To those of you who check this blog every day I’m sorry but I’ve been out adventuring and not blogging. Hopefully I’ll backdate an entry about my Shasta trip and my 4th of July activities. Until then all I’ve got is my race report which I’ll put up here in a second.
Some resources for endurance mountain biking:
Today’s mountain bike ride was a bit of a slog. Keith nor I had our minds into it so we spent most of the time leaning over the handlebars while cranking uphill. We did get in some fun downhill singletrack but unfortunately we kept having to stop to let uphill riders pass. I was able to ride the off-camber sections much better this time around but I still have some work to do before I can ride those sections perfectly. I did have a bit of a wipeout today though…In a narrow windy section I was barrelling downhill when around a curve came an uphill rider. I hit the brakes fast and had almost diverted around him when a rock threw me back toward him. Luckily we didn’t crash into eash other but I still got a bit dirty/scratched from the incident.
My bike needs some work on it - I need to get some new brake pads and some new cables. Need to get in perfect condition so I can bomb the downhils! (Yeah, right!)
Some day I’ve gotta make it down to the Canyonlands:
Slot Canyons of the American Southwest
Well, plans got kind of mixed up this past weekend. It turns out that Derick had never been to Tahoe before so we scratched plans to head to Lassen and Lava Beds and spent time in Reno and Tahoe instead. Saturday Derick arrived and we headed off to rent a couple kayaks from UNR. We were able to snag a Necky Mission and a Wavesport BigEZ and the requisite gear. We headed down to the playspots on the Truckee. We hit the first surf wave on the north side of the river and stayed there for awhile (until I got used to being back in a whitewater kayak!). We soon decided to make a run of the south side - which is running high and fast right now. The first rapid is roughly a class III rapid and the others, while pushy, are class II. At the bottom of the run there is a big huge surf wave which we didn’t get to play in but I definitely want to go back and try it out.
The next day we decided to go up to Lake Tahoe and doing a hike out to Emerald Point and on the Rubicon Trail. It starts at the top of D.L. Bliss State Park and a foot trail follows down the side of Eagle Falls to the beaches of Emerald Bay. From there you can tour around Vikingsholm and then head onto the Rubicon Trail following it northeast to Emerald Point. From there you could see all of the lake as well as back into Emerald Bay. It was very cool.
Today Derick and I headed up to the summit of Peavine Peak (8265′) it took 2 1/2 hours to reach the top and from there we could see down into Reno as well as into the forests and mountains northwest of the Reno area. It was a great time although I did get a bit sunburned. We are a bit sore now but it is well worth as that was Derick’s first summit ever. Later on this afternoon we hit REI and Reno Mountain Sports to look at whitewater and mountaineering gear. I’m buying an ice axe and boots for my trip to Mt. Shasta in a couple weeks and I wanted to compare prices. I think I’m going to settle on a Black Diamond Raven for my ice ax.
Anyway, tomorrow I gotta head back to work - after work I’m doing running intervals in Keystone Canyon or at the UNR track.
It’s a 3-day weekend and my friend Derick is flying in to hang out and adventure around in the Sierras. Tonight and tomorrow morning I’m volunteering at the Reno Silver Sage adventure race. Then Derick arrives and we are going to hit up the local kayak playspots on the Truckee in downtown Reno. Tomorrow evening we’re driving off to Lassen Volcanic National Park for snowshoeing and camping and then Monday we are going to check out Lava Beds National Monument (or head back for some more kayaking). It should be a fun-filled tiring weekend - presumably no updates until Monday!
(Initially written up for the participants of the BAAR Brawl in Marin County, CA, I decided to put these night navigation tips on this site. Enjoy!)
I’m fairly experienced with night navigation having done several rogaines, multiple 48-hour orienteering events, and 24hours ARs…That said, here goes (keep in mind this will be for trekking at night - strategies are similar but different for cycling and paddling):
The best way to get around at night is to compute every variable down to a specific point. When you first start out you will be at a known point on the map (this could be a TA or a CP marker) and the goal is to get to the next checkpoint, right? So, think about the specific variables that crop up along the way to the next CP. You’ve got current altitude, change in elevation, distance, notable terrain features, bearing to next checkpoint (or to next notable terrain features), and time. All of these issues can be constantly tracked as you walk through the forest to help you form a picture of what the land around you would look like during the daytime and give you a somewhat-specific idea of where you are along your intended path. If you keep things logical and mathematical getting to the checkpoints with little hassle is a sure-bet.
So, the main variables I’ll pick on here are: distance, bearing, and terrain featuring.
The best tip to keep distance specifically tracked is to use pace-counting. By counting the number of footfalls over a hundred meter span you can keep track of varying distances very easily (remember that you should always know the distance from where you are to where you need to be by looking at the map). So, for instance by repeated trials I have discovered that to walk 100 meters at a normal pace it takes 61 left-footsteps. As I am walking I count the # of footfalls and when I hit 61 steps I say to myself “100 meters” and then I restart my count and when I reach 61 again I say, “200 meters”. So on and so forth. Since I have a poor memory I use ranger beads tied to my pack to keep track of the number of meters I’ve been - pulling down 1 bead means I’ve gone 100 meters. Now remember that pace varies depending on individual’s height and the speed that they are going. The average pacecount for an average person is 60 left-footfalls. If you are taller you will have a smaller count and, converserly, short people have a greater number of footfalls. Pacecounting takes a bit to get used to but once you’ve got it down it becomes second nature. Also, lastly, concerning distance, learn to work in metric. 24 hours into a race it’s easy for a fugued mind to know how many meters are in a kilometer but it sucks to have to determine number of yards per miles. Metric is usually on the map so why not use it?
Next up is your bearing. The best thing to remember is to stick with it. The worst mistake rookie navigators make is thinking that they are heading on the correct bearing and then dropping the compass and busting all out for the CP. No matter what if you are not looking at the compass you will veer from your intended heading. Guaranteed. At night looking at the compass is more pertinent because if you get off your intended bearing then your distances will be skewed and then you will be out-of-luck. One of the best things I’ve learned to do to more easily keep a bearing is to use line-of-sight bears that are super short. So, after placing the compass on the map and putting the north needle in the compass housing (”put the red in the shed”) I look ahead to my intended direction and I try to find something along the path of the bearing that I can walk to with assurance that I won’t veer off course. This “something” is usually a tree, a bush, or occasionally a man-made object and, at night, it will probably only be about 30 feet away or whatever the span of your headlamp light is (this is when the halogen/xenons come in handy). Once you have that sighted you can look up from the compass and start heading toward that object (remember to keep your pacecount!) and once you get there you stop, relax, and take a look at the compass. Presumably the compass housing hasn’t moved and all you need to is box the needle again (thus, reconfirming your bearing), pick the next tree along the path and start walking along toward that. After that do the process again. Rinse, recycle, repeat until you get to where you need to be. Sometimes in really confusing navigation conditions (i.e., walls of vegetation, etc) you may have to do a back-bearing to the tree you just came from. All in all the most important thing is to keep checking and rechecking your compass as you walk through the forest to ensure that haven’t strayed from your original bearing.
Terrain featuring basically means getting an idea of where you are by selecting specific elements of the environment and making assumptions about what feature they relate to on the map. At night terrain featuring is tough but entirely doable. The important thing to remember is that little things in the terrain can add up to mean big things on the map. For instance, say you come across a creek and you stand in the middle of the creek you see the shadow of a large hill to your right, you see about 40 ft worth of flat open space to your left, and you also feel the general incline of the creek bed. All of these “concepts” (and I call them that because at night you need to have a doubt as to if something really is what it is) can be associated to general features on the map. You can look along the map and find the spot where the creek has a hill to the right, open space to the left, and a steep incline. Voila! That is more than likely where you are, right? Well, it’s possible that there are multiple spots like that on the map so to help deduce even further you can apply your other variables - distance, intended bearing, where you’ve been on the map already, etc. One thing I always tend to do when I have a rest stop or a spare moment is determining the angles of specific terrain features around me. For instance, I might happen to cross a trail that has a southwesterly direction and I can note where that is occurring on the map. So, again, at night keep track of the little terrain features that are within the zone of your headlamp and they will help guide you to the big picture going on outside the zone of your headlamp. Lastly, sometimes to get a better sense of the terrain I’ll turn my headlamp off and let my nightvision take over. You’d be suprised at what you can see at night.
So all in all, use pacecounting, precise bearings, and the terrain to give you the best idea where you are at all times. And to keep your confidence up keep in mind what I always say: navigation is the sport of errors. There are too many variables to get in line perfectly all at once and so errors in the navigation WILL occur. The people who learn to rebound from the errors more quickly are the ones who become the best navigators.
Finally, take some time to read up on some of the other advanced techniques used to get around the course: aiming off, using attack features, and what do when you have to interrupt the pace count.
Got my stats from the Forefunner imported and all the fancy whizbang graphs and such made. It looks like we did 6 miles in an hour and 18 minutes. The elevation profile looks killer but it’s really not that bad!
Elevation/distance/time profile:
Topo of the route:
After tonight’s run with Keith (which hopefully I’ll have the stats posted for tomorrow) I zoomed off to the REI AR Clinic which was sponsored by the Big Blue AR organizers. Rebecca Rusch, of Team Montrail was there and she gave an intro to adventure racing clinic and showed a couple videos of Eco-Challenge and the Raid Gauloises. Most of the crowd attendees were newbie types but I was able to get in a couple specific questions about how she sets up declination for compass work and also about the advantages of using disc brakes during expedition-length races. It was very cool to meet her and learn more about how an elite racer approaches adventure racing.
Keith and I met up yesterday afterwork for some mountain biking in Keystone Canyon. Unfortunately, I forgot my new Forerunner so I was unable to track our distance and speed but I’m guess we did somewhere around 10 miles of biking. Keystone Canyon is gradual uphill until you reach a plateau and from then on it’s short strenuous uphills to get to certain parts of the BLM area. We climbed a steep uphill and then rode the downhill back to the the mouth of the canyon - then we decided that we felt good so we turned around and climbed another uphill and rode that back down all the way to our cars. It was a fun time but very tiring.
Tonight I am meeting up with him again for a 6 mile trail run. Afterwards I’m headed off to REI to see Rebecca Rusch (a prominent adventure racer) give a clinic for the Big Blue Series!
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