mountain biking
April 5th, 2010
open source video, online video platform, video solution
A group of Tucson cycling friends rode a loop from Patagonia to the U.S. Mexico border and back to Patagonia recently. The loop is 50 miles, about 40 of it on dirt roads. It takes in mining ghost towns nestled in oak covered hills, and a broad expanse of high grassland ranches.
 Halfway through the ride, we visited the border and inspected the relatively new vehicle barrier fence. It is made up of cut and welded railroad ties and rolls across the undulating valley like a row of carefully placed pick-up jacks.
I like that it stops vehicles, capable of carrying large loads of drugs or illegals, without hindering the free flow of wildlife.
The route is on Forest Service roads, very well maintained, but a challenge for some with skinnier tires. A road bike would not survive the trip, but two cross bikes did fine. There was one tire casualty. We rode Zippy, our touring tandem without difficulty.
This ride gives the workout of a longer ride on paved roads, with the upper body workout of a non-technical mountain bike ride, the best of both worlds. There is almost no traffic and the silence is a welcome change from city riding.  The San Rafael Valley is surrounded by mountain ranges: Patagonia Mountains on the west, Canelo Hills on the northwest, and the Santa Rita Mountains to the north.
This is the West of imagination, the Marlboro Man leaning on his saddle horn surveying his herd. The valley is a favorite movie location.
 The route climbs steadily into the Patagonia mountains in the Coronado National Forest.
The graded dirt road passes through or near the ghost towns (not all are abandoned) of Hershaw, Washington Camp, Duquesne and descends to the valley at Lochiel, where much of the land is in large ranch holdings.
Ranches in this part of Arizona are commonly in the thousands of acres.
The valley is a wide expanse of treeless grass with a few cattle and ranch houses in the distance. The riding is sublime and in spring and fall, cold in winter, hot in summer. Plan accordingly. Note that there is no water along the route.
March 22nd, 2010
It has happened before. It can happen again.
 This is a republication, with changes, of an earlier post.
It appears the volcano in Iceland is not going to go back to sleep without causing mankind to take notice of the disruption possible. Thousands of flights have been canceled by the the ash cloud ejected from the eruption under a glacier. The ash is even more destructive to air traffic because some of it may be turned to glass by the ice before being ejected high into the air.We’ll just have to wait and see if this will last for weeks and cause major economic disruption in North Atlantic and European transportation, or fade away quietly. I wouldn’t bet on either.
We rode mountain bikes across Iceland one spring and learned just how unstable a place it can be. No, not the banking system, that might be another post, but the land itself. Iceland is part of the Atlantic Ridge, where Earth’s crust is being ripped apart as the tectonic plates slide on the molten mantle. In the first picture, Claire is straddling the North American plate and the European plate.
All this volcanic activity so close to the surface has been both a blessing and curse to Icelanders since settlement times. Steam from vents warms homes, produces electricity and draws tourists for their short summer. But where there is steam, there is fire, and water. With lots of precipitation, and just bussing the Arctic Circle, Iceland is and land of fire and ice, and roaring powerful rivers. Iceland has the third forth and fifth largest ice sheets on Earth, quite a distinction for such a small island nation.
Powerful rivers with thundering waterfalls carry the rain and glacier melt to the sea, along the away, often harnessed for electricity to smelt aluminum from ore shipped from all over the world. In recent years this has been a major contributor to the Iceland’s economy, replacing the fishing industry facing increased competition in the North Atlantic fishery. The harnessing of their rivers is a contentious issue with Icelanders; they like the money, but aren’t so sure about the environmental consequences. The also fear the consequences for the unprecedented purity of their gene pool, from the importation of foreign smelter workers.
 This beautiful lady we met at a national park in the far north. She is pure Icelandic, lovely and nice too. She is studying to be an opera singer in Europe, and works summers as a park ranger. For years, scientists have been using Iceland as a place to study the genetic makeup of humans; their line goes back to the 9th century, and they are isolated halfway between continents and far north. With new gene sequencing methods, it won’t matter so much if science looses that pure strain, but it seems to be still important to the people of Iceland. I wouldn’t call it racism in this case, more cultural pride.
 Should you be concerned with a small volcano on a tiny island nation far away? Possibly. Activity in the current location has always been a precursor to large eruptions under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in southern Iceland. In 1783 an eruption killed a fifth of the population by famine, and created severe climate disruptions in Europe. A large, ash producing eruption, could cause rapid climate change in many parts of the northern hemisphere. Geologic evidence points to many such events in human history.
So, are you ready for a winter all summer next year? You might want to watch tiny Iceland for the foreseeable future.
 Claire and her mountain bike in the center of Iceland.
For more photos and story about our tour across Iceland, click here
June 6th, 2007
Claire examining an arch; good thing she’s a lightweight!
 June 1. Colorado National Monument.
One of our lesser known national monuments, it overlooks Grand Junction and Fruita, Colorado and the Grand Valley, former name of the Colorado River here. The Colorado River flows lazily though the valley, irrigation pump sucking at it as thousands will do, and a small river of it gets ditched to Phoenix and Tucson, and much more to California, until it reaches the Mexican border, and disappears. We are too early for the peaches, and of course the wine grapes are tiny and green; some other year.
Wonderful sunset last night over Wedding Canyon, looking very much like Southeast Utah. We decided on the rim road bike ride today. Nice, except for the road construction, canyon edge riding and a detour to a crossroads store that was probably very nice one time, but now only sells scented candles, chips and beer. Must be all the ageing hippies moving in to build funky houses and horse corrals, all with a view: been there.  Tomorrow we will try another mountain bike ride, and hope it’s not another sand epic as the one in Arches. The second largest collection of arches in the US, outside of Arches National Park, is supposed to be at the end of about a 22-mile mountain bike ride from the rim road. It’s outside the national monument in a newly (to us) designated McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area, that runs all the way into Utah. It is divided into zones of usage: mountain bike and ORV, horse and hiking, and river running, and areas of trail-less wilderness. I wonder if it is an experiment in separating the, sometimes competing, groups of public-lands users from each other?
 June 2. McInnis Canyons arches mountain bike ride.
No epic mountain bike this time, just a couple of challenging climbs, and lots of wildflowers to cheer us on, the scent of sage and the expansive Colorado Plateau vistas that we love so much. The arches were fun, if nothing compared to the ones in Arches NP, but the hike from the end of the track was pleasant, and one sliver-rock arch was a hoot; we felt like kids, inching up on the thin part, teasing about causing it to collapse. I told Claire to tell all my friends my demise was, if premature, spectacular. What a treat to return to Turtle for a warm shower and icy drinks from the refrigerator. We are spoiled.
May 29th, 2007
Arches National Park, May 27, 2007
We were at the park visitors center at 6:30am to make sure we got one of the few remaining campground sites. There were seven available, and we were number three. We drove to the end and picked the site we wanted, it was still occupied by three people in two tents. Their car looked nearly loaded, so we parked to wait for them to leave, not wanting to hurry them. After a few minutes we walked to the site to put our daily reservation on the post, so someone else wouldn’t get the really spectacular view site. We talked to the people there, who turned out to be from the south of France. They had arrived at 2am and slept in their rental car (filled with camping gear and food) They were very disappointed to learn of the system, and that they would loose their site. We offered to share our site with them, and enjoyed talking to them both days they were with us. They tried to share the cost of the site, but we refused; we have been on the receiving end of the kindness of strangers (sometimes very poor strangers who didn’t speak our language and we had been told wanted to kill us) that we could not take money from them. They have nearly a month in the States, and are going to see more of the West than most Americans will ever see. Their English is fantastic, and we had some interesting political and social discussions. They like Americans despite the anti French press they have been hearing the past few years. One thing we all agreed on was that people who travel are much less likely to harbor hate for other peoples and cultures; once you have looked in a stranger’s eyes, and broken bread with him/her, it’s hard to hate him or his kind.
Nancy, Pasqual and Daniele (forgive our spelling)
 We had a long and enjoyable visit with the campground hosts, Gary and Francoise who are looking to move out of Phoenix; she has asthma and can’t take the air anymore. I can relate, and attest to Tucson’s clean air. They had heard about Far Horizons, and we gave them our pitch. I think they will visit in the fall and maybe move there. They would be a great addition to the park; they are full of energy and social.  Our first day in Arches we took a short hike, enjoying at least one, new to us, arch and the beautiful wildflowers and cactus arrayed against the coral pink sand. Sunday we took, what we thought would be a moderately strenuous mountain bike ride of about 30 miles. The first seven miles were easy, showing us lots of different wildflowers and only a few corrugations. Then the —- hit the fan. First it got steep, then the steep turned to sand. We thought we might have a couple of miles of pushing our bikes, but it turned out to be an epic of seven plus miles of deep sand and hills.  A bicycle is an awful burden to push through sand, and we couldn’t even pedal the downhills the sand was so deep. Good thing the flowers were blooming.
We ran out of water and food near the end and felt the big bonk:
To bonk is to run out of glycogen in one’s muscles from exertion and not have food to replace it. It is very unpleasant, particularly when you do not have any choice except push on. Each step is a struggle to force your muscle to do work it is really incapable of doing, and every muscle in your body makes you pay in pain for making it move when it only wants rest and food.
We finally made it out of the sand and to a motorhome parked in an unusual place. The very pleasant young man from California, was the “mo ho” (California speak for motorhome) manager for a company that supports film and still photo shoots. The photographer, assistants and model were off doing their shoot. He gave us water and that made a big difference; we only had to push our muscles without food for another nine miles.
The photo shoot was for French Vogue magazine and the model was wearing Pocahontas, and other Native American inspired dresses. Claire thought they came to the red rocks of Arches, and not the more famous Monument Valley because of the fake Indian theme. I can imagine the Navajo would not be angry, but only too glad to take their money, and laugh at their absurd vision of Native Americans.
The light was lovely at sunset and we clambered over the slickrock taking pictures and enjoying the truly spectacular location. Arches never disappoints, though this time we could have done without the epic part of our mountain ride!
Claire against the sky long after sunset
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Halfway through the ride, we visited the border and inspected the relatively new vehicle barrier fence. It is made up of cut and welded railroad ties and rolls across the undulating valley like a row of carefully placed pick-up jacks.
The San Rafael Valley is surrounded by mountain ranges: Patagonia Mountains on the west, Canelo Hills on the northwest, and the Santa Rita Mountains to the north.
The route climbs steadily into the Patagonia mountains in the Coronado National Forest.
