going the distance
This was no ordinary epic ride. This was THE epic ride. July 18th, 1999. I shall not soon forget that day. But first, some background... Many times, on long backcountry rides, while lamenting the increasing suckhood and wussliness of modern mtb races, SuperDan and I would fantasize about putting on serious races, races like the monster races from back in the day, races like the Blackwood Backwood, the Flume Race, the Whiskeytown Shootout, races like the few modern day survivors from that era, the Lemurian, the LaGrange Classic. Now SuperDan and I are smart enough to realize that we're much too lazy to do all the things actual race organizers do, such as organize races, get insurance, design courses that beginners could survive, etc., so we always imagined these events as total bootleg deals, publicized by surreptitious phone calls, anonymous internet postings, and word of mouth. Because we'd rather ride than work, these ideas never got further than conversation filler in the car on the way back after long ass backcountry rides of doom, developed in fits and spurts in between handfuls of cheetos and swigs of gatorade or beer. But then something happened.
What happened was that the all time most bitchen' mtb race ever to take place in the Milky Way, the Cascade CreamPuff 100, didn't happen for 1999. This left a huge hole in my schedule that was only partially and inadequately filled by my timely entry to Leadville. So I started planning. Initially, i wanted to do 100-ish miles in the Sierra foothills, on and around the Western States 100 trail. I even went so far as to sketch out a course proposal. Several big time riders immediately pronounced it as impossible, which naturally heightened my interest.
Fortunately, after a 24 hour solo race, and an abortive attempt at a second 24 hour solo 2 weeks later, I came to my senses, and realized that the terrain we like to ride is orders of magnitude more difficult than what is found even in a tremendously hard 100 miler, like the Cream Puff. Plus, I got really sick and freakin' tired of it being 8 zillion degrees while I climbed impossibly steep slopes. So I had a brainstorm one night (about 3 weeks before the scheduled event), and pulled a totally excellent course out of my butt.
The new course would be cooler (at Lake Tahoe, never going below 5500 feet or so), and shorter (only 55 miles, to make up for the challenging nature of the terrain). What I came up with looks like this on the map (500kb). The first part of it roughly mimics the first half of the infamous (and sadly defunct) Blackwood Backwood race. This is followed by lotsa rocks and jeep trail for a while, then the entire route of what mtb tour organizer Bob Ward calls the "Loon Lake Death March", followed by retracing our route back to Tahoe. Because I'm gullible and stupid, I figured 6-8 hrs to do the whole thing.
The morning of the ride, I was joined by 11 hapless souls at the entrance to Sugar Pine Point state park. There was me, my neighbor Tim (who got me a ticket, almost got me arrested and broke my ribs, all in the first 8 months after i moved in), SuperDan and RegularDan from the VeloSapiens team, Olaf (my nemesis in the spring races), Troy and Sean (crazed single-speeders), Pete and Karen from Team Wrong Way, Zol (the only fast guy on earth who rides a super-v), and Arthur, my work mate who likes to get sloshed and doesn't even own a mountain bike (i loaned him one of mine). Astonishingly, everyone took it quite well when I announced that we would not, in fact, be getting lunch and goodies at Loon Lake, because an analysis of the logistics of sending someone almost 6 hrs round trip to the meeting point, when that same person still had a 4 hour drive home that night, led me to understand that I would probably be giving up any hope of physical intimacy with that person (who happened to be my beautiful and brilliant wife, Stacia) for many weeks. On the plus side, that meant that everyone saved 10 bucks.
We were only about 40 minutes late getting rolling. I'd hate to point fingers at Karen, but since she was the last one we were waiting for, I guess I will anyway. I'm sure she just got bored waiting for everyone else so she went for a last minute nose-powdering, but she got caught being last. We rolled out gently on the pavement of highway 89. Despite that crazed kook Mike Vandeman, no rangers were there to stop us from riding our bicycles. I did actually field a phone call from a ranger who had been alerted by Mike that we planned some race in Desolation Wilderness. Fortunately, the ranger possessed the power of thought, so I explained things to him, and he even offered to help out.
As we meandered up the west side of the lake, I was struck with amazement that anyone actually lives through riding bikes in the Lake Tahoe area. The "bike trail" crosses the highway randomly, crosses busy driveways at odd angles, and generally endangers the lives of anyone who attempts to ride on it. We finally gave up and just pedaled the highway, which seemed vastly safer to us. Not long after, we came to the turn off to Blackwood Canyon, and headed west. After a couple miles, the paved road veers left and we veered right, onto the jeep trail that goes up to Barker Pass. The first bits are easy, then it gets steep, but no big deal. We pushed and lounged, still chatting and getting to know one another.
We reached the pass, then hung out for a bit to snack, enjoy the sun, and wait for stragglers. SuperDan started late, but he caught up in a hurry. Three of our number, the less crazy, were starting to plan where to bail out, and everyone else was starting to get into a rhythm. Once we were all together again, we set off across the pass road and up the singletrack towards Ellis peak. I remembered this trail from the Blackwood Backwood race, and it hasn't gotten any easier. In fact, despite being July, there were unrideable sections of snow on the way up the switchbacks. Sounds like a good excuse to get off and walk, if you ask me. Pretty soon we came out onto the ridge, and at the top we were greeted with fabulous views of Lake Tahoe on one side, and fabulous views of the Crystal Basin on the other, including our destination, Loon Lake. It didn't look that hard to get to from where we were. Little did we know.
By this point we had managed to waste enough time that we opted for a slight course change. We skipped the little spur off to Ellis peak, and we took a slightly more direct way down to the Rubicon, a trail that would drop us off at the summit. On the way down we silently thanked the motorcyclists who'd just come through and carved out a good line through and around some downed trees across the trail. As we got towards the bottom, the trail got rockier and rockier. Amazingly enough, we had taken the smoother way down. The rocky way is truly out of this world.
When we finally reached the Rubicon, we prepared to part ways with the early dropouts. We attempted to make sure that everyone knew how to get back, but standing still for even a few seconds proved completely impossible. We were utterly besieged with mosquitos. They were landing and biting everywhere, as if we had enough red blood cells to spare any. This would turn out to be a recurrent theme throughout the rest of the day. Zol was feeling particularly generous, so he tried to spill some blood for the skeeters by going over the bars in some rocks and hitting the ground as hard as he possibly could. Thankfully, no bones were poking out, though he was a little shaken up. His crash had the effect of making the rest of us pay a little more attention, since we realized we were a long way from any kind of medical help. The next few miles are rolling and increasingly rocky, and since we were now on the main jeep thoroughfare, we started to see some jeepers. They all seemed pretty happy, cans of bud in one hand, toodling along at about 2 mph.
A few miles before Rubicon Springs (site of the jeepers jamboree) there's a very steep downhill, with lots of big slabby rocks. There were also literally 50 or more jeeps pretty much parked on the hill, each waiting their turn to drive over the top at 2 mph. To make matters worse, they were totally hogging up the good line half the time. I managed to get down through them without much problem, but I did take advantage of a few elbow and shoulder dabs on jeep fenders to stay upright. It was quite a long downhill, and we lost 1500 feet or so of elevation, so we naturally had that hill in the back of our minds for the rest of the day, knowing that on the way back we'd have to climb it.
We rolled through Rubicon Springs, crossed the bridge, and were instantly faced with one of the hottest, buggiest, steepest, rockiest hills I've ever had to push my heavy-ass bike up. There's just no really good way to carry most squishy bikes, so I was getting increasingly jealous of the 1-speeders. None of us had ever been on this part of the trail before, so the gruesomeness of the hill took us completely by surprise. When we got over the top, we were mostly faced with rolling, but very, very rocky and bouldery terrain. About that point, I got a flat tire, which I suppose is what I get for riding with 30psi. Naturally my spare had a hole in it. Naturallier my glue was dried up and I didn't have a glueless patch. Just call me Mr Backcountry Preparedness. Thankfully, Troy the 1speeder had a couple tubes, so he kindly donated one to me. We meandered along after that, rolled past Spider Lake, and pretty soon we were on terrain we knew.
If you've read Bob Ward's book on the Crystal Basin area, or if you've just been paying attention, you may have heard about the infamous Loon Lake Death March, and how it's terribly hard and takes at least 5 hours to ride and you have to carry your bike half of the time, etc. blah, blah, blah. Maybe it was that way back in prehistoric days, when everyone rode 35 lb cruiser bikes, but it ain't that way now, at least not for riders who can steer their bikes. Our ride incorporated the entire "death march" loop, and we found it to be by far the easiest part of the ride. I pretty much rode all except a total of about 50 feet of it, and the entire thing might have taken us 2 hrs if you subtract our lunch at Loon Lake. Beware, if you're one of those people who find this loop difficult, do NOT, under ANY circumstances, attempt the rest of the Rubicon. It's really much, much harder.
There were some entertaining moments on this part of the loop. The first one was that Peter Donohue, of Team Wrong Way, somehow managed to destroy a shimano 747 pedal. Not only did he destroy it (pedal body came off the axle), but he managed to do it in such a way that he LOST THE PEDAL!! This would be really funny if we hadn't been 5 hours or so from where we parked. Fortunately, the Loon Lake Death March is such easy terrain that he was able to ride most of it standing on his pedal axle.
The other entertainment came when we watched a couple on ATV's ride up Little Sluice Box. The guy rode up, looking for all the world like he would die any moment (it's full-on huge boulders there, the jeep equivalent of trials riding). He came awfully close to flipping backwards and sideways more than once. Then he got to the top, and walked back down to drive his wife's ATV up WITHOUT HIS HELMET!!!! It was too scary to watch, and we literally turned away a couple times when he was teetering precariously on 2 wheels part way up a vicious rocky slope. Thankfully he lived, since none of us were too skilled at fixing crushed skulls.
At long last, out of water and starving, we reached Loon Lake, where we sat down for a well-deserved lunch. Unfortunately I had forgotten to steal the leftover pizza that Arthur was carrying when he bailed out, but we managed to combine our provisions and still have enough for everyone... Well, almost everyone. Rather than accost some other mtb-er (there were a couple groups there at the lake) and try to borrow a pedal to complete the ride, Pete wussed out and got some guy in a huge RV to give him a ride 40 miles or so down to hiway 50 so he could try to contact his girlfriend (one of the early bail-outs) at the campground back in Tahoe, so he wouldn't have to walk back. Here's his version.
Since it was 4:00 already, we figured we'd better not stay too long, so after we ate and drank and refilled, we headed out onto the Loon Lake Singletrack. Either my riding skills had improved, or the trail was easier. I rode all but 10 feet on the singletrack around the lake, surprising myself on several occasions. Even so, I fell behind the rest of the group, who were all riding like mad bastards for some reason. I started to think about the fact that I didn't have a spare tube or any means of fixing a flat, and I got a little nervous being behind, but after a while I caught up again. We crested the hill on the east side of the lake, and started down the most annoyingly long and bumpy section of baby-heads that I've ever ridden. No matter how many times I ride that trail, I'm never fully prepared for how long and rocky that descent is. At the bottom, we turned left onto the very obscure singletrack that connects back to the Rubicon trail. I'm happy to puff out my chest and note that I rode all but 1 foot of that trail too. I was pretty much in the zone.
In no time at all, we reached the top of the gruesome, hateful hill that we'd pushed up on the way out. I gotta say, it was much more fun going down. SuperDan and I are pretty comfortable in big rocks, so we were riding stuff that others were not, and we got a little bit ahead on the descent. Towards the bottom, I rode through a particularly ugly section of massive rocks and drop offs, and a few seconds later I heard Dan as he came to that section, took a good look at it, screeched to a halt, and loudly exclaimed "What the fuck?!?" in wonder that I had survived. No one else in our exceedingly skilled group of riders even considered attempting it. Dan is one of best bike riders I've ever known, so that was one of my proudest moments ever on a bike.
We attempted to wait for the others at the bridge, but the mosquitos could smell our sweaty, stinky selves from a long ways off now, and they had sent for reinforcements. I was seriously beginning to worry about finishing the ride with any blood left. Dan and I rode slowly back and forth, trying to evade the airborne troops until we were all back together. With little ado (and with more than a little fear of the impending darkness), we sallied forth, with the thought of the huge climb (where the jeep traffic jam was) filling our minds with dread. As it turned out, the climb was not as bad as I had feared, but I'm not sure everyone else agreed with me. The only awful thing was the mosquitos, but happily for us, we came across a jeeper who had managed to break the living fuck out of his jeep, and was lying under it covered in grease and dirt. His girlfriend was happy to share their mosquito repellent with us, so we slathered it on every possible surface, blissfully unconcerned with its carcinogenic qualities. Not long after that we could get back on our bikes, and we rode the rest of the way to top of the steep part. About this point, I was starting to feel chipper again.
We more or less happily (though tiredly, since we'd been riding around 10 hours) rolled up the gentler part of the climb until we were again at the summit, at which point we were faced with a question. RegularDan, an eminently sensible person, was in favor of going straight down the Rubicon into Homewood, and puttering back the 3-4 miles to our starting point on the pavement. Olaf and I were in favor of carrying out the original plan to turn south off the Rubicon, and take the singletrack/portage/more singletrack route into General Creek and back to the campground. Everyone else was pretty much too exhausted to discuss it, so the majority carried the day, and we turned south. In my defense, I'd like to remind everyone that I have never made a secret of my flawed decision-making skills when it comes to bike rides.
So we went past a little road with a gate and a "dead end" sign. I thought about whipping out the map, we had sweated off most of the skeeter repellent, and stopping for any reason was bad for our health. We climbed and climbed, up an annoying dirt road. After a mile or two, we came out at a lake, with some people camped there. I had the weirdest sense of deja vu, and for a good reason. We had made the exact same wrong turn, and done the exact same annoying climb to nowhere, and wasted the exact same amount of time and energy as I had done 5 years previously when I rode this part of the trail with my beautiful and brilliant wife, who for obvious reasons (remember, she's brilliant) doesn't ride with me anymore. Light was fading and I was really pissed, all the more so because I had led 8 other tired souls astray too. We bombed back down the hill, turned up the dead end (dead end only means for jeeps, not bikes or hikers), and climbed some alternately rutted and swampy trail until we started down again.
I'm not particularly averse to carrying my bike. I've had some rides where I've had to carry my bike a lot, like for an hour straight, so I don't fear a little portaging. Apparently I'm alone in this sentiment, because there were some grumblings when we got to the hike-a-bike part of the downhill. I personally thought everyone was being just a little wimpy, and I was actually riding quite a bit of it (i didn't much feel like walking), but I could tell there was some tension. I pointed out to SuperDan that he, of all people, should have been well aware of how dumb it is to let me decide anything, since we've been riding together and doing stupid things together for years and years. Eventually the portage ended though, and we were faced with some of the sweetest foresty singletrack in the world. Everyone pretty much perked up, and the group left me and RegularDan behind before long. We were enjoying the heck out of ourselves, but I was pretty ready to roll up to the campground. Olaf got a flat, but seemed to have everything he needed, so I cruised on past. It was really starting to get into twilight now, and visibility was starting to be an issue on some of the technical bits of the trail.
Just about the time I was REALLY ready to be done, the stupid-ass goddamn trail started rolling again. This was really pissing me off. Every tiny uphill seemed just about insurmountable. I'd been in the saddle for just shy of 12 hours, and I was not all that happy about pedaling. I checked out the map, and it seemed like I should prepare myself to take a left onto a singletrack before too long. Sure enough, after the trail opened out onto a cross-country ski trail, there was a singletrack to the left. I marked it with orange engineer ribbon for Olaf and RegularDan, and struggled up the climb, then down the other side in the darkness. Imagine my surprise when I popped out on a paved road in a residential neighborhood. Fuck! I'd obviously taken another wrong turn. Naturally, these things only occur when you're right at the limits of your endurance. To make matters even worse, it was highly likely that Olaf and RegularDan would take the same turn, since I'd marked it for them. It was too dark and too steep for me to consider going back, so I asked a kindly fellow out watering his plants how to get to the campground.
I don't know if he was malevolent, or just stupid, but he told me I'd have to ride a couple miles out one way and come back on the highway. I chose to completely ignore his instructions and just set off in the general direction of where I thought I should be. Happily enough, I was right for once, and when I got to the end of the street, there was a little footpath that connected with the ranger's residences at the campground. 2 minutes later, I was at my truck, in the pitch-freakin' dark. My little detour had cost me enough time that everyone except SuperDan (who was waiting for RegularDan) had already left, so I gingerly changed clothes, feeling more than a little bit worked over. By about the time I was done changing, RegularDan appeared. He looked none too happy about the whole affair, but at least he was alive, and he confirmed that he had ridden in with Olaf, so everyone was safe. He also learned a valuable lesson about riding with me.
I don't even want to think about how much it would have sucked to drive home that night. It was all I could do to get to Tim's house in Truckee. On the way, I had to stop and barf up all the water I'd drunk after finishing. I was clearly in the throes of a galactic bonk. I straggled into the house a little after 10, looking pretty pale and messed up. I managed to take a shower and just collapse into bed, shivering semi-uncontrollably. Every 10 minutes or so I'd force down a few tablespoons of SoBe. After a couple hours of drifting in and out of consciousness, I was strong enough to get up and eat some chips and salsa. The next morning I could barely get out of bed, but I could at least eat again, so I did. Then we drove back to the palatial Weaver estate in Forestville. It seems pretty unlikely that i'll ever be able to get any of those guys to do that ride again, but the next time I do it, I'm definitely going straight on the Rubicon back to Homewood.
