Mountain Biking Hurkey Creek June 07

Funny how we start Mountainbiking a lot when the weather becomes worse. By that I mean unbearably hot.

To try and escape the over 100F temperatures here in Palm Springs, we drive to Hurkey Creek in Idylwilld.

There's Clark who came out with us for a ride.

Clark attacking the torterous uphill.

That would be me - pretty out of breath.

This is one heck of a hill, though it doesn't look it from here.

Still going up.

Obviously Jacques always finished the hills first, since he's the one taking the photos. He's just like a little energizer bunny on the uphills.

Jacques in action.

Clark preparing for a pretty technical downhill....

Oops - like that didn't happen to any of us!

At least he didn't get any bruises unlike me!

(However - I did manage to escape Jacques taking a photo (evidence) of my glitches...)

This is a really cool piece down this rock. Looks a bit steeper in real life.

Whoopla - here we go...

Hmmmm - so whose going down first?

Me and my beloved Stumpjumper - love that bike.

Taking a breather...

Victory - Finally ontop!

Zion - Campground

We camped in the South Campground on our trip to Zion. The campground is very close to the Visitors Center, from which the shuttle-bus leaves.

This was the view we had - How about that!




Busy making breakfast before we head out for one of our hikes.

Another view from a hiking trail that starts from our campground.

Do you see the flattish rock on the right with the red running down the rock - That's the "altar of sacrifice".

And this was our "bath facility" in the Virgin river. The campground didn't have showers so everybody takes a dip in the River to freshen up.

It's like a natural jaccuzzi.

Zion - Angel's Landing

So, about 2 weeks ago we decided to visit Zion National Park, just north of Vegas. There were two hikes we really wanted to do and this is one of them. It's Angel's Landing - and once you get up there, it really does feel like you're on a heavenly landing site!

It's only a 5 mile (8 km) hike, but it does climb 1488 ft (453 m) with unbelievable views.

This is the view from the first part of the ascent....Did I mention it was about 107F? If you look carefully you can see a dot moving up on the trail - that would be another hiker!




















Part of the first part of the climb, where we had a bit of shade.




















After a while you get to the part they call "WALTERS WIGGLES": 21 Switchbacks which are pretty steep!

The colours of the rock were just unbelievable deep red from the iron oxide in the rock.























Just a little later, things get a bit steeper. There are quite a few places with chains - Thank goodness!
























To the left and right of where Jacques is standing it's sheer DOWN - nothing in the way! The ledge is barely broad enough to walk over. Most people only hike up to Scott's lookout and that last bit to Angel's Landing is not for those scared of heights!
























The view from the top is spectacular - no photo can really do it justice. This is looking down towards the temple of Sinawava, which was the starting point of our second hike.





























Better hold on to me! Not exactly the best place for a total klutz like me to hike - is it now......

I was not kidding when I said It was a STEEP uphill....

That point up there....THAT would be where we were heading! See the hikers on the left ridge! We literaly climed the ridge of that mountain!

Now we're getting closer and closer

The path ahead was becoming narrower and narrower....

And it kept going up and up....

Another one of those narrow crossings - sheer cliff on each side. AMAZING!

Adrenaline junkie? Who me?

This was the last bit - you can see the top of Angels Landing in the distance.

On this photo you can see the road that the bus takes through Zion. They pick you up at the Visitors Center and drop you off at several points. The bus is for free and runs ever 6 minutes or so.

And here we have our first angel..

After taking a little breather and absorbing as much as we could of the view, we started heading back.

This part is in "refrigerator canyon" on the way down. It's shielded between the mountains the temperature is quite a bit cooler for this little piece. Very welcome after a pretty hot ascent!

A bridge at the bottom of regrigerator canyon.

How small we look between those massive rocks!

And if that was not enough, we decided to add another hike to this one and carried on to the Emerald pools.

This is the upper-most pool of the three. By now we were only to happy to catch a bit of shade.

What a spectacular day

Zion - The Narrows

This was the main reason for us going to Zion: To do "The Narrows". It's tricky what time of year to do it. In Winter it's pretty cold and in summer the timing has to be good to miss any flash floods.

Basically you hike in the Virgin River between cliffs that slowly rise around you as you continue on.
"The Narrows" is the obviously the narrowest part.

We didn't know too much about the shuttle service or how long it would take us, so we hiked it up from the Temple of Sinawava to the 10th camping place (see map). Surprisingly it only took us about 3.5hrs to there.

Now we know, we can get a shuttle to the top of Chamberlain's Ranch and hike the whole thing down in a day (gotta leave something for next time)

Since we had so much time on our hands we did the sideloop of Orderville Canyon too -which was just as amazing.

No picture will do this hike justice and initially we weren't going to take any so we wouldn't insult the canyon, but here's a few:

The water seeps through the sandstone rock and comes out as a miniature waterfall.

They say the water is thousands of years old.

This is more or less the deepest we had the water go, but at different times of the year it can get much deeper.

Another waterfall coming out of the rock. It's amazing and at certain parts of the canyon you hear an eery noise as the water comes through between the break in the cliffs.

Jacques was in his element.

The deeper you went into the narrows, the quieter it got. It's quite tricky crossing over rocks underneath you with a pretty strong current.

We crossed the river at least 51 times ONE-WAY. Those were mandatory crossings from left to right. The rest of the time we were in the middle of the Virgin River going through.

The cliffs go up so high - we couldn't even get it with the camera.

What an experience. Totally different from any normal hike on land - We can both totally recommend putting this on your list of "Things to do before I die".

Bump and Grind

Lately we've been doing some more running, especially the off-road kind.
It's been a blast discovering new trails.
This one here is called the bump and grind. I'll let you use your imagination as to why.
It's a total of only 4.5miles, but the first half is a 1163 foot climb.

If you look carefully, you can see some other runners on the trail running down. It's a very popular outing for running enthusiasts.

The view from the top is quite spectacular.




A quick break half way up ..

And it goes up and up and up...



This is a private golf-course! Can you believe it! It looks quite strange - so green in the middle of the desert mountains.

Hopefully all this training will come in handy next week, when we're doing our first half-marathon in the United States! We're really looking forward to it.