Scott's Graduation and Superior with Ian

This week Scott graduated from High School!

I never imagined the years would pass so quickly.

Here is Scott lining up for the Red Rock Rampage in 2006 when I started writing this journal. Hopefully he has changed more than I have:

Actually, Scott wasn't that excited about the graduation ceremony itself, but enthusiastic about graduating and looking forward to the future.

Friday evening Ian and I climbed Superior together. We got slightly off-track on the way up a few times and did more scrambling than the easiest route would require, but it all ended well.

It was beautiful weather and great to spend the evening with Ian.

We did see a few skiers hiking to ski Baldy and hiking to ski superior, but there isn't much snow left.

Bikepacking and the Grand Staircase

Last weekend Reed and I joined up with Grizzly Adam, Ty Hopkins, Keith, and one other guy for a loop through the Grand Staircase Monument.

We drove down and bivvied not too far from Grosvenor Arch, which was where we started. The arch itself was awesome. I was feeling a little like I was getting sick as we drove down, but hoped it was allergies or something. It didn't feel like a big deal.

And ... off we go.

From the arch, we rode about 75 miles on the first day.

We encountered some snow as we climbed. The snow eventually became mud, which caused me a lot of chain-suck and some walking, but some water-bottle washing and oil got me going again after we got past the mud.

Somewhere late in the first day the bolt on the main shock pivot of my Intense Spider 29er failed. This has happened before. Fortunately, the two halves stayed in and it still worked OK.

We had a lot (one) of crystal-clear (sort of) streams to drink from.

I was really hoping we would make it to Lake Powell the first day, but we had started a bit late in the morning. We rode till it was nearly dark, but even so, as we discovered the next morning, there was quite a bit of riding left before Lake Powell from where we camped. We skipped the final spur down to the lake, and hence never really saw it. This was my only real regret of the trip.

While eating and getting ready for bed Friday night I was feeling a little strange and my stomach was unhappy. We had been riding all day, so I hoped I just felt weird from being tired. Throughout the night I kept waking up sweaty and and belly grumbling, but again, we had been riding all day and my sleeping bag was new, so I was not really sure what was going on.

In the morning, I got up shortly before sun-up because we had a lot of riding to do and I did not want things to drag on into the dark that night.

As I started riding, it became clear something was indeed wrong. My body's thermal-regulation just wasn't working right. Nothing to do but keep riding. I rode along an endless dirt road by myself ahead of the group until we came to a big overlook. Unfortunately, this photo doesn't really do it justice.

What followed was a long descent. This part of the ride was interesting with lots of black-seams of coal visible in the layers of rock on the sides of the cliffs. In some places, the dirt road was even black with coal.

At the bottom, more endless dirt-roads.

By the long dirt road pictured above, I was feeling pretty sick and just riding to get it over with. This part seemed kind of long and boring, but then we came to the town of Big Water, where no stores were open but we got water from the restroom.

At big water, Reed and I left the group. They opted for an off-road route that we had heard was a lot of hike-a-bike, and it was going to be into a head-wind. Instead, we took a route on the highway, which was still a lot of headwind and more annoying than fun. After hearing how it went for everyone else, I think we made the right choice even if I had been healthy.

Honestly, I can't remember where this photo was taken, but I think it was where we got off the highway.

When we left the highway, the winds were crazy strong, blasting dust and sand into our eyes.

Fortunately, the ride ended with a long, steady climb up this canyon (Cottonwood Canyon?)  I really liked the canyon, despite feeling horrible, and ticking off the miles and the time in 25 minute increments.

After the ride I was shivering uncontrollably. We stopped at a gas station and I got some hot water out of a coffee-machine, which helped a little. We stopped again later for some Tylenol. This seemed to tame the fever and I stopped shivering. The flu has been unusually bad this year, and I finally got it. It kept me in bed for the next four days. Maybe it was worse because I rode 150 miles of dirt as it was coming on.

Maybe it was just because I had the flu, but I left this trip feeling a bit underwhelmed -- like the area was pretty in about the same way all the rest of Utah is, and frankly not that unique except a few particular spots. This was the first time I remember that I've done a big ride and then thought it would have been more fun to just ride it on a motorcycle.

The vastness of the nearly undeveloped land is probably the coolest thing about the area. We barely saw anyone the whole trip, and that is pretty unique these days.

There has been a lot of controversy about how much of the area should be protected and how that should be accomplished. Visiting somewhere like the Wind Rivers, the Tetons, Zions, Bryce, or Canyonlands, I always leave thinking, "wow, this needs to be kept as pristine as possible", but Grand Staircase really didn't have that effect on me. It would be a shame to dig it all up for coal or parcel it out to private property if that were what people wanted to do with it -- something should be done to keep it wild, open, and accessible, but there is probably a lot of fine ways to accomplish that.

Mr. State

Scott made it to state in wrestling. The big event was at UVU.

One of the challenges with these tournaments is that the organizers need to make sure the third-best wrestler doesn't get knocked out of the running by the end of the second round through an unlucky draw. As a consequence, the lowest qualifying wrestlers compete against the highest in the first rounds. This made it tough for Scott. He wrestled tough and avoided getting pinned, but lost on points in the first round. In the second round, he went the time and lost by a single point -- so close! At one point I though he was going to pin the guy, but clock expired on him.

While there, we also toured the stain-glass wall in the UVU library. It is both beautiful and interesting. They had young-women working there that could tell us what each picture represents (and are many), and answer any questions we had.

I've been interested in getting a sports-car for quite a while. Saturday Kim and I drove down to St. George to look at an S2000. Turned out it had been heavily modded, and it overheated on the short drive we took it on. They were supposed to follow up after they diagnosed the problem, but they have not called back. It was fine. Kim and I had a nice day together, and I got a good ride in.

While I was riding, Kim found a statue of one of my ancestors: Sarah Leavitt. My chain back to her looks like this:

Me -> Dad -> Stephen G Abbott -> Stephen Perry Abbott -> Mary Leavitt Abbott -> Lemuel Leavitt -> Sarah Sturtevant (Leavitt)

Obviously, I'm not exactly her only descent living today.

Some of the stories about what she and her neighbors had to endure to settle Santa Clara, Bunkerville, etc. are terribly humbling. It left me thinking about what things we accept as tolerable, normal, practical, or even possible, simply because our comfort zone is formed as a pretty narrow band around our actual life path. Most of our expectations and judgments are made relative to our own first and maybe second-hand experiences rather than against some set of basic principles. In some ways this probably frees us from wasting too much effort on each decision, but in some ways, it probably holds us back significantly.

Ski Season Supposedly Starting

There has been very little snow so far this year, but Alta has the easy runs open. We bought Kim ski equipment this year so she could start skiing, and we took the girls up to Alta Friday afternoon after "early-out". Dad met us up there. The girls were nervous at first, but after warming back into it, they did very well.

Yesterday I took the road bike up to Tibble Fork and back. A light snow storm brought fog, wind, and falling snow for my ride down the north side of Suncrest, which added to the fun. My toes were really cold most of the ride, so I'm going to need to figure out something warmer for my feet for road riding in the 20's.

Thanksgiving and Zion Traverse

A few years ago we started a tradition of spending Thanksgiving in St. George with the Abbotts. We didn't do it last year, but we did it the two previous years before that. Sadly, this year Mom had a full sibling reunion in Florida, and couldn't be in two places at once, so she did not make it.

This year it was really warm, both here in Salt Lake, and there in St. George.

Thursday Scott, Ian, Tanner, and I rode the Zen trail. It took a long time to get going. We were getting ready to ride when I found out Scott and Ian both use Kim's shoes when they ride, we were short a pair of shoes. I took the pedals of Melissa's little bike and put them on Ian's so he would ride with normal shoes. Then we found Tanner's valve stem was leaking, so I took the stem out of Melissa's bike and put that in Tanner's bike. After that, the ride went well.

I was a little nervous watching them ride some of the drops, but no disasters occurred, and we had a fun ride.

After the ride, Kim, Rob, and I went went for a quick run in Green Valley. While running, we saw Chris Holley trying to fix a flat, which didn't look like it was going too well.

After the run, we had Thanksgiving dinner and played games.

Friday we drove out to a place called, "Sparkle Mountain" It is an old Gypsum mine out in the desert. Google maps took us on a pretty rough jeep road, which we drove in the 15 passenger van. That took a while. We even had to stop and find some hunters that had parked in the middle of the road (thus blocking it) and left to go hunt. Their vehicle was leaking oil, but they said they had fixed it already. When we got to the mine, we learned everyone else went a different way which was a much better road. Still, when we packed up to leave, we found Dusty and Leah had a flat tire!

Friday night we watched a slide show of old family photos.

Zion Traverse

Saturday Rob and I ran the Zion Traverse. Reed generously got up at 3:45 with us and dropped us off at the east entrance, so we started running right at the planned 6:00 am.

The first few hours breezed by as the sun came up and the temps warmed from about 30 F to eventually somewhere in the 60's or 70's. My bad kneed started bothering me unusually quickly despite our relaxed pace, but other than being painful, it never became a serious problem. By 20 miles, my feet and hams were sore, but this mostly only bothered me going down. Rob seemed fine the whole time, and never really complained about any problems other than a little chafing from his pack.

The first half of the run has most of the great scenery, but it was all good running and the weather was a perfect bluebird day. The second half had more sand and soft trail, which was nice on the sore limbs. The trail was crowded climbing up to Angel's Landing, but it was not a problem and the rest of the run we saw people only occasionally.

I ran with a full 80 oz in my pack, and I filled a bottle at the Angel's Landing trailhead. Reed also dropped off water for us at the Hop Valley trailhead, which was good because we were out by the time we got there. As we approached Hop Valley, we saw a car do a U-turn in the road, and Rob said, "Hey, that was my car!" Dad had driven up the road and missed us by 100 yards! It would have been fun to see him.

Rob had wanted to pace it well so that we'd manage the last climb without feeling too bad, and actually it went great. As the sun went down, temps cooled and we had a nice climb at a comfortable pace. Shortly after dark, during the climb, we ran into a couple who called out, "Hey are you Rob?"

"No, but he is."

"Oh, are you Rich? We met your family, but they left -- you are late!"

They had seen my family and dad dropping off the car. We were glad to know the car was there waiting for us to finish. We couldn't have done the run without all the logistical support.

As my longest run so far, I was really happy with how it all went, and it was great spending the day with Rob.

Funny looking selfie in the dark after 50-some miles.

Eagle Scout Scott!

Scott received his Eagle Scout award this week!

Greg Hughes, our friend and Speaker of the House in the Utah Legislature, spoke and presented Scott with a US flag that was flown over the state capitol building. Bishop Simons wasn't there, so Greg Rees presented Scott with the actual medal.

Point to Point

I've done the Park City Point to Point (PCPP) several times over the years. I missed the first year, although I can't remember why anymore. Anyway, it is a fun route.

This year in preparation, I rode about 60 miles of the course last Saturday. That was probably a little close to the actual race for optimal recovery, but I wasn't overly concerned about my finishing time anyway.

I always have cramping issues in this race. It is a long race with a lot of climbing, and I am prone to cramps in long races. So I started pretty conservatively with the hopes of maintaining a steady pace till the end. This worked out pretty well.

The course was changed up, with the finish moved from the Canyons resort to a field next to the Skull Candy HQ. The last descent was a long, rocky descent with a lot of switchbacks, and my fork was going flat so I had to tough that one out, but my finish time was 7:51:32, which I was quite happy with. It was probably my best time yet, but I think the course was faster this year, especially compared to the first year I did it.

Weather was unusually hot this year, but otherwise perfect. As has become my custom, I parked between the start and finish, so my point-to-point was actually a loop.