Spring Cleaning

I have a ritual that I perform every spring. Like many mountain bikers, I carry a 100- ounce hydration pack when I ride. The pack also has room for a spare tube, a patch kit, some tools, and some trail snacks. My current pack is 3 years old, faded red, has a couple of holes worn through it and has seen thousands of miles on hundreds of trails. It is a great friend. Once a year in the Spring I treat it to a spin in the washing machine. Before it gets loaded into the Maytag, I have to empty the pack of all the residue of a year of riding. This Spring I took some time to look at the stuff that came spilling onto the table from the dark recesses of the sack. 

The first thing I picked up from the large pile was the crumpled wrapper for a fast-food cheeseburger. As I smoothed out the greasy, yellow paper I thought about the rainy day it was stowed. I live in Vernal, in eastern Utah, where we have been building mountain bike trails since the 1990’s and we now have over 200 miles of sweet singletrack. On the day of the burger, I was scouting an old piece of trail called More Hoes that someone had started to develop, but never finished. My companions were Troy Lupcho, owner of Altitude Cycle in Vernal and Barney Hawk, local bike crazy. The autumn day had started cloudy and eventually turned to a cold, steady rain. We left the McCoy Flat corral on a trail called Retail Sale in pursuit of More Hoes. Retail Sale is a classic desert singletrack that rides much longer than its eight miles. Two miles into the ride we slowed, searched for the intersection with More Hoes, found it and took turns at the front of the group. The trail was faint, but showed lots of potential. The first mile wound through the drainages feeding Cattail Tank. The trail was narrow and had lots of challenging off-camber climbs and descents. The second mile climbed gradually through the sagebrush on clay hills before turning into a steep 800-foot ascent onto a mesa.

By now we were pretty rain-soaked, but our spirits were high as we talked about how cool this trail was. Another mile of winding through the sagebrush the trail led us onto a narrow spine with fifteen-foot drop-offs on both sides - not a place to find out you have vertigo. I took the lead across the spine, trying to avoid the worst of the wet, baseball- sized rocks. Troy and Barney quickly discovered the mud that I kicked onto the smooth, round rocks added some technical challenge to the trail. We descended off the spine back into the valley and stopped to tell lies about our riding skills. As Barney and Troy opened small packets of gooey energy food, I scrounged in my pack for some chow. Things did not look good. As I dug deep into the strata of junk I found 17 empty gel packets and no full ones. However, my friend the pack did not let me down. Hiding deep in the abyss of the sack was a cheeseburger left over from a ride in Tucson the week before. My mind briefly argued with my growling stomach and cramping quads. We still had ten miles of riding in the cold and rain and I needed some kind of energy. I opened the wrapper and found that the meat and pickle were frozen. I rationalized that it was probably frozen since I left Tucson and took a bite. Not bad. I took a few more bites and when I offered some to my buddies, the looks on their faces said the cheeseburger was all mine. I wadded up the wrapper and stuffed it back into the pack and we mounted up. We finished the ride and amazingly I did not end up in the emergency room. We spent lots of hours later in the autumn working on More Hoes and it is now ready for public riding.

The next artifact I picked up from the Spring-cleaning pile on the table was a neatly folded map, hand-drawn on a napkin from the Brewhaus in Vernal. I keep a supply of these in the pack for trailside business trips. The map was residue from a trail building effort the previous Spring. Troy had been scouting a route to the top of Asphalt Ridge west of Vernal and had found an old cow trail that climbed about halfway up the thousand-foot ridge and then disappeared. At this point it was an out-and-back ride with lots of potential to be a classic singletrack loop. The prospect of a new trail with over a thousand feet of climbing in two miles followed by a ripping descent had the locals drooling. Troy recruited the usual suspects for a weekend rendezvous at the McCoy Flat Corral trailhead to blaze the route for his new trail. Missile and Barney Hawk showed up, as did Betty Hatfield. Troy’s wife Nan was pregnant with their son Tyler Jack and this would be his first singletrack adventure. As Troy took the lead and we hiked up the narrow trail behind him, I asked if he had named this ride yet. Trail naming is an art not to be taken lightly. The name should reflect the character and spirit of the trail. One of our trails in the Red Fleet area north of Vernal is called The Handsome Cabin Boy, named from the Grateful Dead song about a cabin boy who has a surprise for the ship’s captain and his wife. The Handsome Cabin Boy trail has lots of surprises as it snakes through the red clay and climbs the slickrock benches of Red Fleet. Troy had not thought of a name yet. We arrived at the end of the trail and Troy at a herd of antelope cresting the ridge where the new trail would go. The slope was steep and would require a number of switchbacks. While Troy and I set to work eyeballing a route and stacking rock cairns, Nan and the rest of the crew kicked rocks and connected the cairns. After a few hours of work, the new singletrack topped out on Asphalt Ridge. As we sat resting, I pulled the Brewhaus napkin out of my Camelbak and sketched the trail. The route for the descent would require a map. Nan lamented that she would not be able to ride this trail for quite awhile as Tyler Jack was due in a few months. Listening to Nan, the name for the trail hit me — Jackalope. It fit in so many ways. First, it paid tribute to the Lupcho’s future son. Second, it included the antelope. Finally, it would be a cool name in the trail guide for Northeastern Utah that I publish. The name stuck. It took us another month to finish Jackalope. The descent is fun, fast, and technical and when the snow melts this spring, I think Nan will be hunting for Jackalopes on McCoy Flat.

As I dumped the ride trash into the garbage can, I listened to the washer revving up into the spin cycle and wondered what adventures the new year will bring. If you are interested in checking out More Hoes, Jacakalope, or any of the other cool singletrack trails in northeastern Utah, drop by Altitude Cycle in Vernal. Troy will steer you in the right direction for some great riding. You can find the latest trail conditions at www.altitudecycle.com.

 While you’re at the shop, don’t forget to stock up on energy food. And just in case you’re interested, Altitude Cycle doesn’t carry frozen week-old cheeseburgers!