Sparkle Day

The bloated moon hung low in the west. We piled into Sam's second homeowner SUV and made the quick trip into the canyon. It was a day of utmost sparkle. The trees were thickly laced with rime. We breathed in sequins.

I was still hanging onto one of those lame little winter colds that never fully evaporates. I coughed and blew snot. My lanky companions skinned away from me. Their long legs worked up and down like pistons. I tried not to be grumpy about always getting dropped. Immediately.

Our progress slowed when the trail turned elsewhere and we had to cut up to the plateau. The only sound was the gentle collapse of powder under our skis.

We peered across the canyon at the objective. We gauged wind-loading and line choice. A lot of snow and a lot of wind had just happened. Concerning but perhaps not a deal breaker. Perhaps.

The first run was fast, a little sun affected. We straight-lined through a chute. Our fingers got cold in the shaded basin below. The climb out of the creek bed was taxing. We each felt fatigued for different reasons. The pistons pumped at half speed through untouched snow. We swapped pulls at the front.

The Grand emerged before us, an apparition with gusts of cloud wreathing it. I had a beer in my pack but I am rarely in the mood to drink on cold summits.

We picked our way carefully along the softly corniced ridge. My heart beat fast. Moving snow might lead to unmanageable consequences. No snow moved.

Cy was nervous. He was leery of the unknowns. There might be a cliff choke. The chute is a big empty expanse, an obvious slide path. He dropped first into the west-facing trees because he has an airbag. He radio'd back to us. We picked our way down. The snow was really really good.

Our nerves receded as the line revealed itself to be open. It hadn't been blasted by solar rays yet. Nothing moved under our skis. We slashed deep turns. Lovely. Not scary.

We soon had to put skins back on. It was that or wade through snow down the flat canyon. The walk out felt inexorable. My boots found new places to rub. My backpack chafed my shoulders. My nose burned. But all walks end eventually. We lounged by the car. Our gear was strewn around us in attention-seeking piles. I looked smugly at the cross-country skiers filtering in and out of the parking lot. I thought, Going uphill and downhill is far superior. 

Not the Worst Running Race Ever

When I saw the race announcement for the Palisades Ultra Trail Series I got super jazzed because it looked amazing, it was nearby in a mountain range I wanted to explore more, and it looked hard as shit. Also the marathon was a beautiful aesthetic loop with “98% singletrack” (not true, but I ain’t mad...anymore).

The race directors’ vision was to put us out there on disappearing trails deep in the Palisades. Unfortunately they had to make the tough call at the last minute to change the 50 and 100 mile courses and made them a lot crappier than the original plan. Some of the most remote sections were so overgrown and littered with blowdowns that they decided it was dangerous to put ultra racers out on the course in those conditions. Instead of big sexy loops, they had to cut back on their aspirations and trim the courses into smaller loops and out-and-backs. Logistically it was far less of a headache but I could really feel for them and the racers—I’m sure everyone was disappointed. They didn't really change the marathon course though, to my delight.

The vibe at the start was pleasantly chill. The race announcer kept goading people to stand closer to the front but everyone was hesitant. The race started with a few yards of doubletrack then we immediately turned uphill, just how I like it, and started plodding in a conga line straight up the steep, rooty, dusty hillside. I dared to burn a few matches to pass a big group of walkers so I didn’t have to climb with my nose in some dude’s ass. Soon we were high above the reservoir, contouring around south-facing slopes and enjoying big views. I heard from afar what sounded like a raucous crowd of supporters and couldn’t believe that so many people had rallied and found a good spectating spot to cheer on runners, but as I got closer I laughed: it was actually a noisy herd of sheep occupying the drainage below the trail. Oh, Idaho.

Early in the race when I was just plain stoked.

After a precipitous descent, the trail crossed through a wide bowl of scattered stone surrounded by cliffs. It seemed like part of a mountain had calved off and formed a barren stone basin in the otherwise lush landscape. Mordor radness.

Cy and I leapfrogged each other several times. I’m faster than him on downhills and he’s faster than me on uphills. Turns out we’re pretty much the same speed overall, which is cool.

The trail climbed and descended again, then we hit a flat gravel road section, which made me super disgruntled. “I hate hate hate road,” I thought in rhythm to my pounding footsteps. Fortunately the road ended with a nice big aid station. There was a dude in a diaper. One volunteer brandished a sign: “You’re doing awesome! Only a crap ton of miles left!”

The course moseyed up North Indian Creek, then took a left and headed up Garden Creek, beginning to gain elevation more efficiently. A runner popped up behind me and I thought it was a chick. Turns out it was just a womanly-looking guy.

Just as I started worrying about water, another aid station came into sight. The volunteers there had purified water from a little stream and poured the pure run-off into my hydration bladder. One of them reassured me there were less than ten miles to go, and pointed to a peak at the head of the canyon. “You just have to get to the top of that first.”

Slowly, slowly going uphill.

I grabbed some bacon and settled in for the climb. The trail was a magic little piece of tread sculpted onto steep shale slopes, rising over little plateaus and ridges on the magnificent landscape. The canyon dropped down behind us, a waterfall poured off red cliffs to my right, and I could see a steady line of runners far ahead and above me. I felt good.

A woman came into sight several switchbacks above me. She was the first chick I had seen all day and I started feeling competitive. I caught her at the top of the ridge but she started going off course, so I yelled to her to come back. Her mistake gave me a small lead but she was a fast descender and soon passed me on the rocky downhill. She introduced herself as Juli. We caught and dropped Cy and another dude, and when Cy darted off the trail for us, I could tell he was stoked to see us together. I charged down behind her, thinking there was no way I could sustain this reckless pace, but we had another moment of quick orienteering through a meadow and when I found the next course marking, she disappeared behind me. 

It was real pretty.

I was confused and stressed by her disappearance, feeling like she must be breathing down my neck and would catch me any minute. I ran faster than I wanted to through long, flattish miles of dense overgrowth with lurking rocks and vines and logs waiting to throw me to the ground if I stopped concentrating on my feet for even a second.

Race volunteers had put a ton of work into clearing the course, but the thick vegetation was stronger than their machete swipes. I pushed through slow miles of claustrophobic green corridor, aware that I could at any moment run into a moose or bear but too tired to care. My feet hurt. I was hungry. I hate flat descents. I started feeling emotional. I didn’t want Juli to catch me.

As I left the final aid station, I saw her behind me and had another little moment of panic (but also relief that she hadn’t seriously hurt herself). That was motivation enough to keep a steady, uncomfortable pace.

I finally broke out onto good trail again and put my head down for the final three miles on Big Elk Creek, trying to relax my upper body and focus on good running form. It was hot and flat. Have I mentioned I hate flat running? The half marathon course was an out-and-back that stayed on Big Elk and I thought about how terrible that sounded.

I finally saw the parking lot and staggered to the finish line. As I ran up the final flight of stairs and rang the finisher’s bell, the race announcer proclaimed that I was the second woman to finish. I almost started crying with happiness and brokenness. I fell down on the grass, as one does.

The first place woman called out “COOLIA!!” She had to remind me of who she was (the rad sister of one of my bike team moms) because I was an empty shell of a person.

I really can't believe I got second. Also, 14th out of 66 doesn't suck.

Juli finished shortly after me and Cy sprinted in just after that. Then we had to book it back to the valley for a wedding.

I had a better attitude at this race (I never decided that I hated running and would never do it again) and a better finishing kick than I used to back in the old days. I credit that to age and experience, or something. Which is good, because I’m signed up for another race in a month.

RockBlock

During ORATB last year when we were riding long stretches of gravel roads on fat tires, I got it in my head that if one were so inclined one could gravelpack a big loop, combining the two local favorites of Around the Rock and Around the Block into one aesthetic circle of the Tetons and Palisades.

ORATB and RockBlock both included the lovely Fall Creek Road.

It was an unusual thing for me to want to do because I’d already traveled every inch of the loop but the novelty was in squishing them together. I hadn’t heard from anyone who had done it before and that appealed to me too.

I looked back over previous ride stats for both loops and felt pretty okay about it. Around the Rock is a big ride, half gravel, half pavement, that cuts through the northern foothills of the Tetons then follows the entirety of the range through Grand Teton National Park. It customarily ends with a climb up Teton Pass after the rider is already good and shelled. Around the Block is a 107-mile paved road ride, although there are a couple of gravel alternatives one can seek out. When I rode it in 2014 we started the loop by climbing Teton Pass. Ironically, by combining the two routes I was able to avoid the pass altogether, which I joked was the entire point.

Frequent restock points meant we could travel pretty light; we just brought basic sleep set-ups and enough snacks to keep bonking at bay.

And so it begins. 

We set out north from Driggs at dawn on Saturday. As we meandered the back roads of Teton County I compared the experience to my 2015 Around the Rock ride. The fact that we were riding two weeks earlier than the annual group ride meant everything was much greener, there were more wildflowers, the peaks held more snow, it was a little cooler, and barely anyone was driving Ashton-Flagg Ranch Road, which can be dusty and hectic in the high season. 

Those first 70 miles to the park entrance were fine, kind of boring. We didn’t talk much and the lyrics to annoying songs eddied through my brain. I picked a lupine stalk and threaded it into my handlebar bag. We were moving more slowly than the last time I’d ridden it, but I wasn’t too worried about that, assuming we’d pick up the pace in the park by drafting. Last time I was alone without anyone to help me face the wind.

The road into GTNP was closed from one direction but not the other, and a car managed to strand itself on a big snow patch. I followed suit.

We made it to Flagg Ranch in good spirits. The resort there is interesting because it’s a hub for several long distance bike routes. We met a couple that was touring from New Orleans and a man racing cross country from Oregon to Virginia, and if we had waited a week we’d encounter Tour Divide riders heading south down the spine of the continent. At Flagg Ranch, we were strange not because we were riding loaded bikes, but because we were out for such a short jaunt.

Around the Rock, which has only a paltry amount of total elevation gain, is really not a hard route. The things that make it suck are the ever-present wind and the cumulative discomfort from so many hours on the bike. There was a light headwind through the park and we were definitely feeling it as we motored around Jackson Lake and past the Cathedral Group. I remembered why I pledged to only do ATR once: it's monotonous and uncomfortable. 

Real pretty though, if you're into big mountains, I guess.

We hid from the sun in Moose for a while and watched the stream of tourists in heavy hiking boots or yoga pants, taking selfies and talking about bears and bison. National parks are kind of the worst.

The Moose-Wilson Road wasn’t as bad as I expected, because Cy pulled my grumpy ass most of the way. We made it to the Stagecoach with little ado, ordered beer and street food, and flopped down on the grass. Fooster and Sean, who were riding downhill laps on the pass, joined us.

Perfect campsite, right next to the road but completely unbothered.

After eating we were happy not to have to face a 2,300 foot climb and instead puttered down Fall Creek Road, looking for a camping spot. All the firmly worded “Private Property—No Trespassing” signs pushed us further south until, after an unexpected long climb, we set up camp behind a gravel pile in the Munger Mountain parking lot. It was a perfect site and I slept harder than I ever have outside. I woke up after ten hours to the buzz of hummingbirds and the distant drum of grouse wings.

Traveling down Fall Creek Road in the midmorning light was lovely, albeit cold. We saw a big badger hovercraft across the road and watched him flatten his body and hiss at us from the creek bank below. Any closer and I would have been nervous of his aggressive bulk.

Badger!

There was a firm headwind in the Snake River Canyon that meant instead of the fast effortless miles I expected, we were toiling on the slight downhill and I was too cold to take off my jacket. When we discovered that the gas station in Alpine was under construction I had a meltdown, convinced that the rest of the day was going to be much harder than anticipated. 

"The only guarantee on every trip is that if I say something will be easy or short or downhill, it's fucking hard," I fumed, low on blood sugar. 

Then we found a little fireworks store where I drank a restorative iced coffee and immediately felt like I could crank through the miles around Palisades Reservoir. Also the headwind mellowed, because Idaho is better than Wyoming. I was feeling good about Pine Creek Pass. Cy was falling apart because he doesn't have old lady strength, so I kept pace with him. We only wanted to present one target for the deranged drivers on the pass. I want to give a word of thanks to people in cars who see two cyclists death-hugging the shoulder and slow slightly instead of trying to thread the needle, full speed, between the riders and an oncoming RV. To everyone else: fuck you.

We turned off Highway 31 onto 9500S and moaned with relief: no more scary highway riding. The psychological repercussion of riding 130 miles at the mercy of bad drivers was even more exhausting than the physical toll of the effort.

It is just so aesthetically pleasing though.

Threading our way through quiet valley roads as the cold wind whipped at our backs for the first time all day, we were grateful to be back on the good side of the Tetons, only a little worse for wear.

ORATB Part II - Here Be Dragons

The question mark.

Trail Creek was the motorized trail that I landed on in my Internet foraging. We started while the sun was at a gentle height and we mostly pushed up steep, loose, narrow trail for over an hour. As we gained elevation we could see some of the mighty peaks south of us in the Salt River range.

At the summit we chugged the other Gatorade and looked north into the non-motorized corridor that dropped to the Snake. We started following an eroded whisper of a trail that soon disappeared into a faint filigree of elk trails crisscrossing wide sagebrush meadows. Here I made the dire error of not consulting the map again and I chased a drainage that I thought was Pine Creek, but was at least two bowls removed from our objective. We gave up on finding trail and dropped precipitously. Every time we wearied of being raked by sagebrush, we ran into spring-fed nettle patches or hairy stretches of dense deadfall. And repeat. For 2,500 feet of descending.

Scratched, tired, disgruntled, we sat above the Snake and watched rafts full of tourists mosey by. Cy said we could hitch a ride across the river. I thought he was joking. Instead we picked our way over the treacherous rubble and snags on the east bank. I gasped and cried with the exertion of lifting my heavy bike and trusting clipless shoes on slabs of river rock.

After one too many sessions of my choked tears, Cy again suggested thumbing a ride from a raft and I acquiesced, seeing the purity of my route slip from my fingers but also seeing that it had taken 45 minutes to travel 100 yards of river bank.

A raft immediately picked us up and ferried us to the west bank. The women paddled fiercely against the current and the guys handed our cumbersome bikes up to us on shore. 

Blazing up the highway, I watched the east bank and started to realize how dangerously foolish my time estimates had been. All the drainages leading to the Snake were brutally steep and even after the bank mellowed, the riverside trail shown on the map did not appear. It looked like many miles of hard-to-navigate, marshy up-and-down. I was achingly disappointed, but also relieved to bail on the Alpine to Hoback leg of the route.

We rolled into Hoback Junction, set up all our gear on a picnic table and hid from the afternoon sun, buying lots of food to satisfy weird cravings and drinking boozy sloshies.

After 4 p.m. we emerged rejuvenated and booked it back along the Snake to Fall Creek Road, which we climbed and descended forever as the sun sank lower and became more of a pleasant companion and less of a tyrannical overlord. We pedaled up Mosquito Creek Road until we found a flat campsite next to the water. The moon was fat and bright.

Smoke rolled in thick the next morning and tinted the sun salmon. Our toes were cold and our phones were dead as we started climbing.

I saw many signs of wildlife through the trip, fresh scat and matted grass and dried hoof prints in the mud, but only saw one deer golden in morning light and a moose that ushered her calf into the pines and watched me as I passed. There were more signs of grazers: cow shit, fetid wallows, and the lawn mower effect of a herd of sheep passing over a ridge.

The Internet said it was only five miles, but the climb from Mosquito Creek to Mail Cabin felt interminable. It was very nice trail at first, meandering along the creek bank, but after the many false summits of Mosquito Pass, the trail degraded and steepened. I felt every match I had burned in the last three days, both in climbing and pushing my bike. I also really wanted to meet the Smithhammers at Mail Cabin but my overly optimistic timeline was getting away from me. I was slow, cranky, and thirsty, and the normally exquisite views into the Palisade range were obscured and watered down by the haze.

But we made it to the Mail Cabin intersection. While we had missed Bruce and Kat, a sit-down lunch of jerky and chips righted my mood. I was ready to face Mikesell, the best-established trail we’d ridden the whole trip.

While it’s a technical descent, I was so happy to be in familiar territory that I didn’t mind rallying such a fun downhill on a fully-loaded rigid bike.

We finished with massive grins and pedaled slowly back on Old Jackson Highway. Our friends greeted us at Grand Teton Brewing with cheers, beers, and string cheese.

No grievous injuries, no trip-ending mechanicals, no petty fights, and my stupid, arduous, beautiful route came mostly to fruition.

150 miles. Three nights. Three mountain ranges. Two breweries. 10% paved road. 60% gravel. 30% of some of the gnarliest singletrack you’ll find.

Would I recommend this route? No. Obviously not. It’s a little foolish and very demanding for a short time frame. But I’m already thinking about other ways to link together the newly illuminated spaces on my mental map.