Comments on: TU denial

By: Steadmans

Steadmans — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 23:22:19 +0000

that sounds so fun to be on a trip like that im jealous

By: bobble

bobble — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 20:14:00 +0000

Nice, thanks Dave!

Good to see I have some overlapping gear, I love my SnowPeak.

I’m halfway there!

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 14:12:53 +0000

I didn’t, but here’s a shot of my gear prior to GLR: http://picasaweb.google.com/hairball.dh/GrandLoopRace#5072995839248528114.

Pretty similar setup for this one – I added an all-weather bivvy and rain pants, and ran a Fenix P3D flashlight on my helmet (which rocked).

Scott Morris (creator of topofusion, all around multi-day beast) set up a new site at bikepacking.net. There’s a specific place to share bike setups at http://www.bikepacking.net/category/individual_setups/ and in general this is a great resource to learn what others are doing and discuss varying ideas/technology.

Good stuff…and dang I can’t wait to get back out there. It’s addicting.

By: bobble

bobble — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 03:14:04 +0000

Dave, Dave or Marshal,

Just curious if any of you guys happen to take a picture of your pile of gear while it was unpacked?

By: Dad

Dad — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 06:36:07 +0000

Great Ride, “Bud”!
jan & I have comered a lot of the sites you mentioned on the TU. Like Navajo Lake, Brian Head, Escalante, Kolob and several others. (reachable by car:-)

This senic country is some of our favorite vacation territory

By: Geoff

Geoff — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 04:24:41 +0000

glad to see October won out. I’m sure there’s something worse than riding a bike all day in July in some of the lower elevation areas that this route will include… I just can’t think of what that might be.

I would suspect that most years early October would end up being perfect weather. bummer for you guys that that wasn’t the case this year. I hope to be out there next year, if my running addiction allows for it.

By: Ed

Ed — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 03:48:57 +0000

Wow Dave, awesome stuff.

That deer kill is definitely something spooky to encounter out there all alone.

October is a wise decision. If I’m unemployed next summer….maybe. I have no idea how you fit a career in with what you do on a bike, amazing!

Congrats to all three of you for attempting this monster.

By: LyndaW

LyndaW — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 18:45:56 +0000

Oct 9th 2009 – cool! That gives me a year and 2 days to pre-ride those bits of the course I am missing. Umm and get a new bike and some bags to fit on it and…

By: dkirk

dkirk — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:42:40 +0000

Sweet! Hey, what’s a little snow anyway?

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:09:44 +0000

That settles it. Put October 9, 2009 on your calendars for next year’s edition.

By: dkirk

dkirk — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:54:46 +0000

Nice job everyone. Great touch with the bucket Dave N! Marshall, I got the same thoughts rolling around my noggin two years ago on the GLR. How did he climb that??
Way to go Dave. You prepared for everything that you could control I’m sure. The weather, eh, whaddaya gonna do? You made the right choice.
I’m itching to give TU a try. If you really do put it back another week then I don’t have my annual White Pass ski patrol refresher muddling things up! I volunteer to be sweep.

Best regards
Dave

By: Dave Byers

Dave Byers — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:23:41 +0000

Tremendous effort Dave! Quite the whopper of a course you have ended up with. 4 hundo w/60K of climbing = binge even for crackheads like you and LW. But the wheels are spinning.

By: Grizzly Adam

Grizzly Adam — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 05:28:14 +0000

Looks like a classic Lion kill. The claw marks on the back would be from the lion leaping up on the deer from behind. Scary stuff. Bears don’t get me too worked up. But I see mountain lions in my nightmares. And even sometimes on the trails. Well only once. Had another encounter with one where I never saw it, just heard it scream at me. I was hunting and had a high powered rifle and a sharp knife. But I was scared enough to go about 10 miles out of my way to get back to camp.

I have been in dark, quiet spots out on the trail and had the hair prick up on my neck, and I get that feeling that something is nearby watching me. I usually ride as fast as ever in those situations.

By: Dave C

Dave C — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 02:10:29 +0000

Duh, you’d die riding east of the waterpocket fold in July. Gotta be October.

By: Jeni

Jeni — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 00:23:41 +0000

Mmmmmm, ice cream….

Orange bucket? Nice touch for hunting season. Dave N is a smart man.

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 20:13:18 +0000

Funny you should ask Grizzly. After a bit of reflection, I think the deer was taken down by a lion, wounded but not dead yet, and left to die before the feast began. The deer had not been down for long – no odor or bloating, and it wasn’t punctured either. That smell I got a whiff of that I assumed was a bear, well I think it was that lion.

In any case my hair was prickled on end from the lion smell to the deer. I got that shot quick and rode off ASAP. It was intense, coming during the best/most surprising piece of trail and sunset and towards the end of the ride. Every ride has it’s moments…

Click that deer pic and note the deer fur all over the foreground, and the claw marks on it. Lion, bear, sasquatch or other?

By: Grizzly Adam

Grizzly Adam — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 19:52:49 +0000

Uh.. was it the bear that killed that deer? Looks like you hit Wild America there.

What a huge route, and huge effort. Great job designing it. and attempting it.

By: Sarah K

Sarah K — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 03:05:30 +0000

Amazing work Dave! Sounds brutal. I’m pleased to see the ingredients for a crack sandwich in your breakfast photo :)

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 01:38:32 +0000

Wow, awesome work there amigo. I wondered what you guys were gonna do with the storm coming in…good call on the early leave.

Daves’ bucket thing is awesome. Makes me wonder if he’s got a scooped in there and some sort of crushed feed. ;-)

As for the deer in the trail – I just got some pictures emailed to me from a buddy back in New Mexico last week. He rides with a guy who works for the state and has access to outdoor cameras for wildlife. So they ride this trail near Albuquerque up in the mountains and find a dead deer similar to what you found. They end the ride and Chris’s buddy goes back and sets up the camera. He comes back a couple of days later and looks at the film and finds the usual – coyotes, etc. Then he sees a big mountain lion take a few shots at the carcass…and finally later on a big mamma bear and it’s cubs come to dinner. All within a few miles of “civilization.” Like the wildlife guy told me years ago…when you see deer, get the hell out of there.

By: marshal

marshal — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 01:12:21 +0000

Hey, sorry my timing was off on the hotel in Cedar. I know I would have enjoyed riding the single track decent into Cedar if I was with someone, I am still a bit gun shy about the ‘technical stuff’ right now. And had I known how close I was to topping out and having mostly down hill the rest of the way to Cedar I would pushed on rather than camping out as a hotel saves tons of time.

Anyway I think Oct is the right time of year for this route. Also I think the start time should be early enough in the night/wee hours so as to beat the heat across the AZ Strip and try to “time it” to get to Virgin right when the small restaurant/gift shop(s) open in the morning. Personal I would probably start a couple of hours ahead of any ‘official’ time to make this ‘timing’ happen for me.

Oh and my TU write up is up on http://desertmountainride.blogspot.com/2008/10/trans-utah-in-bag-2008-season-is-done.html

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 23:16:15 +0000

Jill – one could manage with a light dusting I think. The trouble with snow in Oct is that it melts fairly quickly but the mud won’t. A significant amount of precip will render most surfaces unrideable, and melting snow prolongs the misery. Not to mention – there are some technical, steep, rocky, thin areas where ground cover will make life “interesting” to say the least.

After a typical summer monsoon the trails dry out pretty quick. You might get stuck for a few hours, but things will come back to good shape in short order.

Keep it on yer plans for next year! Having a whole year to prepare (even if largely mentally) will make it even more fun. And impossible :)

By: Jill

Jill — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 23:04:39 +0000

A week at the strongman’s touring pace … definitely gives me something to think harder about. I’d never survive July, but, then again, I’m starting to realize that I’d never be able to acclimate for this thing anyway. Quite the monster you’ve created, Dave. Beautiful and deadly. Nice work again.

Is snow really such a problem in its own right? I understand that those roads and trails become impassable under a lot of moisture, but isn’t that just as much of a risk in a summer monsoon? The storm that came through this weekend seemed to be a big low pressure with a lot of precip. But if you got a light snow storm, a dry dusting, that wouldn’t be so bad, would it? Maybe even preferable to cold rain.

By the way, what is with the bucket? Seriously, Dave N., in all of your years of bike-camp testing, that’s the best you could come up with? ;-)

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 22:47:22 +0000

I’d much rather take the fall crapshoot than the June crapshoot. Brian Head trails don’t usually open until late June – I think it was actually early July this year. The route will probably be rideable end to end in a week and stay that way for awhile in typical indian summer fashion…last year was clear till mid-Nov but that was more of a fluke. Big storm weekend of Sep 22 last year soaked S Utah pretty good.

It’s the challenge of a route like this. It involves crap shoots no matter when the start date. July – the desert will be unmanageable…Oct – snow becomes possible.

Hey, wait a minute – you aren’t doing summer school next year are ya? July 4…could happen.

Fred – a vote for Oct, eh? Oct has always made the most sense to me, pretty much for that reason. I will almost certainly put it a week later next October. 10 days between Payson 24 and TU was tough, even for me.

By: Fred W

Fred W — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 22:44:38 +0000

Dave,

Solid effort there. Sorry I missed the fun. Next time for sure.

It has to be October. July probably seems OK when viewed through snow covered motorcycle goggles. But July is pretty darn hot on some parts of this route. And with an eye toward the ‘trans’ part of TU, there’s a few hot stretches east of Escalante (in July) too.

By: Dave C

Dave C — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 21:53:32 +0000

Damn. Quite the adventure there.

Seems like the route could melt out earlier than June, though that’s a crapshoot. 6 pm, July fourth sounds about right. It would give the yahoos something to shoot bottlerockets at.