Flushing Down the Dry Beaver

Welcome to Arizona paddling....a week long season happening by way of a rapid warming trend following a cold and snowy winter.  Only in Arizona can you run Dry Beaver Creek, desert counterpart to the perennial Wet Beaver Creek.  There are in fact beaver in this normally dry stream bed.  As semi-novice kayakers with plenty of time on the water in other craft, boat control but no ability  to roll, Ack and I were looking for something with less volume than those found in the more popular run-offs, and hopefully less vegetation, too.  The incredible amounts ebb and flow of the streams here means that the growing season for riparian vegetation is long and the flood cycle is short and infrequent.  This holds particularly true on perennial streams so with our most "educated" guess withstanding we took a stab at a section of creek for which we could find exactly no information.  None.  Zero.  Zip.  The best I got from a real paddling buddy was, "yeah, people run that."  Good enough for me.  The section was from Highway 179 just south of the Village of Oak Creek to Interstate 17 in McGuireville....about 12 river miles with a 10 mile bike shuttle via the highway.  With our shuttle set we launched our boats downstream into water that would be dropping in volume all day from a start around 350 cfs.  

Our theory here was that in Dry Beaver, since it only holds water during flood cycles that there would be less vegetation and more open waterway.  Wet Beaver according to the paddling guide is not runnable due to perennial flow and resulting vegetation.  Within a few minutes of launching we were greeted by fence wire and for me a branch to the shoulder that didn't want to move.  Soon thereafter we found ourselves boating in an alder forest.  This is about the scariest boating imaginable, but the volumes here today were nothing in comparison to Monday's run of Beaver Creek below the confluence of Wet and Dry which saw double the flow.  This allowed for generally safe scouting of the forested waterways and portaging (French for "I'm a crappy boater") where necessary.  There were stretches here clogged with bank to bank debris and water flowing beneath it.  So much for our theory. Only once did we find ourselves in a bind where a seemingly clear channel was met with a water-level four inch log.  Ack was able to bunnyhop the log in the more nimble green boat.  I got stuck underneath it.  Backwards.  Boat under log.  Body pinned, but upright.  Ack was able to help me out of the jam.   Scout those forest sections thoroughly.

AZ forest boating

Eventually our theory did pan out and we got about 6 miles or great open channel boating.  There were still some strainers to be found on the banks, but the main channel by and large was open and runnable Class II/III water with some great wave trains and even a few more challenging rapids with pillows and holes.  This made fore a totally worthwhile trip at this water level.  A little more water would still be do-able but I can't imagine it being great at over 450 cfs.  Mostly because the ability to scout the forest sections would disappear.  The end of the day was met with broad streams and multi-channel arm boating and a gradual return to forest boating at lower, flatter water approaching our take out.

Ack swims and I fill and drain

A common sight - rock bar pour over through vegetation

A great open class III rapid

Crappy Bikes

This concludes our Northern Arizona whitewater season.  Until more snow melts, thanks for reading!

Intro to Bike Packing - Bike Packers Gear Reference

In exchange for who knows what sort of livestock and mining activities we, the mountain bikers of Arizona have been gifted with a 70+ mile point to point purpose built singletrack, the Black Canyon Trail.  And while a lot of people opt to ride long day sections of this trail with shuttles I prefer to do this with heavy bikes and camping gear to get the whole desert experience over three days.  This year the ride was dubbed "Intro to Bike Packing"....and everyone was promised a real shit show, though not so much as to be confused with similar class offerings as "intro to mountain biking," or "intro to camping,"  or "intro to fraternal organizations." These other courses would of course be prerequisites.  

The turnout of 10 brought a variety of backgrounds and experience levels to the plate and of the riders present only two or three had prior bike packing experience.  Since the scenic aspects of the trail can be found in last year's blog post: "Touring the Black Canyon Trail", what follows will be more of a photographic reference of the bike packing setups on this trip, how they came to be, and their pros and cons.  Most loads were cobbled together from stuff lying around in bike friendly garages.  Riders were encouraged to buy nothing and make it work with what they had or could borrow.

It should be noted that at most we were carrying only a day's worth of food and water at a time, though caution to the wind does allow for carrying excess.  Black Canyon Trail is about as easy as it gets in terms of a bike packing trip and allows for plentyful water sources in a wet winter (probably not so in other months), a restaurant detour featuring the state pie of AZ, and a convenient place to cache food and spirits if one were so inclined.  All this adds up to a pretty light load on a heavy bike suitable to rookies and hacks alike.

Mr. Walker's Krampus:     29"+ Singlespeed Rigid.  Revelate Seatbag.  Full size tent and bedroll tied to handlebars.  Medium pack.  

Pros:  Big Wheels crush all....mucho momentum.  Balanced load.  

Cons:  None until you get into steep climbs or multi-day routes.

Richardo's Touring 29er 000 High & Tight Rust Bucket:  Geared 29.  Integrated Fork Rack with Jandd expandable panniers.  Light Rear rack with bedroll tied on.  Feed bag for convenient cold beverages when available.  Light Pack for food and water.  This is essentially the same setup I used for Colorado Trail last year.

Pros:  Design refined over years of bike touring.  Medium front load sticks into corners and handles great.  Front bags absorb vibrations.

Cons:  Bike Touring isn't Bike Packing.  Awaiting the next incarnation.

Taxidermist Treadwell's Karate Monkey:  Single Speed 29er.  Homemade frame pack.  Medium Seat Bag.  Various handlebar attachments.  Medium Pack.  This is a pro looking setup for multi-day adventure, but this was the Taxidermist's first bike pack.  He's hoping for an AZ trail run on this setup later this year.  Shred well taxidermist.

Pros:  use a setup like the taxidermist.

Cons:  Well I'd want some gears, but that's me.

KP's Blizzard:  26" steel hardtail.  Tubeless.  Rear rack and panniers.  Improvised handlebar bag tied on with cinch straps.  Light Pack.

Pros:  Plenty of storage.  Why buy a handlebar bag??

Cons:  Rear Panniers = heel rub, loose straps, poor weight placement, and unexpected drag on rocks. 

This setup was all borrowed or improvised which is great for someone's first bike packing trip.  It sets you back $0 and you can figure out what works and what doesn't.  In this case more didn't work than would be desired.  The rear road panniers had straps that could catch and drag on about anything the bags themselves did not scrape.  KP's heels were constantly hitting the bags even though they were adjusted as rearward as possible.  Despite all this....fun was still had.

KP^2's Giant:  Smaller Full Squish 29er.  Double Handlebar Bags, Medium to Large pack.

Pros:  KP^2 made this work with minimal expense

Cons:  Cable interference issues with handlebar mounted load.  Specific tying pattern required.

This was KP^2's first ride on her new bike and the rigging embodies the spirit of "Intro to Bike Packing".

Trashbag Trudeau's Skunk-a-lope:  44 bikes custom 29" singlespeed.  Small handlebar bag, small frame bag that still allows 2 water bottles.  Medium seat bag.  Heavy Trudeau Forestry Trash Pack.

Pros:  This heavy bike rides more or less "normal".

Cons:   Heavy packs are rough on your bones.  Especially the ones you sit on.

Kukulkan:  Custom Moustache 26" hardtail.  Rear Rack, Commuter Panniers and tied on stuff sack.  Medium Pack

Pros:  Stuff she already had.

Cons:  Rear only load throws handling...front wheel lightens and understeers causing rider to adapt.

The rear load can cause excessively "wobbly" steering leading to sketchy moments in sections that would otherwise be fine.  In the photo below Mrs. Viking shows a face of added concentration riding beside a ledge on what would otherwise be a smooth trail.

Odin:  Moustache Cycles custom Trials 29er.  Rear rack.  Adapted Motorcycle Panniers.  Top Load Tie on.  Medium to Heavy Pack.

Pros:  The Viking can ride ANYTHING!

Cons:  Rear load on a short wheelbase.

Mr. Wilson's Raleigh:  29" Singlespeed.  Adapted Rear Rack.  Stuff Sack tie on.  Medium to heavy pack.

Pros:  Great rookie bike packing setup.  Nicely packed top mount stuff sack avoids drag and catching issues associated with panniers.  Minimal Cost.  Rack rigged to frame w/o tabs using disc tab, long bolts, washer, p-clips, custom seatpost clamp.

Cons:  Rear weight bias.  Rack rigged to frame not feasible for long term use.

For more info on the Black Canyon Trail go here:

     http://www.bctaz.com/

For more info on Bike Packing and the like go here:

     http://www.bikepacking.net/

ACK ACK ACK ACK!

I'm always a big fan of when I bike takes on a personality before it is realized.  This one is already going on three or four personalities which are really just overlaps of one another but no one (be it human or beast) can have too many nicknames.  Hedge's build request for this bike was The BIG Lizard in my Backyard.  I asked if he meant the Giant Iguana.  Definitely.  If the Giant Iguana were actually a bike instead of a crappy relic of 90s chinese manufacturing that I spent way too much of my teenage bike years dealing with, just imagine how it would ride.....It would totally slay!  This one's got big wheels, tons of travel, a short-ish rear end, and slack angles that still let you know where your wheels are.  Its a romper from its inception, and its life will be spent getting totally thrashed while serving as a home to its hobo, Hedge.  The "Floop Tail" is a first but any lizard needs a namesake tail.  We still haven't found any of those old Giant Iguana decals yet though, so the current thought is to make it an '89 Oakland A's team bike.  Georgians beware of the arrival of the 1989 World Series Champion Oakland A's at your this fall.  Carney and The Eck are out to put the hurt on.

Parts for Retro Parts

I found these old XTR shifters at a buddies garage sale before he split town.  I don't even think he charged me for them but I also didn't realize that they didn't have barrel adjusters so getting them to work would be a process.  There was a brief tick in time where M950 XTR shifters and M739 XT shifters used a barrel adjuster with an oversized 8mm bolt.  M8-0.75 threading to be exact.  With no luck tracking down the real items produced for these shifters I was forced to try and dig up some bolts of that size to make some barrels.  I combed the internets for a while after a trip to my only descent hardware store turned up nothing.  The only thing that came up for that size was a replacement part for a hitachi with no pick and finally....chainring bolts.  I fashioned these replacement barrels out of the latter and spent....0.00...save for some food calories and some electricity for the drill and air compressor.

The Boy's Ninja Speeder

This story goes back a ways....high school really.  That's when I started riding with The Boy.  We rode GTs.  One of the first bikes I ever parted up was for the boy.  We had these Prestige GT Richter 8.0 frames in the ceiling of the shop I worked in high school.  We sold them for something like $125.  Nice bikes considering they were the warranty reserve from 1993.  I think I built The Boy one in 1997 or so.  He still has it; still rides it.  Its served a lot of duty over time...broken most of the parts it held at least twice over...probably on its fourth set of wheels.  I rode that thing on my last trip to homeland.  It has reached scary status.  Needless to say I've been riding bikes with/building bikes for The Boy since I was 15.  More than half my life.  Crazy.  

Sometime in our college days we decided that we needed to make an official bike gang of our high school bike posse.  The bike ninjas were formed sometime around 2001 and a free yahoo geocities webspace was comendered by The Boy to document our covert operations and mock our friends that couldn't quite find the time to make ninja status.  Operation Bow Tie was of particular popularity to our readership as myself and agent Ron served in kidnapping The Boy's now wife and driving her around blindfolded before dropping her off unknowingly at the local trail head so she could then be chauffeured around town by her friends to end up at the top of Stone Mountain where The Boy would propose to her.  The bike ninjas shared a brief fame in LBS lore around north Georgia but in reality we still scheme ninja operations to this day.  In that I've already said too much.

I got the call last fall that The Boy's primary bike (The GT serving secondary and loaner duty) was down and it was time for a new one.  We had both long awaited this day.  Conversations I have with clients tend to take place in the qualitative realm rather than trying to discuss numbers.  Our conversations were the epitome of qualitative; we briefly discussed wheel sizes, but The Boy wasn't interested in anything that would result in sluggish riding.  After describing to him what 29" wheels would do for him on a bike that was properly executed he said, "That describes nothing of where or how I ride."  In the piedmont of North Georgia you are never doing any one bike riding function for more than say...2 seconds.  Half a pedal stroke; left; up; down; left; right; left; pedal; down; dodge vine; pedaleft; accelerate; climb; left; right.  The trails follow second growth forest that has taken over once terraced farmland and are covered with needles and leaf piles hiding the mystery terra below.  A granite layer can be exposed as southern slickrock anywhere within a hundred mile radius of its pimpled out epicenter of Stone Mountain.  Riding here is FUN, and bikes that do it well are playful and quick...i.e. you can steer by throwing a knee in a split second.  The Boy knew he wanted a 26".  These bikes live on in a larger group than the mainstream wants to recognize.  

This bike would be a dedicated singlespeed realizing the potential of the old world wheel size with the modern amenities of a thru axle tapered steerer fork, Industry Nine three degree hubs, disc brakes and an external bottom bracket.  This is the pinnacle of hardtail design in my opinion.  There's nothing new here at all save for an oversize head tube.  Everything in the bare bones geometry of this bike was realized a decade ago.  While new bikes and big wheels are cool too they really tend to complicate many designs more than is necessary and compromise a lot of basic and essential riding functions for riders too small to fit them.  Don't get me wrong, I love all bikes and all the current size options, but don't go confusion essence and utility for the latest fad.

The Boy picked me up at the Brick Store Pub, a favorite Ninjas rendezvous point.  We made our way to the eastern headquarters where the heavily consolidated package I had mailed out from the ranch awaited.  The speeder was assembled with minimal hassle and we pedaled out to the local proving grounds.  Most riders would consider this place a write off and it shows.  The trails are covered with needles indicating lack of use.  Its pretty damn confusing if you don't have the time to devote on the regular basis to figure this place out.  The Boy has this devotion and it shows.  We looped around single tracks for two plus hours and never repeated ourselves.  Pretty good considering the closest national forest is over an hour drive.  

We climbed through the southern slickrock entrance and wove through the tightly spaced trees and vines while I tried to keep up on that scary old GT I had built originally and rebuilt probably four times over the last 15 or 16 years.

At the first turn down The Boy was gone.  Granted you should always have some home trail advantage; I was flat out dropped on the scary bike.  Outta Sight.  I came to the end of the downhill to find the speeder's drive side presented to me and the trail I descended, The Boy standing on its opposite side with a monsterous evil grin on his face.  A handshake awaited my arrival follwed by the words, "That was it.  That was the test."

"I didn't fully believe what we were talking about, what you were asking for, and promising in return," The Boy told me with the skepticism of a scientist, "but this is so much more than I ever thought possible."  I was floored.  The ceremonial drinking horn was procured and we both drank to the ride.

Missoula Bound

Long time no bike post.  Here, let's fix that.  This one's headed up north.  Hopefully Austin finds a place to ride it before the long winter sets in.  Otherwise its gonna be a good five to six months before the snow clears from the trails up there.  Maybe he'll load up those rack mounts and bottle cages and head for warmer climates.  Its the do-all 29" tourer after all.  Its a great looking bike if I must say so myself!  Enjoy your new bike Austin!

Trolls Tackle Tri-Cities

After a weekend of treachery, suffering, great food, mathematical computations beyond our abilities, and the best riding in Williams, the Trolls have proven their worth, much to the surprise of the goats and even themselves, as the most diversely talented beasts in the mountain biking universe.  Competitions were close, heated, and not without controversy, but after calculations were checked and re-checked the normalized scores for our three heroic teams were as follows:

Trolls:  22 points

Goats:  21.27 points

Martians:  0 points

Total points tabulations, however, put the goats on top with an astonishing lead of 76 points to 44 points.  Individual competitions were fierce, with Pepe le Troll being the only competitor to take a double stage win.  He won the DH and the dab'l'doya hill climb.  Heinchez took the UH, and I reigned in the Kamikaze and took away a surprise two bonus points in the X-treme headstand competition.  Valiant performances were also had by Fast as F___ Fields, Potter, Bleeder Butel, and Otter Face.

Thanks to all riders for making the first Tri-Cities Showdown a great success!  Here are some pictures.