Thanks to Scott, Leslie, Dutch and Lucas for the great times!

BJ in the Poop Chutes - Backside of JH

Mellow Grove at the bottom of Four Pines

BJ and Scott show off their Snow Beards

Lisa's 30th Birthday Weekend in Moab

Fun Turns on Cardiac Ridge

Plummer Yurt with Ellery

Victor Sunset

]]> http://riverecho.com/2011/02/23/pow/feed/ 0 43.6079826 -111.1420288 http://riverecho.com/2010/10/09/weekends/ http://riverecho.com/2010/10/09/weekends/#comments Fri, 08 Oct 2010 23:03:31 +0000 Lisa http://riverecho.com/?p=829 BJ and I make the long boring drive through northern Nevada a couple times a year to visit friends and family in California. We’ve never ventured far off the highway through the barren state but a recent trip to Lamoille, Nevada may have changed that for future trips out west. Just 30 minutes from the city of Elko, the small town of Lamoille sits at the base of the stunning Ruby Mountains. There is even heli-skiing in the Ruby’s if that gives you any idea of their grandeur.

The reason for the trip? Jean’s grandmother and grandfather had a ranch in a protected little valley in Lamoille and Jean spent quite a bit of time down there as a child and teenager. Although the main house is no longer standing, the ranch still exists. From her many stories and a video she brought along, it was easy to imagine the ranch as it used to be.

The Lamoille Cemetery: Jean's Great Uncle (John Billet - died age 15), Great Grandmother (Hanora McDermott Billet - died age 43 in 1918), and Great Great Grandfather were all burried here. They have their own family plot.

The family plot.

A well known Basque restaurant we ate at in Elko. We had way too much food - endless soup, salad, french fries, beans, and spaghetti .. oh, and our entres of beef, pork, and mountain trout too. Our waitress gave us some laughs.

On a drive up into the Ruby Mountains. Like I said ... impressive.

It was hard to leave this little slice of Nevada. Other than exploring the tiny tiny town of Lamoille, visiting the ranch and the cemetery, and driving up the Lamoille Canyon into the Ruby’s (okay, that actually sounds like a lot), we sat at home snuggled into the couch with many cups of coffee and multiple books. It was one of the most relaxing weekends I’ve had in a while.

The following weekend we got a group together to ride the Pinnacles Trail on Togwotee Pass. The only stories I have heard about the ride involve grizzly bears so along with our 8 bear canisters for our group of 8 riders, we spent most of the ride hooting, hollering, and singing down the trail. In the end we were a little bummed we didn’t see a bear – ha! The ride was around 17 miles but with the number of hike-a-bike sections, it felt much longer. It took us roughly 6 hours car to car. The views were amazing and I couldn’t have asked for a better group of people to ride with. Don’t miss our mid-trail dance (led by the one and only Barry Lewis) … everyone was so delirious at this point.

Riding through the meadows.

At the saddle.

The sketchy section.

Yay - fun group.

As we drove through a very rainy downtown Perth, it didn’t take us long to move along to the next artsy hip town of Fremantle. The cafes, one of which we visited every day, pubs, used bookstores, and weekly craft markets kept us entertained for a few days. But as the weekend approached we decided to head to the hills and seek out the local mountain biking trails. We found two awesome trails, Marrinup and Turner Hill, just outside of a town called Dwellingup, where we set up camp at a free campground for a few days and had our first campfire since we’ve arrived in the country. We’ve been camping our way around Australia but for some reason it hasn’t really felt like camping until we had a campfire.

Slim needed a bit of a tune up so we had to spend our short work week in the big town of Bunbury. But to our surprise, Bunbury was a pretty cool little town. Our camp was surrounded by water, the Indian Ocean on one side and a lagoon on the other, and there were tons of rabbits. Apparently that rabbit proof fence that runs north to south through Australia didn’t work very well.

After the short week, we made our way up to a place called Wellington National Park where we’ll spend the next couple of days on another series of mountain bike trails at Leonard Hill. The national park is one big Jarrah (a type of tall eucalyptus tree) forest. We are camped below these huge tall trees at Potters Gorge, which may just be my favorite campground so far. It reminds me of camping in Yosemite, minus all the granite cliff walls.

Eucalyptus trees are fire tolerant so when fires spread through the area, they leave their trunks pitch black and their leaves green. A couple of the mountain bike trails we’ve been on weave right through forest that has recently burned. The colors are stunning . . . black trunks against the bright green new growth along the forest floor.

It’s still hard to believe that it’s Thanksgiving. Jean is cooking up a turkey and oyster stuffing at our house in Victor for her sister and family and apparently our fat cat, Salsa, wasn’t going to miss out on the feast and brought in his own mouse to eat under the table. My mom, stepdad, and Anni are meeting up in Sequoia National Park and from the sounds of it, might end up at a Mexican restaurant for dinner. I also just chatted to my Grandma in Arizona, whose voice I haven’t heard since last year. Our call cut out really quickly, but it was so good to talk to you Grandma! I’m not sure we’ll celebrate the holiday in any tradition and although we miss the holiday feel at home, we’ll just have to make do with campfires, mountain bike trails, and the company of each other in this large eucalyptus forest for now!

Our weekend began with Bellingen’s huge community market complete with carriage rides, live music, great food, massages by the river, lots of crafts and a number of, what looked to be, excuses to clean out the garage. We circled the market twice until deciding to cruise up the hill another 20 kilometers to a place called Dorrigo National Park. The road was steep and windy but towards the top the mountain range that we thought we were climbing turned into beautiful rolling fields and farm land. Dorrigo National Park sits along this steep border and we started our tour with a stroll on a skywalk which led to an amazing view over the rainforest below.

We asked one of the rangers about mountain biking and she pointed us in the direction of a park trail that doesn’t get a ton of use. So we drove in that direction and found a perfectly flat piece of ground at the trailhead where we decided to camp for the evening. It was our first night of free camping in the country and, as we were prepared to get a tap on our window telling us we had to leave, we were excited about our find. Whether no one saw us or no one cared, we never got a tap on the window. Prior to our bike ride we spent the morning trying really hard to do nothing but read, drink coffee and gaze out over the neighboring farms. But in my relaxed state I did manage to give myself quite a scare.

Having a post coffee urge, I strolled away from camp into the forest to find a nice grassy perch. Just as I was about to . . . you know . . . I spotted a scaly, multi-colored and much too large for my liking snake just bathing in the sun. I actually can’t even be sure it was alive since I didn’t exactly wait around to inspect it. Before I knew it, I was leaping back over to the van to share my news with BJ . . . and to catch my breath. The bike ride was a great diversion and led down an old dirt road to a lookout that claims to be the point of conception for most of the local population. But I can’t pretend I wasn’t thinking about the snakes that were going to jump out of the grass and bite my leg the entire time. BJ finally reassured me, telling me to think of snakes like we think of bears and moose back home. They will typically only attack if threatened. The biggest difference when it comes to bike riding down here is that your line of focus becomes the many sticks (that I swore were snakes) lying in the middle of the trail. I can’t wait until we get up to crocodile country. I’m not sure I’ll be going on any bike rides up there.

We returned back to Bellingen for another night and then made our way into Coffs Harbor the following morning for another van appointment. We found a mom and pop shop that would be able to quickly fit a new alternator for Slim. As Jeff worked away on our new alternator (and battery) we were welcomed into his house by his wife for tea. We sat on their porch for what seemed like hours enjoying the neighborhood birds, a couple short rain showers and a view overlooking town. His wife brought us tea, chicken wings, crackers with butter and cheese, fruit, more fruit, and even offered up their spare bedroom to us if we didn’t feel like pushing further up the coast. We had never before experienced such hospitality from a mechanic.

On our way out of town, we made a mandatory stop at Coffs Harbor’s Big Banana, the area’s most popular attraction. It was about as exciting as a big fake banana can be and might shed a little light on the type of excitement you might find in the rest of Coffs Harbor. We didn’t stick around to find out, but instead continued north to a tiny little town called Red Rock, originally an Aboriginal community that is surrounded by national park land and ocean. The post shop, town store, laundry, take-away stand, and campground office are all-in-one but the camp is close to perfection. Just over a small dune from the beach, we set up camp for a couple nights on a nice grassy patch. We are surrounded by noisy birds and crashing waves and truly starting to feel settled in our temporary life on the road.

After our ride and unexpected history lesson, we continued north to the small town of Karamea, which is basically the end of the road for the northern West Coast of the South Island (that’s a lot of directions). We spent the night in the sleepy little town, where I am pretty sure everybody who lived there knew about us 10 minutes after we arrived, and spent most of the next day exploring a few different trails in the Oparara Basin. We had no idea what we were in for when we read about the two limestone arches that we could hike to. As we came upon the first arch, the larger and more impressive of the two, we were blown away by its size, 43 meters tall, 79 meters wide, and 219 meters LONG . . . as in length . . . as in the distance you can walk through it while it’s towering 43 meters overhead! It was so long that we actually had to use our head lamps to make our way through it. So how was it formed you ask? Well the river is to blame. Oh yeah, did I forget to mention that a river runs through the arch too? The river slowly carved out a layer of granite below the tough limestone rock, leaving behind the limestone arch and tons of stalactites. Once again, we’ve discovered another beautiful piece of nature in New Zealand.

The first ride out to Lake Dispute was slightly muddy, requiring a few more walking sections than normal, but lead out to a very quiet and serene lake that sits in a valley between Mt. Crichton and Mt. Ben Lomond. We only ran into one other group who found our loud conversation, about why anyone would “dispute” the lake, quite amusing. The downhill was a combination of cruisy singletrack, switchbacks, and wide sections covered in babyheads, but all in all a fun ride.

Our second ride turned into three short rides. The trail to Macetown follows the Arrow River for a couple hours, crossing it on twelve different occasions. We figured a clear sunny day, although cold, would be a great day for this particular trail. But we failed to remember that Arrowtown is situated perfectly to the south of a small mountain range, which blocks out a majority of the winter sun. Crossing the rushing Arrow River in the shade all of a sudden seemed much less desirable. So we ventured out as far as we could to the first crossing, looked at how deep we would be wading to cross it and at the snowy peaks in the distance, laughed at ourselves, and quickly turned around. Back at the car we turned toward the Chinese Settlement and continued out a road that led to a trail up and over a mountain to Macetown. We figured we might hit a little snow at the summit but it was better than hypothermia. We reached the trailhead and found a sign that said “Track crosses private land. No bikes.” Our chances of getting caught were pretty slim but we played by the rules and turned around . . . once again. Back at the car we rode over to the small skate park and played on a couple little jumps which warmed our freezing fingers and toes right up. We finally settled on the rolling and wide river side Millennium trail. It was busy with strollers and dogs but still a nice leisurely ride.

With most of our afternoon still open, we decided to give our bikes some very overdue cleaning attention. Our patio, where we normally clean our bikes, is now shaded for most of the day so after spraying them off, we loaded them back into the car and drove to a sunny park in Frankton to give them a thorough clean. We had two little boys, probably no older than ten, approach us asking if we could fix their seat height. We should have put up a sign for our temporary bike shop.

Today is Tuesday and our last day on this long weekend which we’ll be spending giving the house a deep clean. BJ and I move out next weekend and Steve moves out not too long thereafter but today is the only day we all have together to pitch in some elbow grease. Looking at the frost covered deck and neighboring rooftops on this fine fall day, it may not be so bad to spend the day inside . . . cleaning.

We hopped back in the car and drove another hour to Naseby where we hoped to go on a bike ride. The last time we were in Naseby the forest was closed due to fire danger. With so much snow over the last couple weeks we knew we wouldn’t face the same problem. We waited out the rain, and the decision making, in the only café in town over a few coffees and finally talked ourselves into a short ride. Had the trails been dry the riding would have been amazing. It reminded me a lot like riding in Utah, without the slickrock. But the wet clay that we encountered seemed to eat us up, bikes and all. To top it all off, it started to snow half way through our ride and we started joking about how we should have packed our ski goggles. Although slightly frozen, we continued along the more stable fire roads until it was time to return our muddy selves to the car and head through more snow country to dinner.

Despite having packed the tent, once we were in Moeraki we were both easily persuaded to step it up and pay a little extra for a one room cabin. It was perfect, equipped with an oil heater which we instantly turned on high, and had views overlooking the Moeraki harbor. We arrived at Fleur’s Place later that evening to a packed house and immediately remember it was Mother’s Day in New Zealand. We tried to pace ourselves so we could enjoy the experience for as long as possible. Our appetizer, a huge pot of green lip mussels, was delicious and my entrée, John Dory with caper lime sauce was perfectly flaky and flavorful. BJ’s baked sole melt entrée was a bit of a letdown but maybe that’s what we should have expected ordering fish covered in cheese. He got over it, scrapped off the cheese, and helped me finish my meal and a scrumptious berry crème brule for dessert.

The following morning we drove a little further up the coast to the historic port town of Omaru where we gave ourselves a tour of a Whiskey storage house and watched an Antarctic blast throw giant waves over the harbor’s retaining wall. We encountered enough snow on the way back to Queenstown that we are on the lookout for a set of chains. Once we move north, and even if it means skiing in our jeans and rented alpine gear, we will only be a couple hours from a handful of ski areas.

The following morning, we ventured out for another bike ride in Skippers Canyon. A very different ride from yesterday, the Mount Dewar track has a lot of climbing in the beginning and the end and a huge downhill in the middle. It is a classic cross country ride with a handful of hike-a-bike sections. Although on a 4 wheel drive track for most of the downhill we both concluded that it was probably one of the longest descents we had ever rode. The trail flattened out for a while as we rode high above the bright blue waters of the Shotover River before meeting up with the road again for our final ascent to the car. We have been up the same road a couple of times before, coming in from a different trail, but this time it seemed to take us twice as long. We were beat after four hour ride of ups and downs and arounds. But we weren’t nearly as tired as our friends Tim and Mary Lynn were this weekend. They completed an 18 hour race together in Fruita, Colorado . . . nice work you two!

Now it’s back to another week of work and wine in beautiful NZ . . . damn, we have it rough.

Our plan to wake up just before sunrise not surprisingly failed and we finally managed to get up, eat breakfast, pack our backpacks and start biking just before 9am. The trail may not be a trail I would ever just ride for the sake of riding, but it sure made the relatively flat track into the hut a short one. We had a few adjustments to make initially with our pack-bike set up. Walking with a big pack is straight forward. Biking with a small camelback is comfortable. But biking with a big pack is somewhat of a challenge. The back of my helmet kept hitting the top of my pack and standing up on my bike to better absorb rocks or bumps was pretty much out of the question. It also totally screwed with my center of balance, throwing my weight way over my handle bars which wasn’t very desirable for going downhill. However . . . we had a lot of fun doing it, slightly enjoying the worried look that would overcome the cows as we passed.

We arrived at the hut a little out of breath and pretty sweaty but we had barely begun what we had set out to do for the day. We quickly downsized to one pack with rain jackets and lunch, tossed our bikes in a grove of trees to hide them not from bike thieves but from the kea, or mountain parrot who enjoys eating rubber, and changed gears to begin our assent up to the Cascade Saddle. Cascade Saddle is the crossing between the Rees-Dart Track and the Matukituki Valley and usually ascended from the Dart Hut as a side day trip. The hike in to just the Dart Hut takes at least two days and seeing as we only had two days to spare we chose the one day straight up the mountain option.

From the hut we started off on a steep but hands-free trail in beech forest and before we knew it we had reached bushline and were looking down into the narrow valley we had just ascended. As a side note, most tracks in New Zealand are marked by orange arrows nailed to trees when you are in the bush, or orange posts when you are above bushline. It’s not the Yellow Brick Road down here, it’s the Orange Post Track. We had prepared ourselves for the section between bushline and the ridge which we would have to reach before descending to the saddle itself. The shortest distance between the valley floor and the saddle was a straight line up a giant rock wall, so to access the saddle the trail had to skirt around it entirely. But we may as well have been scaling the rock face because each orange marker was directly above the previous. Switchbacks (or zig-zags as they like to call them down here) did not exist on this track. But I don’t want it to sound like we weren’t enjoying ourselves. It may have kicked our butts and we may have been breathing way too hard, but I still had enough energy and pizzazz to do a little “Pylon Dance” when we reached the pylon marker at the top of the ridge. It was here, at the pylon, that we realized what a treat we were in for. Matukituki Valley was behind (or below) us, the Dart Glacier was starting to appear and Mt. Aspiring continuously fought the clouds that tried to envelop it. But we still had another hour ahead of us before we would reach the saddle so we trucked on . . . and it was totally worth it!

My words won’t do it justice but what we saw, or experienced, at the saddle was truly breathtaking. There was a strong wind too, which really did seem to take my breath away. So it literally, and figuratively, was breath-taking. We were standing on a cliffs edge that dropped straight down to the Matukituki Valley. In the distance Mount Aspiring’s snow covered summit peaked through the clouds. On the other side of the saddle we stood at eye level with the entire Dart Glacier, blue ice and all. All we could do was spin around in circles, attempting to digest the view in every direction.

We spent about a half hour at the saddle before starting back up to the ridge and then down down down to the hut where we spent a quiet night hobbling around, playing cards and reading with just a handful of other trampers. We woke up with tight legs and took the morning in the hut to drink a few rounds of coffee, eat a huge pot of muesli and read in front of the hut’s huge windows that faced up valley before getting back on our bikes for the descent down the valley and through the cattle to the carpark, homeward bound from another @$$ kicking and inspiring New Zealand weekend.

View March 2009 :: Cascade Saddle Photo Album