Dressing for cold and crappy

"How can you possibly ride a bicycle this time of year?"

It's a question I hear a lot from people around Juneau, even outdoors-type people. I think it's because people around here understand that I'm not simply trying to ride in the rain or the cold or the snow, but rather a volatile combination of all three. Weather forecasters call it "wintry mix." I call it "snain." It's seriously wet, right on the cusp of freezing, and a stream of slush is falling from the sky. It mixes with the night snow and day rain to form a putrid, gritty Slurpee that covers icy roads and trails inches thick. Ride through it, and one will have to endure the barrage of a frigid gray geyser that no fenders can hold back. Not to mention there's still Slurpee falling from the sky. It's like that often here, especially in November, December, January, February, March .. well, often. And it guarantees two things: You're going to get wet, and you're going to be cold.

So when I want to ride my bicycle when it's 35 degrees and slushy, I just assume I'm going to get wet. Trying to stay dry is an excercise in futility, and I've been a lot happier since I gave up the battle and turned my strategy to "wet and warm." I've found a system that works really well for me:

Base layer: I like to wear a thick synthetic base, such as polypro and polyester long johns, which maintain nearly all of their insulation capabilities even when wet. I have a couple of wool base layers, but usually don't wear natural fibers when it's wet because they absorb so much moisture; you start to feel like you're wrapped in a clammy towel. (And, yes, I am talking about Smart Wool here.) Synthetics absorb much less water and maintain more of a semi-dry feeling even when they're soaked. Also, they're much cheaper, so you can throw them away when the start to hold onto that lovely laundry-soap-mixed-with-sweat odor.

Mid layer: When temperatures are in the 30s, I need a mid-layer on my torso. I usually wear one of an assortment of polar fleece pullovers, which also maintain most of their warmth when soaked, although these tend to become quite heavy under saturation.

Outer layer: I have an $8 pair of Red Ledge rain pants that I love, although like all nylon products, they only hold rain out to a certain extent, which is to say not very long. What they are really good at is blocking the wind. I rely on my thick polyester long johns to keep me warm. On my torso, I usually wear a plastic jacket, which is a completely nonbreathable jacket made out of PVC. Basically like wearing a Hefty bag. Some cyclists complain about the sweat condensation generated in this miniature biosphere, but since I don't believe it's possible to stay dry, I don't really care about where the sweat moisture ends and the snain moisture begins. It's all the same, wet and cold, and after more than three years in Juneau, I've resigned myself to the fact that moisture is going to seep in no matter what I wear. Rain even finds its way into my plastic jacket, usually through the neck, arms and bottom.

Outer Outer layer: If I am going out for a really long ride, longer than five hours, I will actually carry a Gortex winter shell or another large polar fleece to throw over my plastic jacket when my core temperature starts to drop, which it inevitably does. The wet and warm strategy can only work as long as I am pedaling at a certain level. During long rides, when my effort starts to drop, so does my body temperature.

Head: I release a lot of heat through my head and hands, so I go pretty light in these places. On my head, I usually just wear a fleece ear band. During long rides, I will bring a thin polyester balaclava to throw on when I start to get cold.

Hands: I usually wear fleece liner gloves with snowboarding mitten shells (Sometimes I start with just the liner gloves and throw on the shells later). Like my leg system, these eventually soak through but do well enough to block out wind and hold in heat. On the long rides, I will simply throw my pogies on my handlebars. Pogies are actually perfect for cold rain. They take a long, long time to soak through, so if you want your hands to stay dry, pogies are the way to go. I usually have to go bare-handed with pogies because they are so warm when it's above freezing, however.

Feet: Lately, I have been a big fan of insulated vapor barrier socks like the ones made by RBH Designs. I just wear a wool liner sock with these, and my regular running shoes (which means you clipless types could wear them with your bike shoes.) They do a great job of keeping out the slush water for a long time, and when they do soak through, they still stay relatively warm. I've completely converted to these, over from neoprene socks and booties. If I want my feet to stay completely dry, I wear a pair of NEOS overboots. I usually only do this for particularly long or wet rides, because they're floppy and annoying. I may have to start wearing them more often, however, because I've noticed my frostbite toes on my right foot are particularly sensitive to the wet cold compared to the toes on my left foot, and I should probably take more precaution to avoid further nerve damage (read: trench foot).

But that's just my system. I wouldn't expect it to work for everyone. Maybe there are some out there who still claim it's possible to stay dry while riding in slushy weather. I'm beyond skeptical, but I'd love to hear your strategy.

Thanks for reaching out

I had to do a long ride today to work out a thick case of malaise. I'm not really sure what caused it ... hormonal, maybe, or possibly because the end of daylight savings time means that darkness starts creeping in at 4:30 in the afternoon. Either way, there are just some days that I wake up feeling bad about myself, which necessitates going out into the gray morning and pounding out 40 or so mindless miles on pavement, with 10 fast and fun miles of swooping, Ewok-forest trail on the skinny tires, even if it's snaining and there's slush on the road. I almost never return from a bike ride grumpier than I was before I left. Tired, sometimes. Cold, sometimes. Wet, many times. But usually with a brighter outlook on life.

I am grateful for a couple of people who contacted me this weekend, and inadvertently helped me work through the grump. I was wedged in a thick Halloween crowd at the Alaskan last night, wearing a tiger costume with a hood and pointy little ears and looking decidedly different than I usually do, when I woman pushed her way toward me and yelled over the bluegrass band, "Don't think I'm some kind of crazy stalker or anything, but do you have a blog about biking?" She went on to tell me that she just moved to Juneau from Seattle on Tuesday to work as a nurse at the local hospital. "Your blog is pretty much the reason I came to Juneau," she said. "I wanted to get out of the city and be somewhere where the wilderness was all around me."

Then today, I received an e-mail from a woman who wrote, "I got myself in the Iditarod Invitational and it is pretty much your fault. :] I am always looking for a new adventure. A friend of mine gave me your book to read and I was hooked." She wanted to ask for some advice for the 2010 race, which she's signed up for.

I think the most any of us aspire to is to make a positive difference in the world or in the lives of others. It's nice to think that in my own small ways, I helped inspire other women to embark on new adventures. I like to think that's the difference I can help make in the world. If more people come alive, than the world will come alive.

Venture into the new season

It's been a good weekend. What I expected was rain and lots of time spent indoors catching up on chores; what I got was pretty much everything but.

I was in the middle of doing my laundry Thursday afternoon when I first noticed sparkles of sunlight breaking through the clouds. I stopped the dryer and figured I'd just air-dry the load on hangers, later, and hauled Pugsley out of the back seat of my car.

I took a quiet two-hour ride around all the trails of the Valley, rolling and fun with no real destination. A light freeze set in and the trails firmed up nicely.

And, of course, riding the big wheels on the beach is always a good time.

It was a great little breather between shopping and cleaning and laundry and going to see that new Michael Jackson movie. Like a whiff of the sublime amid the mundane.

I lingered for a while on the shore of the Mendenhall Lake to watch the sunset. I see so few of these.

For as serene as Thursday was, today was the polar opposite. I've been wanting to get out and play with my new mountaineering toys, but the weather, which has been seriously wet, just hasn't been cooperating. Today was overcast and windy but at least dry. I've been interested in tackling some winter mountain treks but I realize I need to start small. I decided to head up the Mount Roberts route, which is easy to follow and has a more mellow grade than most of the routes around here. It also happens to be in the windiest area in this entire region. Roberts and its adjacent ridges act as a funnel for Arctic blasts from the Interior. It was probably not the best place to go when the weather forecast was calling for northeast wind, but I figured retreat would be easy and fast. As I approached the mountain, I observed a startling lack of snow compared to the mountains surrounding the Mendenhall Valley.

By the time I cleared treeline, I fully understood why there was no snow ... it had all blown away. I worked my way toward Gold Ridge, sometimes swimming through waist-deep unconsolidated snow drifts; other times walking on barren rock. Crampons would have been useless in that powdered sugar, so I didn't bother to put them on, but toward the top a breakable crust was starting to form. The wind howled and I pulled on all of my layers, which included too much rain gear and not enough warm stuff. But I was warm enough, and there wasn't nearly enough snow to create any kind of avalanche danger, so I relaxed and let myself believe I was having fun.

When I crested the ridge, however, the entire force of the wind funnel broke open right where I stood. I dropped to my knees and clutched my ice ax as the jet stream roared past. Sharp ice blasted my face like thousands of tiny shards of glass. My eyelids clamped shut and refused to open again. As much as I tried, I could not physically open my eyes, as though some subconscious part of my brain that controls muscle movements believed that would be the last thing they would ever see. As it was, the ice shards were scraping the small strip of exposed skin on my forehead with such force that I felt like I was bleeding. Finally, the gust calmed down from what was likely near 80 mph to a more manageable 50 mph, and I was able to open my eyes and stagger to a more protected slope and hunker down with my back to the wind. As I looked back toward my route up, I realized the footprints I had just laid in the knee-deep snow were completely gone; scoured clean by the wind in a matter of seconds.

It was so brilliantly intense that I was gleeful. I tried to pull my hood over my hat but it just flapped around wildly like it was going to tear right off my flimsy little raincoat. My fingers ached from the short period of time in which I took off my mittens to snap some photos, and I wondered about the windchill. Minus 10? Minus 20? There's something about finding myself in an environment that extreme that I just love. Something that makes my whole life seem so small and inconsequential, but at the same time makes my body feel so alive. To be alive is a wonderful feeling.

Of course, I would probably feel differently about it if I had to spend several hours up there rather than the 10 or so minutes that I actually did. I retreated quickly as the lower-elevation wind picked up force. By the time I took this photo, my camera was almost completely coated in ice. I ran down the powder snow and ducked into the safety of the trees. My eyes and face burned, my fingers ached as though they had been smashed and my toes were starting to go numb, but I was happy, because I had faced the blinding winter wilderness, and it allowed me to see so much.

First day of Pugsley season

(photo by Michael Penn)

Poor, neglected Pugsley. I finally headed out to my storage unit to extract him from cobwebs and dust. He still has the tiny road racing saddle I used as a placeholder after I stole the original seat to use on the Great Divide (and subsequently wore it to shreds and threw it away.) The lube is probably six months old. I don't even know what's up with the brakes. Much maintenance is needed, but today it did not matter. There was snow on the Eaglecrest Road, and it was fully necessary to get out and lay some first tracks.

I have no problem riding most of this steep road in the summer, but it's a beast with a 36-pound bike atop wet powder with a film of ice. I walked most of the way up with a group of hikers, who, like me, just wanted to get out and enjoy what feels like the season's "first snow."

It was cold and windy at the top — a small taste of the raging northeasterly Taku blast that is reportedly on its way.

I was dressed in rain gear rather than frigid-wind-blocking snow gear, a mistake I make a lot this time of year. So I couldn't linger up high as long as I would have liked.

Looking out over the top of the ski hill, Fish Creek canyon, and the Mendenhall Wetlands far below.

Much of the road had iced up by the time I went down, so I skirted to the side and rode the shoulder — with occasional forays over frozen tundra — through an exhilarating blast of wet powder. Pugsley's tires, still coated in spring mud, effortlessly floated on top of the ice-crusted surface, and for a few beautiful minutes, all was silent except for the wind. Silence and speed ... those are the origins of bliss.

I wonder who missed it more ... me or Pugsley.

Saturation

It's thrilling, really, that first moment your defenses are breached, that first trickle of water between your shoulder blades, like a slow, icy tickle on hot skin. Then the rain pants soak through, followed by the slow saturation of wool long johns. Then the neoprene gloves become clammy; they drip water when you clench your fists. Then more water seeps in from your neck line; it creeps up your arms and your waist; your fleece hoodie absorbs it like sponge, swirling water vapor inside your plastic jacket, condensing until there are more droplets on the inside of the sleeves than the outside. When the wool leggings won't hold any more moisture, lukewarm water trickles down your vapor barrier socks to your liner socks, which are already soaked with sweat anyway. You wriggle your white wrinkled toes and breathe in the thick humidity, the vapor of warm sweat and cold air surrounding your own personal biosphere. And you pedal harder into the geyser streaming from both sides of your pathetic fenders, and you smile, because you and the rain are finally one, and you are free.

Geoff's big dream

Dark days are coming; really, they're already here. It's the time of year to build up body fat, pray for snow, and start dreaming about 2010. Most of my ideas for next year encompass things that even normal people would consider a fun vacation (ski touring in Banff), local epics (traversing the Juneau Icefield to Atlin, B.C.), and real big-time bike races (TransRockies).

But, so far, nothing truly huge. I admit that I wish I had something big, even in the abstract sense, lined up for 2010 or 2011 — if nothing else, because it might add some depth to this state of flux I feel like I'm drifting through. But, no, now is not the time for that. Now is the time to focus on the bigger picture and let the adventures fall where they may.

I think that's why I'm feeling excited about an ultramarathon that Geoff has been cooking up that he is calling the Tongass 100. It's not particularly new to me (a lot, though certainly not all of the terrain is stuff I've seen). It's not particularly far away (always within about 10 as-the-crow-flies miles from Juneau city limits). It's not even something I could participate in (Someone like me would require three to five days to complete the route, and even then I would call it "fastpacking.") But there's something about it that feels huge; maybe it's just potential - this twinkle of something larger, like when those Iditabike crazies in the '80s looked at the Iditarod Trail and said, "Let's try to ride our bikes on this."

From what I know about 100-mile foot races, the Tongass 100 would be similar to, well, none of them. There would be times racers would be sloshing through shin-deep mud or balancing on slippery wooden planks; others where they would be plodding up or swinging down 60-degree slopes; and then there's the alpine — hand over head scrambles up peaks, crossing massive snowfields, glissading down and repeating over and over and over again. The crux of the route involves the crossing from Nugget Peak to Ptarmigan Ridge. Either Geoff will have to drop the route several thousand feet and ford Lemon Creek (which is a raging river in my opinion), or stay high and cross over the Lemon Glacier, which I've heard has been done by people in running shoes, but still ... glacier. Big, shifting river of ice that tends to be full of large crevasses (usually exposed in summertime).

Of course, this race would be unofficial. It's an insurance nightmare, dangerous in many ways, but oddly doable. People could run this route. It would be one of the toughest 100-milers ever attempted in the U.S., for sure. I wouldn't be surprised if the elevation gain is in the 30,000-35,000-foot range. But it wouldn't be anything like the big climb-fests of the Rockies. Sure, there's no real altitude in Juneau, but what we lack in elevation we make up for in bad trails, treacherous terrain, horrible weather, and sheer remoteness even so close to a populated area.

I would hope my contribution to this race would be to man a checkpoint at a place near Cairn Peak called Camp 17. It would be located between to two huge ridge traverses, where runners would gain an endless string of peaks and a large bulk of their elevation, all without touching any hint of civilization. I would have to backpack in any provisions, over a seven-mile, 5,000-feet-of-climbing hike for me and anyone I could convince to do it. But I envision setting up shop in the unheated quonset hut, rolling out the extra sleeping bags I carried, firing up the camp stove to melt snow for water and filling up a small number of water bottles with some kind of endurance drink. And if I could find a really good friend with a big backpack, there would also be sliced oranges. Runners would drop in after their long traverse of Heinzelman Ridge, summit run over Nugget Peak and crossing of either Lemon Creek or Lemon Glacier. I would hand them a water bottle and a sliced orange and say, "there are only seven more peaks and maybe 10,000 feet of climbing and then a huge drop to sea level before the next aid station." Yes, that would be lots of fun ... for me.

But it is inspiring to watch Geoff dream up this monster, and maybe even talk others into joining him. I hope he pulls it off, and I hope I can somehow be a part of it. So if anyone out there has any crazy ultrarunning aspirations, I encourage you to get in contact with Geoff. It's not about how fast you can do it — it will be amazingly impressive if anyone can even do it, even Geoff, with his hometown advantage and superhuman endurance. But the Tongass 100 may be just crazy enough to become the next big thing.

I'm in the photograph

It has been a rather dull weekend - dull meaning, mostly, that Juneau's normal autumn weather came back. It still has no real teeth to it ... a little rain, a little wind, nothing hurricane-ific. I rode 57 miles on Thursday, 27 miles today and did a 3.5-hour hike up Thunder Mountain on Friday.

The hike was inspired by a semi-sunny sucker hole that closed in very quickly. I decided to try out a new trail to the top. I located the trailhead on my map, and after about a quarter mile came to what looked like a three-way fork that was not on the map. I chose the path that went straight up the mountain, because that seemed like the most logical route. It petered out quickly and dumped me in a drainage - an obvious deer trail. But, bull-headed as I am, I continued to zig-zag between that drainage and another, bushwhacking through barren alder and blueberry bushes, until I was scrambling up a virtual waterfall, slipping all over the place and clutching devil's club stalks because they were everywhere, and consequently the only thing to hang on to. I'm still picking thorns out of my palms. By the time I crawled out of the jungle, I was nearly to the ridge, soaked in muddy runoff and frustration and determined to take the familiar Heinzelman Ridge trail back to civilization, even though it would have dumped me on the Glacier Highway, where I faced a four- or five-mile jog to my car. I didn't care. I traversed the ridge through sideways rain and gray-out fog. Upon return, I found the Thunder Mountain trail, which turned out to be a real trail, and also was nowhere near the place where I hiked up. Live and learn.

But I was disappointed by the lack of photographic inspiration this weekend, and even more disappointed by the way the gray sky and wet pavement seemed to strip away any motivation I had to ride. The 57-miler was the first truly tedious thing I've done in a long time. I stuck with it mostly because I had planned it. Then, after Friday's debacle of a hike, I had an even harder time coaxing myself out the door today.

It wasn't so much the weather - to be perfectly honest, I have been pretty lucky with the windows I've caught and I didn't even get rained on during both of my rides. But those gray drab landscapes were just uninspiring. It was cold and windy and I just wasn't feeling the same nervous energy that has propelled me to new heights this season. Instead of big dreams and realizations, my mind remained as gray and blank as the sky. I was just bored. And it was enlightening to realize the reason why I was so bored ...

There was nothing to photograph.

Despite my proliferation of pictures, photography hasn't been a major driving motivator for me in the past. There's a reason I still only own a single, simple digital point-and-shoot and photograph landscapes almost exclusively. I'm not a photographer on a bicycle, I'm a cyclist with a camera. My art isn't photography, it's the outdoors - or, more specifically, my enthusiasm for the outdoors, and my zeal for documenting the things I see and feel.

But the fact remains that I've become increasingly more attached to my camera as an outlet for my art. If I've had a particularly good day on a mountain, I won't let the thing out of my sight until all of the pictures have been downloaded. While I was riding the Great Divide, another touring cyclist in Colorado asked me what I'd rather lose - my camera or my wallet. I breathed a long pause and weighed the choice - my wallet, which was my only means for acquiring food and shelter and bike parts and really even continuing the ride; or my camera, which I received for free and had used to shoot hundreds of pictures from the previous 1,500 miles. I looked at him and answered, in all seriousness, "I'd rather lose the wallet."

Which basically means I care more about the past than the future.

But it also means I've become too focused on the visual side of my art — let's just call my art "creative cycling" (slash-beginner-mountaineering). I'd like to find ways to get back to the roots of expression - the way I used to experience the changes in my body and the startling movements in my mind. Part of me thinks it's about time for real training; that I need to find a concrete goal and drive full-bore toward it. Another part thinks it's time to plan another adventure, even if it's a long way off, and focus my outdoor activities in a way that helps me become more self-sufficient and better prepared for a wider range of demands.

I don't know. I know that right now, I go outside to go outside. And as rewarding as that has been and still is, sometimes it's just not enough.