Best of 2006

well, i supposed that'd be the Grand View Trail mtb tour that Amanda and I attempted on our Coconino's last Memorial Day weekend.

actually, we started at the Thunder Mountain trail and descended the 11-ish mile singletrack through some rad hoo-doos and crazy switchbacks to the western end of the GVT. from there it's ~70 miles of supposedly nonmotorized trail that tours the Sunset Cliffs, wraps around the Paunsaugunt Plateau, skirting along it's base on some pretty damn remote trail, climbing to the the crest of the plateau on gravel roads, dropping crazy fast on sandy trails probably once used by stockmen and hunters, and terminates at the Sheep Ck TH east of the "fish hook" of Bryce C. National Park.

it wasn't all fun and games though. a fair bit of the trail gets very little use and is just plain hard to find. trail crews hadn't been through in ages, so rock slides and down trees were a constant presence. obtaining drinking water was also a reality of the trip, since it was generally only present in major drainages. that kinda limited where we camped and how much riding we'd committ to in a day. after the 3+ days of riding, slogging, and carrying our loaded touring bikes we took a "bail out" UP Mill Ck to the rim of the plateau, then rode 30 miles of gravel roads back to our vehicle at the Thunder Mtn TH.
it was a bit of a shock emerging from one of the gnarliest and remote trail bike tours i'd tried to a beautiful plateau, completely infested with RV's parked all over meadows (probably 60 different trailers or vehicles along 20 miles of dirt road), OHV galore (the only person we saw on foot was one fella fishing) and dusty roads. oh well, next time, we'll make sure we finish at a trailhead.

the Grand View Trail is completely open to nonmotorized travel and is an EPIC of a trail bike tour. go light, allow 4 days to ride the trail and arrange a car shuttle or a day to ride the roads back and spread the word. this route is awesome and entirely underused - by nonmoto folks. anyone game for another attempt next spring? contact the USFS and search out some info if you like, but here's the beta i travelled with... water and trailheads are indicated. special thanks got to Greg G. for motivating me to explore this route, and apologies for not actually riding it with him. i'd like to make another attempt this spring and would welcome anyone that want's to go on a vision quest. any takers out there???

Best of the Baconstrip: Pancakes

So the trend is to do a best of list. Everyone is doing it, though they usually involve music and books and other stuff. We're going a different route. I'm doing a personal best of on i am indisposed, but this is the place to post your bacon strip related best of's!

Best Pancakes:

It was May 19th of 2006. Olaf was in my driveway @ 5 or 5:30 or some insane hour as planned. We loaded up to the towers in his truck and met The Grissly One. Waited a few minutes for J.R. but proceeded as it wasn't totally clear he was comming.

It was dark for the first few miles. McD cought up to us pre Poeville, just in time to see me faceplant into a ditch. Too early for bunnyhopping. We proceeded up the road past the pond and to the intersection with the main road.

Near the top of peavine we cought the waft of coffee and maple syrup. We were met by Matt and Mike from Patagonia who proceeded to grill us some killer cakes. Those guys rode up the night before and camped out. That's love.

We never managed to get another PancakeRide on, but I feel it coming in 2007!

-M

X-Mas Unicycling

Greasons Seetings!

Smella, The Bean and I went down to the unidrome and freeride park this AM to have a little sun and warm winter air. I had a perticularly good sessh on the uni. 10 or so trips across the court and all the way across the field twice!

Hope you're all having a fine day!

-M

bienvenidos, Nooner

The Bacon Strip grows thanks to our recent draft. Skid marks now stretch from the Continental Divide to the Pacific Crest with the addition of Nuninator, aka Nooner, or getoverheregoddamnit as our Pyramid Lake headwaters correspondent. Wildland fire fighter by profession, sawyer and trail builder by training, telenator and bikinator by day. Drinkinator by happy hour... bienvenidos. cuidado, piedra mojada, me gusto cerveza. Say, where's the pic of indian blanket wearing Tecate toting apres ski Nooner? Rock the house, my friend.

Japhy rider

Lawn Dart

this what you meant by "neck deep powder," N.J.?

Nefarious J

Dear Baconstrippers,

You may have noticed the new additions to our Team. Sphincterboy is our corespondent from the Rockies, chairman of the committee of redundancy committee, burner of the sacred relics, and fashion critic. His purpose is to goad us from afar and remind us of MontyPython lines we’d forgotten. Last words I heard from him were, “neck deep powder…” I’ll let J.R. introducs the Nooninator.

-M

If there are others who should be added to the team forward them on to me. (remember that our co-mission of providing dsigusting/funny content along with urban/dirtbag/hipster/pseudo-adventure)

Letter to the editor

RGJ,

In your cover article today on the traffic problems on Pyramid Hwy you focused on ways to make the road accomodate increasing numbers of vehicles. Why were there no discussions of ways to decrease the numbers of vehicles on the road? If the stores are in a compact area why is it necessary to have everyone in their own vehicle?

Adding better opportunities for public transportation and non-motorized transportation is a much cheeper option that is better for the community. Focusing on them first will create incentive to utilize them rather than advocating construction projects that come at a great cost to our community and environment. What's that? you say you can't go shopping on a bicycle? www.xtracycle.com/, bakfietscargo.blogspot.com/, better put out the cigarette(in an ashtray) and guess again!

-M

Keyesville

I'm going to make my de-butt into endurance racing @ the Keyesville Classic this year. Smella has agreed to crew for me, JR and GBG have shown interest. Anyone else want to share camp, kitchen, and cooler? Forward on to extended family who may be interested and let's have a ball.

Keyesville Classic
Retro Race
MTBR Photos

Lots of other stuff to do in the area including, riding, climbing and hott tubbing.

-M

play it as it lies

um, a few years ago, the Garros, B. Siebert (spelling?), and I were trail riding near Flagstaff when low & behold, a big dead tree was found to have layed itself across the trail. it was pretty freshly fallen with no easy ride around - the best line was right over the ~30" high log with the help of a rock or 2...
word on the street is that when a trail crew came through, rather than clear the rocks and cut the log, they bucked a section of log next to the rocks so you could roll up and over or ride right on by. perhaps they just didn't want to bother with moving those things out of the way!

stuff like this is a far cry from boardwalks and teeter totters that the FS is lashing out against, more like keeping things as primitive as possible. yet kinda spicy...

So high I think I got a nose bleed!

She found it.

-M

"Women who don't like swallowing..."

I guess it takes all kinds.

-M

Bootleg Trails

Check out the article in Moonshine Ink linked in the title. I can't believe those boogerheads don't understand. I wrote some articles for the Foundation For North American Wild Sheep a few years ago. The only reason that industry is so successfull politically is because of the money the throw at it and the taxes on hunting gear that go towards its regulation. Think of a 10% tax on MTB parts and how much we spend and how far that would go (and how much some of us save on gas not driving every day).

Good article, but clearly those guys still don't get it. I may be wrong, I know that I don't do enough to make it better.

-M

(edit: What I meant by that last statement is that while a good portion of that article talked about successes in trailbuilding within the system it seems strange that the comments would focus on going back out and building more bootleg trails that are just going to be torn down again.)
Further discussion: Is a wood ladder-drop in the national forrest any different than one in your back yard in town? Are constructed features, other than those necessary for building good trails, adding to or taking away from the natural environment we go out there to enjoy? i.e. peavine dirt, rim trail dirt, holeintheground rocks... Two-by-fours?

Plumas Freeride Park

After a leisurely breakfast of coffee and French Toast @ my house J.R. and I proceeded with bikes and dogs to Plumas Park for some tomfoolery. My initial trepidation over the wall drop was no longer an issue. There was some trials'n'. Some jumpin' and some down-right hucking. Thanks to the nice landings McD was only marred with grass stains. He actually rolled the shortest point on the wall, amazingly, then made the mistake of trying that again...

The Nooninator joined us and immeadiately took up with the shenanagins. The rock kicker was perfect. Once we got a feel for it and started hitting it faster the landing was perfect.

There's more to be done there including a nice wall ride and some kind of engineered kicker to take advantage of the nice grassy slope of the terrace between the fields...

-M

And where was the Grisslybikegeek??? AT HOME washing his tights!

Note: We were mindful of the old stone and mortar work and avoided damaging it. No rail slides, no grinds, bashringing.