The Rise Up Ride: Day 45-52, Climbers' Ranch: Off the Grid
Date: 6-13 June 2021
Start Location: Climbers' Ranch
End Location: Climbers' Ranch
Distance: 0 km
It had been 45 days of hard riding, lazy layovers, and a dose of extraordinary exposure to the fickle weather out across the Upper Midwest in springtime. But throughout the entire ride my focus was always to keep moving forward so that I could arrive here, at the American Alpine Club's Teton Climbers' Ranch, by Sunday, 6 June. I rolled across Cottonwood Creek and up to "The Ranch" on Saturday, one day early. Cheguei!
Character by character the week's cast of adventurers strode into camp. Many greeting friends and climbing partners with whom they have bagged peaks over decades on the routes above in the Tetons. Professors, students, musicians, engineers, a flight attendant, yoga instructor, all part of the hardcore volunteer brigade of climbers who spent five days painting, sanding and landscaping the Ranch back to its absolute slendidness.
Lauren and Ashlee, our boss ladies, distributed jobs. Sean O'Rourke, Phd mathematician, serial, and self-admitted, peak-bagger and FKT holder known as Dr. Dirtbag, and I were assigned the greatest job…. wrenching the fleet of cool beat-up loaner mountain bikes. Typecasting at its best. Make the guy who just cycled 5,000 km in Chile and Argentina while making seventeen ascents, pulling a Bob through the Andes, work together fixing up bikes with the guy who just rode across the country from Minnesota. We had a great time!
One of my bunkhouse mates had climbed the highest peaks in Equatorial Africa and another spoke about the body hanging on the Eiger. She's bound for Alaska to lead something adventurous and to be a Yoga goddess at the same time, and he is carrying his crampons, boots and skis up to the still snowy pitches at the top of the Grand for June skiing at 4000 meters. He, a concert violinist, played Revel's "Kaddish" in the library full of mountaineering titles and astonished friends. Pretty cool week.
Pam and Sam drove in on Friday after camping and hiking in the north rim of the Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon to join me for my 68th birthday and our official Climbers' Ranch sign hanging party. We missed Kai on a family hike, as we did the "Around the Block" route straight out of camp and back on Saturday.
I'm in Dillon, Montana tonight and will be riding hard up the two passes on Highway 278 through the Pioneer Mountains on the Lewis and Clark Route up from the Beaverhead River. I'll either bunk in at the Bunkhouse in Jackson Hot Springs or push on to camp in Wisdom, at the edge of the Big Hole (Tuesday). If I'm lucky, when I'm pedaling through Wisdom, some might stick.
