Feb 27, 2010

Picketpost Mtn - Superior, AZ

Had a nice little roll one Picktpost yestaday with surfndav. The drive my place in Phoenix to Superior was just about an hour. Here is link to Epicrider's map of the area: Picketpost.

Real nice trail, except for I kinda led us off in the wrong direction from the beginning. I wasn't paying to close attention as we took the jeep road up for the first mile or so.

Mental Note #73: Take the trail to about 20 feet to the east of the gate, not the trail behind the gate. I shoulda looked at the map before I hit the trail.

Mental Note #74: If you skip Mental Note #73 you can tie back into the trail when you the jeep road takes you down to the creek. Just follow the creek DOWN (not up) about quater mile and you get back to the trail.

We were a little bit concerned about getting rained on, so we turned around when we got to Telegraph Canyon Rd.

It was uber green out there, and it was nice to see a little water in the creeks. We stopped and checked out a nice little grotto, perhaps this was Trough Spring???

I was actually kinda tired when I pealed myself off the trail. It wasn't all that demanding, but I was pedaling a my 37 lbs Reign X.

Here is a little vid of the ride:

Feb 6, 2010

Daily Double: Mtn Biking and Skiing the same day

I rolled outta bed this morning and decided to take a light easy ride out the helipad, but this time I thought I'd bring the heavy bike.

Rolling on Desert Classic wasn't as mundane as I thought it was gonna be, but after all this Giant Reign X pedals really well. I was mostly interested in hitting the little jumps and drops that have started to appear recently on the Helipad DH.

During the climb up the helipad, the thought dawned on me that if I get home early enough from this ride, I could feasibly split from town and be down to Mt. Lemmon (near Tucson, AZ) to catch a afternoon ski session. So I picked up the pace, and railed the downhill. It was mighty fun having big travel and big rotors on this little bit of downhill. Woot!

I got back to the house about 9:15 am, and was out the door about 20 minutes later on my quest for a my second adventure for the day. I was nearing Tucson an hour and fifteeen minutes later, but then I spent nearly an hour crawling my way through to to the Catalina Highway, and then a little less than an hour going up the highway up to Ski Valley. Mental Note #73: Never follow Google.Maps route suggestion of getting off on Miracle Mile/Grant. Instead take the route I took a route home that seemed a lot faster and easier. Next time, I'll be rolling down Ina Rd/Skyline/Sunset/Kolb/Sabino Canyon. My return route even with heavy traffic on I-10 was 2.5 hours.

Ever since the big snow a few weeks ago, I've been wanting to cash in on the small window of skiing Ski Valley on Mt. Lemmon, which happens to be the southern most ski resort in the U.S.. I had an idea this place was going to be pretty dinky, and a half day is all it would take for me to entirely way to bored, hence the reason heading down for an afternoon session. Once I got there, it had exceeded my expectations big time. It was pretty small, only two double lifts, and just a handful of groomers. What really surpised me was the coverage was actually pretty good, the hill was actually pretty steep, the trees were spaced out really well, and pretty much everything 10' off the groomers were untouched. I mean really untouched. I don't know when the last snow was, but it had been a while yet nobody found the snow inviting.

On my first run down, I met up with another teledood, and showed me a number of really nice glades and gullies. The stuff over by the observatory was just a short 3 minute trek to get to and Powerline run to the south left us with just a 5 minute boot pack out.

Not to make this place way better than it is, I was pleasantly surprised what a neato excursion this place can be. The lines were nothing, and crowd control was a non issue. If the conditions are always like this, I could easily spend a whole day here.

I pretty much skied in a t-shirt and mtn bike gloves, until the last couple of runs when the wind kinda picked up and my gloves got wet. I dawned a jacket and heavy gloves, but the whole day I was pretty dang comfy.

I did get a little footage of my a.m. mountain bike ride, but I didn't realize I was having battery issues during my ski adventure. So I won't bother you with some boring footage, cuz even the mtn biking scenes weren't that entertaining.

Two passions in a day, what could be better. Well, hopefully one day I can link some Snowbowl and Sedona riding together. Shoot I think I might even throw some kayaking in the mix too.

Feb 4, 2010

GoPro Chesty Testy - National: South Mountain Park

I picked up a little accessory for my GoPro Helmet Cam: Wide today for some new angles.

The Chest Mount Harness will allow me to film the forward action along with the my handlebars/hands to give a little more perspective on what is going on during a ride.

Other than some aiming issues, it worked great. The added bonus is that I can monitor the camera far more easily than when it is mounted on my helmet. I no longer need to yank off my helmet to turn the camera on and off.

I will either grow my belly bigger or add spacer behind the mount to point the camera up a little bit. Easy fix.

Here is short vid of me rolling down National with the Chesty (be patient, I maxed out the bitrate, so buffer might be a bit slow):