(photo credit: Ed Ellinger)

Today I heard of the passing of a friend of mine, Anthony Sloan. Anthony’s passing during his sleep was a shock because he was young and healthy and it came without warning.

Anthony was an avid and accomplished mountain biker. He was an equally avid photographer; although quite modest about his talent, his skill behind the lens was truly – I am not exaggerating – unequalled. These two passions, combined with his life-long love of the outdoors – in particular the American Southwest – leave a huge and unparalleled legacy of images of stunning beauty of some of the most remarkable vistas in America. If you happen to share any of these same passions that energized Anthony, do yourself a favor and spend some time perusing his work.

• Anthony’s Website
• A list of Anthony’s postings
  
• One of my favorite sequences

As much as I’m impressed by Anthony’s photography, I was more inspired by his personality. Anthony was one of the kindest souls I have ever met. I count myself fortunate for the times I got to ride with him, and I’m saddened that there won’t be many more.

We were riding by noon.

I was barfing by 1:30. Violently.

We started making our way back, but I was slow, increasingly exhausted, and becoming not present. Many thanks to Tony and Tom, awesome motorcyclists from New Mexico, who put my exhausted self on the back of one of their motorcycles and gave me a ride back to the car, and to Mark and Mark for figuring out how to get my own bike back to the car.

Back in the hotel room, I had a vomitous Friday night. Saturday was feverish and awful, and foodless. Sunday we drove back, and I managed to keep down a Dairy Queen sundae.

I swear to Allah that one day I’ll make it to the end of Amasa Back.

Sorry, friends, for my impact on your weekend, and thanks for all of the help and support.

I think of route names as story titles: rich, fleeting and individual. We tell these stories over our modern-day campfires – blogs, Web sites, books and catalogs – in equal parts homage and interest.

The depth of each story is proportionate to the protagonist’s commitment to his goal, the complexity of the mountain and the simplicity of the style. We are entertained, but an astute few may learn and go on to build upon these stories, creating new stories of their own. Innovation inspires.

Motivation is the ultimate clean energy. So fueled we try, and usually fail, to reach our summit goal. Bargaining for better conditions, a stronger self or a bluer sky. Trading success to live another day. But success, when achieved, is empty. By attaining the goal we lose it, and then we are lost again. Goals are the plotline to our lives.

We return to the canvas of the mountains, to plot a new route or to combine four summits into a single traverse. We restrict the means at our disposal. Climbing a route on a mountain to its summit and returning in alpine style – without fixed ropes, bottled oxygen, blood doping, Sherpa support – is simplicity refined.

We go simply. Climb well. Action is the message.”

-Steve House

Morgan Freeman narrating a Visa Commercial

We had just finished our first pitch, and were swapping gear, when the calls of climbers all around suddenly became feverish. Sharon and I looked around, and across the canyon on The Bastille, at about the same altitude, and not more than 50 yards away, a climber was hanging upside-down, motionless, 10 feet below the top of the second pitch of The Bastille Crack.

We watched in disbelief. Several minutes passed and there was no movement from the climber or his belayer.

The situation was visible to climbers all around Eldo, and there was a great deal of shouting. The fallen climber and his belayer remained motionless. We were too far to render any assistance, and there were better climbers closer anyway. Nobody was sure what had transpired, or how dire the situation was. Was the climber unconscious, paralyzed by fear, badly injured, or some combination?

Suddenly the fallen climber’s arm twitched. He was conscious! As he started to slowly right himself, “rock!” echoed off the walls, and the injured climber’s rack plummeted down. This was looking bad, and getting worse.

Slowly, the injured climber righted himself, and then – very slowly – made his way up to his belayer.

Around the same time, a climber started up the route from the bottom. Belayed from below, the climber ascended extraordinarily quickly; it was clear that this was a very experienced climber. He reached the ledge just after the injured climber, probably no more than 15 minutes after the fall.

We could see the rescuer build his own anchor, tie in, and then check the tie-in of the belayer and injured climber.

Some minutes elapsed. The rescuer set up a rappel for the injured climber, and, very slowly and with difficulty for the injured climber, lowered him to the ground. By this time Rocky Mountain Rescue and several emergency vehicles were on the scene, and the climber was loaded into an ambulance and rushed away. This was within probably 30 minutes of the fall.

The rescuer subsequently set-up a rappel for the belayer, and lowered him to the ground as well.

After witnessing all of this, Sharon and I were rattled, and decided to not continue our climb. We downclimbed an easy escape, and on our return to the car, spoke with the rescuer. What we learned was that the injured climber had been leading the Bastille Crack, had fallen, and had pulled a piece of protection, but had two more that stuck. However, with the length of his fall, he hit the belay ledge, which knocked him unconscious, as well as injured both his shoulder and hip. The climber had been hanging unconscious upside-down for several minutes!

It turns out that the belayer was his 16-year old son.

If your leader fell, and was hanging unconscious 15 feet below you 150 feet off the ground, would you know what do to? What if you were 16, and the leader was your father?

A nurse on the scene told us that both father and son were clearly in shock when they reached the ground.

I think it fortunate that such an experienced climber was nearby, or things could have been much worse.

Photos will be forthcoming, but know that the weekend involved rocks, wheels, snow, sun, food, and…drumroll please…beer!

Here are some writeups about our day
Jesper
Jen

I am one tired puppy today (and I am absolutely stoked that I have a desk job.)

A couple of my riding buddies have also noticed that without a racing schedule to prepare for, they have no obvious fitness goals, and subsequently their fitness has suffered. What will get them out riding when the weather is foul or when relatives are in town?

Enter my friend Mark. Mark decided that he needed a goal that would ensure he would be as fast on a bike as he was in the good old days, way back before he turned 40. Mark had heard me rave about the Laramie Enduro in summers past, and decided that this one 75-mile monster of a race would be the focus of his training this spring and summer. For most mortals, it’s less of a race and more just a personal challenge: it will take me about 8 hours of hard riding to finish – if I’m able. Two weeks ago, Mark committed to racing the Laramie Enduro at the end of July.

I too needed a goal for the summer. I’ve been eating more and exercising less, and I needed some motivation to turn that around. And, I’ll be damned if I will let my riding buddy do my favorite race without me. I really had no choice but to also commit to riding in the Enduro.

Other riding friends were apparently in similar situations. In a plainly evident snowball effect, John, Liam, Sasha, Jim, Steve have all now also registered.

Here’s where it gets really cool: we’re all friends, and most of us have ridden together quite a bit. Since we all committed a couple of weeks ago, we’ve had Laramie on our mind, and we’ve been talking about our training, and been getting out on more and longer training rides. Without the goal, there surely would have been less training and more excuses to not ride. The BHAG has been clearly motivating and focusing for all of us.

Thanks, Mark, for being a leader and helping us to adopt a worthy goal. It’s been focusing and motivating.

I wonder what other personal and professional goals I should adopt.

…and part of that program is a couple of hard efforts. I’m tentatively going to do three events before Laramie – not to try to win, but just as venues that will encourage hard efforts to serve as build up for Laramie.

The Chalk Creek race was yesterday. What I found was that because I haven’t been riding much, I don’t have as much work (aerobic) capacity as I have had in summers past. In technical jargon, my VO2 max is not fully trained and is lower than it used to be. Also, after hard efforts, I have far less ability to recover. The good news is that after a winter of weight training and a whole lot of skiing, I am strong, so that for brief anaerobic efforts I am faster than I have ever been.

The race confirmed all this.

In my class of 4 clydesdales, one super fast guy took off at the beginning of the race. 10 minutes later, I caught him on a short anaerobic climb that he walked, but that I easily rode. We reached the top at the same time, whereupon he took off, never to be seen again. I rode the first of 3 laps in second place at a moderate effort, with the third place guy right behind me. I was pushing myself, but not nearly as hard as I have at prior races.

Near the end of the first lap, I rode over a small log, and after, I stood to hammer and get back up to speed. My front wheel hit a root, and I tipped over into a huge bush. I tried to get up before the third place guy saw me (avoid humiliation) and pass me (protect my ego), but I failed – I was still clipped in, on my back, in the middle of a huge bush, and helpless like an upside-down turtle. Mr third place asked if I was OK, I said I was, so he floored it. By the time I got untangled and going again, he was a couple of minutes ahead.

Lap two I upped the pace and started to reel him in. I was closing and was sure I was going to get him, when, at the beginning of the third lap, I flatted. I had trouble fixing the flat (it’s been a long time!) and it took me 20 minutes before I was under way again.

The final result was that the first place fast guy did 1:45, the second place guy did 2:03, and I took third in 2:25. (In previous years I did a 1:55 or so.) One fall, one flat, and I still got the third place hardware, because only three of us in the class finished the race.

Net result: a worthy training ride. Notably, because I viewed it as a training ride, I didn’t have my game face on, and I wasn’t prepared to suffer like real racing requires. Hmmm.

Because I rode hard yesterday, I was tired. For the whole ride, I kept thinking that I was too tired to do this, and that I would turn around at the next corner. But I kept on, and pretty soon I was at the point of no return.

Going counter-clockwise on the Walker loop, the last climb out is steep and hard, and I’ve never cleaned it, and not many of my friends have. I always try, but always get pooped out and start getting sloppy and make a mistake in one of the hard sections. Today, I made the first hard rock step…and then the sharp off-camber left-hand turn…and then the steep stretch into the narrow rock move. Those are the three hardest moves, and I had never made all three in one ride. So, I kept going…there were a few more tricky spots, and I cleaned them all…cool! I was going to do it. Then, at the second-to-last switchback from the top, on an easy turn, I got chain-suck! I had to dab to backpedal to clear my chain. I don’t know why Zeus conspired against me: I rarely get chain-suck, and it only happened once on this ride, and after I’d done all the hard stuff – maybe it was my impure thoughts about Athena…

I finished out the ride feeling surprisingly good. Door-to-door, my time was 3:23, only a few minutes off my PR…my weightlifting is serving me well, and is almost compensating for a winter’s worth of ice cream…

PS – Wildlife seen included tons of deer, some at near-collision distance, and a half-dozen wild turkeys (not the yummy kind in a bottle, but the yummy kind on 2 legs with 2 wings).

PPS – EBC Green disk brake pads suck – I put on new pads…coming down Flagstaff, they faded to nothing…I had a scary moment. Anyway, don’t buy ‘em.