Deireadh Or....

An Alaskan rosehip homage to the end of Autumn.















....and last but not least, a photo of the recently discovered Alaskan Bog Wolf. Upon discovery, it was promptly shot, butchered, and mounted to a tree in the Valley.

crainn lasrach

two days in a row. better be careful i don't burn out or something... went back to crev mo on the ssstump today. did the same loop as yesterday. short, but hits all the fun log crossings. it was cloudy all morning, so i was in my cage carving when all of a sudden the sun just burst through the clouds and filled my room with light to the point that it nearly hurt my eyes. so i finished up the piece i was working on and got on the bike.



oh, i had also found a relevant user manual for my now several week old reba team, which doesn't come with one, on the interwebs. read through it and found i was adjusting the floodgate improperly. apparently you need to adjust with the compression on full lock. it was much better today while climbing locked out, but still has a tendency to dive over log crossings whether it's locked out or not.

i don't think it rained last night, but the roots were noticeably more slippery. legs felt great, as they should on such a short ride. i don't think this loop, including riding to and from the trailhead, breaks 12 miles. i had to retry the one multiple log crossing 3 times before cleaning it all the way through. it's the first one that throws me off. it's 2/3rds of the way through a turn and about 26" high. factors which i don't seem to remember causing me any grief back in nj. maybe my skills are dumbing down from lack of use? i'll have to go out and play more.

tiocfidh se...

it's getting to be about time i started thinking more seriously about my upcoming second Iditarod Trail Invitational, aka Alaska Ultrasport, aka Iditabike. yeah i said second. in my year plus long blogging hiatus i managed to barely finish my first attempt. i still intend to eventually get the writeup on this thing, once i've had a chance to fully digest it, of course....

but anyway, i need to start 'training', or at least riding/hiking on a daily basis. no more of this lollygagging i've been doing of late. time in the saddle and miles in the legs will be necessary if i don't want to repeat last years dismal, although somewhat dramatic showing.



so, with that in mind, i headed out to crevasse moraine today to play on the very few, semi-hush-hush log features in the place. not hush-hush because they're illegal, but hush-hush because alot of people up here have hard-ons for chainsaws and have decided that the perfect outlet for their love of motorized cutting is to remove all fun from trails... bastards.

crevlogs from sean grady on Vimeo.

the yellows and golds are still hanging in there, as are the understated reds. the trails are firm and grippy, despite the cover of leaves. scenery can't be beat and it was a beautiful fall day in the valley.

sneachta bui

wintumn has arrived in the matanuska-susitna valley. it rained down in the valley all day yesterday, and the one time i left the house, the hills were all obscured by low hanging clouds. it was a very grey day. looked out the window this morning after watching the salton sea to spot a newly snow-capped pioneer peak through the yellow and gold. ran some errands in wasilla, and upon leaving lowes, i noticed that wasilla baldy was blanketed with a thick white layer up top. i almost crashed into someone pulling into the post office parking lot because i was looking up.

got home and debated my options over a beast ice. i've been wanting to check out the april bowl trail in hatcher pass, so that seemed like a reasonable option. got some light hiking clothes on and headed out the door. in had stopped raining for the most part, so i had an enjoyable drive to the little su, lots of folliage. as i continued on i ascended through at first a dusting, then enough to cause some slush on the road. the views were really inducing of giddiness. i actually jumped and skipped a little back to my truck after taking one of the photo stops on the way up.

up past archangel mine road, they had been plowing. kept going. indy mine parking lot. debated the pass. the gravel road looked maybe slippery and someone had been backing down in an suv when i passed it. i locked the hubs, put it in four X and went for it. i was relatively certain that my cracked negative terminal clamp would rattle loose at some point up the washboards, and it did. but not untill i got to where i turned around. once the actuall pass was in view, i pulled over to let a descending truck pass. got out to take in the view, and when i got back in there was no ignition response. simple matter of popping the hood and re-attaching it. the pass was getting dumped on though, so i knew there would be no hike, and likely no view. a look back where i came from told me that it was also now snowing again down below. so i called it as good a spot as any to turn around and head back home.













a few more of these and it'll be here to stay.

let it snow!