cycling – Page 15 – besthike.com

October 15, 2009

cycling AROUND Vancouver Island

Endurance Athletes To Pedal Hi-tech Boat Around Vancouver Island

Oct. 15, 2009 – One week from now, endurance athletes Greg Kolodziejzyk of Calgary and Jordan Hanssen of Seattle, WA will attempt a nautical circumnavigation of Vancouver Island, piloting the custom-designed, pedal-powered boat Within on its first long-distance ocean voyage. Greg and Jordan will launch Within on Friday, Oct. 23 from Comox, BC and will travel clockwise around the Island. If successful, this voyage will be the first-ever circumnavigation of the Island in a pedal-powered boat. …

read more – Endurance Athletes To Pedal Hi-tech Boat Around Vancouver Island

I’m actually close to Comox, B.C. right now, visiting my parents.

Unfortunately I’ll depart before the launch.

Good luck guys!

September 20, 2009January 27, 2010

biking hiking Banded Peak, Alberta

by Besthike editor Rick McCharles

One of the best day hikes out of my home town, Calgary, is Banded Peak. But it’s a big day:

Something like 37 km return, a 1416m (4645ft) height gain.

Perhaps 27km on the bike and a 10km return hike/scree scramble to the 2,934m (9,626ft) summit.

Here’s the final deceptively easy looking approach.

Banded Peak, together with Mount Glasgow, Mount Cornwall, and Outlaw Peak, forms a small range which lies between the Little Elbow River to the north and the Elbow River to the south. …

PeakFinder

It’s become a tradition with the families of some of my hiking buddies to take their sons on this adventure as something of a rite of passage to manhood.

On Sept. 19th, 2009 we took three 13-yr-olds. They had to get to the top … or die trying.

Rob Glaser, our leader, was far from certain that a group this big could finish. And finish in time before night fall.

Here we are on the summit. Everyone made it. Somehow.

It was extremely windy on top. I’d estimate 80km/hr (50MPH).

Other than that, the weather was great for this time of the year. We were lucky.

Our best fun was some of the scree runs on descent.

Happily, we all made it back to the trailhead by 5:30PM.

Victory.

more photos from this adventure

Guidebooks:

Kananaskis Country Trail Guide – Vol. 2

Scrambles In the Canadian Rockies 3rd edition

September 2, 2009September 3, 2018

hiking Jungfrau, Switzerland – day 2

Trip report by site editor Rick McCharles

day 1 | 2 | 3

Jungfrau hike – day 2

By coincidence, I was in Grindelwald the same time as the annual Eiger Bike Challenge. In fact, I hung out at the main tent two days running.

Hikers, the train and the cycle race all climbed from from the valley to Klein Scheidegg.

Most cyclists had to walk some sections. Fitness and ability level was mixed at this race. Certainly I would have been tempted to rent a bike and join in had I had arrived one day earlier.

My goal. The hotel at Kleine Scheidegg. I remembered the description well from reading The Eiger Sanction 20yrs before. I bought it as an audio download and enjoyed it again on my iPod during this hike.

The train from here to Jungfraujoch 3454m “TOP OF EUROPE” is super expensive. I asked several times if there was somehow I could hike up there instead. … Not without ice climbing equipment, unfortunately.

The short climb up to the glacial moraine was as high as I got, sadly.

There’s a feature there I’d never seen before. Benches in water where you can rinse your feet. It even has a bubbler.

By nightfall I found a fantastic place to put up my tent, on a cliff edge overlooking the lovely, tranquil Lauterbrunnen valley.

That evening when I was cooking supper an Italian hiker stopped by. He and his fiance were doing a long through hike through the Alps. Had been on the trail for a couple of months.

see all my photos from day 2

day 1 | 2 | 3

August 6, 2009August 3, 2009

hiking and biking Sportgastein

Sportgastein is the highest ski resort in the ski-intensive Gastein valley in Austria.

In the Summer it’s a lovely place to hike or bike. The best destination out of the alpine town of Bad Gastein.

A few pics from my two days there.

It was more work than I expected climbing up to Nidersachsenhaus. Great views though.

more of my Sportgastein photos on flickr

everyone’s Sportgastein photos on flickr

July 31, 2009

Primal Quest Badlands – Team Nike OUT

Wow.

I was shocked to see Kraig’s headline on the official blog:

Robyn Benincasa and Team Nike Out of Primal Quest Badlands

… the withdrawl of defending PQ champs Nike. Last week, team captain Mike Kloser suffered a crash while mountain biking, which left him with a broken collarbone, a collapsed lung, and five broken ribs, and while he is already on the mend, the injuried will obviously keep him out of the race. The rest of Team Nike reluctantly decided to pull out of Primal Quest rather than look for a replacement on short notice. …

Robyn Benincasa and Team Nike Out of Primal Quest Badlands

Benincasa was captain of Team Merrell/Zanfel Adventure …

Primal-Quest

July 25, 2009July 22, 2009

Bus and Bike the Italian Dolomites

To rest my feet between hikes, I rented a mountain bike for an “easy” day in the mountains of North Italy.

I did a good chunk of this loop. The bus delivers you to a high pass. And you roll generally downhill.

The Rails to Trails sections were awesome. But at times I was pushed out into astonishingly dangerous holiday traffic. I can’t believe they don’t have several deaths a day.

The cycling was brilliant. So much fun that I ended up cycling about 120km. Probably the longest day in the saddle I’ve ever done.

(There was some chaffing.)

My 19 Euro / day bike was great. The company – Noleggio – does a very professional job. I could drop the bike anywhere around the loop.

bike-and-bus

Check this out … a custom water bottle holder for a 1.5 litre Coke Lite.

Coke-Lite-on-bike

Brilliant!

June 16, 2009June 16, 2009

Adventure Sports Week – whither Team Nike?

UPDATE – Team Nike Beaver Creek won the first annual Adventure Sports Week 2-day Adventure Race.

Team-Nike-Beaver-Creek-small

For this race the team was made up of Mike Kloser, Gretchen Reeves and Jay Henry. Congratulations.

official results

The win was far from easy, however. Nike was pushed hard by Team Life Cycle: Jared Hanly, Roger Viollette and Ian Hoag.

=== Original post posted after day 1:

We were thrilled that a Team Nike was willing to race in our first annual Adventure Sports Week. They instantly became the favourites.

But the team, led by Mike Kloser, seemed on day 1 to be cursed. (Or sabotaged, as I joked.)

Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.

They had far too much Adventure, not enough Race.

Happily, The Crux and The Crucible Adventure Race this weekend in gorgeous northern Idaho is 2 long days of 13-14hrs.

Nike got out to a better start this morning, day 2, at 6AM. Trail run, lake swim, portage, kayak …

No disasters, so far.

I suspect by late Sunday night they will have found a way to win. Despite all the setbacks.

I’ll update this post with results after the race.

June 13, 2009June 13, 2009

more Adventure Sports Week photos

Just added 20 new pics from our sprawling Adventure Sports Week event in Idaho.

Danelle Ballangee leading a pre-race clinic

see more on flickr

The Crux and The Crucible Adventure Race starts tomorrow early. Teams hope to finish each of the next 2 days within 14hrs.

Hints from event organizer David Adlard lead us to understand it’s going to be a difficult, particularly grueling course. Best strategy might be to go for only the mandatory check points, and finish safely within regulation time.

Me?

… I’ll be a comfortable volunteer, cheering on the serious athletes.

… On Saturday, at Idaho’s Farragut State Park, the second phase of the inaugural Adventure Sports Week will kick off with adventure races for athletes of many calibers. Some of the sport’s top athletes will be there, including five-time world champion Mike Kloser and two-time world champion Danelle Ballengee, who made national news in 2006 when she fell during a Utah trail run and might have died if her dog hadn’t gone for help.

But the weekend is designed to offer something to everyone. Short-course adventure races are available to amateur athletes interested in sampling the sport, said Todd Jackson, one of the co-founders.

“All you need is yourself and a partner and a mountain bike. …

Seattle Times – World-class adventure racers to compete in Idaho

June 13, 2009June 10, 2009

mountain biking the Dolomites

The Adventure Life caught my eye with this compelling photo.

dolomites20

more photos

That article links to this important advice:

Timing Your Visit

Ski Touring : March – May 1
Road Biking : May – October
Mtn Biking : June – October
Trail Running : June – October
Hiking : June – October

So much in the Dolomites depends on the huts being open. To come to the Region and have the huts all closed would mean missing out on a lot of the culture, it would also mean a heavier pack. May and June can have periods of great weather for cycling, and the roads are empty. But, it can be quite wet as well. Again, the huts are closed from late April to 20 June.

The time frames above are not fixed, only general references. Also, for the off season you can visit lower, nearby areas and hit the Dolomites in periods of perfect weather. The Lake Garda area is a fantastic escape when the weather is bad, or the perfect spot to base yourself off season.

An interesting thing occurs in Italy each August. The majority of the country goes on holiday. Literally. Unless you live in a holiday area (like the Dolomites), you go on vacation. The interesting thing is that Italians like to stay in Italy, they see little reason to leave, they know it is about the best place on the planet. Why risk leaving where the food is bad and the coffee terrible (good point)?

So, they pack nearly everything they own into their tiny cars and head to either the Dolomites or the beach. At about the same time, the Germans, who love the German speaking Sud Tirol Region, arrive en masse in campers, big Audi’s and motorcycles.

Given the option – do not come to the Dolomites in August – steer clear. The roads are frightening, the trails have traffic problems, the huts are full and the locals are somewhat grumpy. …

read more – DolomiteSport