Adventures of the Hillbilly Hippies: Matterhorn Peak or thereabouts

   After pulling into a parking space at the west end of Twin Lakes near Bridgeport CA, Kit climbs into the camper and starts tossing ski boots, skins, and other various pieces of gear out from their storage. It's about 10:30 AM, following a leisurely breakfast and more catching up with a good friend visiting from up in Oregon, and I was figuring on a mellow day of hiking around checking out ski access for next winter, perhaps trying to catch some fish. However, he's decided after seeing the snowfields around the Sawtooth range in all their glory that going on a hike without bringing skis is a silly thought. Never mind our idea of an "alpine" start...

Just starting up the Horse Creek switchbacks

   It took all of five minutes to convince me that taking skis along was the thing to do--I was still feeling rather out of shape but I was pretty confident I could at least give it an honest try. So I said, wonky knees be damned, I need a good nutty mountain adventure and that's exactly why we are here! What better way to celebrate my birthday!!

In the meadows above Horse Creek Falls

   Shouldering our packs and wandering into the campground, we got a little helpful trail beta from a climber who was about to embark on the same route, sans skis of course, for a 2-day climb of Matterhorn Peak. We cruised up the Horse Creek falls switchbacks and on past the beaver ponds after the terrain flattened out, swatting at mosquitoes (who forgot the repellent?) and marveling at the lack of any other people at this point. Maybe I'm not as out of shape as I think, for an average human anyhow... And at around 8,500 feet, finally, a patch of snow! And another! Shortly after, the route intersected a steep snowfield where we stopped for a lunch of leftover spaghetti and put our ski boots on, hoping for continuous snow from here.

Just about to take off our ski boots and put hiking shoes on again

  Wishful thinking that turned out to be: a change in aspect brought no snow in sight for at least another thousand feet of vertical up granite slabs and loose kitty litter switchbacks. I proposed that we could climb up the snow-covered eastern Horse Creek drainage to a high point and get some nice fall line turns down, but Kit disagreed, thinking it would be way cooler to follow the approach for Matterhorn Peak and see how far up we could get. I concurred. Back on with the shoes for now. At this point my legs were really feeling worked, not painful just tired and slowing down a lot. Plodding up the steep switchbacks in the sun I was finally starting to wear down and lose motivation, seeing us hiking back down this part of trail if we didn't find another way down with more snow.

Snow! Lake! And such majestic granite peaks!

   Reaching the top of the ridge we were greeted by a tiny alpine lake and jagged granite peaks above in all directions. Finding snow again and finally putting skis on feet felt energizing, and we skinned up rather sun-cupped snow towards the rocky pyramid of Matterhorn Peak. The west couloir was looking very enticing. Maybe another thousand feet higher in elevation I spotted what looked like a break in the cliffs to our left, possibly offering an escape into the eastern drainage for a better ski descent. Still thinking we might head higher I clicked out of my skis and scrambled over just to check it out. Meanwhile Kit takes his skis off and sits down for a snack. We discuss our options, settling on heading back down from here. After all, we still had to hike all the way back down to the car, most of it carrying skis and boots. Neither of us had remembered a headlamp, and even with the long days near summer solstice it seemed like a good idea not to push our luck.

Skinning up below Matterhorn Peak

   A short scramble through some trees and we popped out at the top of a nice steep snowfield. It looked as though we would have to traverse quite a bit to stay on continuous snow, but from my memory looking at it from below, it should be do-able. We could have hiked over and up from here for more vertical descent, but both our legs said mehhhhhh.

Back over to the eastern Horse Creek drainage

   Skis on and we're off! A couple of turns, then a hard traverse right, over some rocks and more traversing. We found ourselves atop a steep section that narrowed a bit but definitely went through.
Yes!!

Most excellent skiing to be had!

Not bad at all!

   Great skiing through here, and then an attempted launch off a nice quarter pipe feature below brought some laughs as Kit went flying sideways. Then, dodging rocks to the end of the snow, followed by a good bit of the favorite hiking over talus in ski boots to reach the next snow patch.

Sometimes you just don't want to take your skis off going from one patch to the next--or across a creek.

   Back at our lunch spot it was time to put skis and boots back on our packs for the dreaded hike back down to Twin Lakes. Fun and exhilaration faded into weary legs and sore shoulders, navigating jumbled boulders and rocky trails, trying not to trip and go sprawling all across the trail with legs and skis flying.

   Distance flew by until we reached the switchbacks; there, time slowed to a crawl and the valley floor seemed not to get any closer. Feet and knees ached and the trail dove downward relentlessly, until finally Twin Lakes came into view, tantalizing with the promise of a dip in the icy cold water. Almost there, nothing can stop us now...

   Finally the trail reached the river and became flat, just before tents and campers came into view among the trees. Across the campground and to the truck, dropping our packs, kicking off shoes and cracking open beers. 6 hours from car to car, a cheers to the longest, most awesome mountain adventure I have been on since probably 2012. I felt no weird joint pains at all, hooray! Slightly sunburned, covered in mosquito bites, and every muscle tired and sore, I definitely earned the lazy Sunday that followed--and I also probably can't call myself totally out of shape any more following this nearly 10-mile round trip with 3,000 feet in elevation gain!

Hey summer, slow down!!

   Holy moly! Time seems to be flying by at warp speed--is it really the end of June already? Being busy is good in some ways, but sure as heck doesn't let me "waste" time writing pointless blog posts any more. Life is generally pretty awesome back up on the north shore of Tahoe, living just steps from the lake, riding a bike to work every day and taking the dog to the beach just about every night. I figure I've gotten more hours on the bike than in the past 3(!!) summers already, although I managed to miss the first race I had signed up for in June due to a combination of a crazy work deadline and slight tweak to the knee. A huge bummer, and it leaves me feeling that I still need to prove to myself that I can do a dang bike race if I want to!

   The knee/hip/everything else problems are still working themselves out slowly, with about an hour or so of stretches and exercises before work every morning plus as much foam roller as I can stand. Nothing feels perfect but it's not bad enough to stop me from riding...usually. There have been a handful of random mishaps like a sprained ankle, neck, knee and lower back tweaks, all spaced out about 2 weeks apart and one right when the previous is finally feeling healed. It felt like about 3 months of that annoying business. Must be just getting old and clumsy or something.

   The dirt bike was supposed to be a winter toy for those weekends when the snow isn't great, put away for most of the summer in favor of a mountain bike, but the more I figure out my new moto the more awesome it gets and it's becoming a real dilemma what to ride in between working on projects around the house. Add to that the plethora of OHV trails behind my house and the indecision only increases. We've found some really awesome new singletrack to explore and can get to places after work that would never happen on a 2-hour mountain bike pedal. It's a blast, I can't argue with myself on that at all!

   Yeah, I do really want to do some enduro MTB racing, and I miss the awesome people I've met racing bikes in the past. Still love the silence and light-ness of being on a mountain bike. But dang, I've got a pretty hardcore dirt bike addiction going right now! The speed and focus of riding a downhill bike but ALL the time, not just going down hills. The challenge of finding things that I think for sure I can't get up, but then with some struggling I can eventually get at least my bike up it even if I'm not riding it at the moment... occasionally, I even get through the harder technical bits while actually ON the motorcycle, now that deserves an extra beer at the end of the ride!
 

Spring in the desert just might be my favorite! So many wildflowers!

   So there was the short version of the last 3 or 4 months. What's next? Scheduling is looking like a mess this summer with a couple of weddings interfering with two big races I'd wanted to do at Northstar and Mammoth, and the rest of the California Enduro Series being just plain sold out. What the heck! Guess I'll have to take up motorcycle racing in the desert this fall... I can't imagine those being sold out at all. If I manage to do some mountain bike racing at all this summer I will definitely be posting about the momentous occasion, as well as any other awesome adventures that I can get into now that I'm not completely falling apart any more. Let's hope things keep going that way because I am having entirely too much fun with life again!

How to be a beginner... again

   I keep starting blog posts and forgetting to finish them until long after they've become irrelevant, so with a little extra time on hand I figured I'd get this one out there. We seem to have blown right past 2015 and into February of 2016 already. How'd that happen so fast?? The skiing was incredible from December until the end of January when things warmed up a lot, and we've more or less had spring for a few weeks now.  Great corn skiing and perfect beach afternoons with the dog have been in abundance. Also, nice weather means spending more time with my new obsession: dirt biking. All of this is great, but we could probably use a little more snow before spring really begins to warm things up, and help the lake fill up some more. Lake level is looking much better than it has in several years but still has a long ways to go before many of the piers on the north shore are back in the water.

   On to the whole beginner thing... For Christmas Kit absolutely nailed gift-giving, and though it wasn't much of a surprise because we discussed the options at length, he brought me home a new dirt bike. I thought it was pretty funny how I putted along happily on my little Honda CRF-230 without complaining but when Kit hopped on to try and get it un-stuck from some situation I'd gotten it into, he declared it was a giant heap of junk. Taking a spin on his bike I realized quickly that yes, brakes ARE actually supposed to work to slow you down. And a bike without a kick start is no good when the battery refuses to stay charged. At least I got really good at figuring out how to bump start the bike in all different kinds of terrain.

The new shred-mobile!

   I almost ended up with a 4-stroke 250 trail bike, but before we went to look at any it was decided that one of those was going to be way too heavy; me not being very big plus the number of times I would probably be lifting and lugging it around after wiping out. The new bike wound up being a 2-stroke Yamaha YZ-125, almost identical to Kit's bike but with a smaller engine, almost 80 pounds lighter than my CRF and supposedly easy to fix if I blow it up. Finally a real "grown-up" bike! Having friends who ride 2-stroke bikes I had heard plenty about how different they can be to ride and I couldn't help but be a little nervous about the whole situation. Riding my CRF was sort of like riding an extremely heavy bicycle with a motor, very predictable and would crawl up most things I'd care to point it at. It also sort of didn't seem to care what I did with the clutch lever and wouldn't exactly leap forward with the throttle open.

   So, for my first time on the new bike I was slightly terrified, although the first 10 minutes was an anticlimactic comedy of stalling every time I tried to take off in first gear. Apparently, modulating the clutch does actually serve a useful purpose, unlike on my old bike which seemed to go no matter what--stalling and/or popping unintentional wheelies was a frequent occurrence at first but I've been getting much better lately. A slight twist of the throttle will send the bike jumping almost out from underneath me, requiring constant attention to my hands and positioning on the bike. I would compare it to riding a skittish horse that might spook at any moment but can be kept somewhat under control with the right technique. A different animal entirely!

   Once I got a little better at actually controlling the bike things got even more fun. The YZ even feels way lighter, handles so much better and is getting more and more rad to ride every time, though I'm still working on the clutch-throttle control for trickier hill climb conditions. When things don't go as planned, it's also noticeably lighter to pick up and get turned around, though still a heavy beast compared with a mountain bike and will wear me out in a hurry!

   Oddly enough, it turns out, my nemesis is going downhill, which I discovered pretty early on. Strange for a pro-ish downhill mountain biker, right? I thought so too. For some reason, staring down a steep long hill strewn with loose shale with a long ways to go to the safe runout turns me into a blubbering weenie. The brakes are weird--right foot rear brake is the farthest from making any sense at all! Then I freak out and forget that the clutch lever is not a brake like on a mountain bike. I discover that engine braking on 2-strokes is not quite as strong as on 4-strokes, and the engine keeps dying and rear wheel locking up, sliding sideways in the looseness. If I accidentally hit the throttle, nothing good happens. Way too much going on, when the last thing I want to be doing is picking up more speed! What do I do then? BAIL!!!! This is not the recommended solution, however, especially when one's leg might get twisted funny and result in a sore knee for a couple of weeks. Acquiring a brace seemed like a good idea after that experience. Eventually I will conquer this irrational fear of descending, but until then I might wind up coasting down many things with the engine off to feel more like a bicycle.

Kit gets sideways in the sand.

   All sports have inherently frustrating moments but I haven't been so thoroughly humbled in a long time as I have learning how to ride a dirt bike... though I've progressed a lot in the year and a half since I started, it still feels like everyone else is miles ahead of me. Perhaps if I was able to pay my way to a World Cup downhill I would experience a similar level of complete ass-kicking. Not all trails are quite as gnarly as what I got dragged through last month, but there are constant challenges to figure out, and occasionally a chance to celebrate getting through something I didn't think I could do. Riding with awesome friends who wait for me and make sure I don't get hopelessly lost or stuck also helps a lot. Trials and tribulations haven't seemed to ruin the fun yet and I find myself grinning all the way home after a ride, uncontrollably excited for the next time I get to get out and test myself on the same hill or techy trail, unable to stop talking about what a great ride it was! Somehow the allure of mastering something completely new has become an obsession the likes of which I haven't felt in some time. Not that I've completely given up on mountain biking yet, don't worry!

Fall into...winter?

   A snowy day. Wood stove blazing, lamb stew in the crock pot. Enjoying a bit of calm before the chaos of moving back to Kings Beach begins in less than 2 weeks, and back to full time work a few days after that. Kit is happily back working for his old boss as a plumber, and I'm excited to start my new job at Tahoe Mountain Sports learning all about shipping and retail, working with rad people at a successful locally owned business. In addition, planning to continue making wooden spoons and other small items for Roundwood to keep creating fun artsy things. The process of selling and buying houses, for once, is feeling like it's going smoothly. Hopefully this is the last real estate adventure we'll have for a very long time, and I do mean it!
   My body (and mental state) is finally returning to a normal state; my left knee doesn't quite bend all the way but is getting a lot closer with stretching and physical therapy. At least it's no longer half the size of my right leg--that was pretty scary. Rock climbing has gotten much more fun being able to do all but the most crazy of high-steps, and things are feeling quite good on the bike although I don't go very fast uphill yet. I even ventured out on a dirt bike ride around our local trails, having so much fun that we went out again the next day. So tired and sore afterward but SO much fun!
   The weekend before was my first big mountain bike ride since sometime in April when I became a basket case for most of the summer. Our friends suggested a rather long ride with copious amounts of pedaling and pushing bikes; a shuttle to hike up the back side of Armstrong Pass to a section of the Tahoe Rim Trail up to Freel Pass, then down to Star Lake and Cold Creek trail and finally pedaling back to their house. Debating the wisdom of jumping into a 15-mile ride so soon, I agreed after much peer pressure... after all, it is mostly downhill. The very first hike up the short steep backside trail to Armstrong was quite honestly the worst part, wherein I considered feigning knee pain to bail on the rest of the ride and head down the Armstrong Pass trail to Connector-Corral and back home. Popping an unexpectedly good wheelie and downing a snack at the top improved my outlook a whole lot and I decided to push onward hiking and pedaling up to chilly Freel Pass.
   It was such an epic, soul-reviving experience, despite wearing my horribly out-of-shape body down to exhaustion by the end. Rocky, sandy, un-groomed singletrack above Star Lake led to slightly smoother, newer trails below, and into Cold Creek's infamous boulder-bashing rock sections and fast flowy turns at the bottom. I LOVE BIKE RIDING!!!!

Starting in on the delicious 3,000 foot descent down from Freel Pass

   The flip side of having all of this fun? Well, it just happens to be creating an enormous bike dilemma for me. Spending the majority of the season with an Ibis Ripley collecting dust in the shed until recently means I never got a chance to really appreciate the bike to its fullest potential and decide if I really thought it was all that and a bag of potato chips... until now, conveniently, when I'm already late on handing it back over (sorry!!) Until this particular day I was all ready to get back on board with my buddy at Lichen Bikes, the polar opposite to this flashy carbon fiber beast. Solidly built from lightweight steel and stable at high speeds, his creation rides like an exceptionally pedal-able downhill bike. Also fun, no doubt, and Kit loves his Lichen Bike. Whereas the Ripley feels like a BMX bike with suspension, so easy to pop over obstacles, flick through tight trees, and throw in a few decent manuals. Most noticeable, though, was the amount of energy that I saved having such a stinking light bike that feels like it practically pedals itself. I was able to coast many times where everyone else pedaled, and I'm pretty sure the bike was the only reason I wasn't too terribly far behind everyone on the climb up. Yes, I feel like I've now drank the carbon 29er kool-aid... Eeks! And no, I'm not worried about racing enduro on it. I used to race super-Ds on a hardtail, and my first DH season was on a ridiculous excuse for a bike, so that's right up my alley.
   First-world problems, indeed. Can't I just have both bikes and enjoy each of them for what they are? Budgetarily, no. I shouldn't even be thinking of buying a dang fancy carbon bike right now, but with selling a couple of houses and starting a steady job I'm feeling pretty good about things. So everyone (especially Devin of Lichen Bikes), please forgive me, I think I'm about to indulge myself in a carbon "dream bike" at least for one more season. And I think that Lichen could build one heck of a DH bike, which I might also be looking for soon. No carbon wanted in that department!!
   When the dust settles and life is as back to normal as it will ever be, hopefully some fun weekend adventures will commence. Perhaps, even of the snowy sort... it's still too early for me to believe we will actually have a real winter here in Tahoe but we all hope that it happens!

Sometimes, things get better!

   What the heck! It's so hard to believe summer has come and gone already! It really feels like just yesterday I was coming back from an amazing bike vacation to Southern California. What happened in between? I really just want to forget about it all. Mostly I have avoided writing much this summer because I've been afraid it would turn into a whine-fest about not riding bikes or having fun; sometimes my state of mind was so uncharacteristically depressed or upset that I really didn't care to share my thoughts at all.

   On the positive side, I got the MRI done on my knee and, though puzzling, no abnormalities were found whatsoever! This is good news, but at the same time SO incredibly frustrating that I spent 5 months more or less babying the knee to avoid tearing the meniscus any further. Grrrr!!!

   Following that I booked an evaluation with a new Tahoe area physical therapist (no more Barton) to get an opinion on what the problem might be, not wanting to wait any longer to start real rehab if I could. It sounds like muscle atrophy and imbalance are causing patella tracking issues, which are easy enough to resolve with specific strengthening exercises, and in fact I started feeling much less pain the day after beginning the exercises. Go figure! I'm still going to see Ashwin at Great Basin PT in another week for his opinion, but since it takes a few weeks to get in to see him I thought I'd give this new PT a try. I randomly met her at a friend's house and thought she seemed to know a lot, so far I'm happy with the results.

   Last night I got to ride and finally not hold back as much, and it was incredible. Flying down singletrack freshly damp from a day's rainfall was exactly the encouragement needed to feed my soul and re-ignite the fire of passion for being on two wheels. The knee felt pretty dang good all throughout the ride and just a little stiff afterward, nothing a bit of ice and massage couldn't fix. On the mend again and I'm feeling as though the winter might not be a total loss after all. Following that, I just need to break this horrible curse of springtime injuries and finally get a whole summer to play again!

Dear Life: will you please stop giving me lemons...

... I've made enough vodka lemonades to last a lifetime. We're all getting sick of them around here. Perhaps some limes would be nice for a change, then we can have margaritas or gin and tonics instead, or Mexican beers with lime...much more variety, and beer does go well with fishing!

   In all seriousness that's an attempt at dealing with my current situation with good humor: a knee injury which refuses to resolve itself, along with jumping through frustrating insurance-related hoops to find out exactly what is wrong. Hopefully I don't sound like too much of a whiner. Supposedly it's a torn meniscus, as confirmed by 3 different PTs. The type of tear is of course a mystery until I can get an MRI, hence the insurance hoops. I'm feeling trapped in a vicious cycle of needing better insurance, which costs more, which I need a better job to get, which I almost definitely need a functional knee to be hired for... I almost got back into vector control, which is a nice cushy summer job, but a neck injury in the spring kept me from completing the required physical exam. The knee is not completely debilitating which is nice and I fully appreciate that. But 3 summers in a ROW of not being completely myself? Well, I'm glad to have enjoyed being in one piece this past winter as much as possible! My mind is trapped in a constant battle between abject misery on one hand and forced optimism on the other--come on now, I still have two legs attached to my body ya know! And they are functional too, hooray! One day I will go a full year without hurting myself and that will be an amazing experience!!

   I am, admittedly, incredibly bummed to not be racing bikes AGAIN this summer. But I'm trying not to dwell on it too much, focusing instead on what I still can do to stay involved with the bike community and SheJumps. It is a totally lame situation for somebody like me who loves to do everything outdoors, but relative to how bad things could be, I'm really lucky that they are what they are. I have actually been able to ride my bike on trails though rather slowly and very carefully to avoid tweaking my knee. I also have done some easy rock climbs, successfully able to avoid any moves that might make it worse. Activity usually makes it feel better; there may be a slight overall improvement over the past months, but then again I might also be getting used to the varying degrees of inflammation and just doing more things regardless. I'm also really starting to like fishing a whole lot more, with a little bit of hiking around or sitting in a canoe. Sometimes quite boring when not catching fish, but when one starts getting fish on the line it becomes a whole lot more fun. I have not caught anything on a fly rod yet this year--that's a whole new mystery that I'm still trying to unravel!

 

Catching up

Spring "training camp" in San Diego

   Once again I've been working and playing outside way too much to write anything so here's a bit of what's been going on. Things got shaken up a lot since the last time I posted: Vanderkitten offered me a spot on their women's Pro MTB team for this season and I absolutely could not turn it down. I'm so honored to even be considered to belong on a team with some amazingly fast women! It feels great after two years of frustration and struggles with injuries that things are coming together to create this opportunity for me to get out there and enjoy racing bikes more than ever. Take a look at my Sponsors page for an updated list of supporters for this race season--great companies that I am really proud to represent!

Ibis Cycles is my new bike sponsor; yes, that is a Ripley 29er...

   The Sea Otter Classic is set to be my first race back in 2 years, and of course I missed signing up for the enduro before it sold out, but I will be racing the dual slalom and DH and hanging out with my new teammates and old friends that I haven't seen in forever. Stop by the Vanderkitten booth and say hi to us!
   It will certainly be a new adventure racing enduro, and will probably be a lot tougher for me to get on the podium than the downhill races I've done. I have been strength training more than ever before this winter and feeling good but have not been getting consistent mileage on the bike. It's been so long since I have trained for endurance events that I think I might have forgotten how. It is still early season and I am usually a slow starter, so there is time to pick up and be strong for the mid-season races. Despite the new challenges (and I do love those) I'm looking forward to doing some really fun-sounding races in new locations, including the possibility of a Whistler trip to race Crankworx...