Winter training can be a challenge. I had planned to ride Camp Lynda this weekend, but the weather in St. George had other ideas.
Honestly, I've been too busy with work etc. anyway, and so haven't been skiing either, which is probably best since the hills are sketchy with avy hazard.
This has relegated me to the trainer. I have a computrainer, which Kim's bike is on right now, and a Tacx Fortius, which one of my bikes is kept on. I keep a bike on there so that I don't have to waste time setting it up and taking it down.
People often ask which is better - the Tacx or the Computrainer. Each seems to have its benefits. The Tacx software has more features, but I just end up riding in ergo mode all the time anyway, and its ergo mode works fine.
The computrainer ergo mode makes the wheel feel like it is stuck in goop, so I ride virtual courses that can be made up by the user. I really like that feature, which surprisingly Tacx doesn't have. My CT seems to have more consistent wattage than the Tacx, once it is warmed up, but it doesn't have the nice user-settable calibration constant that Tacx has, which allows matching to the power meter.
In the end, it doesn't matter much which one. Bart once said to me he finds riding indoors "is like burning a match" (cyclists all understand this). I almost agree. Both trainers are still boring and mentally taxing for anything over 90 minutes. This makes it hard to get a great workout, but better than conventional trainers, and worlds better than rollers.
As long as it isn't actually snowing (or raining), I ride outside unless it just won't fit in my schedule. I ride in the dark a lot in the winter. Maybe sometime I'll write about clothes for cold weather training. I've tried a bunch of things over the years.
Spent Monday and Tuesday riding in St. George with Greg and Brad, and hanging out with the family.
The weather was a bit 'fresh' as Bp would say (and overcast), but much better for riding than SLC right now. It was not particularly windy and no mud, so the riding really was pretty good. Greg knows the trails in that area quite well and we rode some great ones.
I've still yet to get a great picture out of this new camera, but I haven't looked at the instructions yet, either, so what can I expect?
It was really nice to have the kids and Kim along. We had fun swimming, and they did a little touring while we rode.
Reed and I hit Cardiac this morning. We started walking shortly after daylight and walked for several hours before seeing anyone, despite the huge views. The planned route would have taken us almost to the peak of Superior and then down another canyon, but a combination of equipment, fatigue, and snow conditions got in the way and we ended up doing one nice run on Cardiac ridge and then heading for home.
As we hit the bottom of Cardiac, a guy on a snow machine motored up to us. "Hey! Did you see the no-trespassing signs?"
I had to admit that I did, but wasn't clear on what spots of property they were trying to protect, etc. After a few minutes conversation I gathered two things:
1) The guy had been involved in some confrontations with skiers in the past, which is unfortunately easy to imagine. Some back-country skiers can get a self-righteous attitude. Helicopters, snow machines, ski resorts, etc. etc. Even hilarious things like the path of a skin track, spacing your down-tracks too far apart, crossing other's down paths. A person on a machine would not have to be very aggressive to precipitate a fight with the wrong skier.
2) Pretty much the entire upper end of Mill D South is actually private property. This did surprise me. So many people ski there and it is so big and wild that it didn't really even occur to me someone might own it all.
I think it was a mistake for the government to sell all that land so long ago. I assume they sold it and didn't just give it away. Presumeably it was all for mining, maybe some ranching, and probably very few particuarly wanted it. Still, the fact is that someone did sell it, and we shouldn't just go and forcefully take it away now anymore than the government should be able to come and take away my house, my car, or anything else. The fact that it is a large group of people that wants something doesn't give them the right to just take it.
Corner Canyon has worked out well in this regard. The owners wanted to see it preserved, they knew approximately how much they could sell it for, and they sold it to Draper instead. It wasn't cheap, it would probably have been cheaper 20 years ago, but better late than never.
I also think that both the OHV and environmentalist crowds both need to be a bit more realistic.
On the one hand, OHV's really should have places to go, and in so far as they don't destroy where they are going, they should have some great places to go, not just the left-overs. There really should be some snow machines in the Wasatch. As far as I can tell, their environmental impact is small (except noise), and through permits limiting numbers on any given day and perhaps restrictions on riding in shallow snow, impact could be kept to a minimum.
OTOH, there are practical limits to how much acreage can be open to motors next door to a million person city. It would not be good for the mountains or the other users to have thousands of machines buzzing everywhere all the time. It is nice and I think proper to have areas that are quiet and peaceful most of the time. Some people claim the machines are quiet now days, but that is wishful thinking. Maybe someone makes quiet ones, but most of them that I see are not quiet. Salt Lake used to be a small town, and there were lots of dirt roads and areas to go off-road. It was nice, but not sustainable with more people. As the population increases many areas and roads will have to be closed.
Environmentalists need to back off or modify the wilderness efforts. The current interpretation of the 'wilderness' designation is so strict that it really amounts to a small group of users dictating the use of wild lands according to their own arbitrary desires. The policies are inconsistant, which is evidenced by the current stand on horses, grazing, row-boats, bicycles, skis, etc. It is not even based on environmental impact or preservation, which would be a fine standard. The policy of the government with respect to public lands should always be to allow as many activities and types of use as is environmentally tolerable. Some areas will get too crowded. In these cases lotteries and permits work fine, but they should be numbers based, not activity based.
It is too bad that both sides have become so radicalized and vicious. The unreasonably polarized positions have and will continue to lead to unnecessary user conflicts. More coherent policies would not elimate them, but it would help and at least then the policies could be justified.
