Escapism

I was going quite stir crazy in the valley to the point where I was unpleasant to be around. It was raining a lot and I was feeling a little overworked, wrung out by the groundhog-weekly nature of my job and resentful of the hordes of people who had escaped the valley for warmer climes. Worst of all, I was deeply frustrated that I had ordered a bike in October and it still hadn’t arrived.

I sent in an employee purchase form by mail to Santa Cruz for the in-hot-demand aluminum Bronson. I never received confirmation and was never charged for it, but heard from others that that was the norm for EP and the bike I wanted was out of stock anyway. I waited contendedly(ish) until midway through February, then started agitating with not one but three shop managers from two different shops to figure out WTF was happening. All of a sudden it was April and I didn’t want to pay retail for a bike but my window of freedom was nearing and I was desperate. And extremely pissed.

Finally two weeks ago I ordered a bike from Sam but I hadn’t acted quickly enough (y’know, besides the whole ordering in October thing) and was facing down a scheduled trip to the desert without the new bike I had been waiting for the entire winter.

Yeah, frustrating. I had to leave town though, so I said fuck it and loaded up the Half Chub in the minivan. I couldn’t even bear to wait until the end of the day Thursday, so with the blessing of my boss, who was clearly over my angst, we left town at noon. As we drove south the temperature gauge rose steadily until it came to rest at 70 degrees and I could feel all my churlishness slough off me.

We did a short ride at Red Fleet State Park right before the sun set and I tried to remember how to mountain bike. The Krampus is a champ though. After riding it almost exclusively last fall, I have a deep affection and respect for its maneuverability and indestructibility. I feel like I’ve spent a full season working on fundamentals because riding singletrack on the Krampus means taking absolutely nothing for granted, and I can’t wait to get back on a light bike with full suspension, a dropper, hubs with less than 25 degrees of engagement, good brakes, and a modern drivetrain.

Krampus riding: exaggerated form required

After a night spent on BLM watching the moon rise over the umber rock formations of Red Fleet, we rode a bit more in Vernal to wear the dog out, then headed south again, landing in Grand Junction. It was hot and the Lunch Loops trailheads were crowded with people and dogs. Jolene kind of hates other dogs, which adds a lot of stress and strain to a lot of situations. Feeling at a loss because there was no camping allowed anywhere on the BLM in Grand Junction, we decided to just start riding.

It was so hard, rock jumble clambering and walking uphill and downhill in the sun, my wrists aching from the jolts through my steel fork, frustration with the constant hike-a-bike weaseling into my brain. We finished and I was certain, again, that I didn’t like the desert. Fortunately I got in touch with Erica and she said a big crowd of Teton Valley’ers had scored a camping spot in a nearby area, because otherwise we would be SOL. Relieved, we headed their way.

Jolene was stoked on any riding she was allowed to do

Life got a lot better, although I was kind of annoyed by the hordes of extremely privileged people with $200,000 Sprinters or campers, the children on carbon bikes, the roving unleashed dogs that forced us to keep Jo locked in the van all day. But we drank beer and rode bikes with friends and it was great. The trails ranged from fine to awesome, weaving through the campsite and up onto needle ridges, with features and drops that were challenging but never caused me the consternation that I had experienced the prior day.

Mountain biking with friends is the best

The 18 Road trails were very fun

But I still don’t love the desert, and we were low on food and water and we’re both pretty restless people, and I wanted to let the dog off leash and run away from the crowds, so we bailed. I found an area on the map that seemed intriguing, and even though I knew the fact that it was at 10,000 feet was a clear warning, we decided to send it anyway. Of course on top of Grand Mesa the snow was piled higher than the van. We joked that we were terrible at going to the desert. We parked in an empty XC ski lot with restrooms and fell asleep to a light snowfall.

We suck at deserting

It rained as we dropped back into the canyons of northwestern Colorado the next morning. Scanning the gold mine that is Trailforks, we found a little trail network two hours north, in a town where it wasn’t raining at that exact minute. After a quick van unload and gear up, we went for another ride and were delighted to find a mellow, twisty ribbon of dirt swooping through trees, definitely more my scene than bare rock. We ended on a downhill trail with perfect berms and friendly wood features just as the rain started again. We putzed our way north again and hunted down a hot spring that was sort of on-route. Juniper Springs was down a long dirt road, slimy pools with eroded concrete walls painted in once-bright colors, the water not quite warm enough to warrant a substantial soak.

Meeker is magical

So we left, and decided to just go home because the rain wasn’t quitting. We weathered I-80 in a storm, crept through a herd of skittish elk in Hoback Canyon, and made it home as night fell.

It was rejuvenating to feel the sun on my bare arms and to put rubber to dirt again, although I’m still not convinced I want to go back to the desert any time soon. Fortunately my bike is arriving this week (supposedly) and riding areas closer to home are drying out (slowly).

Earned it

Dry Riding

My grandmother in New Hampshire is the only person in my family who understands what it's like to live in the grips of winter for six months, to wear snow boots for half a year without reprieve, to bask like a daffodil when the sun does occasionally emerge even though sunshine usually means bitter cold, and to gird yourself for spring because it's truly the worst season.

Truly. We've had above freezing temps during the day the last two weeks, for the first time since late October, and the mountains of dirty snow in town are melting at a glacial pace, exposing each day new fetid piles of poop from dogs, deer, and moose, degrading the already potholed roads, and leaving expanses of mud, grit, and barren brown ground. Ah, spring.

The switch always flips sometime in March or April, where I lose patience with winter. This year it happened early, because February was ridiculously deep, and because last weekend I skied the Middle Teton, and every time I spend twelve hours in ski boots without actually making a single good turn, ski season feels over.

We're all in the same boat, so Carolyn and Chrissy and I ditched work yesterday and hightailed it down to Idaho Falls for a road ride with Carolyn's friends. We started pedaling from a generic house in a generic suburb of IF and headed through farmlands for a few miles. I felt skittish on skinny tires, riding single file with five other ladies, cars buzzing past going fifty. I've only ridden a bike a handful of times this winter and only on snow. Road biking took some re-acclimation for all three of us even though we're all experienced, albeit lapsed, roadies.

Then we started climbing and it was all better. I went as hard as I could up the four-mile hill and felt like I was pressure-washing the cobwebs out of my legs and lungs. God I love road climbs. We regrouped at the top where the road turned to gravel. Deanna looked down into the canyon and noted with surprise that the road wasn't muddy. IF is dry but its foothills are still spotted with snow. We decided to drop in and circle through the canyon to make a loop back to her house.

Dry riding!

We were all so so so stoked to pedal down the empty rutted dirt road through vegetation on the cusp of blooming. I am so starved for speed and smooth cadence and rolled up sleeves and a sport that I'm still, even six years later, so much more comfortable in than skiing.

On the rolling, busy roads back to the subdivision, to my minor surprise the IF girls surged, sprinted, pulled hard through the wind. I love roadie fuckery and I appreciate it when I don't get in trouble from other women for that kind of behavior. We finished together and high fived then ate excellent Indian food because that's what one does when one is not in the valley. Now we're plotting a longer weekend ride and I'm dying for the snow to melt.

The Spoon Couloir

Couloir skiing is what you’re supposed to do in the Tetons. You’re supposed to hunger for those long, steep, narrow strips of snow, lines that you have to ascend to assess, and lines that you’re fully committed to once you’re in them. I’m not sure, though, that I actually like couloir skiing.

Not my happy place.

Cy, Dapper Dan and I set out from Driggs early on Saturday in pursuit of the Spoon, an aesthetic couloir in GTNP that cuts through rock bulwarks on Disappointment Peak's northeast face. I hadn’t skied anything scary for a while so I was nervous. Let me clarify: the Spoon is a scary line to me, but it wouldn’t be for many skiers I know. I don’t enjoy skinning on icy surfaces, bootpacking up steep lines, or skiing in no-fall zones. I’ve been skiing couloirs for half a decade but definitely started before I was actually a competent enough skier to safely do so. Fortunately I have had supportive partners every time and definitely got real lucky

once or twice.

We were skiing with pointy accessories (an ice axe or a whippet, Black Diamond’s ingenious ski pole with a pick on the end for self arrests), a new concept to me, and one I’m not entirely comfortable with. If I need more sharp objects than just my ski edges, I’m leery of the consequences.

Skinning at dawn.

The forecast seemed to be on our side; no snow had fallen in a week and the impending storm kept getting pushed back in the day. We made quick work of the long flat skin from the Taggart Lake Trailhead to the toe of Disappointment and then booked it uphill, me lagging slightly behind those two with their long-ass legs. Cresting the shore of Surprise Lake, we were hit with big gusts funneling through the basin. The snow was polished to an icy sheen by the constant wind. We picked our way around the Amphitheater Lake basin, found softer snow in the apron of the Spoon, and put our skis on our backs. The first traverse freaked me out because I hate bootpacking sideways on steep slopes, but we decided to continue uphill after I had stopped hyperventilating. It was fast going at first, the boys punching steps into the supportive snow, but near the top of the couloir the wind intensified, slapping our faces and blinding us with vicious spindrifts.

We fought our way across the top to hide in the flattish berth of a rock. The guys were patient as I transitioned shakily, paranoid that all of my gear would be ripped from my hands by the wind and thrown into the abyss.

Cy finds some soft snow after 800 feet of hardpack.

The avalanche danger appeared to be minimal. The loading zone was scraped clean and the couloir was groomer-firm. We each skittered down the slope, and I made nary an arcing turn; my top priority was to keep my ski edges dug into the snow. Each time another gust blasted me, I sat down and plunged my whippet behind me. Pretty graceless way to ski a couloir, if you ask me.

That said, I'm a much better skier than I used to be, so the descent was uneventful. The three of us were very happy to exit the Spoon without incident and we traveled down to Delta Lake via a much nicer and almost as aesthetic second line. The snow in Glacier Gulch was soft and the terrain was playful, but I wasn’t as appreciative as I would have been with fresher legs. Somehow the trek back to the car was much longer than the ingress, but isn’t that always the case when your boots are rubbing your feet raw and you can hear the siren call of Coors?

Dapper, stoked to be in soft snow again.
Little did he know he would be split skiing the rest of the descent.

Safely off the mountain, I reflected on the fear that grips me in couloirs, and wondered if it’s worth it. Climbing and descending consequential lines scares the piss out of me for extended amounts of time and I don’t really enjoy it. Am I a real Teton skier? Should I content myself with skiing low-angle bowls and effortless powder trees? And would that be the worst thing in the world?

Or will I forget the paralyzing fear once a few weeks have passed and start perusing trip reports again, dreaming of big, beautiful lines?

I mean it is really fun sometimes.

Gratitude

I had a really lovely Christmas vacation filled with lots of socializing and skiing and it made me feel lots of feelings, including overwhelming gratitude for all the good in my life. Mostly:

-A family that doesn't expect me to ever visit or call and still loves and supports me even though I've been hiding in Idaho for five years.

-Podcasts and libraries: all the free content you could ever consume.

-A good man and a good dog, even though I was extremely resistant to going down that road again because I'm convinced that all relationships are doomed to failure.

But seriously, just look at this weird cat-dog.

-My health. After racking up tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills at the beginning of 2018, I'm doing just fine and it could have been so much worse.

-My friends. My god I have wonderful friends. I am so fortunate.

-The fact that the city plows the sidewalks.

-My job, which is low key and flexible but feels so engaging and important.

-Interactions with people who believe in very different things than I do but are still deeply kind and caring. Related: rarely having to interact with trolls.

-My warm sunny house that I signed for a year ago holy fuck I can't believe I'm a homeowner and I can't believe it's been the most gratifying experience of my life.

-Generations of privilege. I can't stress this enough. Our family has always been working class but because of decades of canny financial decisions I have a college education and a home and I couldn't have done either without the wisdom and benevolence of my parents, grandparents, and great grandparents. Credit also goes to them for teaching us what really matters in life.

Toxic

My office is made up of five women, and I think not working with men has made me even more intolerant of some of the rank and casual unpleasantness that men can display. It came to the forefront at a party I went to this week.

A sixty-year-old man and his wife, both fit cyclists who loved to travel, were with us at the party. It came up in conversation that I used to be a racer. The man asked if I raced road or mountain, and I said mostly mountain.

"I should've guessed, you're not skinny enough to be a road racer," he said in a jocular tone.

I was pretty shocked by that and immediately told him in no uncertain terms that that was absolutely not something he should feel comfortable saying to a woman.

His assessment of my body didn't bother me, fortunately. While I'm not content with my weight, it's because I want to be stronger and fitter and more motivated, not because I want to be attractive to men. I don't have body hang-ups--I don't feel a need to apologize about the space I occupy.

Also, he obviously didn't know enough about cycling to know that, with the way racing works, a woman with some heft to her can make it a lot farther in the competitive road world than as a mountain biker.

I tried to think through why it made me so mad. I josh my male friends about their appearance. But I wanted him to understand that it's not his job or his right to observe me and tell me what he thinks about my body. I thought about one of my athletes, a girl who started out a little pudgy and is now a state champion in the throes of an eating disorder. What if this bozo had said that to her instead of me? That made my blood curdle with cold anger.

My friends' hackles were up too and they spent the rest of the night telling him how badly I could kick his ass on a bike. He seemed very sheepish and clearly didn't mean to sound like such a dick.

He never actually said sorry though. And then the next morning a guy we were giving a ride up to the ski hill showed up twenty minutes late and didn't apologize. Cy threw up his hands and said, "Men are terrible! Why don't they ever say sorry??"

The male gender continued to display its shittiness that evening. Later another guy, much younger, said that LeBron James was this century's Rockefeller. I said I thought that was a false equivalency, since LeBron built his fortune on talent and entertainment value rather than plundering the country's resources and using child labor. Suddenly this man started talking about how everyone who is not in the one percent is a slave, how we're all enslaved by our jobs and "the man," for lack of a more creative phrase. I think Cy and I both felt compelled by all the stuff we've read and listened to recently to speak up, to not let this person coast on his bullshit.

We both started arguing with him on his word choice, how it was flawed and stupid and inappropriate to misuse a word with so much historical baggage, how people who have to work for a living are very different from people who are bought and sold like chattel.

He pushed back hard and I felt for the first time like I was arguing with someone who trolls forums and Facebook. I interact with a lot of old school conservative people because of my job, but I had never talked to one of these put-upon alt-right men you read about in the left-leaning media. He was not interested in hearing what we said.

After Cy walked away too angry to continue, the guy informed me that he was a brainwashed liberal, which is truly laughable considering Cy grew up in a fundamentalist sect and his views have changed because he is compassionate and intellectually curious. I was shaking with fury the whole ride home.

Did I overreact? Or is it correct to keep holding these shitty men accountable for the stupid, thoughtless things they say? Is that how we fix a world where men have been unchecked for millenia? I really don't know.

Just Pictures of My New Dog

This is Jolene. 

She is a little two-year-old of unknown origin. 

 She really enjoys truck camping.

When we adopted her she had never been out in the woods before but she immediately loved singletrack.

 She would really prefer to never be left alone, thanks.

 And she will eat all the food. All of it.

• Photos courtesy of her primary handler/caretaker/co-parent Cy.

Why I Love Coaching Girls

In my fourth year of coaching the Teton Region team, which has grown so large it's now split into Teton Valley and Jackson Hole, I've gained confidence in myself as a leader. For the first two years I was so hesitant, unable to articulate lessons and advice, concerned I didn't have the respect of my audience. Last year I grew comfortable talking to the kids, yelling at them, teaching them. This year with additional training I've embraced the title of coach and, watching the kids progress through the program, I can now say with certainty that it has a positive impact on their lives.

Especially the girls. I've done some coaching clinics and led group rides with women but I much prefer girls. Women are busy and hard to pin down, and their fear has calcified and they aren't willing to challenge themselves as much. I've seen exceptions, women who charge forward into a new sport with passion and motivation, but girls are more reliably open to learning and hungrier to improve. It seems like girls have a more articulate learning style than boys. When I take a girl aside, give her praise, and then make a suggestion, I can see the processing. She thinks about it, tries it, analyzes the results. Boys are much more susceptible to actions than words so the best way to teach them is to beat them. (On the trail, not bodily.)

Our team has always had exemplary girls. We haven't gone a single race without at least one girl standing on top of the box. The coaches can't take much credit for it--most of these girls are genetically gifted athletes. However, we certainly don't hurt them.

It's not bragging to say that Amanda Carey and I are great role models, women who are strong without being too type-A and intense. All we care about is the kids, not our own racing, and we've been a consistent presence for the team through the years. Having women who are role models is great for the boys too. I don't think any of the boys who have stuck with the program think that female riders are weak or inferior--their coaches and teammates prove that false all the time.

The girls generally ride with the boys, divided up by skill level--they're not tagging along, they're in the mix, jostling for position. But once in a while we let them segregate and go on girl rides, in which the older girls thrive as leaders and the younger girls chase them, challenging themselves and feeling part of a separate, awesome group. Now we have the third generation of new riders coming up and while they were nervous and uncertain at the first couple of practices, now they've tasted success, grown in skills and confidence, and enjoyed the shock of being told they won spots on the podium. I absolutely love seeing that.

What Is It About Santa Cruz Bikes?

Every time my old mountain bike is nearing at the end of its life, I try my darnedest to constantly borrow bikes instead of further beating my dead horse.

Last year I bought a house instead of a new bike, and as a result this summer my Bronson has seen the inside of the shop more than it has seen singletrack. I want a new pony. I borrowed a top-of-the-line Trek Fuel EX and found it was a great bike but not the right steed for me. It didn’t fit right and rode too much like a 29er…whatever that means these days. I borrowed a Trek Remedy, which was an absolute delight. It required a little bit of adjustment in my riding style but was thrilling downhill and even uphill. Then I rode both a Santa Cruz Nomad and a Juliana Strega, which are the same bike, so I’ll just refer to the lady version. Zero adjustment, to bike or style, immediate heart-pounding adoration.

Why do Santa Cruz bikes always feel like home? It might require some serious digging into geometry charts or a better understanding of pivot points than I have, but every Santa Cruz I’ve tried through the years felt intuitive and so, so fun.

Jumping!

The Strega is a big bike. I’ve never considered getting one because at almost seven inches of squish, it’s overkill for everything I ride. It’s a downhill sled dressed up as a trail bike. Or so I thought. I took it on obligatory lift rides at two different bike parks and it was joyous. It’s so muscular but manageable, so playful, so jumpable!

But then I took it on an aggressive thirty-mile all-singletrack trail ride. I climbed for hours and hours on it, motoring over chunky rocks and up steep loose switchbacks. The Strega doesn’t even have a shock lock-out, but hot damn can it climb. The pedaling platform is much more efficient than on my current Santa Cruz.

My only hang-ups were literal pedal hang-ups. I guess everyone else in the world is skilled enough to cope with modern, low bottom brackets but that is going to take some figuring out on my part. Also it’s a heavy bike. When I stopped racing, that stopped mattering to me, but the Strega is not begging to time trial up dirt roads or anything.

Cornering!

While I was riding a beautiful ridgeline through a burn zone in Montana on a perfect bike, I remembered that I have had a very torrid and abiding love affair with Santa Cruz. Long long ago, Sycamore Cycles was in downtown Brevard and Wes carried Santa Cruz for a while. When I was eleven I saw the first iteration of a Juliana and was convinced that I needed to own one someday, because it’s basically my name, duh.

One time, when I was in middle school, a family friend let me take her Superlight out for a ride and I remember so distinctly that amazing feeling of clearing, for the first time ever, the steep root-baskety left-hander on the Middle (Upper Lower?) Black Mountain climb.

When I first threw a leg over what is now my Bronson, it was Tim Koerber’s bike. We were riding Teton Pass laps and I was on a different borrowed bike, because I wanted to be done with my Specialized Era. I had done a lot of research and narrowed my next purchase down to a couple different XC’esque bikes, but then I got on the Bronson and didn’t make a single adjustment and found myself boosting root gaps on Jimmy’s Mom. By the bottom of one short DH run I made Tim an offer.

All of which is just a long way of saying, I’m going to buy a new Bronson ASAP because version 3.0 just got released and it has the same suspension design as the Strega. Yes please.

Climbing!