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Wednesday was a real soaker in the Black Canyon. Ben Dressel & I experienced torrential rain while climbing the usually tame Maiden Voyage. Water was pouring down the rock faces and the canyon was enveloped in mist. It surreal and frighteningly beautiful. Friction diminished forcing us to climb very cautiously and cling tenaciously. It made 5.9 feel “for real” again. In a strange way, it was also fun. There was no one else around and the canyon felt quite remote.
The weather improved enough on Thursday for us to get on a longer and more difficult route, Casually Off. We were able to top out via two wonderful new pitches that avoid the standard bushwhack finish: an airy arête and a Pegmatite band that finish on top of the Debutante’s Ball Buttress. This makes that climb 10 nice pitches long, 6 of which are 5.8 or 5.9, all are good quality.
It was a good finish to our 3 days climbing in there.
Ben leading Casually Off Route:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytYKorok0xI

After two days of recovering from Saturday’s monster ride in Breckenridge, I spent a pleasant day out on the hard rock of the Black Canyon. I climbed with Ben Dressel from St. Louis for 12 pitches on the excellent moderate outing Ground Control to Major Tom. It felt good to use the fingers and arms again.
We’ll go for another couple of rounds in there the next few days if we don’t get rained out.

I just finished riding the Breckenridge 100 Mile Mountain Bike Race on Saturday. I managed to place fourth in the Single Speed category, for I which I won a burrito!

It hurt. It really hurt. It gave me a whole new perspective on suffering and how to get through it. I guess I would call this type of suffering just masochism. It’s not real suffering, which is what people experience from unfortunate circumstances beyond their control or choice. No, suffering from doing a bike ride (or mountain climb) that I’m freely willing to stop doing at any time is just plain masochism. That’s fine with me. You can call it whatever you like.

But anyway, the interesting thing about suffering during a long mountain bike race is that the level of pain is relatively high (I chose to ride a single speed bike to make the experience even more acute!), and the duration of time that you experience it is even longer. On a long alpine climb, for example, there are moments of severe pain that can be short lasted, and there is the longer lasting, but lower level pain and soreness you get from just being out in inhospitable conditions of the high, alpine environment. The duration is longer, but in some ways easier to take as it’s generally a lower level of pain spread out over a longer time period .

I think one way to look at the level of suffering for a given activity would be some sort of “Pain Index.”

Pain Index = Level of Pain X Duration of Pain

The level of pain is, obviously, quite subjective (1-10?), the the duration is pretty easy to nail down. Then, you can also figure in the number of types of pain (i.e. muscle soreness, specific joints, head ache, tired/low energy, etc) so Pain Index might look something like this:

Pain Index = SUM (Level of Pain((a, b, c, etc.)) X duration of Pain)

So if you’ve got a sore back of Pain level 3 for 4 hours and tired legs at pain level 6 for 5 and hurting feet at pain level 7 for 2 you get a whole different Pain Index than just painful fingers at level 9 for 10 minutes.

Of course the Pain Index is just part of the challenge. No matter what type of masochism you are  undertaking, it eventually, it ends. It is finite. It’s just a matter of tolerating the discomfort for a given period and sustaining some level of physical output to complete said activity.

The “digging a little deeper” part of doing something hard really just comes down to telling yourself  ”this hurts right now, but eventually it will end.” This weekend’s mountain bike race gave me a new perspective on how long I can tolerate certain moderately high levels of pain. It was hard for me, more than I expected it to be, but at the same time, it was a GIFT!

Oh yeah, the race was fun, too. BTW, if you want to see the “data” on my pain, here’s a link to my training log for the day:

https://www.trainingpeaks.com/sw/2ZTTQPXGMFXDLH2RNBEG3EMANA

Now, it’s back to climbing for a while (except for one more bike race next weekend!)

Does anybody remember Uriah Heep?
I had a great ride at sunrise with Colleen when the above mentioned proto-metal classic came to mind.

I woke this morning only slightly hungover and to cool, 60 deg temps. I wasn’t too sore from yesterdays road ride sufferfest, either. I decided to go check out yet another new trail near Grand Junction’s Lunch Loop trail system with Colleen & Bad Boy Will. This one, called Butterknife, was a real gift and offered miles of moderately technical, fun single track overlooking the Gunnison River. Just doing the simplest loop possible gave us over 4 hours of riding and it’d be real easy to double that by adding on a few of the Lunch Loop’s other trails (ie the Ribbon, Holy Cross & Gunny Loop). This gave Colleen & I back to back 4 hour days on our bikes and 11 for the weekend total. We’re going to great lengths to expand our threshold for pain! Hopefully we’ll be ready for the Breck 100 in a few weeks.

I don’t, but I wind ways to deal with it. Our recent spat of near 100 degree temperatures has given me a good excuse to get out and enjoy the sunrise while the temps are still in the low 60’s. I find it quite pleasant and a great way to start my summer days.
Here’s a few shots from this morning’s ride on Holy Cross.

I took the boy to climb on the new kids boulder on the newly remodeled Main Street Mall in GJ. He took naturally to it and at three feet tall, every problem is a highball! Super Fun!

I just  had a great eight days of climbing and biking with tireless  Pat Murphy of Toronto. In spite of the 100 degree heat in the desert, we were able to complete a number of classic climbs in area including the Kor/Ingalls route on Castleton Tower and the never ending Ground Control to Major Tom in the Black Canyon and the historic Otto’s Route on Independence Monument. We  took early starts every day to avoid the heat, which worked well in the cool of the high desert mornings. We even managed a day of bolt clipping and edge crimping in Ouray.

Our biking adventures saw us road rippin’ across Colorado National Monument and single trackin’ in Fruita and Crested Butte. The mix of short, hard climbs, longer, easier ones as well as both road and mountain biking made for a good “alpine climb simulator” over the eight days. Rest and copious beer was in order on the ninth. Sounds a bit like some new religion? I know that we found salvation. Seriously, this mix of activities really is a good way to train for a “the big routes” and focus on a variety of muscle groups, energy outputs and types of mental focus, AND without much objective hazard. It’s a lot of fun, too!

Here’s a some photos of a few of the highlights.

I spent the morning riding many of the fine loops around the start of Kokopelli’s Trail in Fruita with Pat Murphy. It was a great way to take a break from the desert towers we’ve been climbing.

I had a great Memorial Day weekend by way of the classic tradition of a family camping trip. We hit the road in our camper to the Four Corners region: Cortez and Durango. The whole affair was fun for all, rife with some great mountain biking, hiking into the ruins of Mesa Verde, hot dog gilling, making s’mores, swimming, canned beer and even and impromtu appearance at a trailer park party with a live band! Everybody had fun, nobody got hurt AND we’re all still on speaking terms.

The riding at Phil’s World, near Cortez, is everything it is rumored to be: fun, fast and easy. It is like skiing high speed groomers with a nice half pipe section in the end (i.e. The Ribcage). It is defiinitely worth the visit. Also, the Dry Fork-Colorado Trail-Hoffein Connector trail loop outside Durango is a similar, but less rolling version of this: one big climb followed by one fast descent. Although short, we found it to be “more fun” than the nearby, more bumpy (and more famous) Hermosa Trail.

Phil's World