Swope Trails on the Brain

Last Spring I started doing a little trail building out at Swope and got slightly obsessed. Well last Saturday I went out for the first scheduled work day on Phase 3 and had a blast. Travis Stephens, Bryce Lawrence, myself and a few others made a beautiful gully crossing and benched some trail leading up to it and away from it. I have been out two more times this week for multi-hour bench cut sessions by myself. I am totally stoked on getting that trail done. So much so that I ignored the blisters that I earned on Saturday.

And after working today they look like this.

Don't worry I will be just fine. Next time you are out enjoying a ride through Swope Park Trails just think about all the volunteers who suffered to make that place so kick ass. I would go out and see if I could get down to bare bone working on the trails over the weekend. But alas, I am headed down to Arkansas to climb for the weekend. See ya suckas later.

Reel Rock Film Tour

Next Friday the 20th of November, the Reel Rock Film Tour will be in KC. Hosted by The North Face and the American Alpine Club. It starts at 7 p.m. so get there (the North Face Store on The Plaza)for a good seat. Best part is admission is free, and there is swag to be had. Now wait, why the hell am I advertising this if there is swag. That just decreases my chances of getting some. I guess sometimes I am a Reel nice guy. Check out the link to the trailer, looks sweeeeet!

Vo Legs Full Speed Ahead

Last Spring my wife got the crazy idea that she was going to start running. It started by her wanting to the Trolley Run in April which quickly hatched into a plan of doing the Rock n Roll half marathon in Chicago with her sisters Angie and Ngoc. All summer she trained and once a week i would lace up my shoes to go out and do her long run with her. This consisted mostly of the Trolley Trail. A crushed gravel trail through the city that is boring as ever to run on but good for developing some endurance without suffering through hills.

August quickly came, and Bit was off to Chicago for the big event while I stole away to Wyoming for a climbing trip. She had a great time and finished in 2:32, meeting her goal of completing the 13.1 miles without walking (except for the one bathroom break).

Have Ipod, will run. With smile on face.

With One under her belt she quickly decided that she was going to do the KC Half Marathon and both Ngoc and Angie were in as well. Ngoc has been a runner for years while Angie and Bit had just taken it up this year. With a little confidence and much improved stamina for hills, Bit and I started doing some trail running as part of her training. I found great relief in this. I only moderately enjoy running, and despise the Trolley Trail after this summer. Now trail running is a totally different story. Going out to Landahl and Swope park for a jaunt through the woods is very nice. Bit quickly learned to appreciate the peacefulness of the woods, as well as the training benefits of technical trails with plenty of elevation change.

The weekend finally arrived and the house was taken over by the Vo sisters. Saturday morning the alarm went off at 5:30 and I set off to starbucks to get coffee while last preparations were made. I dropped a car load of Vo's off near the starting line then bolted home to grab the dogs. The pups and I left the house and met Jeremy and Zion to look for our respective runners up at Main & Westport Rd.. We never saw Trish or Ngoc in the endless crowd of runners. And I know I would not have seen Bit if she didn't coming running straight out of the stampede to give me akiss then sprint back into the sea of runners. She looked very energetic and was just ahead of the 2:15 pace group. Angie came by several minutes later rocking out to her ipod and not hearing me yell to her.

Dogs in tow I jogged over to Gillham and 40th St. to cheer them on around mile 9 and to hand out accelerade gels and sharkies gummies (sorry Ngoc). Again we missed Ngoc, but my Mom and Andy had been there for the last 20 minutes and said she went flying by. Bit made her brief appearance looking strong and still holding a steady time. Angie made her way to my support station getting her energy gels, which she said she really needed at this point. The course had been very hilly and there are zero I repeat zero hills in Chicago to train on. Everyone finished, having a great run despite cold and damp conditions. Bit finished in 2:16 knocking a whopping 16 minutes off her previous time, talk about leaps and bounds. I am sure there are going to be plenty more of these to come in the future.

Vo girls post race. Sorry Sean!

Cyclocross

I had heard of it and finally this year I experienced it first hand. Two weeks ago I met some other Team Ethos riders and competed in the Boss Cross Race in Parkville, MO. I liked the pain enough to do my second race today, the Boulevard Cup at Wyandotte County Park.

Cyclocross works like this. Take a road bike, make it capable of dropping loading docks and monster trucking over a ball of human and bicycle, slap some knobby tires on it, and be ready to ride this machine to the verge of technicolor yawning all down your jersey. It is usually held at a park on a twisty turvy coarse marked off by police type tape between wooden stakes in the ground, with occasional obstacles that require you to dismount and go over them on foot. The race consists of getting as many laps in a 30 minute period for intermediate riders, and 50 minutes for the advanced riders. Basically it is the most fun you can have on a bicycle in the absence of roots, rocks and benchcuts. The other huge perk is that after you are done racing there is hoards of warm food and cold beer all while watching other groups race. Because it is held in a park the course is very compact and makes for a great spectator sport unlike most cycling events.

Today brought beautiful weather, a very technical course and great friends to cheer on. Second race of the day had Travis Donn, Kevin Winters, Jamie Jeffries and myself duking it out with 90 other riders in a combined group of Cat 4, Cat 4 40+, and Junior Boys and Girls. The start was mayheim with several wrecks within the first 1000 yds. I redlined for 4 long laps having a great time with only one little tumble to get 19th out of 50 riders in my class. Travis Donn ran away with 1st winning by a comfortable margin. Kevin made his goal for the day by not DFL'in (dead fucking last).

Two other Ethos stallions Garet and Cameron raced in the single speed category with Cameron putting the hurt on his fellow racers grabbing 1st with Garet finishing ultrastrong in 3rd. We all had a great time cheering on everyone and drinking the Tank 7 provided by Boulevard, that stuff is the bomb.com. pics to come soon.

Travis justifying all the money spent on his bike!

Jamie schooling the police tape.

Bi-monthly

Since I have been trying to post at least twice a month on my blog. Here is numero dos. My dogs have been obsessed with a possum that frequents our back yard. Here is a priceless photo of them wondering what to do with the nasty little creature.

The brown one went right up to it, sniffed it and took a big bite of it. The possum promptly bit her right back and spooked her. After that the black one was very hesitant to get to close. Specially after seeing the creature fight back and because of all of the hissing and stench it was projecting. I took the dogs inside.

15 minutes later I opened the back door to see if it was still there. The dogs must have been discussing possum sieging strategy while inside, because they burst out onto the porch and in a flurry plucked the vile thing of of the cable and each took to shaking and pulling on their respective end. It went immediately limp and Cooper (the black one) trotted down the steps towards the yard with his trophy in tow. i yelled for him to stop and drop it, which he did. The possum was doing what he or she does best and looked/smelled convincingly dead. I scooped it up onto a board to toss it over the fence. It's prehensile tail groped for the cables of the railing while it was being raised. Thunk, inside dogs.

10 minutes later the possum had finished acting and was nowhere to be found.

While on the subject here is a classic. Enjoy

Too Good for Smithville Trails

Having heard about the trails for years and never actually ridden them. I had built it up in my mind that they were lame and not worth the drive up there when I could go to Landahl or BuRP in the same amount of time.

Well this morning I took a major hit to my ego. Yes, sometimes I am dead wrong. In this instance being dead wrong is pretty dog gone good. Travis and I headed to Smithville for a late morning start. He had ridden there twice before. The parking lot was nice and paved with an official trailhead marker and maps. We dropped in on the East side and rode all the way to Sailboat Cove then headed back sampling everything on the west side. Ninety minutes later we rolled into the parking lot with grins on our faces. The trails were plentiful and lots of fun. Tight single track through trees, rock gardens, and open fields. Big burmed corners, lots of low radius switch backs and alot more climbing than I had expected.

This is how all fast singletrack should ride. Shawnee Mission Park needs to take a few lessons from the northland dirt. psyched for next time!

Wyoming

My buddy Chris Johnson and I have been talking for several years about meeting up for a back country climbing trip in Wind River Range. The Winds are a popular hiking, fishing, backpacking and thankfully climbing destination. Cirque of the Towers is the main climbing attraction, rightfully so. The Cirque, as it is referred to, is a massive ridge of perfect alpine granite encompassing several alpine lakes, meadows, and more boulders than you can imagine.

After making the long drive across the plains I arrived at the trail head campground. Chris had just got there 30 minutes earlier and his truck had already purged all of the clutter and gear from the back onto the ground. We ate, drank, talked trash and tried to organize for the next day.

After a good nights sleep we began the horrible process of finding out how much our backpacks were actually going to weigh. Climbing gear, backpacking gear, and 6 days worth of food quickly added up to around 75 lbs. We should have brought a scale for justification. Regardless they were large, heavy and very uncomfortable. Luckily the first 5.5 miles to Big Sandy Lake has very little elevation gain and we were able to bang it out in less than 2 hours. We rested soaked our feet then began the rough and tumble trail to the Cirque. 3 hours later with aching hips we crested Jackass Pass to see the Cirque in all of it's beauty.

Chris on the trail to good times. the faint red lines are routes that we got to sample. From

right to left; NE Face of Pingora, South Buttress of Pingora, and East Ridge of Wolfshead

We established camp hung our food and started planning for routes.

After a late start the next day we stumbled up to the NE Face of Warrior I. My legs and hips were sore and stiff, and by 11 a.m. we were climbing. The first 4 pitches were mungy and not exactly what I had hoped for. Trip reports I had read online had rave reviews of this climb. The next 4 pitches improved dramatically and I lucked out and got the money pitch. 100ft of thin hands to hands on splitter granite followed by 50 ft of thin crack and slab climbing on and above rp's.

Me finally thinking that all the choss up to this point

has been totally worth it.

The following day we got up early (like you are supposed to for alpine) and boulder hopped our way over to the NE Face of Pingora in the dark. We got there at 6:50 to find 2 party's already on the route, and moving painfully slow. I have never understood how such slow people manage to arrive at routes so early. Chris and i took our time mulling around the base using the restroom and finally got started once the upper party was at the 2nd belay and the leader from the lower party was almost 1/2 way up the second pitch. The lower party's follower was having trouble making the face traverse moves off the first belay when Chris suggested placing a cam then clipping a cordelette into the cam so he could tension traverse. He did this then we unclipped his cam so he could reel it in. I gave him a 60 ft head start then lead up the 2nd pitch to share the belay with the lower party. They had decided to bail, yippee, so i waited for them both to get down and out of the way before bringing Chris up. We climbed efficiently upwards on pitch after pitch of the best alpine granite that I have layed my hands on in years. We caught the upper party on the 7th pitch and shared the last 4 belays with them. Around 1 we summited, snapped some photos then took our time on the descent with no eminent weather visible. Once at the base of the SW Face of Pingora we found a little waterfall and some dry grass with an excellent view.

We hung out for several hours to avoid the horrible mosquito's down in our camp. Around 4 we stashed our gear in the boulders since we planned on coming back up the following day for a link up of 2 routes. Once back in camp we found Chris's roommate Tommy and his friend Todd. They were supposed to be in the day before, and had gotten to the Cirque after dark, setting up camp within 50 yards of us incredibly.

The third day we woke up to rain, then sun, then rain and so on. Late morning we gave up on climbing and headed down to lonesome lake to explore and watch Tommy and Todd fish for dinner. By 3 p.m. the clouds had cleared and blue skies had returned. Chris and I hoofed it to camp, got food and water then blitzed up the trail to our gear. While retrieving our packs 2 like minded individuals walked by. One of them looked very familiar and we soon realized that it was Jeff, a friend of Chris's ex-girlfriend who we had climbed with in the desert several years prior. We caught up while scrambling to the base of the South Buttress of Pingora. Jeff and Drake chose some route left of the buttress proper and we took something to the right. 3 pitches later Chris was finishing up the gorgeous "K-Cracks" with some very threatening weather on top of us. It was around 5:30, we made 5 fast double rope rappels to reach the ground and ran back down to camp avoiding getting drenched.

The following day we climbed my favorite route of the trip. Wolfshead via the East Ridge III 5.6 unadulterated fun. Pristine Alpine setting, check. Perfect Alpine granite, check. Knife edge ridge, check. Massive exposure, check. Crazy gendarmes, check. Hand traverses on splitter cracks, check. Foot traverses on splitter cracks, check. This route dished out the goods pitch after pitch. Chris and I kept thinking that I had just climbed the "money pitch" when his next pitch would be even better. We approached via the gully between Tiger Tower and Pingora then traversed into the start. This turned out to be very easy and quite quick. The standard approach via the grassy ledges looked very wet and took some party's several hours as opposed to the 30 minutes for the gully. The photos do not do this climb justice at all, if I went back I would climb this route again in a heartbeat.

Wolfshead as viewed from the south.

We waited below Wolfshead till Tommy and Todd were done with the NE Face of Pingora then we all headed down to camp for dinner.

That night we had some snowflakes in the evening, and woke up to cold windy weather which quickly turned into moderate to heavy snow. We had planned on hiking halfway out, doing a climb on Sundance Pinnacle then making our way back to the trail head. Instead we scrambled to get camp broke then hit the trail before too much snow could accumulate. Thankfully the rocks were melting the snow and only a small amount was showing up on the grassy areas. By the time we got to Big Sandy Lake, we were below the clouds and it was easy hiking to the cars. Once back to the parking lot, beers, chips, cheese and candy were devoured. Jeff and his partner Drake soon showed up and the 6 of us went to Pinedale for calories. It was an excellent trip, and I am now psyched for a trip to the Bugaboos next summer.

Myself, Tommy, Todd and Chris right before the weather moved in.