February & March Part II: BC, NV, & UT

It's May now, so quite frankly I barely remember February and March.  I know I went to British Columbia for about three days.  Fernie, BC to be specific.  It was pretty rad.  I have never been to western Canada, but one of the mine's I am responsible for is in Sparwood (just north of Fernie), so I'm looking forward to visiting there more.  Since it was late February, the first day I was on site it was about -1C, but the next day it was -34C.  The day I left my beard froze on the approximately 50 m walk from the rental car facility into the airport terminal because it was -36C outside, which may be as close to the Celsius/Fahrenheit crossover temperature as I think I've ever been.  I try not to complain too much about the weather, but that was damned cold.  I didn't spend too much time in Fernie, and the trip was kind of last minute because it happened approximately 36 hours after I got back from Italy.  Fernie is in a narrow river valley surrounded by pretty damn impressive mountains.  Right now they have a rental unit, but are in the process of buying a unit of their own.  That means that I have two weeks in Fernie sometime in my future.  Which likely means a ton of mountain biking, so I'm pretty damn excited.

Just a little taste of Fernie, BC.

I got back from Canada on a Saturday afternoon, and left for Elko, NV on a Sunday night.  There's nothing much to say about Elko.  It's in the middle of nowhere.  There is some pretty cool national forests around it, so since we had some time, we took some time to explore some of the trails.  There was also a mine, with super muddy roads.  We got to drive around them in out small-on-the-outside Fiat 500L.  It was pretty rad.

The Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest Ruby Dome District would be a pretty cool place for backpacking.

Fresh cut trail with half a hundred switchbacks.

Valley views.

Some interesting metamorphic rocks.

Muddiest Fiat ever.

The reason why.

Got to drive through the Bonneville Salt Flats and decided to stop and take pictures on the way back.

Big view.

I got back from that trip late on a Friday night.  The next weekend I headed to St. George, UT for my first race of the season, the True Grit Epic.  It was pretty rad.  I ended up having a big crash on a fast section of singletrack resulting in some broken parts and a scraped up leg, but I finished the race in not last place in the Pro/Open 50 mile class.  I bought this picture, taken on the Zen Trail, after the race.  It was taken by Crawling Spider Photography, a creepy name for some people that do pretty good work.

Zen Trail was freaking rad.  I could ride stuff like this all day.

Two weeks after True Grit, Mrs. Geology, KMill and I went to Moab for the 92Fifty Training Camp.  Moab is really cool, and you should go there.  I don't have any pictures, but we rode a ton, and I got to see most of the new trails that have been made in the eight years since I was last there.

Now that it's May and I've barely traveled since the beginning of March you'll be back to your regularly scheduled race reports.  Except for some more interesting surprises coming up in June.

Laters!