The Big Trip

Ashley and I have always liked Big Trips; when she graduated from college she rode her bike home….from Connecticut to Yakima (via Seattle) and when I graduated from college I sent to Colorado for a bit then to Europe, where I ultimately met Brother Paul Paul in Turkey (where we fittingly spent Thanksgiving) and I went on to Egypt before finally straggling home for Christmas.  The first date that Ashley and I had was two rainy weeks in Ecuador, that she extended on the front end to the Galapagos and the backend to Costa Rica, and I stayed in Ecuador for 2.5 months.  Our “second date” was a month in the Indian Himalayas.  More recently we took advantage of her retirement to do a  2.5 month road trip through the PacNW and California, three years ago we did spring and most of the summer in Europe, and two years ago we finally talked two great friends – Megan and Meghan – into joining us for a big bike tour of Spain. Now we are about to go on another trip, but this one is gonna be a bit Bigger.  

We love Salt Lake City and Utah.  Well, that may not be quite right; Salt Lake kinda drives us crazy: the big influx of people in general, the crowding and traffic in the mountains (especially in winter), the heat, the pollution, the state leadership that seems determined to ruin the state by developing every square inch of it that isn’t a national park and doing everything they can to power the aforementioned big influx of people to deteriorate the quality of life for all who were already here.  But….we love Salt Lake!  The access to the mountains is so close, the quality of those mountains is so high:

the two-hour radius from Nebo to the Uintas to the West Dez to the Logan mountains is great, and the 4-5 hour radius to the Tetons, Sun Valley,  the Winds, Colorado, and – most saliently – the southern Utah desert for some of the most iconic riding, hiking, canyoneering, and general lonely, gorgeous landscapes – is incredible.  

Most importantly, however, is the community; despite living in a valley that holds a dizzying 1.2 million people, somehow we manage to either get together with or bump into friends at every turn.  Last weekend Derek and I did a big run and between the gratuitous mile+ from the  two trailheads we saw only one person….whom I knew.   At the rock gym this morning we were literally the only folks climbing when we arrived, but by the time we left we’d bumped into ten friends.  Ash and I love it; we are pretty social, and I’ve developed a habit of scanning around most places anticipating that we’ll see someone we know and have a good chat and a few yuks with them.  This is super valuable to us. 

But…..we are heading out, at least for now.  

While we’ve talked about actually moving for a long time – and actually put in an offer on a house in the Teton Valley a couplafew years ago, we could never actually pull the trigger to do so, for the aforementioned reasons.  Then I watched Brother Paul and Janette actually pull the trigger and do it, and was impressed; it’s a Big Deal! 

Last year we had thought about doing A Big Trip, but then had the fortune of having Big Al move to SLC, which was really nice for Ashley to reconnect with him, even if he was a step behind his old self.  But after Al passed away, we realized that the time was nigh for yet another Big Trip, and the ideas that had been germinating for a while kinda came together in what we think will be a good plan.  

A few years ago we met Kris Erickson, who was our guide on a ski trip to Svalbard, and while Kris hails from the Bozeman area originally and has spent most of the last many years in Chamonix, he loves Morocco, and he and his family have also built a life there, with Kris guiding in the High Atlas mountains and Chloe running a foundation that helps Moroccans improve their quality of life.  A month later while riding in Scotland we met a great couple from Amsterdam on their bikes (not surprisingly) and rode with them for a day exchanging tales of various bike adventures.  One thing that really stuck out for us was their love of Morocco as a cycling destination; they’d been there five times!  As folks do on one trip, we started doing a bit of research on another trip (enhanced by the concept of a very dry place, in contrast to the very wet Scotland that we were experiencing!) and Morocco did indeed sound pretty amazing.  Fast forward a coupla years, and the good folks at Bikepacking.com completed the “Route of the Caravans” bikepacking route (south and north)that is 1200 miles long, mostly through the Atlas Mountains (High Atlas, Mid-Atlas, and Anti-Atlas, as well as the Rift Mountains) and dipping into the Sahara in the South.    Despite the fact that it’s pretty far from a lotta places, this route seems to already have gotten quite popular with the “out there a bit” bikepacking crowd, and it sounds great.  So we are gonna give it a go.  

But first, to keep up our high quality socializing, we are going to meet our old pals the Jamiesons:

in southern France and riding with them towards Girona, Spain for a week+, then when they return we will carry on to Barcelona to catch a 30 hour (!!!) ferry to around a good chunk of Spain to Tangier, Morocco.  The ferry ride itself could be an interesting adventure, according to this account.  While the Route of the Caravans is kinda drawn to go south-north, it does so because most folks seem to go in the spring and it takes more time for the Atlas snows to melt; since we are going in the fall we want to be higher earlier and then as fall progresses and we are closer to the desert the temps will moderate; at least, that’s the idea, so that Ash’s partner doesn’t melt in the desert heat like he did last fall in Canyonlands!  Hopefully we can find some Nuuns in Morocco….or at least some pickle juice?  

We plan on riding that route – or, as we usually do, the route with lots of variations depending on the vagaries of our desires – until mid-November, when Ash is going to head for Sicily to meet Felicia, Meghan, and Kaf for 10+ days of yuk-filled riding and copious dining on delicious Sicilian food and I’m going to head back down to Zambia for another Zambezi river trip with Rocky Contos’s Sierrarios with a great cast of old friends who are also making the journey, most for the first time.  When we decided to go to Morocco I thought “well, if I’m in Africa in the Fall, I’m definitely going to the Zambezi!” but, of course, I’ll almost certainly be flying through Paris or Frankfurt or somesuch to get to Zambia!  

After Sicily Ash will likely head for mainland Italy, and the plan is to meet her there after my Zambezi soiree and I will leap back on the steed (yes, the $10-special Scott is getting customized and ready for action!) and we’ll start working our way northward, weather dependent.  

The next major stop is Innsbruck.  While the mighty Wasatch does indeed harbor the Greatest Snow on Earth, we have decided to hunker down in Austria, one of the world’s headquarters of all things skiing (ever wonder why there’s never significant Austrian athletes in any other sports besides skiing?  Well, me neither, but I think it’s because all they do is ski!) .  We were originally lured to Austria when we rode through there in the summer and stayed with our friend Linh Nguyen near Innsbruck and then our other friend Roddy Darcy near Kitzbuehl and marveled the many big mountains that loomed in between and the central location of Innsbruck; it’s at a bit of a crossroads to get to Bavaria, St Anton, the Dolomites, and Switzerland, and the nearby mountains can get a lot of snow.  Of course, like all mountains, it can also NOT get a lot of snow, but our friend the Wasatch Weather Weenie Jim Steenburgh – who wrote the definitive book on Wasatch powder snow did a sabbatical there a decade ago and has since gone back many times, and we sorta figured if it’s good enough for a true snow geek like Jim, it should work for us!  

Of course, that’s not entirely true.  We have indeed gotten pretty spoiled in the Wasatch, and often the measure of success of a day is how much untracked powder we have skied, and how few (many) people we’ve seen doing so.  It’s quite possible that by going to Austria we’ll be in a zone that is even more popular than the Wasatch for backcountry skiing, and the snow will be a far cry from powder; that is, if snow even comes at all!  (it’s been pretty dry the last few winters; climate change has been hitting Europe hard).   There are a dozen resorts in the Innsbruck valley, and while we aren’t big resort skiers, these resorts – unlike most in Utah – have uphill tracks and sell one-ride “bumps” on chairs since the real mountains sometimes start over 3000 feet over the valley floor.  And the concept of “wild” skiing – ala BC huts, which we like to hit most winters – is replaced by very civilized “backcountry huts”; Ashley read somewhere that there are over 700 huts in Austria, many of which range from cafes to lodges!    But it’s a different deal over there; the proliferation of mountains and the juxtaposition of civilization to them means that the overall culture is mountain-oriented, not just the “mountain towns”; at least, that’s what we think it will be, and we are spending the winter there to find out if it’s true!

  

We are renting an apartment in a little village called Axams, which is only 6 miles from Innsbruck, which in turn is either a big mountain town or a small mountain city at about 100k people.  We were turned on to Axams by a director at Black Diamond’s Euro HQ in Innsbruck who told us about the various good places to live in the area and had a great line:  “if I live 30 minutes away from skiing I won’t ski every day; if I live 5 minutes away, I’ll ski every day!”  Five minutes sounded better to us, so we found the one (??) rentable apartment there, and I hope that the BD guy doesn’t regret suggesting that we be his new neighbors!  The apartment is a one-bedroom and the big couch folds out to a big bed, and we are hoping hoping that some of our friends will somehow also see the value of leaving all that good Wasatch powder for some European chunder (but lots of good food and yuks to go with it!).   Ashley is determined to go watch the famed Hahnnekamm downhill (worthy video!) in late January; it’s pretty iconic, and apparently it even draws Arnold Schwarzenegger back annually and he has created a climate summit around it!  

We will be there for all of January and February.   March is typically the beginning of the bigger tour season- bigger hut to hut traverses with longer days and – maybe? – better weather/visibility, and there’s some talk with my old pal Colter about giving the Pierra Menta another go; we got foiled by Covid in March 2020, but is that reason enough to train hard enough to suffer hard in a 4-day skimo race?!!  

Logisitics:  people have asked us how we are getting bikes and gear to and fro. I have done all the stuff to have mybaggage.com pick up our ski gear (one package that’s two ski boxes taped together and another filled with packs, clothes, etc) and we are shipping it to our new BD pal to await our arrival in January.   Mybaggage also does bikes, and they have assured me that they can send a bike from Marrakesh to Naples, so I will send my bike there to meet Ashley in early December.  Our Italian connection Steve Smith knows everyone in the Italian cycling industry and has introduced us to yet another cycling industry icon who we hope can help us find a good destination (or hotel, or bike shop).  Crossing our fingers that these things will work out!   

Beyond March our trip/life is a bit TBD; I’d love to do some kayaking in Europe, having never done it, but showing up with no boat, no paddle, no gear, no language skills, likely no car then, and no pards may make paddling a bit challenging!  Ashley’s mom Deb and her friends The Betties want to meet up in Prague, and we’ll be no doubt looking to get back on the bikes, so the spring should be fun and interesting.  And it’s fundamentally being enabled by the good fortune of Big Al’s parents; Ireland allows citizenship to grandkids, so a coupla years ago Ashley got her Irish passport and can therefore stay for longer than the standard 3 months (90 out of every 180 days) and fortunately ne’er-do-well spouses like me  can sorta dangle on (at least, I hope I read that correctly!) We also have an unusual opportunity that our old friends the Southwicks are moving back to the US after a dozen years in New Zealand (possibly the only people moving from a cool country like NZ to the chaos of the US) and they are going to live in our house, and while we are getting rid of the famous Beige Forester, it’s going to stay in The Gang as the new car for Jane and Mike’s son Gus Elovitz in Seattle.  

When will we return?   We kind of anticipate that we’ll miss the lonely wilderness/wildness of the Western US, and probably more prominently we’ll miss being part of a community and specifically our community; perpetual travel enables meeting lots of people, but the brief time and language barriers don’t engender deep relationships.  Even two months in one spot where we can kinda dig in a little….well, it’s only two months, and good relationships sometimes form and grow over years. 

Along those lines, we are hoping that folks will come over and visit us for skiing, bikepacktouring, or just sightseeing around the regions we’ll be in!  But for now, we are gonna take advantage of a unique opportunity to do The Big Trip!  

I did buy a tablet and a small folding keyboard, and there may be times when we are sorta looking for things to do in lieu of having good friends nearby, so I’ll likely be writing dispatches in future blog posts about our adventures.  So stay tuned!