Coyote Coulee

"What the hell. You know the routine. Just get off you pansy asses and get down here." - Joel

There you have it. The next time our own reality TV show colleague, is up in Alaska hunting Griz with a spear that he gnawed out of a Sitka spruce, he's going to grab the sat-phone, swat down your namby pamby excuses and harangue your lazy asses reminding you how pathetic your so called life must be if you can't even exert yourself enough to get a little outdoor adventure once a week on Wednesday nights.  Honestly I don't know if he is a reality TV show.  I think he might have had a cameo once. Regardless if any one could manage to be entertaining on TV it would be him. Leaving the question of why anyone would want to live with cameras following their every move for another day and another post.

Considering the relatively chilly overcast weather, typical weather for this ride, turn out was again stellar at 10+. Finally a real Bitterroot ride: cold creek crossings, a little snow slogging, cold feet and wet socks. (We were about week too early with a fair amount of snow on the upper reaches.)  Somehow last year it seems like we avoided almost all of these inconveniences that we celebrate as badges of macho posturing to demonstrate how tough and superior we are. 

Compensating for our ordinary lives as dads and husbands working ordinary jobs and trying to believe that had we been born in a different era we would have been dog warriors defending our land or possibly Custer heading west to subdue the savages. Instead we carry saws and clear downed trees.  Coyote Coulee did not disappoint.  

Jeff, our current reincarnated Chief Joesph lead us unerringly to the mythic third loop after several misadventures in previous seasons.  At his time I have to acknowledge Doctor J who after  intermittent appearances in previous seasons has made every ride  this year and has assumed his position at point. He may not know where is going yet, but he is determined to get there first.  Also making every ride after lackluster prior seasons are my favorite photo models, Kevin and Aaron. Also  perfect for the season so far is Cory. Finally getting their asses in gear were Travis and Donny.   As I alluded to,  Joel dropped in between his other adventures for a ride, and I always hate it when he does.  When he is around I can't blame my slow climbing and wussy descents on being washed up and over the hill.  Instead, I have to accept that I'm simply a slow wuss.

"You should talk about the apres' cocktail hour.  I need to drink before I eat after a ride. Once I eat I bloat up like a manatee and need a nap." - Joel

Sawdust Gulch

Have you heard of something called flow?  Read Bike, and all I hear is how a trail should have flow.  Check the IMBA website trail building guide; all about adding flow to a trail. Trails that aren't too steep going up or down, predictable. Trails that you could take your 29er hard tail single-speed on and still enjoy it. A trail you can have fun on whether you are young or old, fit or flab, noob or knob head.

One Sawdust Gulch virgin felt we should have a ride summary when we announce the weekly ride so that cherries would have some idea what to expect. First, if we did that how would we ever get anyone to deflower.  Second, he's been riding with us on and off for a few years now, so he should already know what to expect.  Sometime during the climb you will either ,if you are lucky, want to puke or more likely just  want to lay down and pray that this is the end.  If there is downfall to climb over, we will go off route to find some adventure, and there is a good chance that there will be blood, since this is no country for old men.

Planning next week's ride.

What was he imagining? That hidden somewhere up Sleeping Child there was a machine built trail with a pleasant middle chain ring climb followed by a fun fast downhill filled with grade reversals, sight lines and bermed turns.

So do you become an old man when you give up the Wednesday night rides, or do you stop riding when you become too old.  The list of former riders who seem to aged out of the group seems to grow longer with every season, and now that I'm one of the veterans, I occasional ponder when I'll follow Jay and Shrek, Joe and Warwick, and others who predate me into obsolescence or is that convalescence. Usually is seems to be somewhere between 50 and 60, even if a few have chosen early retirements, and there is a good chance Joel  will break the 6o barrier a few years hence.

Doing what everyone wanted to do at the top of the climb

For some of the under 40 riders out there, they can still skip a few rides or even seasons, and still be able to jump back on the train.  For some of us, at least for me, is the realization that if I don't get on at the station, I'll never be able to catch the caboose once it gets rolling.

So for those who haven't ridden Sawdust, it is our early season test piece to see how your lungs and legs survived the winter.  Roughly a 15% grade for 1.5 miles you get to redline from the start, and while your vision blurs add in the fists of death studding the road. In years past it was always an accomplishment to just get up it with dabbing or walking.  Now everyone, even those feigning a lack of fitness, ride the climb clean.  In the good old days after almost killing ourselves we would contour over to the Forbidden Ridge, but not this year.  No this years guide added not one be two more climbs.

The first another steep road to the saddle overlooking Skalkaho. The second a mad trail free scramble with mountain bikes crisscrossing each other to the top of ridge line knob, like a bunch of ants getting out of the anthill at the first sign of spring, while the whole time I was hoping someone would get off and walk, so I could do the same thing with a modicum of dignity.  Of course everyone rode the ascent clean. Just when I'm starting to look forward to my future Thailand vacation to get a few joints replaced, and having the chance to sit at home and anxiously ponder my retirement account, everyone else decided to keep pedaling all winter on trainers with heart rate monitors or on fat bikes in the snow.

Aaron ready for some unknown to him at the time unplanned dismounts.

Kevin claimed he was demonstrating his anguish.  Looks like he was practicing some blanket hornpipe.

Once at the top, Chad informed us that we had several options for going back down. We could do Forbidden rRidge. We could do the ridge barely legal ridge from last year, or we could look for a trail on some other ridge that he had never been on, then take it down to a old road bed that he had never been on, then loop around to another knob he had never been on and then finally ride that back down to Sleeping Child. So once again the herd put our lives in his greasy hands and bounced and flounced our way into the  unknown.

Final resting spot after his wife caught him taking a flyer with his Turner

Did I mention that the climb was steep? My mistake, the descent was steep. And the sidehill?  I'm not even going there.  Was there a trail? No.  Was there an old road bed? Yes. Did we use it? No. While everyone survived the climb, the bush whacking over and around the sage and down the untouched ridge claimed a few dismounts, but luckily no blood.

Flow is all in your head

How about the grilling.  Oh yeah there was none this week, actually I grilled some wonderful venison sirloin when I got home, since no one brought a portable grill this week.  Speaking of grilling, good news marinating your animal products in beer decreases the number of carcinogens created by turning animal flesh into charcoal.


For a ride that is too steep, with no flow, and in fact no trail at all for the descent, everyone was exceptionally perky on the final cool down to the cars. Maybe there is more to a good time than flow.

Soft Rock 2014

After writing ride reports for awhile now, I have sadly come to realize that I'm running out of witty things to say. So with the new ride season upon us I'm going to introduce some guest bloggers to share the load. This weeks guest blogger will be someone, or rather something that has joined me for nearly every Wednesday ride over the three previous seasons. So here to bring you a fresh POV is my Vitamin P Ibis Mojo HD.

Not to sound ungrateful or anything, but it's about fucking time. If it wasn't for me, I don't how many times that dolt Monkey Doo would have ended up a Raggedy Andy missing his button eyes and hanging by his blue bow tie off some lodgepole limb.

When I first arrived here 3 years ago there we doubts whether my carbon fiber was up to the rocks and roots of the Bitterroot. Well despite the utter incompetence of Monkey Doo dropping me onto countless sharp bits of granite in Blodgett, Camas, and now Soft Rock, I'm still here, having survived longer than some of those supposedly sturdier aluminum frames.

It feels good to be out of the garage and back on the soft loam, no hard packed fire roads, no dust insinuating its way into my linkages, and no mud clinging to my luscious nearly neon greenish yellowish hide.   Finally, you know who, has given up his winter infatuation with that Mukluk monstrosity, and his early season love affair with that that cachectic roadie.  Just a passing thought, since I'm the one doing to ass poking, why I do always have to be the bottom?

After a prolonged visit to the spa at Red Barn, I feel rejuvenated with fresh bearings, new rear derailleur, chain ring chain, a new blue saddle to replace that duct taped embarrassment, maybe some blue flat pedal bling, and an uber cushy Cane Creek DB Air. I guess those Bitterroot trails had put some wear and tear on me.

Thinking back over the last few years, the changes I have gone through have been pretty staggering. I started out as a svelte 5" travel cross country racing machine, and over the years I have bulked up into a 7" all mountain slayer.  As much as I have enjoyed the makeover, I just wish I had a rider who could push me to my limits.




I was so jealous some of the bikes I hadn't seen much of the last few seasons like Giant and Delirium, who actually got a a chance to get decent air off the jumps and rock drops off the ridge at Soft Rock. Instead I had the indignity of micro-air and the abuse of premature  flat landings. 

There are time I think the Caballero Sin Cojones believes that if he just tricks me out just a little bit more, maybe with flat pedals or a chain guide, he can be the next Aaron Gwin or Stevie Smith. I hate to break it to him that with his diminished reflexes and reading glasses, even the sweetest bike made is not going to turn him into a downhill jedi.




Finally, those organics got over their fear of cold and dark, and nearly a month later than last year we got riding. It was probably the first time Soft Rock had ever seen a herd of 12 to 13 mountain bikes. The herd included Giant who has been missing for at least two seasons, both of the Knolly brothers, the ever elusive Ellsworth, the usual Turner and Ventana clans, and that sweet Raleigh number whose hard tail makes my dropper post hydraulics boil, if you know what I mean.  One El Ciclon is still missing, and I'm only mentioning it, because I want his rider to invite us down to New Zealand for some riding.



One thing I have noticed recently and it really dries my chain are those annoying blobs of blubber that have popped up all over the place.   Everything is great with day after day of rolling in the dirt, hopping logs, and airing over obstacles, then suddenly you are locked up in the garage hosting generation after generation of spider webs.

 The lucky ones demeaned to getting strapped to a Burley so you can tow those shrieking shit making machines to the Farmers Market. Fuck, I hate those little fuckers, and it doesn't get better.  Even now Monkey Doo ignores me every other Wednesday so he can make the even bigger parasites they turn into dinner or help them with homework.

So how was the ride?  Few things are better than rubbing against sagebrush while carving turns on soft loam single track, with outcrops of grippy granite to play on and pine needle and cone covered hillsides to grind up.  At one point a herd of elk outnumbered us and forced us to retrace our treads and find a new hill to climb.  Not a huge day, but our riders with their flabby early season legs and winter insulation managed to power out 9+ miles.

The current rumor is an out and back on Brennan's Gulch.  If I'm lucky, maybe I can swap riders so that I can get a chance to stretch my suspension and not just roll the kelly humps.

Love,
Mojo