The MacIntyre/Colton on the Grand Jorasses

And introducing Dave Searle as part of the Cold Thistle test team and the author of this guest blog piece. It is Dave's picture of Ally Swinton chugging up thesummit icefield of the Eiger that now graces the Cold Thistle masthead above. Welcome Dave!









“IT'S GOING TO BE A LONG NIGHT DUDE!”







....That’s the words Ally said to me when we topped out on Pointe Walker at 5.45pm after climbing the Colton/ McIntyre (with Alexis Crux Variation).





Our plan was to traverse the Jorasses, after climbing the north face, to the Canzio Hut at the Col des Grandes Jorasses for the first day of our epic link. We wanted to traverse the Rochefort Arete to the Forche hut and finish up the Cechinel Nominee on the Grande Pilier d’Angle to Mont Blanc.



Little did we know just how long the first day was going to be……



Be sure to dbl click the Dave's and Ally's photos to see any of them full size.



Ally on the way up to the Leschaux hut.









We arrived at the Leschaux hut in good time on the Wednesday (21st) to hydrate, feed and sleep before our early start for the North face of the Grande Jorasses that night. Conditions looked good on the Colton/McIntyre, a lot better in fact than last time I was up there, but, looks can sometimes be deceiving.









For those interested, Route marked with red on how to get to the bottom this year.







Converse hut slippers= rad



Ally’s phone beeped into life at midnight signalling the time for the action to begin. We

brewed up, got ready and ate the mildly burnt porridge (nice one Ally) after what had turned out for me to be only a few hours of stressed out sleep.





We left the hut and were soon on our way up to the bottom of the face, navigating our way through the maze of crevasses up to the toe of the Walker Spur. One pitch of steep rotten ice got us over the first of three Bergshrunds with the next two being pretty straightforward to get us to the bottom of the face.



We moved together up the first ice field to the first ice crux. It was a lot steeper than the previous year when Myself, James and Gav had been on it. We were the first team up it too which meant every placement had to be swung for rather than hooked so it felt pretty hard, amplified by doing it by head torch.



I arrived at the bottom of the 2nd (real) crux to find it in less than ideal condition with a large blank section gaping the initial ice ramp and the steep wall.





me leading up the first crux







ally at first light after the first icefield



We opted for the steeper and more technical Alexis variation (the same way that Mr. Steck went when he soloed the route in 2h25!!) due to the conditions. It was an impressive lead by young Ally, with hard to place gear, thin feet and lots of rotten ice to be cleared. A few American friends of ours have since been up on the face for the Colton/Mac and said they did do the original crux pitch but they also said it was quite hard too “I had to pull out all the tricks in the book for that one!”



Ally on Alexis.





Ally a bit further up Alexis.....





Me following Ally after Alexis



It took a little more time than we would have liked to climb this variation pitch but you can’t hurry these things. If it needs time it needs time. After this pitch we worked our way up to the bottom of the mixed pitches where I took over again. Thin ice, loose rock, poor gear was the order of the day but I knew what I was in for and the pitches aren’t that steep either, just delicate. Soon we were sunning ourselves on the walker spur on the way up to the summit. We passed the bit of tat that I had placed on a ledge, where we had bived the previous year, and I wave of relief washed over me knowing that I wasn’t going to have to sit another night out there without a sleeping bag!









2nd mixed pitch.

We topped out at 5.45pm giving a total of 13hours on the face. We briefly discussed our options as the original plan to traverse the to the Canzio Bivi hut that afternoon seemed like a lot of hard work. Quite an ambitious plan such as this can easily be spoilt but any number of factors and the lure of walking off the back for Italian Pizza’s was strong. We were both feeling the strain after the Colton/MacIntyre but decided we should at least give the traverse a go, so we set off shortly after topping out (Thursday) preparing ourselves for a long night….



ooooohhh I think I need a sit down!



From Pointe walker to Pointe Croz is straightforward enough and it was soon after completing that section that it got dark….







Sunset, just after Pointe Croz





Just before it got dark at the first 1st abb.







The ridge is incredible, knife edge for the most part, with the 1000m north face on the right and equally long way down to Italy on the left. It was also incredibly loose in places which obviously takes a lot of care. There was a lot of rope on, rope off faffing about which eats the time up too. We must have taken the rope off for abs a total of 10 or so times. It was very cold too. We were both in all of our clothes and only movement was keeping us warm which stopped us from stopping to eat something warm. We made a fairly serious route finding error coming of Pointe Marguerite in our fatigued state. This cost us a huge amount of time, probably 4 hours in total. After we had corrected our error we eventually got to the top of Point Young the last summit on the traverse. From here it is about 200m of abseiling to get down to the col where the Canzio Bivi sits. We got down to the hut at 8.30am on Friday making it a 32hour single push from hut to hut. We were both seriously tired from such a long time on the go and with little food or rest (for me I had had ½ a pan of (slightly burnt) porridge, 4 chewy bars, 5 energy gels and a caffeine tablet that day).





As they say, "the rest of the story" is here:



http://searler.com//09/27/its-going-to-be-a-long-night-dude/



Enjoy!



Ally and Dave have been ripping it up this yearin the Alps. For Ally's version of the story and his comments on thenew RAB sponsorship (congrads Youth!) look here:



http://allyswinton.blogspot.com/

Flowery

Waterleaf


Coreopsis


Rattlesnake Fern


Tuberous Stoneseed (Lithospermum tuberosum)


Bluebells (a white one)

Rough Road

This is a really rough part of one of our favorite roads in the Jemez Mountains.

Battery Park and north, then back via Brooklyn Bridge

Iris reticulata by the hundred in park by the Hudson

Looking across to New Jersey

Nice plants, shame about the sign

Massed crocuses sun-worshipping

Some fantasy sculptures in the park

Looking back across the bridge

My route

Seminole Canyon State Park

After leaving Padre Island, I headed west on Texas Route 44 connecting to U.S 83 west of Encinal. From there it was north to Uvalde, which has a very nice public library with excellent wifi, where I was able to schedule those posts on Padre Island. The next morning it was west on U.S. 90 with Big Bend National Park as the next destination. I was tempted to stop at one of the camping areas in the Amistad National Recreation Area just west of Del Rio but the campgrounds I saw weren't all that appealing so I continued on a little ways to Seminole Canyon State Park near Comstock.

The campground was on the top of a very large hill. The sites were quite nice, with a covered picnic table, which provided some protection from the sun but none whatsoever from the wind!

Arriving at Seminole Canyon in the early evening of February 19th, it was too late in the day to hike the trail to the canyon, a six mile roundtrip, but it wasn't too late to catch a wonderful sunset!

The Feel of a Smaller Wheel

This spring I've been test riding a 26" wheel Sogreni city bike, and some readers have asked what I think of the 26" wheels - specifically, do I find the handling sluggish and do I think the frame could fit a 700C wheelset. The answer is that I do not find it sluggish at all, and believe that the 26" wheels were a good choice for this frame - allowing for aggressive front end geometry with no toe overlap. The bike is pretty fast and maneuverable, and I do not notice the wheel size at all.




Back when I was riding a Pashley Princess and describing the handling as slower than several similar bikes I'd tried, many expressed the opinion that this was due to differences in wheel size. The Princess is fitted with 26" wheels, whereas the other bikes I compared it to were fitted with 28" wheels. Despite a few contradicting voices (most notably that of Jan Heine), it is commonly believed that larger wheels are faster, and that it is always better to use 28" or 700C rather than 26" or 650B, unless the builder/manufacturer is trying to achieve something specific with sizing or clearances.






While I cannot contribute scientific evidence to the wheel size debate, personally I am comparatively indifferent at this stage. I've ridden fast bikes with 28" wheels, 700C wheels, 650B wheels, 26" wheels. I've ridden slow bikes with 28" wheels, 700C wheels, 650B wheels, 26" wheels. Recently I tried a very cool 26" wheel roadbike, made by Richard Sachs for a local cyclist. I would need to put it through a real road test to really comment about it, but around the neighborhood I could not discern any difference in handling, any hesitation in accelerating, compared to a 700C roadbike. And the proportions work so nicely for a cyclist of shorter stature, maybe even for someone my height. I am surprised that shorter women getting custom frames don't go for 26" more often.






Folding bikes and mini-bikes suffer even more from the small wheel bias. Just the other night a friend was telling me that he finds the idea of a folding bike convenient, but cannot imagine the small wheels being adequate. Having ridden Bromptons on a number of occasions now, I disagree as does the Co-Habitant. While I am sure that some folding bikes are slow, it probably has more to do with how the bike itself is designed than with the small wheel size. To me, the 16" wheels on a Brompton feel no slower than full size wheels. I have also spoken to cyclists who ride Moultons and Bike Fridays with dropbars as their main roadbikes, finding them more than adequate for club rides and pacelines.




I am not saying there are no discernible differences between wheel sizes, all else remaining equal. But in the scheme of things, there are so many other factors affecting speed and handling, that I feel the importance of wheel size is disproportionally stressed. It seems to me that getting the tubing, geometry and positioning just right for a cyclist of a given size should be the primary goal, and the wheel size should be a function of that - not the other way around. I am open-minded about smaller wheels and would like to try more bikes with them.

Cycling in Lower Manhattan

I am in New York City for a few days, with all sorts of nice cycling people who have gathered here for the New Amsterdam Show this weekend and the Bobbin Bicycles/ Adeline Adeline party last night. One of the first familiar faces I encountered was the beautiful Julie, of the Julie blog. This lady works in the fashion industry and rides all over the city on her white and pink Linus loop frame named Kate Middleton... which I think speaks for itself: Cycling in New York has certainly become more accessible over the past few years.






On my way down here on the train I realised that I had not been to the city since maybe - which is almost 4 years ago now. I have to confess that I don't love New York. It's not that I hate it. I just fail to see the magic and romance in it that everyone gushes about. Maybe it's because my family briefly lived in Washington Heights at a time when it was anything but romantic and my impressions are forever coloured by those childhood memories. Whatever the reason, I just see New York as a very large, very crowded city where you have to watch yourself despite all the art galleries and coffee shops and lofts and trendy boutiques that have popped up in neighbourhoods that used to be considered "dangerous."






And despite hearing about all the new cycling infrastructure here, I couldn't easily picture myself riding through the streets of New York, at least not right away. What about the dense traffic? The notoriously aggressive drivers? Walking from Penn Station to Tribeca it was hard to imagine myself sharing these busy streets on two wheels.





But an hour later I was doing exactly that - on a beautiful Retrovelo, courtesy of Adeline Adeline. While my travel radius was mostly limited to lower Manhattan, it was still a surprise to experience how relatively easy riding in the city has become.





I started out on the West Side Highway bicycle path, which is quite impressive. The 5.5 mile stretch of major road along the Hudson River has a protected greenway running through it the entire way, with somewhat frequent but well designed interruptions where bicycles even get their own green light.






The lanes are wide, allowing bicyclists to pass pedestrians and each other if need be. Cyclists were courteous and used their bells. Pedestrians behaved predictably. With views of the city ahead and views of the river alongside, it is a great path.





Many of the piers in this are have been renovated and developed with all sorts of little restaurants an recreational complexes. The weather was pretty terrible on Thursday afternoon - heavily overcast skies and cold temperatures - but there were lots of people strolling along the piers and enjoying their day.





One great thing about New York City, is that no one found it strange at all when I would stop to photograph the bike. In Boston passers-by will sometimes comment how wacky it is that I am standing there and taking close-ups of a bicycle, but here no one batted an eye.






Having had my fill of the West Side Highway, I took to the streets. Some streets have bike lanes and others don't, but honestly I found that it did not matter hugely. The bike lanes were so frequently blocked by double parked cars and delivery vehicles that a degree of comfort with vehicular cycling was necessary regardless. There was a lot of traffic, but it was slow moving and drivers seemed accustomed to cyclists. I got honked at a couple of times, but so did everyone else around me - honking just seems to be a way of communicating here. When I needed to make a left turn and didn't change lanes early enough, a taxi driver saw my predicament and let me squeeze in ahead of him with an impatient but not unfriendly wave. Overall it was entirely manageable and not any more stressful than riding in downtown Boston.






I will not be in town long enough to experience riding in the city as a person living here would, but my Thursday afternoon jaunt was a nice introduction to cycling in New York. After 4 years away it was certainly the best "welcome back" I could have hoped for. I will eventually be posting about the New Amsterdam Show and all the other things I am doing here, and you can check my twitter feed for "live coverage" snapshots of all sorts of neat things. Have a good weekend!

Wordless Wednesday :: Two by Two

Taken at Lake Itasca, Minnesota in the quickly fading light of dusk.

Beta alert.

Look away if you ever plan on on-siting "Spoonman" at Coolum Cave.



Pay attention if you want to see a big Frenchman running out the crux.That's all I have to say. Enjoy.































Need more Antoine? Click here.



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