Skogan Pass

23.11.2013

After a little Moosling skiing near the Ribbon Creek carpark, we took off towards Skogan Pass on Saturday morning. Lincoln and I on classic skis, and Alex riding the fatter of his fat bikes (the Moonlander) towing the Moosling in the Chariot with ski runners mounted. Moosling skis stashed in the back of the Chariot. Moosling stashed in the Chariot.

Bee lining up to Nakiska can be tricky. Particularly when you’re towing an extra 30-35kg. Once we reached Nakiska, and then the groomed trails beyond, things got a little more civilized.

The Moosling did some skiing on the way up. And walking. And hurling himself into the snow at the side of the trail and proclaiming “Help! I stuck!”

Conditions were great though, especially for November. Not perfect, but if a few rocks were the worst the day had to throw at us, we thought we did pretty well.

Once we reached the groomed trails, there were only a couple of short uphill sections where Alex had to hop off and push for a bit. There were definitely other climbs that required rest breaks though – it’s good training I tell him.

I had some fun messy around with waxes. Usually I skate ski. The few times I’ve headed out on classics, it was invariably patterned bases. In Australia the conditions are so frequently spring-like that only the genuinely mad get into waxes. Because it invariably involves klister. So I have almost no experience, and the witchcraft behind it all drives me batty, reminding me why I love the simplicity of a well-behaved, predictable skate ski. But I shall learn!

The Moosling has even started taking on downhills. No mean feat when you consider he’s wearing Nordic ski boots strapped into his old toddler skis (his first proper set of Nordic skis should be here for Christmas).

It doesn’t usually end well, but at least he’s trying.

Then sometimes a boy needs a break from all this learning, and he’s back to what he knows best.

Then finally, the pass! And time for lunch.

Toddlers: ruining family photos since 1876.

Then it was time to learn the Charleston, layer up, and commence the descent. Unlike Moraine Lake Road, Skogan Pass has a wonderfully long and fast descent to pay you back for all that climbing.

Distance: 21.5km
Elevation gain: 766m

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Ha Ling peak again

10.11.2013

A dusk ascent.

Directly up via the Grassi Lakes trail, and on along the climbers trail to the pass. Past people wearing inappropriate shoes, who warned me it would be slippery coming back down. I had Yaktrax on though, and was invincible!

It’s always a little bit intimidating running up Ha Ling from town – it looms over you so, and seems so high and imposing and improbable

Up above Grassi Lakes, in black and white because the light was so low my phone couldn’t actually capture colour properly anyway.

A couple of people on their way down over the first kilometre or so, not too long after sunset. And then I was on my own. The mountain got darker, but between the snow and the light of the half moon, I didn’t bother with my headlamp. The trail was well packed all the way, thankfully no treeline post-holing and snow-wading this time around.

I turned my headlamp on at the summit, and Alex messaged that he could see me. A quick glance down to the warm orange glow of Canmore, nestled between the mountains, then back down again, looking out west to the last glow of pink on the clouds, up to the warm orange glow behind me, to the half moon casting my shadow onto the snowy slope, and to the trail, always keeping an eye on that slippery snowy trail.

Summit

I made good time on the descent, and convinced my legs into a tired jog trot to get home for dinner. Around 3.5 hours door to door, with 3 hours of moving time. Not bad for winter conditions.

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Snow Monkey

9.11.2013

Just because the snow has started the fall, it’s no reason to give up on single track altogether. There are a few trails around town that tend to be pretty well-packed down and make for great riding, even with skinny tyres (as long as they’re a bit chunky). Just so long as you’re not trying to ride straight after a snowfall or in the middle of a chinook.

I took the Monkey out for a wander on the Highline at dusk. There’s nothing quite like a snowy night ride.

Better captured with a proper camera perhaps, but you get the idea. It’s wonderful out there.

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Moraine Lake Road

8.11.2013

A Friday expedition out to Moraine Lake Road. When you’re used to not having to drive at all to go skiing, it seems like an incredible injustice when you choose to drive for as long as an hour to get to a different skiing location. It’s nice to get out of the valley occasionally, but the hour of driving is difficult to overcome.

We went out to Moraine Lake Road, which had enough snow on for grooming, but not so much that we weren’t hitting our poles on the road underneath from time to time. Although we were up quite late on Friday afternoon, there were still quite a few other people around – I’m glad we didn’t wait until the weekend, from the sounds of it there were hundreds of people about.

The Moosling is much heavier than he used to be. Skiing with him is hard work these days.

Thankfully he’s showing some enthusiasm for skiing on his own. Although at his speed, we would probably take a couple of days to reach the end of the groomed section of road (it’s about 9km one way).

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Winter begins

3.11.2013

SNOW!! SNOW, MAMA, SNOW!

Shall we go and ski up that hill?

Skiing Frozen Thunder

On Saturday it started snowing. And the Moosling wanted to ride his bike to the park. Snow biking – nurture or nature?

Snow!

Out on a snow biking expedition on Sunday

The Moosling tries some powder skiing, while Alex rides around on the Moonlander

Then I went out for a run. There were hoards out on the Nordic Centre single track, although Long Road to Ruin was less well trodden than EKG.

Our prolonged autumn season is now over for good, and any fun on the trails will be snow fun.

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The Rohloff Monkey

1.11.2013

Well, it’s been a long time in the planning, but I finally have a new bike for touring! This time with off-road touring in mind, as well as winter biking, and all year commuting (as it will be replacing my beloved Surly Long Haul Trucker). Behold, the Surly Karate Monkey! (Please forgive the dodgy phone pictures for now, I hope to get out with a proper camera on a sunny day some time soon. When the sun returns. One day. Right now it’s just snowing and snowing and snowing.)

The Rohloff Hub

The stock build of the Karate Monkey is a single speed. After a lot of umm-ing and ahh-ing, I deciding that trying to pick one gear to ride in the valley would just be too annoying – especially as I would need to be towing heavy toddlers around with it. So it would need gears. Then there was a lot more umm-ing and ahh-ing, and I finally decided to use an internally geared hub rather than the standard derailleur setup.

After reading a lot of prolonged internet arguments, and getting a few in-person opinions about the Rohloff hub (they’re awful! they’re fantastic!), I thought one might suit me, and I may as well give it a go myself. After hunting around on the internet, I sent off an email to Cycle Monkey in California. They are fantastically helpful, and it was an easy decision to have them build up a wheel for me. This took no time at all, and so last weekend with wheel in hand a morning was spent assembling the bike, and ta-dah, the Rohloff Monkey was let loose on the world!

The Karate Monkey – Rohloff Hub build isn’t one I’ve seen very often, definitely less frequently than some of the other Surly bikes. I can’t really give a thorough review until I’ve got a few more thousand kilometres under the saddle, but so far it seems to be awesome. There were no difficulties in getting everything assembled, although there are a few make-do solutions that I might change in the near future. I haven’t been bothered by the low range noise that people mention, although it was nice to be aware of it beforehand(that’s the noise you get in gears 1 – 7, which apparently quietens down after the hub has worn in a little). And it does feel a little like it’s marginally less efficient when climbing, but not so much so that I think it will make a difference to me for my uses.

The hub installed is the:
Speedhub 500/14 TS (threaded spindle, so not quick release) DB (disc brake, for the Karate Monkey’s mechanical disc brakes) OEM black anodized, 32h. The rest of the set up used
Axle plate TS OEM2 long
Monkey bone instead of Speed bone
Magura Rotor 160mm 4-bolt

Currently the cables are held in place with a slightly dodgy cable tie setup. I’ll do something to make this look a little nicer some time soon.

There’s no chain guide used, and no tensioner required. Everything was built up on a No Tubes Flow Rim, as I’m planning to go tubeless in the summer. I do have chain tensioners on at the moment, just because when we were assembling everything, I didn’t want to shorten the chain until I had checked out how the gear range suited me. The smallest chainring that Rohloff says is legal to run with the stock 16T hub sprocket is 34T, but the stock Karate Monkey cog is 33T – Neil from Cycle Monkey said this was close enough that I was unlikely to have any issues. I am fairly light and small compared to a lot of Rohloff riders, that’s for sure. So far the range of gears seems to suit me perfectly though. I’m a bit of a spinner rather than a cranker, and I spend a lot of time riding up long climbs, or towing a toddler around, so having a good low range is perfect. So I might be shortening the chain soon, and removing the tensioners.

My beloved Ergon grips come in Rohloff style! And there is no thumb shift option (that I’m aware of) – the default gear shifting mode with the Rohloff is this little twist shifter.

Rohloff and Chariot towing

The good news is that it’s easy to insert and setup the Chariot hauling spindle to tow the Chariot. I was a little worried that it wouldn’t be possible, but it’s turned out to be fine. I’m not sure if it will sit quite so neatly once I remove the chain tensioners – so that might require some playing around with to optimise. Hopefully I won’t be towing the Chariot for too much longer anyway though..

Next up…

Now it’s just waiting for some awesome Porcelain Rocket bags, so when we go out bike-packing together I’ll actually be able to carry some gear. And maybe I’ll get a front fork at some point, as I’m not so much of a masochist as to want to ride the single track around here on a fully rigid bike. Maybe eventually I’ll get a new wheel on the front, with another No Flow rim – maybe a dynamo hub? That might just be crazy talk though. And of course, lots of riding.

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Bikepacking Canmore to Lake Minnewanka (via Goat Creek)

20.10.2013

“We should bikepack Lake Minnewanka this weekend.”
“Going there from home, via Goat Creek?”
“Yes!!”

And so was our most recent adventure planned.

We had company on the first leg, biking up to the pass from Canmore, and then dropping down the Goat Creek trail to Banff. We weren’t expecting the snow though! I always forget how this little valley is so much colder and darker than our big wide valley next door.

Following the floods, one of the bridges is still a little bit out. Definitely not open for business. Could be that it’s possible to cross the river there anyway though.

We all stopped for hot chocolate and coffee in Banff, warming up a little after the journey through the freezing cold valley of doom. Then we said goodbye to Tomo, and biked onwards towards Lake Minnewanka.

The sun was out, but the temperature hovered around 12oC. Luckily we found a hill to ride up. Alex kicked the Moosling out of the trailer, and managed to ride up the hill while I did some high quality toddler coaxing.

Most of the time he just zoomed along with arms outstretched, “Buzz Eye-ear to the rescue! Kssssshhhhhhhhhh!”

The Lake Minnewanka trail is in perfect condition at the moment though, thoroughly recommended!

We biked along to LM8 (the campground 8km along, imaginatively named), passing Joel and Kristy shortly before arrival. They were hiking in to camp with us – they had brought the stove and hatchett, we had the ingredients for s’mores.

We pulled into camp around 5pm, and got things set up. This time round we opted for the slightly heavier, less roomy, but warmer, Big Agnes tent – the old faithful who’d seen us all the way around our European cycle tour. We were also carrying sleeping bags instead of the down quilt – the quilt is great, but just not warm enough for freezing temperatures when shared with a toddler.

Following dinner there were some high quality family photos taken on the shore, and then we retired to the fire pit for our first attempt at s’mores-making (s’mores = graham crackers, toasted marshmallow and chocolate). After a couple of efforts, I’m willing to accept it’s a reasonable idea, and potentially very tasty. I feel like my chocolate should have been a little more melted though, and that perhaps I need the guidance of a more experienced Canadian s’mores-maker.

It dawned cold and frosty on Sunday morning.

Porridge was eaten, morning light was admired, and camp was dismantled.

By the time we got on the bikes to hit the trail homewards, I was feeling thoroughly chilled to the bone. Even the climb over the hill at the point didn’t really warm me up.

Alex seemed nice and warm though, with 15kg fast asleep in the singletrailer, he got a nice long hill push in.

Once we hit the Minnewanka parking lot, it was all smooth sailing on sealed surfaces. Out on the Minnewanka loop road, then onto the Legacy trail for a quick pedal back to Canmore. We did consider the option of riding back along Rundle Riverside, but then remembered how rocky, rooty and rough it is, and how muddy it would probably be, and thought better of it.

Distance: 85km (Day 1: 50.5km, Day 2: 34.5)
Elevation gain: 1219m (Day 1: 1078m, Day 2: 241m)
Packing List: Was as per here, but with the Big Agnes Seedhouse 2 tent, and two separate sleeping bags for us instead of the down quilt. No stove/fuel, no insect repellant. The smaller tent was great, as there were no gaping holes developing between the thermarests. The toddler did spend most of the night inside my sleeping bag, but at least we were both warm.

Day One (click to embiggen)

Day Two (click to embiggen)

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