Kongesporet 2013 and Narrow/Wide chainring follow up.

Today is Tuesday. My bottom only hurts a little now.
Sunday evening it was a bit worse. Crossing the finish line Sunday afternoon it didn't really feel that bad. The pain came creeping in after I'd relaxed for a couple of hours.

Sunday morning 9 a.m. I was ready on the start line of the inaugural version of Kongesporet (Kings trail) 2013.
For the last two months I've been training to start racing again, planning to debut in the Slushcup in November. Despite that plan I was ready on the start line of Kongesporet this Sunday. Thinking it might be a good opportunity to test my fitness and finally do some racing again. I'd signed up for the marathon distance of 105 km, as the shorter distances of 42 and 21 km are for kids and rookies.
I've ridden marathon races before, but it's been a couple of years, so I didn't really know what pace to set. But I had a plan.

2nd or 3rd loop in Boserup.

Photo: Mikkel M Beisner, Grip Grap

Race Face Single Ring Narrow/Wide - initial impressions

Are the XX1 style narrow/wide chainrings worth the money?
The answer pretty much comes down to their ability to keep the chain from falling off, when running without a chainguide.
I thought it might be interesting to isolate the narrow/wide effect, too see what it really does.

 Narrow/wide and standard version of the Race Face Single Ring.

I've been riding a standard Race Face 34T Single Ring since spring, and have so far put 1400 km on it.
Today I changed to the 34T Narrow/Wide version of the Race Face Single Ring.

Moroccan climbing

Back in the spring of 2010 Jonathan Mathiesen, Jens Arne and I wen't to the Atlas Mountains of Morocco for some african skialpinism.
I've since had 900+ photos that I want'ed to get sorted and perhaps share a few of.
Anyways now it's autumn '13 and the Danish Climbing Federation are organizing a climbing trip to Tafroute in Morocco, so what better reason to put of some pictures.
This first post from our trip three years ago, is primarily climbing orientated. Later post can cover skiing and culture.

Trekking in from Imlil. 1600 vertical meters + food and gear for two weeks = mule - good idea.

Take care when clipping high.

Take care when clipping high. Especially at the beginning of the route or close to ledges etc.
Illustration from the Petzl techtips section.

What to do when you loose half your chainring bolts?

Ever tried spreading your chainring bolts all over the trail?
I tried it today. When I discovered something was wrong, to bolts and nuts were missing completely, and the other two had loosened so much, they only had a couple of threads keeping them together with the nuts.
A 15 min search only revealed one bolt. Two nuts and a bolt had been abducted by the numerous very large ants that were all over the trail today.
So how to continue?
Search in your pockets (saddlebag in this case) and see what you can find.
In addition to my tools and spare tube, I found a couple of meters of 3mm cord.
Tighten to two remaining bolts and tie the cord through the two empty holes.

Two bolts and cord for the rest.

It holds up pretty well. Enough to both ride home and to get some icecream to celebrate the arrival of summer.

Sluff management

Jim Conway and Mark Newcomb has made a good writeup on sluff hazards and sluff management techniques, for the US Forrest Service Avalanche Center.
It's not new anymore, but the information is still relevant. I think it's easy to understand and easy to apply.

http://www.fsavalanche.org/encyclopedia/sluff.htm

Small sluff on Cheops Mountain. Rogers Pass, BC.

Recue mission on Combeynot

"Chris; Iben have twisted her knee!" Someone yelled. I'm at around 2900 m and breaking trail on the boot pack after it got too steep to skin. The majority of the group is about 100 m below me, around a corner. I can't see what's going on down there. Communication is difficult because of distance and terrain. Decision is easy, go down and see how bad it is.

The had started in beautiful weather at Col Du Lautaret, and we had ascended the 900 vertical m in little less the 3.5 hours earlier.
The goal was Pic Ouest de Combeynot (3145m). Our skin track had gotten gradually steeper with more frequent kick turns, before we decided to boot pack the steepest part.