Hope to Kenai

Had a fantastic trip with Dylan on our little pugsley shake down. Technical singletrack, ocean currents, swamps, quicksand, river crossings, drunk rednecks and miles and miles of beach.
Full Story here:










Untitled from Eric Parsons on Vimeo.

New Bike

Surly's are great bikes, they ride great and are pretty much zero-bling bs.
The guys that run the show are into adventure riding, touring and off - the wall kind of stuff. Look at their blog for proof, of just their products. Really...

A little history. I used a Karate monkey to singlespeed the Mcgrath race back in 2005. It was great, conditions were good enough for a 29er with snowcats, aside from knee destruction and searing pain for 90 miles, I had a great time. I think a few emails were traded. Then the monkey went to South America and generally got the snot kicked out of it. Aside from a large amount of salt deposited inside the frame and a messed up paint job its no worse for the wear... I start making bike bags... Surly liked the bike bags.. I like Surly's... I come up with far flung trip ideas.. Surly liked far flung trip ideas... trip ideas need fat tire bikes... I don't have one and am cheap :( Surly makes fat tire bikes :) A bags for bikes barter was made and everyone is happy Hurray!
So without further delay..
My new pugs:





Going to go break it in and get it wet over the next few days.

Mt Alice

Capt Dano got me down to Seward yesterday for a climb up mt. Alice, We've both been wanting to do it for a long time since its just oh sooo tantalizing from the Town. With a decent looking weather window up the trail we went.



Conditions looked good, there was a bit of a question mark connecting the lower Couloir to the middle snowfield though.



The crux of the route was in fact that lower couloir, it was fairly steep and borderline to needing crampons. At the top of the snow it required some exposed scrambling and pulling through a large boulder to get to the middle snowfield.





The middle and upper snowfields were in great shape, a bit on the soft side on the upper part, but nothing to really raise red flags.



After 5,000 of climbing we saw this and started to wonder why we left the rock gear in the car...


after giving it some good looks we found a reasonable route through it via the main gully in the photo, then around the back of that there is a low 5th class chimney, or a loose and exposed scramble up route. Not bad or unreasonable unroped but focused climbing for sure due to the exposure. Nice and airy summit ridge...
There were only about one log entry per year up in the register, and nobody yet this year. cool!

Heading back down:



The bottom Couloir consumed a bit of time as we had to face-in down climb the whole thing, its pretty steep, at least 50 degrees.

Back at the tundra we had nap and story time as the clouds drifted in, I think we spent at least 3 hours of the day napping in the sun, it was great! Low stress climbing for sure

Nice views of Seward


A Great Day to take Saturday on a Thursday!

Good things!

Lots brewing,
First - the monkey got a face lift.
I finally threw in the towel about getting my black sheep Ti bike up and running again. Why do I have 2 29er hardtails? I dont know... but I can never seem to have them both running at the same time so screw it.

threw the WB fork on...



and added some new technology like a granny gear...



and got my new rack eyelets brazed on (thanks Dave Grey @ Surly and John Evingson...)


SO its a real mountain bike again. I might even put a rear disc brake on it to replace the $19 deore v-brake I have that has worked works just fine for the last 20,000 miles...

on to other things - Behold- the monster twinkie seatbag! Swallows up both large and small mammals with ease. Should be a hit this winter...




Also got my mind on some other projects, or should I say trips..

These should come in handy,


and this


and this


and last but not least this...


How do I sleep? I don't know...