Date: Sept. 15
Mileage: 25.7
September mileage: 360.6
My bike Pugsley turned one year old today. Although he was conceived sometime in July of last year, he wasn’t fully built up until Sept. 15, 2007. I asked him how he wanted to celebrate his birthday, and, predictably, he blurted out “Week in Hawaii!” I said my PFD check wasn’t
that big, and offered him the next best thing - North Douglas beach party!
Unfortunately, we arrived at the wetlands right around the high tide mark, so there wasn’t much beach left to ride. We skimmed the shoreline and bounced over some boulders. Late-morning fog hung low over the water, but across the channel I could see a small window in the clouds around Mount McGinnis, with an unmistakable new coat of termination dust near the peak. “Look, Pugsley, snow!” I said, but he just grumbled. “This is boring. I’m tired. I hate the beach.”
“Ok, then,” I said. “It’s your birthday. What do you want to do?”
“I wanna go tear up some trails,” he said. “You’re always taking that skinny brat on trail rides. I wanna go sometimes, too.”
“Don’t call your little sister a skinny brat,” I said. “Fine. There’s the Fish Creek trail over there. It’s just a mud bog with lots of big roots and stinky fish guts. Your sister hates that trail. It always turns into a hike-a-bike.”
Pugsley’s spokes lit up. “Fish guts?” he said. “Does that mean there’s bears there, too?”
“Probably lots of big scary bears,” I said.
His rear fender started to wag a little. “I wanna go there!”
“Ok,” I said. We followed the delta shoreline beneath the highway bridge and started climbing along the creek. Pugsley enthusiastically took on his role as trail crusher and we cleared a nice long line of roots and puddles before a log grabbed his pedal and threw me sideways. I swore quietly as I crawled out of the blueberry bushes and started guiding Pugsley back down the trail.
“What are you doing?” Pugsley protested, “I can handle this!”
“Sorry, Pugs,” I said, “it’s just a little too much for me. I never said it was your sister’s fault she and I always ended up hike-a-biking this trail.”
“Man, this sucks,” Pugsley said. “What a crappy birthday.”
“Sorry, Pugs. I know it was hard to be born in these inbetween times,” I said. “But you remember last winter, right?”
Puglsey sniffed. “Yeah.”
“Well,” I said, “winter’s coming back. In just a couple more months, the snow will start to fall, and it will be just you and me again. We’ll go play on new trails and have new adventures and we can even come back here to Fish Creek. If the hikers don’t stamp down a trail for us, we’ll stamp down our own trail. What do you say?”
Droplets of rain dripped off Pugsley's frame but his head tube seemed to brighten. “Cool!” he shouted. “But this year,
I’m driving.”
Sniff ... My baby’s all growed up.
I set out to traverse the Juneau Ridge today but got shut down, again, by cold and clouds. I can't believe that summer is over and I haven't even hiked the full Juneau Ridge yet, let alone Observation Peak or a Blackerby-Juneau and/or Juneau-Roberts epic. It's definitely been a dud of a season as far as my mountain ambitions go. At least there were good colors today, despite the flat lighting. Autumn is actually past its peak at higher elevations. It won't be long now until snow settles in to stay.
Ebner falls, with autumn just starting to emerge at lower elevations.
I mostly took this picture as an excuse to take a break during the lung-busting climb.
Ah, the city of Juneau. Next week will be the last for cruise ship visits. The first day the cruise ships stop coming is always a strange one, because the population suddenly drops sharply, the downtown shops close up all at once, and I no longer ride by tour buses full of people all staring out the window (the people on city buses never look out the window). It's a nice, quiet time of year, but there's a sadness to it, too.
The always photogenic first pitch after Mount Juneau.
As I crested the peak and started to descend the ridge, I had to fight this wild, frigid crosswind. It pushed with enough force that I felt like I was about to blow off the mountain. Based on past experiences with strong winds, I'm guessing the wind was gusting 50 to 60 mph. The temperature at 3,500 feet was maybe 40, likely high 30s, which would put the windchill at about 20-25 degrees. It felt like it! I wore only a fleece pullover, a rain jacket and no gloves, so every gust blasted me with wintry cold. I knew there was no way I was going to spend two hours traversing the ridge in that kind of wind, but I had hiked all the way up there and thought I should at least enjoy as much of the scenery as I could bear. That turned out to be 45 minutes out, and a fairly uncomfortable 45 minutes back.
I was really, really cold in this picture ...
But that was mostly because I stopped long enough to set up my camera's self timer twice. I just wanted a portrait picture with the crimson-colored tundra. This is the failed shot, because I didn't turn around in time. But now that I look at it, it turned out to be the better picture.
As expected, the clouds finally sunk below the ridge line, so it was a good thing I aborted my mission. After my Blackerby Ridge experience last month, I'm terrified of getting lost on ridges in the fog. It would be even worse to be lost when I'm already uncomfortably cold and wearing every piece of clothing I have with me. Fall is here and winter is coming, so I have to remember to prepare better every time I go outside. It's a harsh, hard time of year, but it never fails to be interesting.
