Who the Hell is maadjurguer?

My photo
I like to ski, mountain bike, drink beer, cook and listen to any jam band I can get my hands on; all while making a complete ass of myself. Hopefully this catharsis is as interesting to others as it is to me.

Friday, February 27, 2009

Trail Fixed

In my last post, I ranted about Trail sanitizers. I took matters into my own hands, spent some money and made up some laminated fliers. I rode out to Hawes this morning and put up a sign at every trailhead post and then, with BullitTom's help from the MTBR Forum...we put the rock back to it's original configuration. That sucker was heavy...but we made it. Here are some of the pics. I feel so much better now....and hopefully the sanitizers get the picture and stop their heinous acts.


The scene...note fresh dirt to left of trail...this is the hole where a cool boulder used to be that required you to have some very basic control over yourself as you passed, otherwise you would hang your shoe off of it, or it would grab your derailleur as you climbed passed it.....in no way an obstacle...just one of many challenges on the trail which made it fun.






















The hole


















The Rock






















The fix looking up trail






















The fix with sign looking down trail

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Trail Sanitizers should rot in hell

I rode Hawes today and started a descent into a section we like to call Disneyland....it's called that because it's so much fun...tight and twisty, boulders which sometimes reach out and clip your feet.....or it used to be that way.

See....some folks who think they are "improving" the trail removed a large boulder and made what was a somewhat challenging feature nothing more challenging than a sidewalk. I learned to ride on this trail...what was once challenging is now easy. However, if that feature had not been there....I would not have learned steering control on the descent or while climbing. I clipped my pedals there a couple of times back in the day...and it taught me to be more conscious of my pedal stroke.

Now....some folks are attempting to make things easier....not by learning how to become better...but by modifying conditions to suit their own shitty abilities...the classic merican' dream.....football teams with no losers, 12th place ribbons, investment firms with no posted losses, etc.

These people make me sick. It's the same as the Suzuki method of violin teaching. Ohh yeah....I'm also a classically trained violinist....something I don't talk about much; but contributes to my arrogance and general sense of superiority...there, I've said it. But being a perfectionist, and generally pretty good at it has it's personal costs....anyhew....I digress.

Suzuki was a guy in Japan (I hope he's rotting in hell and chained to the guy who invented Muzak) who would take classic masterpieces of music by the likes of Mozart, Handel, Holst, Beethoven, etc....and dress down the music. All so he could teach 10,000 3 year olds how to "play" the violin in a soccer stadium....don't believe me?....google it.

Mozart wrote that piece of art to sound a specific way....if you can't play it the way he wrote it.....then you suck. There's no way around this....you suck. But don't fret...because you still have a way to not suck....you just have to pick between one of the following options: 1) Learn to not suck or, 2) QUIT! There's no shame in saying you can't do it...you either practice until you can do it...or just quit and say it's not for you.

Same situation here. So...I've drawn up a flyer I'm going to post up at all the trailheads.




Sunday, February 22, 2009

I smell like a yeti

At the invitation of Randy, I headed up the hill for some BC fun this weekend and an overnight at the snow cave. The recent return of high pressure to the area earlier in the week brought high westerly winds which stripped a lot of the latest snow off of western aspects above treeline. The following above average temps baked the remaining powder into 1-inch thick mank in the trees. Based on this, we scrapped our plans for Lew (Philomena Springs) Canyon and sought some wind/sun-protected areas in the trees off of Temptations ridge and gully. Cresting the treeline, we traversed across Temptations itself. Randy had no trouble traversing, but the ice was giving my dull edges fits and caused me to eject one of my skis in skin mode as I was hammering out an edge hold...leaving me exposed with only my uphill ski holding me to the mountain with an icy runout a couple hundred feet below. After some creative yoga assisted by my now anchored poles, I managed to hack out a ledge large enough to stabilize myself and the wayward ski which I had caught with my downhill boot before it had a chance to fly by itself. After this bit of drama, I convinced Randy to pull skins and traverse across in ski mode....much better. Unfortunately, that was most of the excitement for the day. Even the northern aspects of Temptations gully were suspect to the warming temps with crusty conditions interspersed in between cream-cheese powder.




Retreating back to the cave after our day I shot some B-roll which sums up 98% of the days activities.



Sundown pano from the Snowcave looking WNW









Light from the snowcave entrance






















After a nice sleep in the cave, a hot cup of Yerba Mate and a fire brings us back to life....
















Views of the approaching light...note the shadow of Kendrick Peak (center) cast upon the pink haze on the horizon(center left).
















Panorama of the approaching light.







Another shadow, this time of the Kachina peaks and ridges, Aggasiz on the left, Humphreys on the right with the 2 false summits to the left of Humprhreys clearly seen.
















Looking north, a view of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon -Coconino Sandstone glowing pink in the morning glow.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

These guys designed our CRM software at work....

Friday, February 13, 2009

Allison Clay Trip Report 2-11-09

After the big snowfall; D, Snowcave Man, Splitboarder and myself headed up the mountain to try and poke around Allison Clay. If it was safe, we were gonna ski it. If it was not....we were gonna hit the trees. Either way, we had come for the 30" of fresh light stuff which had fallen after a depressing two week absence of Ullr. The fact that it was in the middle of the work week made no difference...we came to party.






















The skin up left us in awe at the bluebird, near lack of wind and cotton candy trees.....an absolute treat.

















On the way up, we stopped for lunch at Snowcave Man's Snow Cave, fully equipped with AM radio tuned to the Hopi station, reading materials, munchies....and one awesome poem I could not do justice retelling here.



After a quick stop over at Snowcave Man's Snow Cave, we the crested the ridge between the plane crash site and Allison Clay where we got our first look.

















We continued on above tree line and descended below the cornice on the southern aspect of Allison Clay to dig a pit.

















The results were fairly stable.....


















......so we continued a climbing traverse on the pit slope to gain elevation.

















A nice sundog became our target as we climbed higher...but somehow was almost lost in the glare and effort of the bright day.


















Topping out at 12,000ft, D snaps shots of us from a safe zone below. I love this shot which shows some of the wind kicking up around us, the rocks and the sastrugi...the ethereal nature of this shot plays up the atmosphere and elation we felt for being out on such a beautiful day, not working and doing what we love.

















Splitboarder went first. The 15ft long rooster tail behind him was the 1st sign that we were all in for some goodness.....

















Yours truly in the #2 slot,






















Snowcave Man followed me.....it was all smiles.

















After pounding out the upper portion of Allison, we all regroup in a safezone to soak up our work. Expressing surprise and jubilation over our good luck to catch Allison pregnent with snow and happy, we continued on down the bowl. In my last few visits with Allison, she was starting to sound like Holly Hunter's character in Raising Arizona......."By the looks of her, she appeared to be as fertile as the Tennessee Valley....but the Dr. explained to me that her womb was a barren and rocky place, where my seed could find no purchase." Not this time Dr......, not this time.

















D cranking some sweet powder tele turns down lower in the runnout zone....you could hear her laughing with each turn.

















As nice as it was up top, it was even nicer down below......





















Images taken by D, Splitboarder, Snowcave Man and me

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

One of these images is not like the other one

After the soaking we've had the past two days and the snow level dropping to 3500 ft last night, I decided to take a spin out at Hawes prior to my 2 day, midweek escape up north for some snow turns...post on that later. The air was crisp, my lungs felt fine, the clouds were magical.....and then this. Last ride I took I noticed my chain was a bit squirrely and was ghost shifting every once in a while, but a quick adjustment of the low-limit screw seemed to fix it.....but it really felt like crap today and after a bit of climbing, I took a closer look....
















After a swap of the bad links for some spares, I was rolling as good as new and looking forward to the final climb up to the hill to see if I could get a good pic of 4-Peaks, snow-capped in the evening light. No go....it was covered in clouds, but the California Poppies were just about to pop.






























































And last but not least, the obligatory pic of Red Mountain....looking Red