and one of them recently bought a house. It went something like this. "Dave, want to go to Phoenix for Chrismas this year?" "No." "hmmm, hey Dave, want to go to Phoenix for Christmas?" "No." "We'll drive - you should bring your bike." "Ok. We should go to Phoenix for Christmas after all. Great idea." I was in!

We packed up the kids and the car to make the long, long, long trek to the AZ desert. We were left the day after our very successful 1st Ever Redstone Cyclery White Elephant 6 Pack Exchange (in which, I thought it was implicit that it would be a 6 pack of alcoholic beer but I guess I'll have to be more explicit next time). Clay! **cough, cough** Anyway...

The drive was shaping up to be exciting, especially given that the worst storm so far this winter was pounding everything from the southwest to the midwest. The drive ended up being not so bad once we got past Glenwood Canyon. A few sketchy bits in southern UT and we were good to go. Funny thing driving across the desert - there was snow on the ground the ENTIRE way until we dropped into the desert after leaving Flagstaff. But enough of that, on to the good stuff. Day one and the family took off for something leaving me alone at Uncle James' house with the girls. I peered over his concrete block "fence" and saw and empty lot and a Walmart in one direction. In the other direction, I see South Mountain!



S. Mountain is the largest municipal park in the country. City of Phoenix owns and maintains this 18,000 acre monster. Just how big is it, you ask? Well, it's damn big and what you see here is just barely a little bit of it. South Mountain is more like a complex of desert mountains rising up from the Valley of the Sun. I would later find that Uncle James' house is much like having a ski in/ski out condo at the base of a mountain. :)

After the family returned from errand running, it would be time to check out the trails. But first, some bike cleaning was in order. 15+ hours driving on gunky roads does not equal a beautiful ready to ride bike.

You could imagine what the rest of it looked like.

Finally, ride time! The Mormon Trail, or 24th St as it's locally known was the closest trailhead. It was recommended to me by locals to not try to climb Mormon. As my wife would say, though, I am not a good listener. It was hard as hell, but a great climb nonetheless. I walked quite a bit climbing up this technical beast of a trail.


My plan was to hit National Trail - a trail at S Mt that is ironically nationally known to be quite good.


It was. I rode it as an out and back as I didn't really know what to expect for time and effort and all that good stuff. Last thing I wanted to be was late getting back to the inlaws on Christmas Eve. That could have a suboptimal impact on my riding other days in Phoenix. The return trip included riding (and cleaning) the infamous "Waterfall on National Trail."



Definitely mind over matter, even though I took one of the easier lines. Later down the trail, not knowing the line, I left a little Stan's on the trail in a super chunky section that left me gasping for air as well as needing to reinflate my majorly burped (but still sealed) tire. Back down Mormon trail did not dissapoint. It was techy going down. I think I walked 5 times in the superchunk.

Day 2, Christmas Day. Up Mormon again, but this time my plan was to climb National a ways and drop down the "backside" of the mountain, loop back around a swoopy trail called Desert Classic, then up the frontside and back down Mormon. That was a good day. I was able to climb a little more of Mormon than the day before.

National is a good climb, too. I ran in to a Flagstaff guy escaping the snow as well. Here's a shot of him hitting the waterfall, just to give it different perspective. It was a super sweet section of tricky trail.



Thankfully, some locals provided me with a user GPSed map of South Mountain that included some trails that weren't exactly authorized by City o Phoenix. I can see why. Old Man was steeper than shite and full of loose shale and Cactus. Old Man was the type of trail that you could tell where it started, but there were no bike tracks. I picked up my bike and hiked in to preserve its authenticity ;)

It turned out to be one of my favorite trails there, until I sliced my front tire on a rock and sent Stan's spewing in every direction. I can definitely see the need for riding something beefier than a single ply tire in this terrain.



I booted the tire and used one of my 2 tubes. I walked a lot down the rest of the descent because I didn't want to burn thru all of my tubes in one ride. It would make a super long walk home, too. It turned out to be a long ride home anyway. Desert Classic was ok. Lots of pedaling in and out of desert washes with moderate up and down. Lots of pedaling. Good connector, but nothing I'd go out of my way for. The rest of the ride was good. This time, I only had to walk 3 times coming down Mormon :)

Day 3 of riding was the best, the day after Christmas. Steve-O from Smoken Spokes and part of the AZ Freeride collective was running the shuttle on South Mountain. I hooked up with Durtgurl, a local friend of a friend, to run some shuttles and see some of South Mountains finer descents.

They looked at me kinda funny since they all had big dh bikes, full faced helmets, and body armor. I had on my normal get up - baggies, jersey, XC helmet. They especially looked at me funny when I declined the offer of extra armor. I told them that if I wasn't confident, I'd walk, no worries. More funny looks. There's a write up of the day on mtbr here. We made 4 runs that day. To be completely honest, I was glad to be on my Snyper. One of the trails would've been more fun on a dh bike, but the rest involved lots of pedaling. We started on Geronimo. That was a full speed, moderately technical hoot all the way to the bottom. Next up, we rode down National to an unmarked trail, 32nd street. I loved 32nd. It was a lot like North Sheep Mountain but without the trees or the fun swoopy stuff. Steep, channeled out and lots of shale rock. fun. Holbert Trail was probaby the toughest and would've been more enjoyable on a bigger bike. The upper section was smoove and swoopy, but the middle section:



and the lower section were uber gnarly. Really fun stuff. I would've walked quite a bit riding solo but I was fortunate to be following some skilled riders that knew the line. I was able to clean everything, dabbing only twice when riders in front of me got hung up. On the last run, we rode down National and out on Mormon/24th Street. This time down Mormon, I only walked once and dabbed 2 other times - sweet! Next time I'm out, I'll clean that mofo. Shuttling was good. I'm a downhiller now brah. Special thanks to Kathleen for the good hookup and personal tour guiding!



Day 4 - 2 days after the mega day of shuttling, I snuck out for a little ride. I had to say goodbye to South Mountain. I rode out the bike path to the main trailhead complex of the area. I climbed Javelina



(great climb, by the way) and made my way to another unmapped or unmarked trail that I had heard about on shuttle day. It was pretty easy to find. Steep, too. A lot like the 32nd street run but a little shorter and not quite as enjoyable.



There were some fun chunky sections, though...



I stopped close to the bottom to reflect. Life was good. Christmas trip was good. South Mountain was good. And the location of James' house was especially good!

One last reflection from this road tripper. Even though a bigger bike would've been fun on a couple of descents, I was incredibly, thoroughly impressed with my Tomac Snyper 140. It doesn't have the most sophisticated suspension in the world, but it rides so damn good in about every arena.



To say I'm please would be a complete understatement. This bike was the bees knees. Johnny Tomac knows how to make a bike handle like nobodies business. I beat the shit out of this bike and came thru with nary a scratch. Well, there was that sliced tire. Oh, and a bent der hanger. Oh yeah, broken spoke, too. The desert riding is harsh on equipment down here but the Tomac was super solid. Super duper solid.

The riding at South Mountain in Phoenix was also super duper solid. I'll be back. Next time, though, I think I'll have to nab the car for a day to check out some other riding areas around Phoenix. The escape to the Valley of the Sun was just what the doctor ordered. Now, if we can get the doctor to order away all of this snow around Lyons, we'll be set!

more Tomac 2010

Clark from Tomac stopped by the other day to show off some 2010 Tomac Bikes goodies.
So far, I'm pretty impressed with the 2010 lineup. All they have right now is some pre production prototypes so I didn't take super detailed shots of everything as a few things are changing. I did snap a photo of the new Snyper and of the new Instant Active Suspension (IAS) link, though.

Here's the new Snyper. It's got the same geometry and angles of the current Snyper (yay) but some small tweaks have been made to the front and rear triangle. The front triangle changes to a traditional diamond frame for more water bottle room and a traditional front der mount. The rear triangle loses the carbon flex stay and adds a verticle brace on either side.


Also added is the new IAS link between the rear triangle and the swing link.


The IAS link yields better small bump absorption than the previous carbon flexstay. A quickie ride on the new Snyper felt like the old Snyper, but a bit more buttery. Good call on the IAS guys. Can't wait to see the production models! If you look closely in this last photo, you can see a seatstay bridge has been cut out. Original designs had the bridge but no vertical braces. The addition of the verticle braces yeilded way more stiffness which allowed Tomac to remove the bridge for added tire clearance.

Left of center recon mission

Big Fall Ride 4 is coming up (Sept 27, Sunday). To prepare, I went off today to do a little recognizance for a potential addition to the route. I mean, last year was tough all but not what I had dreamed of. Although some folks bailed early and the ones that didn't were plenty tired, no one was abolutely wasted and hating life. My goal today was to do some on the ground research to see about adding another 1200' or so of climbing, much of it hike a bike. Left Hand Canyon OHV was in my sites. Although I had originally planned to ride there via Heil Ranch, the plan was changed to driving to LHOHV due to time constraints.

I had thougth about adding the Castle Gulch climb out of James Canyon to the route. From there, we'd be at the top of LHOHV and would be able do descend some sweet singletrack back to the highway. I did find some additional singletrack, but even to climb up to hit it would be downright dastardly to add on after 5+ hours of riding. It would have some hella descending

and some fine narrow and ledgy singletrack

But I'm not sure it would work in very well. We'll see. Perhaps we'll include it on another ride for which I had an idea today. I think we'll keep that one in check til Oct or Nov...

Here's the route down that I intended to take. This would take me back down to James Canyon and the bottom of Castle Gulch, all jeep road.

Don't fall in the straight down for ever open mineshaft. Must be some kind of bird or something living in there. I heard some strange noises coming from the shaft. Maybe it was the ghosts of all the miners that died in this area.

I got to the bottom of Castle Gulch and wanted to explore the opportunity to get down onto the pavement. Looks like the USFS has been doing some creative signing down here. Looks like we'll have to contact the BRD to find out exactly what's up.
From there, the climb was steep and loose but tolerable for quite a bit. Then it turned rocky. Really, really rocky. This was the Castle Gulch that I remembered. I had never been up it before, though. It was quite a hike.

The USFS is a mountain bikers friend.

From the top, there was some crazy steep jeep road descending before the sweet, sweet singletrack.

The singletrack was a bit trenched out in spots, but other than that, was it's normal beautiful Left Hand self. Love it.

So far a good match :) On the steep and fast, the Tomac Snyper 140 did not dissapoint. The Snyper is proving itself to be a super good handling and capable bike.

new bike, new trails, great trip

I got a large Tomac Snyper put together late last week - just in time for a trip to Crested Butte. The plan was to meet up with some other folks from the front range and get in a few solid rides. Mission accomplished.

The bike, a 5.5" travel 2009 Tomac Snyper 140:

Day 1 was to start on top of Reno Divide then connect Flag Creek, Bear Creek, Deadman Gulch and Doctor Park. Oh damn. What a great ride that was. I've ridden the traditional Reno/Flag/Bear/Deadman loop, but was looking forward to a different twist. The first sections, as always, were smoove and swoopy and excellent. I love the fact that those are all moto legal trails, too. I like the whoopdies and every corner has a lip. All good ingredients for fun and fast. We travelled as a pretty big group and made the whole thing in about 4 hours.

Deadman dropped onto Spring Creek Road and we started climbing again. Fortunately, the gravel washboard gem of Spring Creek wasn't very long. The last and final climb was 2 miles and 1,000' up to the top of Doctor Park. It was steep and Johnny Park-ish and we made it up in good time. 2,500' below me and 5 miles out was the Doctor Park trailhead. All downhill. I'm pretty sure I had a religious experience on that trail. Good enough that I'll be dreaming of it for years to come. One of the best in state for me. I got some pretty good photos, too. Unfortunately, they are gone forever due to a memory card meltdown. The curse of the voodoo cow apparently is lingering on.

Beers and food followed later at the Brick Oven in Crested Butte. It was pretty good, but as far as mountain town beerhouses go, they didn't have nothin on Oskar Blues. That and what's up with them not having OB on tap? The arrogant bartender hadn't even heard of Dale's Pale. Huh? Anyways...

Back at camp was pretty fun. Too bad I know longer have the photos of the fire exploding glow sticks. Oh well. Some people win the lottery. Others get a boulder on their car as Doug says.

Day 2: The main group was disintegrating. Most folk had ridden both Friday and Saturday and were eager to roll off to alternate destinations on their own. Tree, Doug and I were also eager to check out a big loop circumnavigating Mt Crested Butte. It was Tree's birthday present after all. Happy Bday Tree! This day's plan was to park at the Gothic Trailhead on Gothic Rd where Snodgrass trail starts. From there, back thru Mt CB, Upper loop, Upper Upper Loop, up Brush Creek, then connect and loop back to Gothic Rd via Deer Creek. We estimated it'd be a big ride with around 3k' of climbing and 25miles.

Rolling thru Mt Crested Butte allows you too see a lot of hardcore development on the mountain. Made my head swim lookin at all the condos. Upper and Upper Upper were fun. We were also stoked to see some good technical bits sprucing up the Uppers. The aspens were fantastic as was the trail.


The tread was grippy dirt and tons of rocks. Upper Upper had a pretty stiff little climb in it, too.


But the descent was sweet. Upper and Upper Upper had some qualities similar to the riding we do off the Peak to Peak and I was impressed. Completely diverse from the day's prior ride.

The road up to Brush Creek was well maintained, hard pack, and otherwise pretty darn ok. The views didn't suck either.

After a short climb on Brush Creek road, it was time for a quick break. In locales like this, it's always good to stop a bit to soak it all in.

Just a bit more jeep road climbing and we were on Deer Creek Trail. It had a bit of everything from buff and beautiful red dirt singletrack

to steep rooty black dirt climbs. So steep it had us all walking eventually.

The rest of the climb happened without incident until we came across a momma cow and calf on the trail. As Tree approached them to shoo them off the trail the momma gave Tree and unmistakable steel glare that could only have been her evil eye. 20 feet down the trail past the cow, Tree encountered a rock that repositioned him on the ground and off the bike. Watch out for evil cows on Deer Creek. Especially this one.

more good scenery

then snacktime.

bad voodoo cows

the final descent was short but sweet. Fast, bermy, black dirt and even more aspens. Good stuff.

We were pretty tired, but feeling fresh enough to buzz back quickly on Gothic Rd to the car.

We should've taken it easier as it turns out. Curse of cow stuck again and we showed up to the Mexican joint 40 minutes too early. Not open until dinner at 5pm. Guess we'll have a beer to celebrate!

Thanks for the great riding this weekend all. The bike turned out to be an absolute gem and the riding was all top notch. CB will beckon again.

time for a change

CB ought to be a good break in for this baby.