Elevation Outdoors April 2018

DAVE MACKEY RETURNS | SALIDA SECRETS | BEST SPRING BEERS APRIL 2018

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FIND YOUR PATH

S I N G L E T R AC K A N D T R A I L R U N S

+

DIRTY SECRET

T he Gr avel Gr inding Guide

2,800 MILES ON THE GREAT DIVIDE H OW AL LEN LIM AND SK RATCH L ABS REWROTE TH E RULES

PLAYS WELL WITH BOULDERS. There’s a reason we put our beer in cans instead of bottles. Because when we can our beer, you can do more with it. More hiking and biking. More climbing and camping.

More of anything you can think of, out where our beer was brewed to be enjoyed: in nature.

At Upslope, we can so you can.

#cancountry 2

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DIRTY DEDICATION WANT TO RIDE 2,800 MILES FROM CANADA TO MEXICO? YOU WILL NEED TO DIG DEEP IN THE BIG WIDE OPEN. SEE PAGE 43. photo by ADAM RITTER

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CONTENTS DEPARTMENTS 7 EDITOR’S LETTER

Can the loss of a species help unify a divided outdoor community?

8 QUICK HITS

Train for that big race, a Bluetooth bike pump, how to find tacos and singletrack in Santa Fe, the Access Fund fights for national monuments, spring beers and more...

12 FLASHPOINT

Gravel grinding has become the hot trend in cycling for 2018. Here's an explanation of the hype as well as insight on how to choose the right bike and maybe even the right race for you.

15 HOT SPOT

There's new singletrack in the Arkansas Valley and we have the lowdown.

COLORADO’S DESTINATION

BACKCOUNTRY SHOP FOR OVER 20 YEARS

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17 NUMEROLOGY

Facts and figures on the ins and outs of breathing.

APRIL 2018 19 STRAIGHT TALK

Cat Bradley raps on how she ran to a record in the Grand Canyon and found a community in Boulder.

41 HEAR THIS

Leftover Salmon and Trampled by Turtles return.

43 THE ROAD

Spend 40 dirty days riding the Great Divide Route.

46 ELWAYVILLE

Peter Kray praises corn snow and... Texans.

FEATURES 22 STARTING FROM SKRATCH

This is the story of how an Asian immigrant kid who loved bikes and cooking turned into one of the most sought after trainers on the planet. Nutrition brand Skratch Labs proves that if you stay dedicated to your principles, you can change lives. We take a deep dive into how founder Allen Lim got here.

27 DAVE MACKEY

After a freak accident left this champion ultra runner an amputee, he has found a new dedication to his sport.

33 BEST BIKES AND CYCLING GEAR

Kick spring off right with these, the picks for rides and accessories for road and trail that turned our cranks. Plus, Zach White rhapsodizes on comfy saddles.

ON THE COVER Following an old mining route, Linden Carlson descends off of the summit of 12,225-foot Red Mountain Number Two towards Corkscrew Pass in Colorado’s San Juan mountains. photograph by Devon Balet devonbaletphoto.com

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CO N T R I B U TO R S

E DI TOR-I N -CHI E F

DOUG SCHNITZSPAHN

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WHAT TURNS YOUR CRANKS?

doug@elevationoutdoors.com PRE SI DE N T

BLAKE DEMASO

blake@elevationoutdoors.com PUBLI SHE R

ELIZABETH O’CONNELL

elizabeth@elevationoutdoors.com ART DI RE CTOR

LAUREN WORTH

lauren@elevationoutdoors.com EDITORIAL + PRODUCTION M AN AG I N G E DI TOR

CAMERON MARTINDELL

cameron@elevationoutdoors.com SE N I OR E DI TOR

CHRIS KASSAR

chris@elevationoutdoors.com COPY ASSASSI N

TRACY ROSS

E DI TOR-AT-LARG E

PETER KRAY I N T E RN

HARPER BROWN

DOUG SCHNITZSPAHN

I live in a community that makes sure it snow plows out our miles of bike paths long before it snow plows out the streets.

ELIZABETH O'CONNELL

Getting out there with badass ladies who help push me out of my comfort zone.

CONOR SEDMAK

Eddyline Crank Yanker IPAs on a sunny spring afternoon. What? This isn’t beer-related?

play@elevationoutdoors.com ASSOCI AT E CRE AT I VE DI RE CTOR

MEGAN JORDAN

megan@elevationoutdoors.com CON T RI BUT I N G E DI TORS

AARON BIBLE, ADAM CHASE, ROB COPPOLILLO, LIAM DORAN, JAMES DZIEZYNSKI, HUDSON LINDENBERGER, SONYA LOONEY, CHRIS VAN LEUVEN CON T RI BUT I N G WRI T E RS

EUGENE BUCHANAN, JESS DADDIO, BEN DELANEY, JEDD FERRIS, AMANDA MCKRAKEN, KRISTEN POPE, RUSS RIZZO, RACHEL WALKER, ZACH WHITE, MELANIE WONG ADVERTISING + BUSINESS SE N I OR ACCOUN T E XE CUT I VE

MARTHA EVANS

martha@elevationoutdoors.com ACCOUN T E XE CUT I VE

CONOR SEDMAK

conor@elevationoutdoors.com BUSI N E SS M AN AG E R

MELISSA GESSLER

melissa@elevationoutdoors.com CI RCULAT I ON M AN AG E R

KAITY VANCE

kvance@elevationoutdoors.com DIGITAL MEDIA ON LI N E DI RE CTOR

CRAIG SNODGRASS

craig@elevationoutdoors.com DI G I TAL M AN AG E R

TYRA SUTAK

tyra@elevationoutdoors.com

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PUBLISHING

CAMERON MARTINDELL

Sweet, rolling, brownribbon singletrack with a few techy bits thrown in to keep me on my toes.

JESS DADDIO

I ride to eat. The promise of a fat bag of salt-and-vinegar chips with some peanut butter cups on the side is all I need.

RACHEL WALKER

Endorphins. If I get out in fresh air, preferably in the morning, and move my body hard everything falls into place.

ZACH WHITE

My legs. The ability to explore areas by bicycle that most people only see on postcards is literally and figuratively what turns my cranks.

AARON BIBLE

Long mixed-surface rides with extreme peaks, hairy descents and many moments when you want to quit.

PETER KRAY

Longer days that equal more opportunities for outdoor fun!

E D I TO R ' S L E T T E R

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WE NEED HALF EARTH

The outdoor community needs to come together to act and save the species of this planet from mass extinction.

by DOUG SCHNITZSPAHN

S

udan, the last male white rhino on Earth died last month at a reserve in Kenya surrounded by armed guards protecting him from poachers. While two females still live and there is some hope that scientists can keep the subspeices, which no longer survives in the wild, extant, the passing of this giant, noble, ancient creature speaks to an even more disturbing crisis we face as humans: We are eliminating life on our planet. For me, the loss of Sudan was yet another wake-up call. We need to do more than just bemoan what humanity is doing to this planet that we should be smart enough and compassionate enough to shepherd. We need to act. Now. And then an even more depressing thought hit me—how many times have concerned homo sapiens said those same words over the past decades? And still we are losing.

In an editorial in the New York Times, one of my personal heroes, the biologist and environmental thinker E.O. Wilson laid down exactly what we need to do to preserve the vast diversity of living creatures on this planet. We must set aside one half of the Earth for them. That seems only fair

considering we share existence with an estimated 8.7 million other species. Indeed, there’s no need to look to the skies. We are not alone here on Earth.

“The extinction of species by human activity continues to accelerate, fast enough to eliminate more than half of all species by the end of this century,” Wilson wrote.

Continuing, he provided solutions: “The worldwide extinction of species and natural ecosystems, however, is not reversible. Once species are gone, they’re gone forever. Even if the climate is stabilized, the extinction of species will remove Earth’s foundational, billion-year-old environmental support system. A growing number of researchers, myself included, believe that the only way to reverse the extinction crisis is through a conservation moonshot: We have to enlarge the area of Earth devoted to the natural world enough to save the variety of life within it.” (You can read more about Wilson’s plan and the Half Earth campaign here: bit.ly/2c6KgXb.) To do this, we in the national outdoor community need to put aside our differences and work together.

Recently, I have heard a lot of conflict between outdoor enthusiasts who hunt and those who abhor it (a lot of it spurred on by much needed debates over guns). Beyond political arguments, I personally have no desire to hunt—I have been vegetarian

for two decades and GONE FOREVER | BEAUTIFUL AND MAJESTIC, WHITE take spiders in my house outside. But I know ethical RHINOS MAY BE JUST THE FIRST OF A MASSIVE SERIES hunters who cultivate OF EXTINCTIONS. a deep, caring spiritual photo by Getty Images relationship with the wild. They own guns responsibly and they pay fees that contribute to conservatiion. If we do want to save the earth, we will need to find ways to see our similar purpose and find solutions for the world together. Maybe it’s time for non-hunters to pay fees that go towards conservation. Maybe it’s time for more hunters and more conservative outdoor enthusiasts to rethink political policies that speed the extermination of life on Earth. We need to act together.

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QUICK HITS

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MAKE IT HAPPEN Coaches and competitors share their top tips on how to train for a long-distance bike race.

FERNANDO OCAMPO WANTS A BIGGER

belt buckle. When he signed up for the 2017 Leadville 100 on a bet with friends that he couldn’t finish, he’d never mountain biked. But he completed the race, loved every minute, and got his official Leadville finisher belt buckle. This year, he’s racing again, and wants to under nine hours, to get that signature buckle.

And to increase his chances this time, he has a training plan and coach. Like Ocampo, you need a plan to succeed in any long-distance race. Here are some tips to make it happen.

LET YOUR RACE GUIDE YOUR TRAINING .

Most endurance athletes know the importance of laying an early-season fitness foundation, but thinking specifically about the demands of your race three-to-four months before race day will help guide your training.

Ask yourself, “How long is the race, and have you ever ridden that far before?” says Jake Wells, 2018 Singlespeed Cyclocross National Champion, cycling coach and runner up at last year’s 200-mile Dirty Kanza gravel grinder (see page 12). “That will tell you how many hours and what kind of terrain you’ll need to train for.”

For example, a race like the Leadville 100 requires long hours of climbing on a mountain or road bike, while the more technical Breck Epic might require more mountain bike training and recon of the course.

BE FLEXIBLE IN YOUR TRAINING .

Laurie Simonson has completed the Leadville 100 and the World Solo 24 Hour Mountain Bike Championships among other long hauls and she says avoiding burnout is a big challenge when training for endurace races.

“One year, I was religious about doing every workout,” she says.

“By the spring, I was burnt out. Let yourself be okay with having life and missing a workout once in a while.”

Alternatively, you might be unable to do all the workouts. Ocampo balances training with working late hours and family time. Sometimes, he admits, the day’s workout is a trainer ride at midnight.

“I try not to let a lack of time hijack my training,” he says.

DIAL IN YOUR NUTRITION .

Find out what food and drinks work for you and start training with them. “The key is not to wait until you’re hungry or thirsty. Some people set a little reminder on Garmin or their watch to remind them,” Wells says.

PREPARE FOR EVERYTHING .

You’ve spent a lot of time and money training—don’t let the unexpected derail your race. Prepare for flats and mechanicals, get your bike tuned and talk to racers who’ve ridden the course.

“Fitness is super important, but resilience even more essential,” says Simonson. “You prepare for something to go wrong, because in a race that long, it will.”

—Melanie Wong

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SPOKE SKILLS A new multi-discipline competition aims to give more young riders—and adults—a chance to show off their stuff.

IT TAKES A BIG HEART LAURIE SIMONSON READIES FOR THE START OF THE LEADVILLE 100 IN 2014. “FITNESS ONLY GOES SO FAR — PREPARATION AND RESILIENCE ARE JUST AS IMPORTANT IF YOU WANT TO MEET YOUR GOALS,” SHE SAYS. photo courtesy LAURIE SIMONSON

MOUNTAIN BIKE RACERS IN THE ROCKIES

now have a new venue to showcase a wide variety of tire-spinning talents.

This spring, Salida’s Chocolate Bunny Productions will debut the Rocky Mountain Race Series (RMRS)—a multi-discipline mountain bike format in Colorado and New Mexico that will include downhill, cross country, short track and dual slalom races.

“We’re super excited to bring this new series to the region—we feel there’s a calling for its multidiscipline format,” says race director Keith Darner, who is excited by the series’ appeal for young riders. “Youth mountain biking is exploding with junior programs like Durango Devo, Singletrack Mountain Bike Adventures (SMBA) in Boulder and the Colorado High School Mountain Bike League across the state. We want to foster the sport and provide these racers with a place to exhibit their diverse skill

sets.”

Darner says the top three finishers will win a medal, all racers (and volunteers) will be eligible for a free product raffle after each event and, sponsorship permitting, a cash prize will be available for the pros.

Sponsored by Yeti Cycles, Ska Brewing, Kate’s Real Food and Tailwind Nutrition, the series kicks off in May and runs through August (see sidebar for dates). It will include categories for juniors ages 8 to 18, as well as age groups for adults, in both endurance and gravity disciplines.

“Having a series that makes racing accessible to juniors is exactly what the sport needs,” says SMBA program director Jessie Bronson. “It’s important for the riders of tomorrow to have access to races geared toward building skills in an accessible and supportive environment.”

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BOOKS BEST TRAIL RUNS: DENVER, BOULDER AND COLORADO SPRINGS EO contributing editor Adam Chase has explored just about every possible trail on the Front Range and many others beyond.

Here, he teams up with Nancy Hobbs and Peter Jones to document 40 top trails, sprinkling in local running club information, post-run eats and GPS info. $22 | FALCON.COM

The downhill courses will challenge elite-level riders, and feature alternative lines or courses for CAT 2 and 3 riders. Dual slalom will unfold at three or four of the venues. Cross country courses will feature varying lengths for different categories, with longer courses heading out of ski area boundaries. Short track will follow the “missing out” format, where the last racer across the line each lap will be eliminated until the last two remain.

RMRS also fills a void left by the demise of other series in the region.

“There’s been a huge lapse since the end of the Mountain States Cup,” says Hogan Koesis, Mountain Capital Partners bike park director. “We’re stoked to have multi-discipline racing back in the Rockies.”

While Darner says there are similar series across the country, few combine slalom, short track, cross country and downhill. “These four disciplines are what racers around here want,” he says. “And we’re super focused on the juniors. We want kids to have a place to race in a fun environment—you can’t grow the sport without the groms.”

—Eugene Buchanan

RMRS Dates & Locations May 5 The Salida 720 Salida, Colorado May 18-20 Pajarito Mountain Los Alamos, New Mexico June 15-17 Crested Butte Mountain Resort Crested Butte, Colorado July 13-15 Sol Vista Bike Park Granby Ranch, Colorado August 3-5 Powderhorn Mountain Resort Grand Junction, Colorado August 17-19 Purgatory Resort Durango, Colorado

SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO Famed for arts and food, New Mexico’s chill capital city also has one of the best trail systems in the country. If you want a mountain bike escape that delivers plenty of culture when you are out of the saddle, point it south and prepare your tastebuds for Southwestern treats.

EAT Santa Fe rates as one of the best foodie cities in the U.S. Let’s get the obligatory chili reference out of the way first: Order it Christmas style (a.k.a. red and green), because you can’t pass on the green and the outstanding red gets passed by far too often. You’ll find plenty of both when you fuel up on the huevos El Salvedorenos (crispy chile rellenos topped with eggs and roasted tomato salsa) at the Tune-Up Cafe (tuneupsantafe.com). The spot may be a bit off Santa Fe’s main plaza but it wowed diner denizen Guy Fieri when he hit town and keeps us coming back. Another breakfast and lunch joint on the rise and just off the plaza, Palacio Cafe (palaciosantafe. com) plates a massive club sandwich stacked with turkey, ham, bacon, RIDER, RIDER, CLIMBER CROSS-COUNTRY RACERS WILL RIP INTO RMRS (TOP). SAVORING SANTA FE'S LA TIERA (BOTTOM LEFT). THE ACCESS FUND'S MAN WITH A PLAN (BOTTOM RIGHT). photos by EMIL ASHLEY (TOP), DOUG SCHNITZSPAHN (BOTTOM LEFT), courtesy BRADY ROBONSON (BOTTOM RIGHT)

cheese and green chili as well as smothered burritos that you should probably wait to eat until after you ride or run. For dinner and margs, find El Callejon (elcallejonsantafe.com), also just off the plaza. This unpretentious bar and grill specializes in fresh tacos that run the gamut from juicy marinated pork to melt-in-your mouth calabacitas (that’s squash, gringo) for vegetarians. Cap it off with cocktails and pool at the just-sleazy-enough-tobe-hipster Crowbar (505-982-0663).

SLEEP Set on the road up to Ski Santa Fe and practically at the trailheads for the Dale Ball system, Ten Thousand Waves (tenthousandwaves.com) tempts with a luxe Japanese-style bath house complete with private hot pots and tea. Stay the night, book a massage and take advantage of morning pool hours for guests only (rooms run $215-$299 per night).

If you want to go a bit more low key, book at Garret’s Desert Inn (garretsdesertinn.com), within walking distance of all the museums, shops and eateries on the plaza. Clean, basic rooms here go for about $90 per night. If you are looking to do it right head to Sunrise Springs Spa Resort (sunrisesprings.ojospa.com), which features spacious, airy casitas

and guest rooms (rates start at $205 per night) on 70 acres just southeast of town. Here, you can enjoy spa treatments and 104-degree, private outdoor soaking pools.

PLAY This is one of the best bike towns in the West. If it’s not too hot, start at the La Tierra trails (sfct.org/trails/la-tierratrails) just north of town, with 25 miles of flowy singletrack (and a bike park).

It’s a complicated series of loops, so be sure to pick up a map and ideas on how to piece together a ride at Mellow Velo (mellowvelo.com), where you’ll also find repairs and demos. Higher up in the foothills, the Dale Ball Trails are the big standout thanks to 24 miles of singletrack here—it’s another, more technical, system where you can cobble together rides from easy to epic. In summer head further up to the ski area and bomb the Winsor Trail 9.3 miles down to the town of Tesuque.

And no trip to Santa Fe is complete without some Meow Wolf (meowwolf. com), the art collective funhouse. It’s a winner with kids, but adults will be just as captivated and may want to chill with drinks at the bar or return when it morphs into a nighttime concert venue with artists such as Martin Sexton playing the space-adelic dance hall.

—Doug Schnitzspahn

LOCAL HERO: BRADY ROBINSON The Access Fund’s leader is on a mission to keep climbers climbing and protect public lands.

FOR OVER TWO DECADES, BOULDER FOR

the past decade, Brady Robinson, 45, has been intimately involved in many of the biggest issues facing the outdoor community across the U.S. As the Executive Director of the Access Fund (the leading climbing advocacy group in the United States), he leads efforts to secure access to climbing areas across the country. Oh, and he’s not bad on the rock, either.

As a climber first and foremost, Robinson understands the significance of protecting one of our most precious resources, wilderness. “One of our most important values and identities as a nation is how we have protected so much of our outdoor lands,” says Robinson. “Very few other countries are as active as we are.”

As part of its commitment to securing climbing areas for the future, the Access Fund has worked with the Front Range climbing community to rebuild trails in Colorado, recently bought the Bolton Dome climbing area in Vermont—closed since 1990—and

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has conservation teams out year-round helping to improve climbing areas.

But the Access Fund’s most important campaign to date may be the battle against the current administration’s attempts to gut the Antiquities Act, which allows the President or Congress to preserve and protect land of scientific and cultural significance. “When any part of our government treats the outdoor industry as secondary to other interests we will fight them, because it’s bullshit,” says Robinson.

“This is our legacy and we will fight to preserve it.” accessfund.org —Hudson Lindenberger

SPLASH INTO SPRING Winter Park celebrates 50 years of getting soaked.

WINTER PARK RESORT’S 50TH ANNUAL

Spring Splash is scheduled for Sunday, April 22. The event begins at noon, with registration opening at 8:00 a.m.

Competitors face tight turns, rolls, and a “bamboo jungle” of closelyspaced bamboo poles, all before reaching the pond and attempting to skim across it.

“Amazingly, the event hasn’t really changed in 50 years,” says Winter Park Resort spokesman Steve Hurlbert, who notes that a new mini-

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IT WAS THAT KIND OF WINTER SO YOU DON'T HAVE THE CHOPS TO RACE DOWNHILL OR BRAVE AN EXTREME COMP? NO WORRIES! EVERYONE HAS A CHANCE TO BE A HERO (OR A FOOL) WHEN THEY SKIM ACROSS THE ICE-COLD POOL. photo courtesy CARL FREY/WINTER PARK RESORT

obstacle course. “People who enjoyed Splash way back in year one would definitely recognize it today.”

So what’s the secret to success?

Hurlbert advises participants to pick up their speed for the best chance of staying out of the drink. “The obstacle course is designed to take away momentum so once you’re through, you’re going to want to carry as much speed as possible down the final descent, which will carry you across the pond.”

Of course, not everyone makes it across, so bringing a change of clothes is always a

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good idea. For details and registration information head to: winterparkresort.com/things-todo/events/spring-splash —Kristen Pope

BETTER WEATHER BEERS As balmy temps return to the Rocky Mountains, the time is now to search out fresh new brews to pack along on your outdoor adventures. Here, we introduce you to four craft concoctions that pair perfectly with spring weather.

WELDWERKS BREWING COMPANY’S

(weldwerksbrewing.com) Juicy Bits IPA has rocked to the top of our must-sip list this spring. The New England-style IPA grabs your attention the moment

it hits the glass with a beautiful floral nose, hazy liquid and light, soft head. Sip it on aromatic spring nights postrun. On colder eves, rock on the deck with a six-pack of Crooked Stave ’s (crookedstave. com) Coffee Baltic Porter, brewed with freshly roasted Colorado coffee and packed with flavor. California’s Sierra Nevada Brewing (sierranevada.com) and Germany’s Brauerei Weihenstephaner (weihenstephaner.de/en) have over 1,000 years of experience between them so any beer the two collaborate on should grab you by the hops. Pick up a 12-pack of the limited release Braupakt Hefeweizen and savor a couple after an afternoon hiking the high country. Finally, fill the cooler with abomber of Casey Brewing & Blending’s (caseybrewing.com) Saison.

Made with 100-percent Colorado ingredients, this barrel-fermented beauty exhibits a complex flavor not usually found in this style of beer.

—H.L.

burly car-camp mansion the new TITAN 4 mtnGLO® with VESTIBULE 3 SEASONS · 2 DOORS · 90 SQ. FT. OF BLISS

Kate Rutherford cheffing up breakfast for a hungry group in Indian Creek, UT – Andrew Burr

2018

The Mother of Comfort bigagnes.com

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FLASHPOINT

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DIG INTO THE GRIND

Learn why dirt-road riding is the next big thing in cycling—and how you can hop on the trend.

by BEN DELANEY

I

n 2013, about a hundred cyclists gathered in Stillwater, Oklahoma, to tackle 107 miles of isolated red-clay and gravel roads in the Landrun 100. Some bikes broke. Some riders took all day to complete the distance of the inaugural race. This year, the event sold out its 1,400 spots in 36 hours.

Dirt-road riding has arrived. Above and beyond those looking to pin on a number and race a “gravel grinder,” the allure of rides with fewer cars has clearly captured the imagination of cyclists. Mix the social and fitness elements of road cycling with the rough-and-tumble solitude of country dirt roads, and you have gravel riding—the booming trend in bikes for 2018.

“The interest in gravel has grown so quickly because of it's relational nature back to the simplest form of riding and gathering with incredible people,” said Landrun 100 promoter Bobby Wintle. “The dirt, the friendships, the scenery, the difficulty, the mostly empty roads all scream adventure and connection.

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Nothing is guaranteed at a gravel event and this instills excitement, fear, adventure and questions about how the day will turn out that demand the attention of any and all riders.”

While cyclists have been pedaling skinny-tired road and knobbier-tired cyclocross bikes on dirt roads for generations, there is now a full-blown movement of dedicated gravel bikes and specialty events around the country. How big is gravel? Well, this year three-time world road cycling champion Peter Sagan is even hosting a three-day gravel event in Truckee, California.

THE RIDE

A gravel bike is a basically a road bike with clearance for big tires. What defines gravel riding depends in part on how you define gravel. Back roads in Colorado are often smooth, hard-packed dirt affairs, fitting most roads bikes just fine — so long as they’re dry. Often a normal road endurance bike is just fine. But venture to Kansas for the Dirty Kanza 200 gravel race, which crosses 200 miles of sharp, flint-covered roads, and you will want a dedicated gravel bike with wide, sturdy tires.

As for a gravel bike’s geometry, it looks like a road bike with curved, drop handlebars, (usually) no suspension and tires in the 35mm-42mm range (all reminiscent of a ’cross bike). But where a ’cross bike is designed for short, intense races, a gravel bike is built for long days in the saddle. As such, they often have three, four or five water bottle mounts. So you can go long. You’ve got the hydration.

WHY BUY GRAVEL?

SOILED PAST RACERS DIG IN AT THE

If standard road bikes roll DIRTY KANZA 200. CREATED BACK IN THE NASCENT just fine on dirt roads, YEARS OF GRAVEL GRIDING and mountain bikes IN 2006, THE 200-MILE are great for chunkier GRASSROOTS RACE terrain, why plunk down HELD IN JUNE PUSHES RIDERS THROUGH THE change for a hybrid? For GRITTY, ROLLING DIRT many riders, the appeal ROADS OF KANSAS' FLINT of the terrain leads to the HILLS. THIRTY-SIX RIDERS appeal of the equipment.

COMPETED IN THE FIRST Dirt roads also RACE, LAST YEAR THE EVENT DREW OVER 2,200. have elbow room and a lot less noise. More photo by LINDA GUERRETTE and more riders are mixing pavement and dirt or even a little tame singletrack into a single ride, piecing together fun routes that don’t involve loading the bike into or onto a vehicle.

Road bikes are also limited by tire width. More and more road bikes are now coming with disc brakes, but the fork and frame size out at 32mm widths—no good for really rocky terrain.

Mountain bikes can take all manner of tires, and, of course, they have suspension that smooths out rocky rides. But on dirt roads, they’re heavy and slow, making for more work than necessary.

That said, you can hit the dirt on whatever you have. In mid-February, riders on all manner of bikes competed in the Old Man Winter Rally event out of Lyons, Colorado, with 50- and 100K courses on paved and dirt roads in the snow, ice, mud and slush.

HOP ON A GRAVEL BIKE

geometry for stability in nasty terrain, and clearance for up to 42mm tires on 70cc wheel or 47mm tires in the 650b wheel size. If you are on a budget, the Diverge Comp E5 rings in at $1,800 with an aluminum frame.

A few companies make road-bikesimilar gravel race bikes—stiff, fast, and light. And some of the smaller core gravel brands have gone off the deep end with bikepacking weirdness. But somewhere right in between sits the Norco Search XR Force 1 ($4,199; norco.com), which handles big tires, fenders, racks and bottle cages on the fork legs—but it also feels like a frisky bike and not a stubborn, plodding mule.

A dedicated gravel bike can change the way you ride, however. If you are looking to buy, where you live and where you like to ride will determine your best choice. The selection runs the gamut from forgiving road bikes to full-suspension models.

Though boutique bike brands like Salsa have built gravel grinders for years, Cannondale was arguably the first big brand to commit to the genre.

The Slate Force 1 ($3,500; cannondale.com), pushes the envelope with a carbon frame, clearance for up to 42mm tires and 30mm of suspension. It’s basically a hardtail mountain bike with drop bars.

There’s no mistaking the Salsa Cutthroat ($4,299; salsacycles.com), with 2.4-inch tire capability, for a road bike. This burly bikepacking beast has fourbottle capacity on small frame and five bottles on bigger frames. It comes ready to mount a rack, a toptube bag and one or two chain rings.

The 3T Exploro LTD ($4,200; 3t.bike) is an aero gravel race bike. Sure, you can find plenty of stiffer, lighter endurance road bikes, but the 3T Exploro is a legit gravel bike, with clearance for 40mm tires in 700c or up to 2.1” in 650b.

Unusual in the world of gravel, this machine was also designed for aerodynamic efficiency.

Specialized introduced the FutureShock on its Roubaix endurance road bike, adding a little bit of spring suspension between the frame and the handlebar. The carbon Specialized Diverge Expert ($4,000; specialized. com) has that same FutureShock plus a low, relaxed

GRAVEL EVENTS AND RESOURCES

TH E CO MP LET E GU IDE TO GR AV EL RACIN G AN D ADVE NT UR E BIK EPA CK ING

NI CK LEGA N

GRAVEL CYCLING

Gravel events run the gamut from low-key group rides arranged via email to massive affairs like the Dirty Kanza 200. Here in Colorado, the Gold Rush Bike Rally (bouldergoldrush.com) is the summer sibling of Old Man Winter Rally (voted best bike event in the annual EO Best of the Rockies reader poll). Expect to see all manner of bikes from road to mountain to gravel For a complete list of gravel events around the country, check out gravelcyclist.com/ calendar/.

For more detailed gravel riding info, get Gravel

While road and cyclocross riders have pedaled on dirt roads for generations, there’s now a fullblown movement of dedicated gravel bikes and specialty events around the country.

Cycling : The complete guide to gravel racing and adventure bikepacking by Nick Legan ($25; ramblieur.com). As an elite cycling mechanic, Legan wrenched bikes in events ranging from the Olympics to the Tour de France, and his passion for gravel preceded the trend by years. He has participated in scores of events, including multi-day monstrosities like the 2,745-mile Tour Divide, and is downright evangelical about getting others into gravel riding.

Packed with inspiration and information on both events and the huge variety of bikes and gear involved, Legan’s 304-page book has 320 photos that showcase gravel experiences around the U.S. and the world.

—Ben Delaney is the US editor-in-chief of BikeRadar and the former editor-in-chief of VeloNews.

EVENTS CALENDAR MARCH

24 10th Annual Save Our Snow and Demo Day 31 Beach N’ Egg Hunt

APRIL

11 29th Annual Enduro & Après Party 21 Earth Day Celebration and POW Carpool Day 28 Shakin’ at the Basin Spring Concert Series Live Music by Black Dog

MAY

5 12 12 12 19 26 27 27

Shakin’ at the Basin Spring Concert Series Live Music by King Cardinal Shakin’ at the Basin Spring Concert Series Live Music by Homeslice Spring Rail Jam #1 3rd Annual Swimwear Day Shakin’ at the Basin Spring Concert Series Live Music by Beloved Invaders Shakin’ at the Basin Spring Concert Series Live Music by White Water Ramble 17th Annual Festival of the Brewpubs Live Music by Mojo Mama Spring Rail Jam #2

JUNE

2 3

Shakin’ at the Basin Spring Concert Series Live Music by The Burroughs Shakin’ at the Basin Spring Concert Series Live Music by Tunisia

ARAPAHOEBASIN.COM/EVENTS A P R I L 2 01 8 / E L E VAT I O N O U T D O O R S . C O M

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!

You’ve been hiking on mountain trails and scenic back country before, but there’s nothing like exploring the slot canyons of St. George, Utah. thin in couple hours you could Just think, be exploring miles of red rock canyons usually only seen in movies made about Mars. The landscapes are so colorful it’s like Mother Nature didn’t know where to stop with her paintbrush.

Just 90 minu minutes North of Las Vegas on I-15, and now with direct ights on United, Delta and American Airlines right into SGU, getting there couldn’t be easier. Going home...well that may take some convincing.

H OT S P OT

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ARKANSAS VALLEY SINGLETRACK

Think you’ve ridden it all? Put your tires to the dirt on new singletrack in Salida and Buena Vista this weekend.

by CHRIS KASSAR

C

lose enough for a weekend excursion from the Front Range, the Arkansas Valley offers up the perfect playground with its high concentration of fourteeners, access to the Colorado Trail, ripping rapids in Browns Canyon National Monument, and an extensive system of trails, ideal for hiking, running and—especially—mountain biking. In fact, we thought Salida and Buena Vista had it all. But, with the construction of new trails every year, it just keeps getting better. Here’s your guide to the best new singletrack and more.

ARKANSAS HILLS (S-MOUNTAIN) SYSTEM, SALIDA Chicken Dinner Completed in December 2016, this flowy, two-mile multi-use beauty combines berms, jumps, rollers, tables, rock gardens and climbing turns to create an exhilarating, just-technical-enough extension off Sweet Dreams, a relatively new (Summer 2015), intermediate-expert trail that also delivers speed and tests traction. With an elevation change of approximately 400 feet, the intermediate Chicken Dinner rides well in both directions and opens up options for extended loops in the S-Mountain system. It makes an especially good addition to the 23-plus-mile Cottonwood Loop, a route that combines a big chunk of trails in the system, including Frontside, North Backbone, Beasway, Rumba and Cottonwood. Use Chicken Dinner to connect with the Methodist Mountain Trail System— another outstanding and extensive network that starts on the south side of town off of Highway 50.

singletrack, The Dude Abides, also starts near Pauli and connects down to North Backbone. It adds yet another climb/ descent to the Cottonwood Loop (see above). It’s fast and flowy like Chicken Dinner and Rusty Lung but also tosses in technical, rocky options to keep advanced riders on their toes.

BUENA VISTA

OPEN FOR BUSINESS

BETA CENTRAL | If you need info or recommendations on any of the local trails in Salida and beyond, point it to Absolute Bikes. The shop basically is the trailhead for the S-Mountain system, and beyond demos, gear and repairs the staff here loves to set you right on your ride. absolutebikes.com

Bacon Bits Trail Measuring two miles one-way, this sweet new singletrack, which links the Old Midland Cutoff (376 A) and the center section of the Midland Trail, delivers a welcome alternative to a steep doubletrack climb (or descent) for those seeking to explore the Midland Trail Route System and/or tackling the 11.1-mile Gentleman’s Loop. Weaving in and out of interesting terrain features like rocky outcrops and offering striking views of snow-capped fourteeners, Bacon Bits and other new trails like Django (also fun, flowy and techical) are well worth a spin.

Rusty Lung Bridge to Bridge Trail Officially opened in September 2017, this Completed in October 2017 with the help of intermediate, two-way trail offers a different option dedicated volunteers, the (from the typical combination newest trail in this system of Frontside and Lil Rattler) forms an intermediate-level for getting to trails—like North RACE YOUR HEART OUT loop between the Barbara Backbone and Backbone—that On May 5, you can try out Whipple Bridge and the delve deeper into the hills. With Salida’s new trails, and many Ramsour Bridge (now called the fun rock gardens, sweeping old standbys as well, by Midland Hill Bridge), a private curves, rollers and stunning competing in the debut of bridge recently opened to views, this 0.8-mile trail begins the Salida 720—a technical the public. Its prime location at Spiral Drive and climbs to the 12-hour mountain bike race at the south edge of South intersection of Lil’ Rattler and that will loop through the Main Street offers easier Backbone at County Road 173.

S-Mountain system. You can access to trails across the Named in honor of two local find more info and register at river and opens up exploration legends, it’s a fitting tribute chocolatebunnyproductions. options in the Fourmile Area. to Don McClung and the late com/events/salida-720.

Because so many of the mountain bike hall-of-famer trails in the Whipple System Mike Rust, visionaries who are challenging and ranked pioneered the sport in Salida intermediate to advanced, this trail represents and beyond. efforts to create more options for beginners.

Hooligan and The Dude Abides Completed in December 2017, the short, expertsFUEL UP only Hooligan features some committing, exposed Soulcraft Brewery options that will pucker even the cockiest riders. It Serving locally brewed beer—our favorite is the starts at the end of Pauli Trail. Another brand new

THE NEW SINGLETRACK ON S-MOUNTAIN HELPS CREATE MORE OPTIONS FOR RIDERS LOOKING TO LINK UP LOOPS, BOTH TECHNICAL AND FLOWY, IN THE OUTSTANDING ARKANSAS HILLS SYSTEM. photo by TAF MCMURRY

creamy Coconut Stout—in a fun, festive atmosphere with tons of patio seating, frequent concerts and raucous trivia nights, Soulcraft has quickly become the local favorite for a post-ride brew or happy hour meetup with friends. Soak up suds with food from Cosmo’s truck outside: It serves fresh pasta, sauces, sandwiches, salads and sweets. soulcraftbeer.com House Rock Kitchen Refuel with a delectable sandwich, burrito, soup or our favorite: a giant bowl of Indian, Greek, Moroccan, Southwestern or BBQ goodness, augmented with your choice of pulled pork, sustainable salmon, grilled chicken, housesmoked beef brisket or housemade veggie patty.

No matter what you choose from this eatery that opened in summer 2015, it will be made from healthy, seasonal, local ingredients and served by friendly staff in a buzzing, energetic atmosphere. Open Thursday through Sunday. houserockkitchen.com The Biker & The Baker Delicious wine, craft beers, charcuterie plates and homemade desserts that include old favorites (think crème brulee and German chocolate cake) and unique concoctions like espresso salted chocolate bark and hot toddy granita are the standard in this funky spot. The brainchild of creative baker Sarah Gartzman (who with her husband, Rob, also runs mustvisits Sweetie’s Sandwich Shop and Mo Burrito) the place will refuel your sugar cells after a day of hard riding. Open Thursday through Sunday. thebikerandthebaker.com A P R I L 2 01 8 / E L E VAT I O N O U T D O O R S . C O M

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N U M E R O LO GY

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INHALE… EXHALE You do it over 23,000 times per day, but how much do you really know about breathing? Dig into these numbers that will tell you more about how your respiratory organs get the job done out on the trail, in the water and on your bike.

by AMANDA MCCRACKEN

45

Average number of breaths per minute an elite athlete takes while running (compared to 12-15 while breathing at rest), according to Brian Mackenzie, a triathlete, coach and co-founder of the Power Speed Endurance training program. Most elite runners use a 2:2 breathing rate (inhaling for two steps and exhaling for two steps). Assuming one is running at the ideal stride rate of 90 strikes per minute, she is taking 45 breaths. Try different patterns (3:3 or 3:2) to see what works best for you at different paces. powerspeedendurance.com

24 minu t es , 3 . 45 se cond s

The Guinness World Record for the longest time breath has been held voluntarily. On February 28, 2016, Spaniard Aleix Segura Vendrell, set the record at the Mediterranean Dive Show. Vendrell is a freediver, the second most dangerous sport next to BASE jumping.

150

⅓

20.95

Tw ice

The number of square meters (more than half the size of a tennis court) the cellular walls of your pulmonary alveoli sacs would cover were they to be unfolded and laid open. Oxygen and carbon dioxide diffuse through these walls—a delicate exchange between air and blood-carrying capillary vessels.

Percentage of oxygen that makes up an inhaled breath. The rest of the air you breathe is mostly nitrogen (78 percent) with small amounts of argon, neon, carbon dioxide, helium and hydrogen. The breath you exhale still contains roughly 15 percent oxygen, making CPR possible.

25

Percentage of people referred to National Jewish Hospital (the leading respiratory hospital in the U.S.) for asthma who don’t actually have asthma.

Think you might? Do your research on vocal cord dysfunction (a similar serious respiratory disease) before puffing on inhalers for years on end.

12

Liters of oxygen 23-time Olympic swimming gold medalist Michael Phelps’ lungs can reportedly hold compared to the human average of six to eight liters.

Swimmers statistically have higher lung volume capacities than other elite athletes. Scientists attribute this to swimmers holding their breath while they train and the fact they strengthen their respiratory muscles literally under pressure, which results in a greater chest wall elasticity.

The amount of normal oxygen intake a climber can inhale atop 29,029-foot Mount Everest (due to atmospheric pressure). About 95 percent of successful ascents on the world's highest point have occured with the aid of oxygen (which costs about $1,000 per bottle).

The number of minutes the average person can hold her breath underwater compared to on land. In order to conserve oxygen and energy when submerged in cold water, humans slow their heart rates and metabolisms. This phenomenon is called the diving reflex. Professional divers can train to reduce their heart rates by 50 percent.

4–6

The number of minutes the average person can go without oxygen before brain damage sets in.

Within eight to 10 minutes, brain damage can be irreversible. The Red Cross recommends giving two breaths following 30 chest compressions at a rate of 100-120 compressions per minute when administering CPR to simulate breathing.

8 4 .6

The VO2 Max measured for four-time Tour de France Champ and 2017 winner Chris Froome. Calculating just how efficient the lungs are with the oxygen they inhale, VO2 Max measures the maximum amount of oxygen a person can use during intense exercise in terms of milliliters of oxygen used in one minute per kilogram of body weight (ml/kg/min). An

average human has SIMPLE SCIENCE a VO2 Max between THE MORE OXYGEN YOU 30-60. Record BREATHE IN, THE MORE YOU SEND TO THE BLOOD. setting mountaineer photo by ERIC SCHUETTE Ed Viestrus once recorded a VO2 Max of 67. The highest V02 Max ever recorded came from Norwegian cyclist Oskar Svendsen who hit a 97.5. Matt Carpenter, who holds the course record for the Pikes Peak Marathon measured a 92. While most of the factors contributing to VO2 Max are hereditary, “a moderately fit runner can increase VO2 max by as much as 25 percent,” according to Runner’s World.

12

Weeks of practicing daily yogic and coherent breathing that it took for patients suffering from severe depression to feel psychological improvement and to exhibit higher levels of the inhibitory amino acid neurotransmitter gammaaminobutyric acid (GABA), according to a 2016 Boston University study. GABA can calm nervous activity, making for a happier human.

. 59

The average amount of fluid ounces of water humans exhale per hour at rest, according to a a 2012 article in the journal Polish Pneumonology and Allergology.

That number can jump up to four times higher during hard exercise. The amount of water you exhale increases in freezing temperatures, which means it is essential to remember to drink water when exercising in the cold.

A P R I L 2 01 8 / E L E VAT I O N O U T D O O R S . C O M

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4TH ANNUAL ENDURANCE MTB RACE

OCTOBER 13, 2018

PENITENTE CANYON - SAN LUIS VALLEY

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Plan Your

Grand Escape

Hiking. Rock Climbing. Biking. Fishing.

Golfing. Boating. Horseback riding. There’s no telling where your adventure will begin in Grand County. And with so much to do, it never has to end. From Colorado’s largest natural lake to the sights of Rocky Mountain National Park, the end of one adventure is just the beginning of another.

Don’t Just Explore Colorado. Go Grand.

VisitGrandCounty.com GRANBY • GRAND LAKE • HOT SULPHUR SPRINGS KREMMLING • WINTER PARK/FRASER

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S T R A I G H T TA L K

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CAT BRADLEY

The ultrarunner who set a speed record in the Grand Canyon talks about her evolution as an athlete.

by RUSS RIZZO

C

at Bradley arrived in Colorado in 2013 hoping to find herself in the mountains and a community that loved them. In the years since, the 26-year-old California native found a running family, a serious boyfriend and a career doing something she loves. After working as a ski and raft guide, Bradley discovered her talent for mountain running alongside fellow Boulder dynamos Clare Gallagher and Abby Levene. Last year, Bradley set a speed record in the Grand Canyon (going from the South Rim to the North and back in seven hours, 52 minutes, 20 minutes faster than the previous record) just months after claiming one of the biggest victories in ultra running, at the Western States Endurance Challenge. Now, she just wants to nest.

When did you first discover your love for trail running?

I read a blog post about an 88-mile run from the north to the south of Rhode Island when I was 21. I was just starting to learn about trail running, so I decided to attempt it, even though my long runs back then were six miles. My godmother “crewed” me, even though neither of us really knew what that meant.

I made it 45 miles and realized how much your legs can hurt.

I also learned what it's like to be truly alone, in the middle of the Grand Canyon, in the dark. It's a crazy, intimidating feeling.

You say the fastest known time (FKT), or speed record, of the 41-mile rim-to-rim-to-rim crossing of the Grand Canyon felt as meaningful as the Western States win. Why? I've always felt a connection with public lands, national parks and open space. I think these FKT projects enhance that connection in a way racing can’t. With racing, you don't have to be as connected to the place, because you can rely on the race to know where the water stops are, where the trail goes, to clean up the trash after. With FKT attempts, you have to take charge of the knowledge of the area. And that helps foster a deeper appreciation for where you are.

What did you take away from your trips to the Grand Canyon?

I have a much better understanding of the Colorado River now, which is crazy because I was a guide on it before. I got a real appreciation of where our water comes from. During those trips, you also get an extreme appreciation for the people who maintain these areas. There are always people working on the river. I also learned what it's like to be truly alone, in the middle of the Grand Canyon, in the dark. It's a crazy, intimidating feeling.

What is it about Boulder that produces so many incredible runners?

I think, for one thing, Boulder attracts people with a lot of raw talent who are hungry to be good at the sport. The other is the community and the support photo by MATT TRAPPE

you get here. Boulder is really a safe place to be pushed as an athlete. The female community is something special.

You’re known to be a shy person who doesn’t love the spotlight. Yet, here it is.

Before Western States I felt like I hid behind [Clare Gallagher] a little to get myself out of the spotlight.

When I realized I was going to win Western States, I was thinking, “Man, a lot of attention is coming my way, and I don't know if I can handle or want that.”

The overnight change was definitely really hard. It was a big transition. I feel I've been able to separate Cat the runner and Cat the person. I've been able to make time for me and keep the things I want to keep personal, personal for me. I'm surprised by it every single day. It's a daily topic of conversation with my friends, because it's mind-blowing.

You were an elementary school teacher before.

Any thought of going back to the 9-to-5?

I'm so happy with what I'm doing right now. There’s always uncertainty. What if running is taken away

from me? I like to be able to express my creativity through running and through movement and writing.

Working 60 hours a week before, that's how I was making a means to do these things. But my happiness was definitely compromised.

You have a live-in boyfriend, a new puppy and family routines that include a weekly walk to get burritos. Are you settling in?

Sometimes I think I'm too comfortable and complacent in my little nook. I'm skiing less and less, and I haven't been rafting like I used to. On one hand, nesting feels really good. On the other hand, I told myself I’m going to say yes to more things and get out more.

Russ Rizzo is a freelance writer and co-founder of Dispatch Radio, a Boulder-based outdoor adventure podcast. To listen to Cat Bradley discuss her Grand Canyon speed record, and hear more outdoor personalities tell their stories and discuss pressing current issues, visit DispatchRadio.com.

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S P ECIAL ADVERTIS ING S ECTION THE ISOLATED SINGLETRACK OF THE 403 IS JUST ONE OF COUNTLESS UNIQUE TRAILS WHERE YOU CAN LOG YOUR 750 MILES. photo by JUSTIN CASH FOR THE GUNNISON-CRESTED BUTTE TOURISM ASSOCIATION

The Crested Butte/Gunnison

TrailQuest ARE YOU READY TO TAKE ON THE CHALLENGE TO BIKE THE BEST TRAILS ON THE PLANET? Looking for a mountain biking goal this summer? How about one that includes prizes, bragging rights and, most importantly, the chance to ride miles and miles worth of outstanding singletrack?

We have you covered: Just head to Gunnison and Crested Butte and register for the new TrailQuest Challenge.

It’s no secret that the region’s riding is spectacular. From the desert rides of Gunnison’s Hartman Rocks to the leg-burners of Crested Butte’s high alpine trails, the Gunnison Valley serves up more than 750 miles of worldclass singletrack—the biggest and most varied trail network in the world. The goal of the TrailQuest, 20

a new virtual competition, is to get riders to get in the saddle and sample them.

Here’s how it works: The CBGTrails App by GoMaps tracks and record rides in the TrailQuest competition. Each unique mile of trail you ride adds up in a virtual race to 750.

“It encourages visitors and locals alike to try trails they’ve never ridden before,” says contest promoter Laurel Runcie, adding that speed doesn’t matter, only unique mileage ridden. “Looping the same trail won’t build up unique mileage; to move up the leaderboard, you have to explore new areas. All it takes is the heart to get out and try new rides.

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The goal is to get guests off the ‘classic’ rides and explore different trails, which also reduces the impact on our most popular trails.”

Mile-marker incentives keep riders pushing, with “leaderboard” positions posted in the app, in the local newspapers and online.

“It’s a multi-user trail map app and the only one that includes all the trails in Gunnison County,” says Go Maps owner and app builder Derrick Nehrenberg. “Plus, it works offline, which is great because there isn’t much cell service around these parts. And, it includes TrailQuest, the contest to see who can ride all 750 miles.”

Once participants achieve mile markers, they receive prizes. Ride 750 unique miles and you’ll take home a TrailQuest jersey, bragging rights and the knowledge that you’re pounded some serious trails.

“I don’t race much anymore, so this adventure was perfect,” says current TrailQuest leader Brittany

Walker Konsella, a 10-year Crested Butte local and the second woman to ski all of Colorado’s Fourteeners.

“It’s one of those things that gets harder and harder as you go along.

The rides progressively get harder, farther, more difficult and more obscure. You find yourself doing crazy things to get in just a few more miles.”

Regardless of the leaderboard, it’s all about having fun. “We have so many great rides that getting a high count on TrailQuest means you’re out riding some of the best trails on the planet,” says Dave Wiens, executive director of the International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA), who by no coincidence also lives in the Gunnison Valley. Come (virtually, at least) ride with him.

Download the CBGTrails app for free on iTunes and GooglePlay.

Top Trails RACK UP YOUR TRAILQUEST MILES ON THESE OUTSTANDING OFF-THE-RADAR RIDES. Aberdeen Loop, Hartman Rocks: This remote loop takes you toward the edges of the developed BLM parcel at Hartman Rocks in Gunnison. It serves up a longer climb and descent than anywhere else at Hartman and it will earn you 11 unique TrailQuest miles depending on how you ride the loop. Try it in late May when the flowers are popping.

THE BRICK OVEN IN CRESTED BUTTE: WHERE MOUNTAIN BIKERS RELIVE THEIR DREAMS.

The 409s: Super popular with the locals, these two trails connect the Cement Creek and Brush Creek drainages. Whether you go over and back from either drainage, climb 409 and descend 409.5. Riding from Cement Creek will net you 12 unique trail miles.

Lupine Loops: With easy-access from downtown Crested Butte or Mt. Crested Butte, these fun loops offer at least a half-dozen variations and link-ups with other trails. Stick with the standard Lupine 1-Lupine 2 or link it up with Snodgrass, Upper Loop, Lower Loop, Upper Upper Loop, Upper Lower Loop, or any number of other lovely trails.

Deer Creek: This grinder, a beautiful cross-country trail around the back side of Crested Butte Mountain, suffers from a tough rep with the locals who complain it’s uphill the whole time. Don’t listen.

Thanks to a new CBMBA reroute, it rides well in either direction. Do bring lots of snacks and some bug repellant, and enjoy one of the most scenic trails in the region.

Kebler Wagon Pass/Lily Lake: Using the town of Crested Butte as your trailhead, you can make a lollipop loop that showcases the best of the West Elk Mountains.

Highlights on this ride include wildflowers in summer, golden aspens in fall and outstanding mushroom hunting in August.

Beginner and intermediate trails make up the bulk of the singletrack, so let your friends or family tag along.

To get insider tips on how to ride some of these trails and other great rides in the Gunnison Valley, visit mtbhome.com/blog.z

photo by JUSTIN CASH FOR THE GUNNISONCRESTED BUTTE TOURISM ASSOCIATION

relaxation HEAD HERE WHEN YOU WRAP UP YOUR RIDE APRÈS: In Gunnison, hit Main Street and Tomichi Avenue/ Highway 50 for eateries and bars just a short distance from Hartman Rocks. Topping the list are the High Alpine Brewery and the new spot in town, The Dive, located right next to Western State student/alum fave Mario’s. Take in some music at the Gunnison Arts Center or I Bar Ranch. Try their Burgers and Bluegrass Tuesday nights. If you ride Doctor Park or Texas Ridge in Taylor Canyon (which you should), try a barbecue or suds session on a riverside deck in Almont. In Crested Butte, ride straight from the trailhead to Elk Avenue and downtown.

The Brick Oven draws bikers early in the day and Third Bowl Homemade Ice Cream makes for some cool après—or just seek out the most happening patio (check out the Alpenglow free concerts).

At Crested Butte Mountain Resort, head to the base of the Evolution Bike Park for burgers and beer, and free concerts on Wednesday evenings, July through mid-August.

Bonus: On Wednesday and Friday afternoons, the lifts stay open until 7:00 p.m. for twilight hours. You can also hit up CB South at the base of Cement Creek Road, for margaritas and pizza.

LIVING THE CRESTED BUTTE WAY. photo by JUSTIN CASH FOR THE GUNNISON-CRESTED BUTTE TOURISM ASSOCIATION

LODGING: Local options range from inexpensive motels and campgrounds to fine luxury homes and condos, all close to the best mountain biking in the world. In Gunnison and Almont you’ll find a host of campgrounds, motels, inns, cabins and even dude ranches (most offer ground level rooms for easy bike storage). In the town of Crested Butte (mtbhome.com/thescene/the-towns/crested-butte/) and the resort of Mt. Crested Butte (mtbhome.com/the-scene/ the-towns/mt-crested-butte/) you’ll find a mix of inns, hotels, lodges, and condos, plus vacation homes. Town offers smaller lodging properties (mostly bed and breakfasts and inns), and is close to restaurants, shopping and nightlife (note: summer weekends book early, so plan ahead). The resort offers access to Evolution

Bike Park and the Gothic mountain bike trails (mtbhome.com/trailarea/gothic).

JOIN THE LEGENDS! The history of mountain biking starts in Crested Butte. As far back as the 1970s, modified road bikes, called Crested Butte Klunkers, took riders onto the region’s vast mining road network. The sport developed simultaneously in places like Marin, California, where the focus was on bike technology. But in Crested Butte it was all about trail building. Today, Crested Butte Mountain Bike Association manages 450+ miles of trail. Add in the south end of the Gunnison Valley with another 300 more and you have the largest network of trails in the world.

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CHANGING THE GAME

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STARTING FROM SKRATCH How a preeminent sports scientist built a brand based on authentic values out of the ashes of cycling's doping scandal.

by AARON H. BIBLE

T

he man with the S on his chest has arrived. No, we’re not talking about that hero, although the man I have been waiting for has been linked to the superhuman strength of too many pro athletes to name, ranging from the Pro Cycling Tour to the Olympics and beyond. Dr. Allen Lim, the inventor/ owner of Skratch Labs, is here.

Lim takes on different appearances depending on where and when you run across him. He may be hiding under a giant sun hat, or sporting a Skratch Labs trucker cap, or in full kit with a road bike helmet and sunnies. These days his long goatee is rather recognizable. No matter what, he’s almost always in jeans, and almost always one of the only Asians running around with a bunch of skinny white dudes in spandex.

No matter whether he’s serving bowls out of the Skratch food truck, on a ride, or in a business meeting, Lim’s intense personality far outreaches his

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physical stature. And the success of Skratch Labs as an omni-present sports drink and now food-product line found in more than 6,000 specialty bike, run and outdoor shops from coast-to-coast—as well as Whole Foods—has only cemented his aura as Boulder, Colorado’s sports nutrition thought leader.

This winter, when Lim and I were making plans to connect for an interview (almost more of a formality, since I’ve been interviewing him for the past six years), I got a text: “Aaron, my schedule shifted. I’m heading down to Spring Training in Arizona to work with some baseball folks. When you can meet?”

Allen Lim is one of the most sought after trainers in the world, and chatting with him, you quickly realize why. He brings a unique mix of philosophy, holistic nutrition, science, passion and humor unlike anyone else in sports. He has the ability to hold opposing views in a kind of exercise physiology cognitive dissonance, and to humanize sports science in a completely unique way.

He’s also uncannily approachable, even though many are a bit starstruck when he pops his head out of the Skratch catering truck at random events like Ride the Rockies or the Sea Otter Classic.

"Anyone who has met Allen Lim is immediately taken by his empathy, expertise, and authentic desire to

help athletes. Allen is a EAT TO LIVE team builder, an athlete, THE FOCUS ON TRAINING inventor, scientist, VIA NUTRITION HAS MADE student and his passion LIM A CELEBRITY . to help athletes to photo by KRISTIN TEIG improve performance transcends the norm," said Connie Carpenter Phinney, Olympic Gold Medalist in cycling in 1984, and now perhaps more well known as the mother of cyclists Taylor and Kelsey Phinney and chairman of the board of the Davis Phinney Foundation. (We exchanged emails from the Spainish Pyrenees where daughter Kelsey was cross country ski racing in the Europa Cup finals as part of the U.S. Ski team.) Carpenter went on to describe Lim as a seemingly tireless problem solver, and a genuine inspiration. She witnessed him at work first-hand when he worked with Taylor extensively prior to both the 2012 and 2016 Olympics.

My own first deep dive with Lim began about four years ago when I got a call to come down to Arizona for a cooking and training camp with the mysterious PhD—who I had been told trained Lance Armstrong, Floyd Landis and President George

Lim has the ability to hold opposing views in a kind of exercise physiology cognitive dissonance, and to humanize sports science in a completely unique way.

W. Bush, among others. The company was two years old at that point, officially founded on Super Bowl Sunday, 2012, a day not insignificant due to the fact that Lim’s partner, co-founder, former pro cyclist and current Skratch Labs CEO Ian MacGregor is probably a bigger football fan than he is a cycling fan, not to mention the fact that roadies love to take advantage of the open roads on Super Bowl Sunday.

If you were around Boulder in 2011, you might’ve even seen Lim out on north Highway 93, selling his original Secret Drink Mix by the side of the road, in Zip Lock baggies marked in Sharpee with an X (the same Sharpee Lim carries around with him all the time, perfect for signing cook books or otherwise leaving his mark) to the core and amature riders who continuosly spin down the route.

“We knew that if we could win in Boulder, we could win everywhere,” Lim told me back in 2014, just two years after the official, rocky, and accidental launch of the brand.

Living in Boulder I take the proliferation of Lim’s drink mix for granted, given it’s not uncommon to see the Skratch food truck at almost every bike-related ATHLETE DRIVEN event in Colorado, or to see Lim himself, as well as SKRATCH LABS TRACES his employees and athletes out riding the roads east ITS ROOTS TO LIM'S TIME WORKING AS A SPORTS of town, sometimes head down digging into hard SCIENTIST WITH PRO work but more often laughing and ribbing each other CYCLISTS. and passing cyclists, all of whom they seem to know photo courtesy SKRATCH LABS personally.

THE FIRST ITCH

Sitting on the couch in Lim’s rec room, slash meeting room, slash brainstorming room inside Skratch Labs’ Boulder HQ our current conversation picks back up. Talk jumps from fresh coffee to office naps to Lance to the differences in American culture compared to other places in the world.

“We love winners here in America, don’t we,” Lim waxes.

I quickly learn that what seemed like a meteoric rise to become the largest sports drink seller in the specialty bike channel (according to data from consumer research group NPD), was actually far from it. The journey began when Lim was 13 years old.

His father grew up in wealth and prosperity in China, but he saw that all snatched away when Communists took over around 1938 and his family fled to the Philippines. With the rise of Ferdinand Marcos, they fled again, and on May 19, 1973, Lim landed in Los Angeles, and his family started over.

“My dad’s first job here was bagging groceries. Back in the Philippines they had been teachers.”

Starting over meant Lim and his brother grew up as latch key kids, but instead of going home, they spent their after-school special hours riding bikes around Los Angeles. Days playing on the bike gave them a freedom beyond the urban sprawl of Los Angles. Lim soon fell in love with all aspects of the sport of cycling, and he began his career as a sports nutritionist.

“Back in the 80’s we couldn’t afford the sports nutrition available at that time, my parents were too poor to buy Gatorade, so I made my own,” Lim said.

Laying a foundation for things to come, that spirit of creating his own mixes continued—when he was racing, he would dilute the commercial sports drinks and add more salt. Eventually he started doing well in school, and his nascent interest in exercise physiology grew, fueled by the cycling magazines of the time. He got into UC Davis, where he raced bikes and continued making his concoctions—essentially gels and sports drinks and what he would later term “portables.” He studied exercise physiology and coached the women’s cycling team at UC Davis, besting rival CU, which eventualy led to him making his way to Boulder and as he describes it “talking his way into grad school,” eventually attaining a Ph.D. in Integrative Physiology.

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BIG BUSINESS THE BRAND GREW FROM A GRASSROOTS EFFORT TO A WHOLE FOODS STANDARD. photo by AARON H. BIBLE

training would have made him one of the key figures in the development of the sport. His academic work led to a residency at USA Cycling, where he pioneered new ideas in cycling performance and began working with some of the top pro men’s and women’s teams at all levels during that time. He then went on to develop the Power Tap product with the Saris Cycling Group, trying to figure out how to use power to better understand the demands of professional cycling, and coaching juniors Timmy Duggan and Ian MacGregor among other athletes.

He worked with what is today called the Education First Pro Cycling world tour team with Jonathan Vaughters. That was a big deal in a sport that came under heavy fire with doping scandals as this was the first world tour team that explicitly put

an authentic focus on clean riding ahead of results.

Lim was not only discovering new ways to access power, but also nutrition. He brought his rice cooker to every race, and began to uncover the secrets to marginal gains and the emotional connections to food and community that influenced race results.

His cooking became as important to the athletes as his monitors.

All of this made Lim one of the world’s leading experts on how to train cyclists, and ultimately pulled him onto the Pro Tour, where he worked with the best of the best, including Armstrong and Landis between 2005 and 2009. But he was derailed in 2010 when the feds began to sniff out doping rumors in Lance and Team Radio Shack.

“I was literally benched,” Lim said. “I was persona non-grata. Life went dark for me. I had effectively lost my job, I was embroiled in a federal investigation. But all these athletes were still asking me for drink mix.”

At first, Lim was slightly appalled. The investigation and tainting of his name left him frustrated, heartbroken, embarrassed, disappointed

and disillusioned with the sport he had devoted his entire life to. Cycling had let him down—but, once again, life had him starting over.

“Skratch Labs was an accident,” Lim said. Without knowing what it would become he started picking up the pieces. In 2011 he began making the same drink mix he’d made for the pros and selling it rogue.

Before long, he got an offer from a big company to buy the recipe. It was a shitty deal, literally. The day Lim reviewed the contract a bird flew overhead and shit on the paperwork.

During this same time, he started writing a cookbook called Feed Zone Portables with Chef Bijou Thomas. The book put into writing the nutrition plan Lim had been devising over the years, not only in his own racing but also in the training regimens of top cyclists in the world. That year, the nascent brand sold $100,000 in drink mix just through word of mouth.

Finally, thanks to a nudge from Clif Bar founder Gary Erickson and soon-to-be Skratch co-founder and cyclist Aaron Foster, Lim settled on the name Skratch Labs, a nod to the idea that the product had indeed started from Skratch, and officially went into business selling to the public at large.

“We immediately started hearing from people who said they’d become better riders because of our product,” Lim explained. “So I relived that need to have to reinvent myself, to start over.”

Over the past six years, every product Skratch has developed has been because of those emails, impassioned requests from loyal customers, not because they thought they could sell something.

“Because we weren’t funded by anyone else, we had the luxury to learn at our own pace, on our own scale,” Lim said. “We grew at a human rate, not a corporate rate.”

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SKRATCH 2.0

That meteoric, yet organic growth rate has meant that Skratch Labs had to get very systematic.

Last year, the burgeoning brand had to rethink its approach to business, essentially starting from scratch one more time. The revamped philosophy revolved around a single conundrum: What are we doing and why?

It was ultimately Ian MacGregor who provided a blunt answer to that question.

“Simply put, as a company, we don’t do business with assholes. We’ve been very specific in drawing a line about that, about paying employees more, doing business in the U.S. and doing what’s right first and foremost,” MacGregor said.

Skratch Labs makes everything in Colorado, even the packaging (except for the energy chews, launched in 2015, which are made in California).

Last year, the company performed a salary audit, committing to pay all 24 of its full-time employees an equitable wage-based on job description, bucking the industry-wide trend of paying people in the cycling and outdoor worlds less, just because so many people want to work there.

Skratch is the ultimate values driven company, working to “help people become better. As long as Skratch Labs exists, that will be our why,” Lim said.

“Allen has this unique ability to hold opposing ideas in his mind,” said MacGregor. “He’s as good of a sports physiologist as you’ll find at any university, but he has the ability to ask an athlete, whether it’s an Olympian or someone running their first 5K, what they like and don’t like. He’ll listen to that feedback and believe that it is important, and that’s what you don’t necessarily find very often in sports.”

The values that drive Skratch 2.0, Lim and MacGregor personally, are authenticity, empathy, performance, and teamwork. “We do this together,”

When it comes to food products, WITH 24 FULL-TIME again, it’s all about EMPLOYEES, SKRATCH LABS HAS BECOME ONE OF THE starting from scratch.

MOST DESIRABLE PLACES “It has to be able to TO WORK ON THE FRONT be made in your own RANGE. CREDIT THAT TO kitchen,” said Lim, A BUSINESS PHILOSOPHY THAT VALUES EMPLOYEES, and that’s evidenced PAYING THEM WHAT not only by the giant THEY ARE WORTH AND commercial kitchen in BUILDING A COMMUNITY the back room of HQ, ATMOSPHERE. but by the products photo by AARON H. BIBLE themselves. Long before they ever considered making a pre-made energy bar, launched last year at Interbike, they started with a cookie mix, allowing athletes to learn to make food for themselves, something that worked for each individual.

Lim’s ethic has resonated in the cycling community. “Our family knows and understands sport and has valued Al as a family friend, close advisor and supporter,” says Carpenter. “He’s also a living American success story, and who doesn’t admire that?”

Today, Skratch offers a full product suite and a roster of athletes that reaches far beyond its cycling roots. “Effectively what they have in common is that they’re all athletes who sweat,” Lim says. And while some may still view Lim as mysterious, it’s clear that he kept way more athletes from cheating than any other single factor during some of the dirtiest years of the Pro Tour.

The one principle that truly drives Lim is so simple it almost hurts to hear: “No matter what you do, if you apply immigrant hussle to it, and keep your cool, there’s nothing you can’t do,” he says.

“Do it right and finish it.”

MOVE OVER, GOOGLE

We grew at a human rate, not a corporate rate. said Lim. “We’re into productivity, being American and doing shit. Just like when you show up at the starting line for a race, you wouldn’t be putting yourself on the line if you didn’t want to be accountable, demonstrating grit and accepting the results.”

A P R I L 2 01 8 / E L E VAT I O N O U T D O O R S . C O M

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RESILIENCE

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UNBREAKABLE After a 300-pound boulder shattered his leg, Dave Mackey—one of the world’s elite long-distance, off-road runners—had to work hard to learn how to recalibrate to his new life and return to the sport with a prosthetic limb.

Now, the 48-year-old is on track to reclaim the joys of running again.

by RACHEL WALKER

I

t’s early February 2018, and Boulder-based ultra runner Dave Mackey is in Texas toeing the start line of the Bandera 50K. This is the first race in three years for the chiseled, thoughtful Mackey, who has been named the U.S. ultraruner of the year three times and once held the record for the fastest known time from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon to the North Rim and back again. It’s also his first race with a prosthetic limb.

On May 23, 2015, Mackey was in the middle of a long run, but really nothing out of the ordinary for him: He set out to top three peaks, totalling up more than 8,000 feet of climbing over about 20 miles in Boulder Mountain Parks. Bear Peak, topping out at 8,461 feet with an exposed rocky summit ridge, was peak number

two. On his way to peak number three, however, a rock gave way underneath Mackey’s shoes. He hurtled 60 feet down a jagged scree field, eventually slamming to a stop with massive 300-pound boulder pinned to his lower left leg, his tibia and fibula shatteed.

“It was a survival situation,” he says. “From the moment that I stepped on the rock and it slipped—in that split second—it was reflex and reaction. I kept myself alive. I was somehow able to control my body as much as you can when you fall backward off a mountain and land on your back.”

Broken and trapped, Mackey bellowed for help.

Luckily, it arrived within minutes, but thick fog and rain precluded an emergency helicopter landing. Rescuers carried the fallen ultrarunning champ off the mountain in a rescue that took the better part of the day.

“I wasn’t bawling because the first rule is survival.

Don’t panic. Control,” he says. “Luckily my friends showed up and they were literally holding me in their arms to keep me from falling off the peak. They were cradling me to keep me from sliding.”

The rescue was only the beginning of his ordeal.

“The first couple weeks after the accident, there was so much processing about what to do with the injury and surgeries,” Mackey says. “I was in the hospital and they were putting in hardware and taking it out, dealing with infection. I really was focused on that. I wasn’t thinking about the emotional aspect of what happened.”

The real crusher: His leg would never be the same.

After 13 reconstructive surgeries in 16 months, he eventually healed enough to walk without a cane. But Mackey couldn’t run. More, his body seemed determined to make life difficult. Pain and multiple infections foretold a future of more surgeries and setbacks.

After weighing the options, Mackey chose to have

the ruined limb amputated THE ROAD BACK below the knee, rather MACKEY MAY NO LONGER than deal with ongoing BE THE ELITE RUNNER HE USED TO BE BUT HE HASN'T pain and infection. The SLOWN DOWN. night before surgery, photo by MATT TRAPPE Halloween 2016, more than 100 people came out to a leg-going-away party at Flatirons Running in Boulder, where sinewy runners quaffed donated microbrew and signed Mackey’s dead flesh with a sharpie.

In the aftermath of that grim choice, Mackey hoped for a quick recovery. Rid himself of the bum leg, he figured, and he’d step back into the high-octane life that defined his pre-injury days. Amputation wasn’t a magic bullet, however. The pain persisted. Fitting the prosthetic turned out to be equal parts art and science, and finding the right fit took time.

In the summer of 2017, about seven months after amputation, Mackey cancelled plans to climb a volcano in Ecuador. He also set aside his goal to compete in Leadman, a series of trail run and mountain bike races in Leadville, Colorado that total 282.4 miles. But he didn’t stop working or moving—first walking, then hiking and biking and, eventually, running.

T

hen he was there in Texas, racing again. But it was going to be diffetent now. The longest distance Mackey ran since amputating his leg before competing in The Bandera 50K was 13 miles.

Despite that, he says he was not worried about the distance.

“My goal was to finish and not hurt myself further,” recalls Mackey a few weeks after the race. “I thought maybe I’d develop some abrasions or muscle issue but that didn’t happen. It felt smooth.”

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Amputation wasn’t a magic bullet. Pain persisted. Fitting the prosthetic turned out to be equal parts art and science, and finding the right fit took time.

photo by Matt Trappe

Smooth enough to finish 37th with the respectable time of five hours and fifty-eight minutes, not a podium, which is where Mackey regularly landed pre-accident, but enviable to the majority of runners who enter longdistance trail races. Not that Mackey cares what you think of his finish. A native of Maine, the quiet, 48-yearold father of two has built a life outside of traditional conventions, choosing a career with flexible hours (physician’s assistant) that provides a paycheck but also leaves plenty of free time for exercise and family.

“Dave looks to break new ground, challenge himself and expand what’s possible,” says Mike McManus, Senior Sports Marketing Manager at HOKA One One, Mackey’s footwear sponsor since 2010. “He has a remarkable ability to stay positive, believe what’s possible and make it happen.”

Mackey wasn’t always an elite athlete, however. For years he led Outward Bound trips before discovering adventure racing, a team effort where competitors navigate unmarked wilderness via multiple disciplines.

From there he moved on to ultra running and quickly distinguished himself. In 2004 and 2005 he was named USA Track and Field Ultra Runner of the Year; in 2011 he won the Montrail Cup and his first Ultrarunner of the Year title. Yet those who know him in contexts outside of trail running would never know of Mackey’s bona fides. In Boulder, a town filled with accomplished athletes who clamor about their latest extreme feat, Mackey is a throwback to the humble old guard, akin to a Swiss mountain guide who would never commandeer the conversation for the sole purpose of lauding himself.

“You could spend days with Dave and not have any idea of his success,” says Mackey’s former adventure racing teammate and pro runner Adam Chase. “Part of it is New England humility and part is his own identity.

He thinks of himself as his kids’ dad. He takes pride in helping people heal themselves. What he does as an athlete doesn’t define him, at least not in his eyes. To trail runners, it’s another story. He’s legendary.”

After surviving his accident, Mackey became famous to a wider audience, as news spread of his bravery in the face of the gruesome ordeal and the choice to amputate. Many runners looked to Mackey for inspiration or answers to deeper philosophical questions. To his thousands of social media followers who were shocked when he was injured, and whose

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devoted following to his recovery can be tracked in the hundreds of comments he receives on Instagram updates, Mackey is simply an inspiration. A film crew traveled with him to Bandera, and Motiv Running, a website devoted to all things running, released a short documentary on Mackey’s recovery in January. Best of all, he will be inducted into the Colorado Running Hall of Fame on April 10.

“Dave doesn’t have to win to keep going,” Chase says. “The fact that he’s able to go on with life as though nothing has really happened and to live a rewarding life is one reason so many people look up to him.”

M

ake no mistake—it’s a pain in the ass having one leg. Even though most days Mackey says he doesn’t notice his prosthetic, his physical change demands more thinking—which blade does he need for an adventure, the running blade or the attached foot?—and dealing with stares or questions.

And there’s the fact that he’s probably not going to set a speed record for climbing the state’s 14,000-foot peaks, something he considered doing before his accident, or even just win races like he once did.

But with one post-amputation 50K in the bag and at least two more on the calendar—he recently registered for the Dirty 30, a 50K race in Golden Gate Canyon State Park and he has entered the 2018 Leadman—Mackey is back. He’s grateful to be running without pain—prior to surgery, he was plagued with infections in his injured leg. He got out skiing this past winter, and, this spring, he’s riding his mountain bike. In other words, Mackey has taken the loss of both his leg and his status as an elite ultra runner in stride.

“Before the accident, I loved what I was doing,” he says. “I loved training, getting out, going to events and doing the best I can. The only difference now is I don’t do it to win, I do it to complete the thing.”

Sweetwater County, Wyoming

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5. EXPEDITION ISLAND For a blend of history and excitement, check out the center of Green River, Wyoming. A registered National Historic Site, Expedition Island was the launching point for 19th century explorer John Wesley. These days, locals and visitors alike enjoy a stroll and picnic along the Greenbelt Pathway, kicking off a kayak or tubing tour, or delighting in one of the park’s many events.

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The heart of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains has long called out to the singer-songwriter as part inspiration and part haven for their craft. Red River is New Mexico’s music mecca and it celebrates with world class talent throughout the year. Don’t miss these events in 2018. Art & Wine Festival, June 16-18: Cool mountain air is the perfect complement to fine arts, fine wines, jazz and blues artists. Michael Martin Murphy’s Westfest, July 5-7: “A celebration of Arts, Culture and Music of the Old and New West since 1987.” Larry Joe Taylor’s “Hot Chili Days, Cool Mountain Nights” Music Festival & Cook-off, August 16-18. Red River’s rousing music scene can trace its roots back to Texas, mostly centered around Austin’s “red dirt rock.” It’s some of the best music anywhere, anytime! Southwest Pickers Bluegrass and Old Time Music Festival, September 13-16: The 44th Annual Festival brings top pickers from around the country for this Old Time Music Festival. Red River Folk Festival at Aspencade, September 21-23: Paired with the popular Aspencade Arts and Crafts Fair, local and national musical acts. REDRIVER.ORG

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After just one visit, you’ll see why USA Today calls Santa Fe the best destination for outdoor enthusiasts. For hikers, Santa Fe County offers more than 478 miles of pristine trails to explore year-round. In summer, you’ll see fields filled with colorful wildflowers; in winter, snow-covered trails and alpine trees truly are enchanting. With long ascents, steep technical downhills, flow trails and cross-country loops, Santa Fe County is a mecca for mountain bikers, ranked by USA Today as one of the country’s top mountain biking towns. With miles and miles of trails just outside your door, you’ll find a variety of terrain suitable for all levels.

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At the crossroads of Highway 285 and Highway 82 in the heart of the Pecos Valley, Artesia offers plenty of outdoor adventure. This vibrant, budget-friendly community full of colorful history is home to both New Mexico’s Most Beautiful Library and Chef Chloe Winters, who was awarded the New Mexico Chef of the Year award in 2014 for her work at the Adobe Rose Restaurant. At its bustling center, the city is alive with unique boutiques and delicious eateries—and don’t miss The Wellhead, a brewpub serving excellent happy hour pricing throughout the week.

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BEST BIKES

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EIGHT BIKES THAT TURNED OUR CRANKS

We put these new rides to the test on trail, dirt and pavement to come up with our list of the best bikes for 2018.

by DOUG SCHNITZSPAHN

MOUNTAIN (MEN’S) G I A N T | A n t h e m A d v a n c e d P r o 29 0 The Dirty Lowdown: If you are going to spend this much lucre on a goddamn mountain bike it better be worth it. Rest assured, this steed simply sucks up the trail. With a responsive composite frame, 90mm of travel in the back and 100mm up front, it’s the machine to put you out in front of the pack in big competitions or just out with the bros.

A Few More Thoughts: We rode the fully spec-ed out “0” version, but Giant also offers a lower priced ($5,000) “1” alternative with slightly less jazzed-up componentry. $8,670; giant-bicycles.com

MOUNTAIN (WOMEN’S) TREK | Fuel EX 9.8 The Dirty Lowdown: This is the bike for women who want to get serious about their time on the trail. The lighweight carbon frame means it will climb those rocky steeps with aplomb, but still react when you bomb the downs. And women’s geometry offers a better fit than a unisex bike for many female riders.

A Few More Thoughts: There’s a nice spec package here, too, featuring a 1x12 SRAM GX Eagle drivetrain and FOX Performance suspension. $5,000; trekbikes.com

ROAD (MEN’S) LO O K | 7 8 5 H u ez The Dirty Lowdown: This European, essentially pro-level carbon road bike, will make you look like a champ while conquering your local rides at your own speed—all at a very nice price.

A Few More Thoughts: While a one-quiver bike is impossible in mountain biking, it’s not impossible for road cyclists. This is that bike. You don’t need the most hunched-over racing geometry and snappiest turning to win hill climbs, or to ride all day comfortably.

And, it’s competition-ready right out of the box. $2,500; lookcycles.com

ROAD (WOMEN’S) LIV | La n g m a A d v a n c e d P r o D i s c The Dirty Lowdown: Here’s a bike with women’s geometry and the guts to keep at the front of the peloton—or just cruise out on training rides. The light, stable Langma will please most riders, since it’s not so high-end that you only want to take it out on race day, but still has the spec package and DNA to push it when you want to get competitive.

A Few More Thoughts: As the name implies, the Shimano Ultegra hydraulic disc brakes impart confidence when you are bombing down big mountain passes. $3,250; liv-cycling.com

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ENDURO TR ANSITION | Sentinel The Dirty Lowdown: The Transition folks up in Bellingham built this crusher with the intent purpose of converting 29er naysayers. Count us in with the believers.

This is a serious steed that can handle jumps and features at high speed but won’t bog you down on big climbs. In other words, it’s the ideal bike if you want to hit enduro races this summer—or just pump some adrenaline with your posse.

A Few More Thoughts: The key to the fun you can have on the Sentinel rests in the brand’s SGB (or Speed Balanced Geometry) rear suspension—to sum up the tech speak, it works in direct conjunction with the geometry of the bike to keep the front wheel down and your weight balanced, no matter if you are racing down or suffering through the long grind up. $5,999; transitionbikes.com

COMMUTER P R I O R I T Y | C l a s s i c P l u s N ev e r F l a t The Dirty Lowdown: The perfect commuter bike needs to be reliable—no one wants to deal with a mechanical on the way to work, or home. Priority’s classic model was originally designed to be low-maintenance thanks to a Gates Carbon Drive Belt drive and simple, strong frame. NeverFlat takes that a step further with airless tires that can stand up to some serious abuse.

A Few More Thoughts: That belt drive works in smooth conjunction with three-speed Shimano Nexus shifting that can handle hills but still keeps things fairly minimalist. $524; prioritybicycles.com

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ELECTRIC R I E S E A N D M U E L L E R | Lo a d The Dirty Lowdown: Just look at this monster! The price tag may be high but this workhorse of an e-bike will carry your kids, groceries, climbing gear… Honestly, this is exactly why you want an e-bike: It makes hauling big loads to work or the store on the bike path easy thanks to multiple power settings. It’s simple to adjust the handlebars and seats for quick parent switch offs and it handles surprisingly well at speeds of up to 20 m.p.h. (the legal limit for an e-bike).

A Few More Thoughts: Full suspension keeps this leviathan surprisingly smooth out in the bumps and potholes of the real world. Plus, a dual-battery Bosch drive sytem provides plenty of power and the abilty to travel farther between charges.

Add in a built in light and you have a winner. $7,219; r-m.de

COLLAPSIBLE M O N TAG U E Paratrooper The Dirty Lowdown: This proved the ideal mountain bike for those of us who spend a ton of time traveling and like to sneak in a ride. It’s not your usual dorky folding bike: Montague actually built this sleek machine for paratroopers to drop into combat zones with it ready to deploy when they hit the ground.

A Few More Thoughts: While it may not be your choice for a daily ride, this 24-speed hardtail can take on most trails and it’s simple to fold up and down thanks to a smart one-pin system. $895; montaguebikes.com

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ACC E S S O R I E S

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THE BIG EXTRAS

Our favorite new cycling accessories will keep you comfortable, improve the ride and maybe even help you push your limits.

by DOUG SCHNITZSPAHN 1. SEAT ERGON | ST Core Prime Comfort rules (see page 38)! And Ergon is leading the way with saddles that give you all the performance you need—without leaving you numb. This soft, shock-dampening seat proves ideal on long tours and gravel grinds, but it never feels too big to cramp your style. $150; ergon-bike.com 2. HELMET AND SUNGLASSES R U DY P R OJ E C T | S i n t r y x sunglasses and Protera helmet Rudy Project created this dedicated sunglass-and-helmet system specifically for mountain biking.

The aerodynamic Sintryx shades feature an easy-to-operate lens change system that you engage and

disengage simply by pressing on the logo between your eyes, and the Ergonose XI nosepiece keeps the glasses on your face even when you are battling jarring terrain. The sister Protera helmet serves up plenty of ventilation as well as an adjustable and removable visor. $225-$300 (Sintryx), $250 (Protera); rudyproject.com

3. GLOVES LIZ ARD SKINS | Monitor SL Gel With all the protection you would expect from bulky downhill-style grippers but far lighter, these gelenhanced gloves improve your dexterity and even work on smart phone screens. There’s just enough ventilation to keep your hands cool but enough padding to survive a spill. $35; lizardskins.com

4. SHIRT F LY LO W | J e s s i Famed for its freeski apparel, Coloradofounded Flylow has brought the same mix of style and function that makes its winter gear so versatile to a new line of active spring wear for women.

The breathable, wicking Jessi shirt can handle a bike ride and run, but still look presentable when you pull over for lunch. $55; flylowgear.com 5. COMMUTER PACK MUDROOM | Quar table 18L Meet a backpack designed specifically for the needs of bike commuters.

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E L E VAT I O N O U T D O O R S / A P R I L 2 01 8

The roomy Mudroom features two side pockets built just to hold your work shoes (or hikers, trail runners, etc.). Inside there’s smart space for electronics and other essentials. $105;

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6. ROAD SHOES SHIMANO | SH- RP901 The sleek, synthetic leather shoes in Shimano’s road performance line keep your dogs from barking on long rides.

Plenty of ventilation cools them down and a BOA system dials in the perfect fit. $300; shimano-lifestylegear.com 7. BEER SUFFERFEST Every good ride deserves cold refreshment at the finale. So why not pick up a brew created by likeminded athletes? Trail runner and endurance athlete Caitlin Landesberg spent years crafting this beer that’s free of gluten, tastes like it’s not and includes a hit list of nutrients to boost your post-ride recovery. sufferfestbeer.com 8. BOAT A L PAC K A R A F T | C a r i b o u 2 That’s right, a boat: This packraft, which weights in at just four pounds, 12 ounces and packs down to jacket size, will get you out on big adventures that combine bike and paddle. Despite the light weight, it can hold its own running rapids. $795; alpackaraft.com

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AN ASS FOR EVERY SADDLE A guide to figuring out which is the best for yours.

by ZACH WHITE

T

hough I doubt he was the first to coin the phrase, an old bike shop boss of mine used to say, “There’s an ass for every saddle.”

He’d repeat the phrase jokingly to customers, as it could be taken in the literal form that there was a buyer’s butt for each bike’s seat.

But it also doubled as a joke aimed at us employees—that inevitably some jackass would walk through the door dumb enough to buy a bike that we’d never be caught dead on.

Almost always, the bikes we minimumwage-earning lackeys considered uncool promised more comfort than performance. In retrospect, I wonder what was narrower back in those days: our minds or our saddles.

Lightweight saddles were gospel.

The lump sum of the industry seemed content to keep saddle widths the same—maybe because the manufacturers only listened to pro athletes about design, or maybe traditional saddle designs do in fact provide comfort to the average cyclist. But, it’d be unfair to omit the masochistic mindset of cycling as a whole when it comes to one of just three contact points on the bike—and

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the one that bears 70-percent of a rider’s weight.

Cycling has always celebrated pain in the name of performance. Phil Liggett, Tour de France announcer extraordinaire, often describes a racer’s intense effort as “riding the rivet,” meaning so aerodynamically hunched over that the rider was sitting on just the very tip of the saddle nose (where old-school leather saddles were riveted or nailed to hold their leather to the frame). The idea of sitting on the skinniest, hardest protrusion of an already minimalist saddle, and with a metal rivet head sticking up no less, should be a vision of discouragement. Instead, Liggett’s quote became a mantra.

At least partially because of this rampant mindset, I’ve generally accepted that doing what I’ve loved over the past 30-years has come with a tradeoff of numb nuts. But, a solid quarter century after I worked in that shop, the bicycle industry is finally breaking free of ridiculous ideas of saddle shape, and offering high-performance saddles in varying widths. Specifically, it’s the width of riders’ sit bones that matter, which equates to various widths in the tail, leaving the nose of the saddle essentially unchanged.

It’s a relatively simple concept that was adopted early on for womenspecific saddles, based on the science that a pelvis with room for child equated to wider sit bones. In an egofree utopia of unbiased sexuality, the male-dominated bike industry may have given these “women specific” saddles a try, and adopted them

GETTING CHEEKY SPECIALIZED’S DIGITAL SADDLE MEASURING DEVICE TAKES AN IMPRINT OF YOUR SIT BONES TO HELP YOU CHOOSE THE PERFECT SEAT. photo courtesy SPECIALIZED

decades ago as a smart unisex option.

The question is why has it taken so long?

Nowadays, companies like Ergon (see page 36), Specialized and WTB are offering saddle models in two or three different widths, and bicycle manufacturers are even spec-ing bikes with wider-than-traditional saddles, too. Whereas 125mm-135mm tail widths were the norm, 140mm-145mm is the new average. Specialized, one of the first major brands to introduce wider performance designs, specs most of their bikes with 143mm wide saddles. Even race bred and high performance oriented Yeti Cycles is phasing out its 135mm WTB Volt saddles, and replacing them with 142mm models in 2019.

So, how does one figure out which ass they have, and what saddle to match it with? By measuring your bottom, and more specifically our sit bones, of course. There are several pelvic measuring devices out there, but Specialized’s digital version is a common one that you can find at their equally common dealerships.

It can sometimes be found in nonSpecialized shops, too. The device (I like to call it an Ass-o-Meter) is basically a foam pad that sit bones leave their impression on long enough to be measured. This is a great place to start for finding a saddle that fits properly. Remember, sit bone width won’t equally match saddle width numbers, as that would put the sit bones at the very edge of the saddle.

For instance, WTB suggests their 142mm-wide saddles align well with sit bone measurements up to 130mm. It’s also possible to find a proper fitting

saddle through trial and error, too, and companies like WTB provide many shops with test saddles that can be checked out by customers.

Can a saddle be too wide? That’s difficult to answer. My personal, anecdotal experience is, yes, a wider saddle can be an issue, at least while riding off-road. I tried one of the wider options available (150mm). It felt fine while seated, but the extra width, in combination with a very pronounced tail, restricted my ability to move the bike underneath me when out of the saddle. Getting back behind the seat on descents and technical sections was tough. Beyond aggressive mountain biking, however, the chances are slim that a wide saddle will be an issue.

Admittedly, width is only one factor in finding the right saddle. It’d take a book to explain how rider positions in each and every cycling genre affect saddle fit, the differences in softer verses harder saddle shells, the reasons for longer and shorter noses, and the pros and cons of flatter or more concave designs. But, if a saddle is too narrow to support a rider in any seated position, then there’s a strong chance that it’s not the best choice.

Of all the equipment on a bicycle, saddles are by far the most personal and opinionated choice—the seat your friend swears by might feel like straddling a 2x4 to you. Luckily, there are now more options than ever before, along with tools to help navigate through them. But speaking from personal experience, since I have switched over to wider saddles, the numbness I was experiencing while riding has all but disappeared.

Our O FIT Insole™ adds the unmatched fit, feel and performance for wherever the trail may lead. ObozFootwear.com

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A SPRING FOR STRINGS

Leftover Salmon and Trampled By Turtles hit the road with new albums.

by JEDD FERRIS

F

ishiness is back in style. In the mid-tolate 1990s, Leftover Salmon bridged the progressive groove and free-spirited edge of Colorado string-band music with an open-ended exploration that came to characterize the thriving jam-band scene of the time. While influenced by nimble-picking predecessors from their home state, particularly Hot Rize, the group also indulged in a broader range of sonic tangents—from headbanging rock assaults to laid-back zydeco grooves.

Salmon’s gonzo live shows came courtesy of quick-tongued, hearty-voiced singer/guitarist Vince Herman, a pied piper of ganja-fueled party time, who lit up the front line alongside string shredders Drew Emmitt on mandolin and Mark Vann on banjo.

The band built a loyal following across the country, filling theaters and conquering festivals.

Sadly, Vann succumbed to cancer in 2002. His loss resulted in uncertainty over the future of the band, but, despite line-up shuffles and a brief hiatus, Salmon has endured. Now approaching three decades together, the six-piece group will release its first album of new material in four years on May 4.

While at times casting a mellow shadow, “Something Higher” is in ways even broader than the amalgam sound the band purveyed in its early days. Salmon brands the sound “Polyethnic Cajun Slamgrass.” Credit goes to newer members, whose contributions provide some of the album’s most interesting moments. Banjo player Andy Thorn, with the band since 2010, drives his namesake instrumental “Game of Thorns,” a fleet-fingered jazz odyssey that pays homage to the cosmicgrass of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. One track prior, drummer Alwyn Robinson, who joined in 2013, delivers smooth, soulful lead vocals on the introspective psychedelic folk song “Foreign Fields.”

To make the album, the Salmon members enlisted producer Steve Berlin of Los Lobos and traveled to Tucson, Arizona, to record using the analog equipment at Wavelab Studios. As a result, songs like “Analog” and “Let in a Little Light” thrive with lo-fi, front-porch rawness, and the title track, a funky, horn-fueled R&B jam about embracing optimism, hits an organic sweet spot between Muscle Shoals and the Rockies.

Even as Leftover Salmon spreads its musical reach, the founders still lay down familiar Americana comforts. Herman, although known for his wild stage presence, also has a thoughtful side to his songwriting. He reaches back to his pre-Colorado days in Appalachia on the dusty ballad “Southern Belle.” Emmitt, too, has a pensive country mind, and through the years he has exhibited the ability to write a highway song with the best in bluegrass. In “Places,” a gently rolling tour of road memories, he sings, “Been so many places, still don’t know where I am bound.”

After all this time, it’s good to see Leftover Salmon still seeking out new frontiers.

A

nother popular unorthodox acoustic outfit, Trampled by Turtles, will also release a new album next month (coincidently on the

Despite lineup shuffles and a brief hiatus, Salmon has endured. same day as Leftover Salmon). Back in the fall of 2016, the Minnesota sextet announced an indefinite hiatus, which gave front man Dave Simonett time to exorcise the emotional demons of a recent divorce through the solo project Dead Man Winter. But on the title track of the new record, “Life is Good on the Open Road,” Simonett sings, “The light inside you comes and goes, but it never really goes out,” so it’s no wonder it took less than two years for a band that excels at hosting rowdy hoedowns to reunite.

Armed with traditional strings, Trampled rarely indulges in flashy solos, instead focusing on an oldtime collectiveness that’s updated with the rumbles and swells of anthemic punk fury. That bravado is alive and well at certain points on the group’s latest effort, particularly the backwoods speed-metal scorcher “Blood in the Water.” Another fast-paced foot-stomper, “Kelly’s Bar” is a vivid, fiddle-driven, cautionary tale about a blurry night in a north country watering hole.

Those ragged fist-pumpers are fun, but the album also reveals a more relaxed side. As the band’s main

THE ANIMALS RETURN singer and songwriter, Simonett uses his rustic COLORADO'S LEFTOVER SALMON (TOP) tenor to deliver earnest FINDS A NEW GROVE folk meditations (“We All AND MINNESOTA'S Get Lonely” and “Thank TRAMPLED BY TURTLES You, John Steinbeck”) (BOTTOM) REUNITES. and occasional forays photos by JOHN-RYAN into sunny vintage pop LOCKMAN (TOP), DAVID MCCLISTER (BOTTOM) (“I Went to Hollywood”).

During the harmonized chorus in the bouncy rock shuffle of “Right Back Where We Started,” he sounds energized, as if he and his string-pummeling crew—even after 15 years together—still have unfinished business.

Leftover Salmon will play Red Rocks Amphitheater on May 5 with Phil Lesh and the Terrapin Family; Trampled by Turtles will headline the same venue on July 19, with support from the Oh Hellos and Dead Horses. redrocksonline.com A P R I L 2 01 8 / E L E VAT I O N O U T D O O R S . C O M

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OUTSIDE

ON THE ROAD, AGAIN Round two? Bring it on. Roxy and Ben are at it again on the Live Outside and Play Road Team tour. This time, they hit the road in new van with 11 wonderful sponsors. Keep an eye out for updates, gear reviews, festival fun and #vanlife tips and sagas over next seven months. They’ll be traveling from east to west and exploring everything the Blue Ridge Outdoors and Elevation Outdoors territories have to offer!

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THE GREAT DIVIDE

Spend 40 days riding 2,800 miles of dirt and gut-wrenching hill climbs with friends new and old, and you may want to keep riding forever.

by JESS DADDIO

I

t’s a late September morning in Hachita, New Mexico. I’m sitting in front of Hachita Food Mart, the only business in this border town of 49, a onepump gas station that’s part convenience store and part second-hand clothing shop. Jeff, the proprietor, has a pot of coffee on. It’s free to Great Divide Mountain Bike Route riders like us, but, honestly, just about anyone who happens to pass through this forgotten desert town could have some.

I take a sip from a Styrofoam cup—it’s my first coffee in weeks—and settle in to a cracked red pleather chair. The blister-white sun is already high in the sky, again. On any other day, I would have been on the bike for two hours by now, too anxious about the mileage I had to put down to putz around during the coolest part of the morning. But not today. It’s the last day of a nearly 3,000-mile journey that began more than a month ago in Canada, and I’m not ready for it to end.

The Great Divide Mountain Bike Route is the longest off-pavement bike tour on the planet according to the Adventure Cycling Association.

Consisting of primarily dirt and gravel roads with some single- and double-track mixed in (and just a bit of pavement to connect the route in spots), it follows the backbone of the Rockies for 2,800 miles from Banff, Alberta, to the Mexican border. It’s

THE WORLD'S BEST LIVING ROOM THE AUTHOR RESTS HER ACHING DOGS AND TAKES A SEAT JUST IN TIME FOR NATURE'S BEST TV SHOW IN A SLICKROCK CAMP DEEP IN NEW MEXICO'S CHIHUAHUAN DESERT NEARING THE END OF THE 2,800-MILE RIDE. photo by JESS DADDIO

Weather-beaten and weary, the skin on our asses now hardened like leather, we should feel relieved knowing that it’s all coming to a close. But we don’t. What more is there to say?

remote and grueling, running up and down over 200,000 feet of elevation gain (that’s more than 71 feet up for every mile you pedal forward). And there are grizzly bears—but, believe me, they are not as scary as the hills.

It is precisely because the ride is so hard that I wanted to take it on. After years of watching friends finish thru hikes, I was determined to do a self-supported adventure of my own. About a year ago, I settled on tackling the Great Divide along with my boyfriend Adam, even if I swore I would sleep every night with bear spray strapped to my chest. That I could end up left for dead like Hugh Glass was my biggest fear, overshadowing any doubts I’d had about my ability to finish the route.

I rarely questioned my determination. Amateur cyclists had been setting off on the Divide with trailers and 80-pound rigs since the gravel tour’s inception in 1998. I had no trailer and half the weight. Surely, I could put my head down and grind, if only the bears would leave me be. Now, six weeks in and just a day’s ride from the end, it seems laughable that it was the grind, not the bears, that nearly took me down.

T

he other Jeff in this dusty town, Jeff Sharpe, is sitting across from me. He’s wearing a perfectly crisp white-collared shirt tucked into a pair of plaid cargo shorts. A Bluetooth headset perches on his ear. Why he needs a device like that, out here in the vast Chihuahuan Desert, I can only imagine.

“Do yourself a favor,” he stops and says to me.

“Don’t ride too close to the white line. That’s where

the rattlesnakes like to hang.”

I’ve been emailing with Sharpe for weeks. He’ll be giving Adam and me a lift from the Mexican border to the Greyhound station in Lordsburg to finish up our more than month-long tour. As we hunker in the fading shade with our coffee, Sharpe spouts off tips not just on snakes but also border patrol and how to score an ice cream sandwich at customs.

Eventually, we mount our bikes and point our handlebars south for the last time. On our way out of town, we pass a hand painted sign hanging in a tree. It reads, “Hachita NM Rest Area.”

There’s a toilet below it, propped up on a couple of cinderblocks, and for whatever reason, the sight of that rusty little bowl makes me sad.

Stormy clouds brew in the sky above and a stiff headwind kicks up dust devils on the horizon. To the east, the craggy Big Hatchet Mountains from which Hachita gets its name dwarf the sagebrush-studded plains. To the west rise the Animas Mountains, and ahead, directly due south, is New Mexico State Road 81, fast, straight and insufferably flat.

Adam and I ride alongside Val and Arlo, two Bostonians who’ve pedaled with us since day five, the first time we crossed a border from Canada into Montana. We ride hard into the wind, four abreast across both lanes, merging single file occasionally to let border patrol zoom by us.

The mile markers pass with cruel indolence. One mile feels more like three. We make a little bit of small talk, but it’s forced. The four of us have ridden so far together, seen so much. Weather-beaten and weary, A P R I L 2 01 8 / E L E VAT I O N O U T D O O R S . C O M

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the skin on our asses now hardened like leather, we should feel relieved knowing that it’s all coming to a close. But we don’t. What more is there to say?

I put in my earbuds, seeking comfort or distraction or both, but it’s impossible to hear much of anything above the roaring wind. I rip them out.

A tidal wave of emotions wash over me: a mix of anxiety and foreboding, frustration and boredom.

I stand out of the saddle to give my seat bones a rest, but with no undulations in the landscape, I can’t stop pedaling for long. Banking into one of only a few turns on this interminably straight stretch of pavement, I realize, begrudgingly, the source of my frustration—I miss climbing mountains.

O

f course, three and a half weeks and 1,700 miles earlier, I was begging for the flattest, straightest pavement. Funny how that works.

It was the day after the total eclipse. We were camped at the base of Togwotee Pass not far from Moran Junction, Wyoming. The morning dawned clear and bitter cold. Everyone was slow to get going.

Someone stoked the embers from the previous night’s fire, and we crowded around the welcomed flames to eat our breakfast. I knew the day called for a heavy dose of climbing—the first four miles ascended over 1,500 feet with a nine-mile climb up 9,120-foot Union Pass not long after that—so I left camp before our companion Ross had even packed the tent.

When you spend this much time riding with people, they become like your family. You get to

COWBOY CAMP VAL, ADAM AND ARLO TAKE SOME TIME TO LOOK OVER THE MAP AND ENJOY THE CREATURE COMFORTS OF AN ABANDONED BUILDING NEAR HARTSEL, COLORADO. photo by JESS DADDIO

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know their quirks. You bond. An Englishborn Sydney transplant, Ross was a new addition to our motley crew of five. We’d picked him up just the day before. Then there was Greg from Sheffield, England, who, like Val and Arlo, had been with Adam and me since day five. We called him Detour Greg for his uncanny ability to take wrong turns and make unnecessary crossings of the Continental Divide. Val was our hopeless romantic. His pal Arlo was a bike mechanic in Boston. He didn’t carry a tent or a stove, often ran out of food, and whenever he got drunk he would read aloud the ingredients in his frozen burritos, but he never complained and, damn, was he fast at climbing.

They all were. Which is why I set out early to crawl up the first pass at my immeasurably slow leisure. We climbed for hours and hours. An endless procession of recreational vehicles and RVs dusted us on our ascent up Union Pass. The gravel was soft and deep and killed what little momentum we could muster. Even when the dirt was hard packed, the road was rutted out with washboards.

I bonked, ate a PayDay, recovered, and then bonked again. It seemed no amount of gummy bears could save me. It was roasting hot and late in the day by the time we crossed the Green River—I seriously considered jumping off of the bridge into the swift-moving current below, never to be seen on a bike again. We’d ridden over 60 miles already, and if we were to make it to Pinedale that night, we still had 30 more to go.

I forced down a generic brand sweet-and-salty granola bar and started riding again as the road deteriorated even more. A brutal headwind blew in from the east and every rock and rut rattled my brain. I’m not a religious person but I prayed for smooth pavement. When that pavement finally did come, with only 23 miles left to Pinedale, I was spent.

The boys pressed on to town, but I couldn’t keep up. Adam hung with me while I shoved fistfuls of trail mix in my face, shouting incoherent profanities between shattered sobs. A woman who lived nearby saw us on the road and stopped. She regularly hosted cyclists, she said, and had plenty of yard if we needed to camp.

“Will you be heading on to Pinedale then?” she asked, completely unaware of my meltdown. And there it was, the question I was too afraid to ask but knew I had to answer: Are you going to quit or are you going to push on and, in the words of Jack Kerouac, climb that goddamn mountain?

Never have my mind and body been so at odds. While that meaty matter between my ears swelled with pride for pushing through the worst of it (for today at least), my withering limbs begged to stop.

Just a few hours later, we arrived in Pinedale. No matter how badly I had wanted to quit back there, I knew that living without trying would have felt worse. We found a seat at a cozy hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant and I looked down at my shirt, crusted in sweat, nearly every part of my body aching from those excruciating 93 miles. But after two margaritas and a plate of huevos rancheros, I knew I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

A brutal headwind blew in from the east and every rock and rut rattled my brain.

I’m not a religious person but I prayed for smooth pavement. When that pavement finally did come, with only 23 miles left to Pinedale, I was spent.

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ow it’s all too suddenly over. When we pull up to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection sign, Jeff Sharpe is already there with his silver station wagon and makeshift bike trailer. No one is in the mood for an ice cream sandwich. The stormy skies begin to spit rain. We take some group photos, unsure of whether we should be celebrating or mourning.

The shuttle ride back to Hachita takes 45 minutes, which seems laughable compared to the nearly four hours it had taken us to ride the same distance.

I watch the Big Hatchet Mountain range from the passenger side window, feeling more at ease, though not entirely satisfied. It’s no exaggeration to say that many days on the Great Divide felt like punishing reenactments of that slog into Pinedale. With every obstacle, every mountain climbed, there was always another one ahead.

And yet, some part of me liked that, the challenge, the effort, the hardearned miles and the camaraderie that evolved. So when we finally said goodbye to Val and Arlo and boarded an eastbound plane out of Phoenix, that feeling of dread settled into a calm resolve, for though I had climbed many mountains between Canada and Mexico, I knew there would always be one more around the bend.

—Jess Daddio is the travel editor at Blue Ridge Outdoors and formerly managed the Live Outside and Play Road Tour.

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SPRING IS FOR SKIING!

This may be the bike issue, but let’s save some room for a few warm thoughts about soft snow, happy Texans and cold beer.

by Peter Kray

E

verybody remembers the ski (and snowboard) season in direct relation to their deepest powder day. Like anglers talking about their biggest catch, it seems the inches keep adding up every time they tell the story, especially if they have a cold-smoke explosion of a picture to back it up.

You know? The kind where all you can see through the big puff of fluff is their glove or a rising pole.

But for me, the season isn’t complete until I get to arc my skis like hot knives into warm butter on a sun-baked slope of fresh corn snow.

That was especially the case this season, when after a promising few days at A-Basin beginning on Halloween, I found myself trail running after Thanksgiving, hiking and biking after Christmas, then finally getting back on the boards after the jetstream decided to crank back into action around St. Valentine’s Day. Now that winter has actually started, there’s no way I’m going to hang up my skis.

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aking tracks long after the tulips bloom is kind of an annual spring rite in Colorado.

The possibilities are endless here, whether it's huffingup lap after lap on Independence Pass when the road opens, dropping into a bowl toward an impossibly blue lake in Rocky Mountain National Park, sweating up fourteeners with your skis in an A-frame on your pack or just making a quick trip up to St. Mary’s Glacier instead of mowing the lawn on a

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Illustration by Kevin Howdeshell / THEBRAVEUNION.COM

lazy Sunday.

In my family, one of our most oftrepeated adventure stories revolves around shuttling cars up and down Pike’s Peak to ski old snow in June, or maybe it was July. On one run, a tour bus full of Texans pulled over to take our pictures. Suddenly, one of them exclaimed, “They’re skiun! Just like in the movies,” which of course, made us feel like stars.

It was a key moment in my own de-generalization of Texans, after a priveleged Colorado childhood of writing off the residents of the entire state as goggle-in-the-car wearing, Cadillacswerving, hip-swiveling redneck rubes (who my brother and I would sometimes accidentally nudge snow onto from the upper deck at Winter Park).

But I have overcome those old misguided epithets.

Instead, I’ve found that (just as long as you steer the conversation away from politics), Texans are indeed some of the finest people in the world.

It seems to me they’re always up for an adventure, and never happier than when they meet someone else from Texas. That encounter often kicks off a loud, compared catalog of Lone Star State memories and laughs, almost always lubricated by several beers (#TonyRomoVille?!).

When I look back on it now, we were snobs. But anybody who grew up in Elwayville understands our history of poking gentle fun at “flatlanders.” You might remember those fake state tourism posters touting, “Ski Nebraska” or “Ski Missouri,” with some cowboy-hatted hayseed poling his way across a dry, flat field. In the case of “Ski Texas,” said pilgrim was gelanding his way past a small herd of mildly curious, long-horned Brahma bulls.

California and Florida show off pink and purple-tinted sunsets of empty beaches, Vegas wants us to believe any fool can get lucky at love and gambling as long he wears the right cowboy snap shirt. And even New York City wants you to get excited about the crushing, claustrophobic humanity of being smack dab in the center of a seething crowd. There's nothing wrong with embracing some regional pride.

Maybe we can learn something from them. We too should promote, and even gloat, about exactly who we are—the high white-peaked, ocean blueskied, late-skiing snow capital of the world. We should Instagram the heck out of the fact that we can still score powder days in April, and ski and golf in May. We should let the world know that we can still feel that arc of acceleration—and exhilaration— all the way into July.

Summer is long and hot. Maybe this year more than ever. By the time the meltdown starts its long slow cook from the cities up to the summits, everyone in every ski town will be wishing they took one more run while they could. Which is exactly what I plan to do right now—head up to Breck, or A-Basin, or Loveland, stare out over the world from a chairlift, carve some soft slush until the troughs in the moguls start to pool, then sit on the deck with some happy Texans (and Coloradans) and drink a cold beer.

See you there.

Why shouldn’t we Instagram the heck out of the fact that we can still score powder days in April, and ski and golf in May.

L

ook, I honestly have no problem with the Lone Star State. Texas openly advertises its steaks, sports and independent-mindedness.

P.S. Learn how you can contribute to a sustainable future for skiing and snowboarding—and late spring shred days—at protectourwinters.org.

—ELEVATION OUTDOORS EDITOR-AT-LARGE PETER KRAY IS THE AUTHOR OF THE GOD OF SKIING. THE BOOK HAS BEEN CALLED “THE GREATEST SKI NOVEL OF ALL TIME.” DON’T BELIEVE THE HYPE? YOU CAN BUY IT HERE: AMZN.TO/2FSA2WR

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