A different kind of gap ride

I would be remiss if I didn't post on a ride Paul and I did last weekend. Paul architected the route, borrowing portions from Adam's Irreverent Road Ride and distilling the loop into a pure climbing fest with other big gaps like Lincoln Gap and Roxbury Gap. The result was 9000ft of climbing in just over 100km.

A few sections of the route, neither of us had been on. We trusted the IRR folks wouldn't do something too irreverent with road bikes, right? Should have read the description a little more closely of how the IRR came to be.

Starting in Roxbury, we immediately began climbing on W Hill Rd. I was telling Paul how it felt like another road I ride VT, saying beware when the power lines end. The power lines on these Class IV roads end at the last house, and road maintenance also ends. Sure enough, the power line stopped and the route immediately became more interesting. The climbing plateaued and the "road" turning into saturated black loam with 1-2ft deep water filled jeep ruts. IRR is sending road bikes down this a day after our ride? We had 38mm and 40mm tires on our cross bikes and couldn't ride parts of it. In one cesspool, nearly my entire front wheel submerged into the goo. Four miles into the ride, our bikes were trashed.

The next mile and a half were on and off the bike. Mostly on, but we could never trust the water holes. Did not want to endo into that stinky quagmire. I'm pretty sure I took two years off my rims as we began descending and the surface became gravel again. Fortunately, part way down there was a stream crossing in which to salvage the bikes. What would the next road on the other side of Rt 12A bring?

The next dirt climb, Cram Hill Rd, was much better. Gained a bit more than the first, about 800ft vertical. The descent on Connecticut Corners and Threshee roads was quite nice.

These first two climbs where just a warm up for one of the main attractions: Braintree Gap. This is another Class IV town road. I've ridden it once before from west to east, now we were hitting it east to west. I thought it was tough on a mountain bike last time, now we had skinny higher pressure tires, no disk brakes, and not nearly as low of gearing. Was it even rideable?

Turns out it was, but it was 30+ minutes of pure suffering. The doubletrack became increasingly rough and loose as the gap was reached. Much of the climbing was at a 15% grade and portions were steeper. The descent is what I feared though. I didn't clean it on a MTB last time, and it was strewn with tree debris and mud. Now we were going down that on cross bikes?

It wasn't that bad either. I think a couple sections might have been worked on, as I didn't notice the exposed ledgy sections that gave me grief when climbing that side last time. Sure was a waste of vertical though, death grip on the brakes the whole way. Continuing the descent to Rt 100 on open and closed gravels roads was much more like it, WFO at times.

We had hoped to re-supply in Hancock, but the general store there closed shop! It was fairly warm and a bit humid. My two bottles were already depleted. Fortunately we were able to fill bottles with water at the inn across the street, but I gathered maybe many before us had done the same. We left a tip.

Next up was Middlebury Gap, a paved up and over that I've done many times from both directions. Just grind it out and get it done. We re-supplied at the Ripton store on the other side, halfway down where we turned off to begin the next, new to us, dirt climb. Interestingly, everyone we met asked how far we were going and told us rain was on the way. I was sweating so much I would have welcomed rain.

I liked the next road, the Natural Turnpike. It turns into a well maintain seasonal forest service road. Because it passes through undeveloped land, it stays in the forest with no views. Paul didn't like it that much because of this. But it was a 1000ft climb on dirt road with no cars. The descent was unlike the others too, where a little work was needed to top out the speed. Because of tree cover, we couldn't see in Google maps if this road was going to be like the first one we hit. But after we crested the high point, all concerns were put to rest.

Even though many humps had been crested already, we still had two more really big ones to go. Next up was Lincoln Gap. I've never done this one from the west. I worried about brakes overheating on the east side 20-25% descent. The west side climb is no picnic to climb either. The grade tops out around 18-20% near the top. That did some damage. The plan was to drop down into Warren, resupply a last time, then hit Rox.

Paul seized up getting off the bike at the Warren general store. Hmm, that is usually me on rides like this. Maybe the potassium I started adding to my drink mix is working. Maybe all the weight bearing hiking I've been doing lately his helping. Who knows. We just had to get over one more hump, then it was literally all downhill back to the car.

I was dismayed to pass the "Pavement Ends" sign on Roxbury Gap only to find brand new asphalt where there used to be gravel. I asked a walker right there if it was paved all the way to the summit now. Yep. Bummer. From the summit most of the way down the east side is still gravel though. I suspect it won't be long.

I finished with exactly 5hrs moving time on my Garmin. Paul expected a faster average than that, but the long quagmire section really pulled that down. Still a great loop though, one I'd do again in a heartbeat with one tweak: cut out the muddy W Hill Rd section by dropping down Oxbow Rd to Rt 12A. That pops out very close to the next dirt road climb across Rt 12A. There's certainly no shortage of route possibilities here. This was probably the highest climbing density ride I've done on a road or cross bike.

Starting out on W Hill Rd. Still have power lines, so all is good.

Lost the power lines, now not all looks so good.

Ruh-Roh!

Sometimes your front wheel would just disappear into the abyss.

You just don't chance that with almost 5hrs to go!

Lucky to have conveniently placed stream for bike wash.

My bike all clean again.

North on Rt 12A to pick up Cram Hill Rd.

Connecticut Corners Rd descent.

Paul cresting Braintree Gap.

Myself coming down Braintree Gap.

Natural Turnpike near bottom on north end. I think that is Lincoln Peak in the distance,

which I mountain biked to the summit of a few weeks earlier.

Looking down the east side of Roxbury Gap, which is still gravel.

Paul at summit of Roxbury Gap, Recycle those streaming electrolytes!

Presidential Traverse: A different kind of wrecked

Earlier this summer, Mark Suprenant (Soups) extended an invite to hike the Presidential mountain range in the White mountains in a day. I dearly love wide open ridge line rides out west. We have only a few extended ridge lines above tree line in the northeast, and this was the grand daddy of them all. Even if bikes were allowed up there, it would be utterly unrideable. The only way to experience it is on foot. So for lack of better judgement, I told Soups I was interested.

In June, a weekend was picked for the traverse. Soups, having nearly completed all 48 4000 footers in NH in the past year at that point, was already a seasoned hiker. Other seasoned hikers were on the invite list too. I hadn't hiked in a year. I know how DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) can be for a cyclist after even a modest hike. Now I was looking at an all-day hike with pros. This freaked me out more than a little bit.

So I made a point over each of the five weekends remaining to get a hike in. I hit the Tripyramids first. That nearly killed me, both literally and figuratively. Only 3000ft of climbing, and more importantly, descending, left me crippled for days. Four weekends left to build conditioning to do a hike several times more punishing. Panic set in.

I upped the ante over the following weeks, inducing DOMS that left me hobbling at the office on Monday mornings like I was 40 years older than I am. But the last weekend before the presi-traverse, I did 4500ft of vertical on steep Mt Monadnock with zero DOMS afterwards. That was encouraging. Now I just had to double the elevation and double the distance!

Getting up at 3am for a 6am rendezvous in the Whites sucked. I did sleep though. At least the forecast was not adding to pre-hike jitters. It was expected to be an ideal day. Mostly clear, temp into the 50's at elevation, very little chance for rain. You still have to pack for the worst though. People have died from exposure in the Whites in August.  I bought a large hydration pack with enough room to hold winter layers, emergency bivy, first aid kit, more than enough food for the traverse, and of course three liters of water. I have never hiked or biked with so much weight slung over my back.

Soups, Tim Lucia and I began our hike at 7am in Appalachia on the Valley Way trail. The 3500ft gain to Madison Hut went by in no time. I felt good. At least I had the sense to not bury myself on the bike during the week. From the hut, a spur is taken to summit of Mt Madison. We go up that?! Where's the trail, I thought to myself. There was a lot of traffic from folks that started their day much earlier. The view from the summit provided a different perspective on Mt Washington, which I've climbed so many times by bike.  Interestingly, almost half the day's climbing was complete after bagging that first peak. That didn't matter to me. Almost none of the day's descending was complete. It was the 8000+ feet of descending continuous rock garden that was going to destroy me, rock by rock.

Mt Adams was next and it looked even more formidable. Not having been to any of these peaks except Washington, I saw a trend emerging. Hike a thousand feet up a massive rock pile, descend, repeat. Above tree line, the continuous post card views kept the mind off how badly my body was going to deteriorate before the end.

Looking at the profile for this hike, each summit appeared as a little bump. That is so deceptive though, because those little bumps are scaled by the 3000ft just to get up here. Each little bump took more than an hour to go up and over, often requiring at least some hands to scramble the steepest parts.

Mt Jefferson was the next peak, going even higher than the first two. So far I was feeling pretty good, but after the descent from Jefferson, my knees were starting to feel a little wobbly already. Even though more than half of the climbing was behind his, we barely made a dent in the descending.

Mt Clay was next, another tough climb, with fortunately little descent on the back side. The whole time, the Mt Washington summit loomed before us. Finally, we began to tackle this one as we hugged the rim of the Great Gulf Wilderness.

The summit of Mt Washington was a circus. I thought on the bicycle race day things were busy up there. Nope. With two cog railroad trains running and steady stream of cars and motorcycles heading up, Soups likened it to "the mall at Christmas." Just nuts. Fill our water and get out of there.

Unfortunately, it was a bit of a conga line dropping down to the Lakes of the Clouds hut. Mostly tourists who didn't have the "trail awareness" that more experienced hikers have. Still good to see people getting outside and off their butts. The entire south Presidentials were visible from the south face of Mt Washington. It looked so tame, like almost no elevation change and smooth. The scale of how far down the ridge you see dupes one into believing it's going to be easy.

Serious knee and ankle fatigue was setting in. I brought my ankle braces along and had planned to put them on at the Washington summit, as that's when the descending elevation change begins in earnest. But I wasn't having trouble with my ankles turning, and those things cause hot spots all around my feet, so I left them off for the time being. I did hike with two poles, the first time this summer. Even though they got in the way on the steepest parts, the poles were proving to be a huge help in stability and in taking some of the pressure off my knees dropping down big steps.

Only three peaks remained, Monroe, Eisenhower and Pierce. Once away from the Lakes hut, the crowds thinned out considerable. There were times we could see no other people on the stretched-out ridge line before us.  I didn't like the fact that each time we climbed, we had to descend that same vertical over again. The climbing was fine, the descending was getting more and more tedious for me. I took two Aleve in hopes of easing knee and ankle pain. Soups and Tim were gapping me on the descents.

We finally reached Mt Pierce. The view back towards Mt Washington was pretty sweet, with how the sun was hitting it. From here, it was all downhill back to the car. Tim was saying this like it was a good thing. I would have much rather climbed 2500ft from that point back to the car than descend 2500ft back to the car! Soups was saying, "don't worry, it's a really easy grade." Yeah, right. It was not steep, but the entire 2500ft was wet baby head rocks! Soups was like "but it wasn't like that this past winter." Yeah, with six feet of snow on the ground. How I survived that without face planting, rolling an ankle or just stopping to cry for while is beyond me.

I would never have thought the sound of motor vehicles would be music to my ears as we approached Crawford Notch on Rt 302. We finished with sunlight to spare. The hike covered about 19 miles in 11.4hrs total elapsed time with 8600ft of climbing. I'd say that that was the hardest one-day activity I've done, as far as pushing through physical discomfort. It is a different kind of wrecked than what a hard bike ride leaves you in. The hike was never taxing in a cardiovascular sense. It taxed my all my joints, even my shoulders, as I became increasingly reliant on the poles toward the end. Still though, it was my most rewarding day in the White Mountains to date.

Soups climbing Mt Madison with Madison Hut below

Myself on Madison with Washington in background

Inside the Madison hut

Soups and Tim heading up Mt Adams

Mt Madison from Mt Adams

Mt Adams summit with Washington obscured by cloud

Thunderstorm Junction

Tim heading up Mt Jefferson

Approaching Mt Jefferson Summit

Mt Jefferson with Mt Clay and Mt Washington in background

Heading to Mt Clay

Looking back at what we covered so far

Soups on or near Mt Clay

The Great Gulf Wilderness

Tim and Soups approaching summit of Mt Washington

Tim overlooking Great Gulf Wilderness

Soups gazing into Great Gulf Wilderness

Line of tourists waiting just to have picture taken a the Mt Washington summit sign. Photo only counts if you hiked or biked up here!

Conga line from Mt Washington summit to Lakes of the Clouds hut. Whole southern Presi's

in this shot.

Approaching Lakes hut.

From Lakes back at Mt Washington

Tim and Soups at Mt Monroe with Dry River Wilderness below. I thought this was

 the best view on the traverse.

Two more to go, Eisenhower and Pierce.

Grades were tempered along the southern Presi's, but footing was never easy. Looking

back over Monroe with Mt Washington in distance.

Eisenhower and Pierce in distance. Finally away from the masses.

Looking back at Washington.

Tim and Soups on way to Eisenhower.

Last summit, Mt Pierce, looking back at the southern Presidential range.

Adventure

With thoughts of moving someday and a desire to avoid repetitious ruts, I strive to visit new places or try new trails at familiar places each weekend. I don't want to miss out on anything good or end up bored doing the same rides over and over. Many weekends are planned by gazing into the blue web of millions of GPS tracks Strava calls the Global Heat Map. If more than a few people traversed a segment, it will show.

Something I've enjoyed for almost as long as I've been riding is linking multiple mountain biking areas together into a single ride using as little pavement as possible. This was exceedingly challenging before the internet gave birth to the many GPS upload sites. You'd start with published state park or national forest maps, which were always hopelessly out of date. Then you look at DeLorme state map books or Google maps online to see how to link places together with official roads. The problem was there's always so much more on the ground that is unofficial and always changing. There wasn't an easy way to build an off-road track to follow on a GPS either. I'd download GPX track files from the likes of Garmin Connect, then point-by-point build a track with road base layer shown in DeLorme Topo. Very tedious, and it didn't always match up with what was on the ground.

When Strava published the heat map and released the route builder tool based on it, this all became so much easier. It works in part because so many people use Strava. It may be something like Metcalfe's Law, which states the utility of a network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users. Social networks might follow something more line a Nlog(N) law. Utility still grows fast with number of users.  In any case, the heatmap is updated periodically and is based on ground truth, at least as accurately as GPS units can measure.  By using Strava to design rides, one thing to keep in mind is others have gone before you. You will not be discovering novel linkages. But a collection of linkages part of a big ride may very well be novel. The heat map greatly diminishes the chance of boondoggles. In a way, that is too bad, as boondoggles always make for good blog fodder!

So on my off-Friday, I put a loop together that linked three riding areas, Franklin Falls Dam, Page Hill, and the Proctor Academy trails in Andover, NH. I've hit these areas before, but I wanted to check out the new machine built flow trail at Page Hill and a new connection between Page Hill and Andover. A 50 mile loop with moderate amount of climbing and very little pavement was the result.

Snowmobile Trail 11 heading north along the Pemigewasset River.

Soups would not have liked this three miles and would have been saying icky-icky,

in fear of picking up ticks. I checked extra carefully after showering.

View from Page Hill at the top of Shock Therapy, the new flow trail.

One of many jumps and berms on Shock Therapy. The trail ducks into the woods part way

down and gets more serious.

View along a Class VI town road in between Page Hill and Andover

Top of ski hill at Proctor Academy

The downhill trail at Proctor. More bermed turns!

The ride was a success. The Page-Andover connection would probably be best to avoid after wet spells. Lots of rutted unmaintained jeep road that could get very soupy. Some new gating and signage around the ski hill thwarted my attempt loop up the back side. Maybe the locals can carry over the gate, but I'm going to respect that.

The adventure didn't stop there. This was the final weekend of conditioning for the presidential traverse planned next weekend. This meant more DOMS inducing descent of steep terrain. I wanted to do a Franconia Ridge hike, but forecast suggested I'd be challenged by lightning if I did. So I had to settle for something further south with a better forecast. Mt Monadnock again, two weekends in a row? Why not.

A friend suggested I find the fabled Pumpelly Cave on Mt Monadnock. It was built as a secret place over a century ago. Many bushwhack off the main trails searching for it but leave all torn up without finding it. Those who find it are not supposed to divulge it's location. Some have even posted bogus directions or GPS coordinates. How hard could this be in this day and age?

Let's go back to the Strava heat map. I know how obsessed Strava users are about posting all of their exploits. "If you don't Strava it, it didn't happen," as the saying goes. So surely somebody posted their hike that happened upon this hidden treasure. I'm not going to tell you where to look, but I will share a few secrets of the process I used to find it.

In the heat map, there is a fuzzy area of tracks on Mt Monadnock. Hmmm, everywhere else people follow established trails, but this one area, fuzziness. That could only mean one thing: people bushwhacking looking for the elusive Pumpelly Cave. But in this haze of tracks, there was no clear indication of convergence. This area was exceedingly steep and exposed. You can't just get to any point from any point.

Then I recalled seeing photos of the cave from above. It has a unique roof that I thought would surely be visible in Google maps. So I used the Strava heat map to narrow the search area. Sure enough, I found it! Without knowing exactly where to look, you would never find it just by scanning the vast Mt Monadnock area.

So armed with exact GPS coordinates, I now only needed a route. The heat map didn't help much, as it was a maze of tracks. I guessed, created a route, then headed off to the mountain.

Despite a nearly 5hr MTB ride the day before, I was feeling pretty good. In no time at all, I was to my cutoff to bushwhack up to the cave. It was laterally 500ft away, but it might as well have been 500 miles. It was a shear cliff wall! I kept checking for ways to cut over, but every possibility required serious rock climbing skills if not ropes and gear. Well that really sucks. I continued up to the ridgeline trail. My route came back across much higher up. Maybe I could drop down to the cave with less risk.

After several false starts (cliff drop down), I found a promising route. It looked like others had gone before me. The route became formidable to traverse and clung to seriously steep terrain with lots of exposure. At one point, I was on my hands and knees trying to stay under fir branches when I almost stuck my nose in a huge pile of bear scat! I looked around and there was bear scat everywhere. Great, I just crawled into a bear's den and perhaps I was following a game trail and not a path to the treasure.
I was getting wicked close per my GPS though. I was maybe 200ft away, couldn't see more than 25ft through the brush, and for all I knew it could be hundreds of feet below me. I worked my way down, sliding on my butt a couple times to the next foothold. Then all of a sudden, there it was. Strangely, I heard voices.

There was a group of three in the hideout. The group leader found it on his third attempt, after getting some inside intel on how to find it. He knew about Google maps and could see it there, but without a GPS to guide you, it would be exceedingly hard to find. It sits on a ledge below a ledge in extremely dense vegetation. Turns out there is a much, much easier way to get to it, which I took to leave.

So that was a fun little micro-adventure. Now I had push to the summit, descend the other side on a trail I've never been on, then come back up and over again. Easy, right? All the trails on Mt Monadnock are superchunk. It's as if a city-sized dumptruck full of broken granite was dumped there, a 3100ft high pile of it. Going up is easy. Going down is scary as shit. There are thousands of opportunities to roll and break an ankle, catch a toe and face plant 10ft below, slide out and break your coccyx. Need that eccentric muscle conditioning though so I can finish the presi-traverse next weekend without injury.

Coming back over the mountain the second time, I was amazed by how many people were on the summit area. I'd say easily over 1000 people, spread out over 10's of acres of bare granite. Really cool to see so many people getting a workout on a nice day. There is no easy way up there, or down. I think I heard at least 7 different languages being spoken too. Pretty sure English was a minority.

Another new to me trail was taken down, the Red Spot trail. This was mostly giant slab hopping, hoping my shoes stick and I didn't get mud on them from periodic wet spots. My legs were noodly by the time I got back down to less steep terrain. Mission accomplished. About 4500ft climbed and descended.

Inside the Pumpelly Cave

The roof. It is metal, possibly 100+ year old tin. How about that view?!

The door. Wood and iron.

The summit on my first approach. A pretty good crowd is building.

Half of the time, this is what you are "hiking" on at Mt Monadnock. Parts are

near vertical. Not so bad going up. The going down sucks.

Part way down from summit away from the crowds. Rain cell on left narrowly missed.

Looking down the ridgeline part way down from summit. There is lots of above

treeline hiking on this mountain.