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Tag: microadventure

On the Road: Dan Sharp’s Bay Ridge Hot Lap

When adventurist/photographer Daniel Sharp is short of time, he just concocts short adventures and invites some friends along for the ride. This time he’s on the Bay Area Ridge Trail, actually a series of connectible trails that circumnavigates the San Francisco Bay. It stretches north Napa and Marin and south to San Jose.

What makes this trip so cool, in our eyes, is that it doesn’t skip the ugly parts. Put another way, Dan and his friends engaged in the urban parts of this route, too. The Bay Area is a part of the world that serves up a lot of natural beauty despite its overall population density, and in some ways the reward of those views is enhanced by pounding the pavement from the city center to see it.

Here are some of Dan’s always-inspiring photos, and some brief prose about the trip:

They say the hardest part of any adventure is getting out the door, especially this time of year when in the Pacific Northwest rainy days start to outnumber sunny ones. For this, my fourth adventure of this project, the hardest part was choosing a route and finding a crew that could take time off to do a ride.
The word “ambitious” became the buzz word whenever we mentioned the route and our planned time frame. I took that to be a euphemism for crazy or just plain stupid. Well, if that’s the case then maybe this is a 3-day fastpacking trip within urban boundaries. Why get so hung up on terminology? Let’s just go ride mountain bikes around the bay and see what that’s like, so that’s exactly what we did.
The Bay Area Ridge Trail is not a classic bikepacking or endurance mountain biking route, not yet. According to the website, the first ridge trail segment was dedicated in May of 1989. Existing trails were quickly added and it opened 100 miles in 1990 and 200 miles in 1995. As anyone that’s ever ridden in the Bay Area knows, land access is tricky and the 300th mile wasn’t added until 2006. Today the Bay Area Ridge Trail boasts 350 miles of trails. A quick look at the interactive map reveals the reality that to complete the route, one will have to link dirt trail with plenty of pavement.
The thrill for me was to see just what quantity and quality of trails are available in the Bay Area close to major urban areas. In past trips I had gotten to ride roads in the Marin Headlands, several trails near Fairfax, Weir’s ranch in Novato, UCSC and Soquel Demo Forest near Santa Cruz. But those were day trips of proper trail mountain biking. This was going to be a unique trip in the sense that it would be more like a fast-paced bike tour, half on dirt roads, some singletrack, and plenty of grinding out road miles through urban areas. The reality is that this route is its own thing – it’s urban mountain biking that you can link together sections of trail and we discovered without too much difficulty.
In the end we enjoyed the company of hosts and having beds to sleep in every night. We were able to recover well before getting out and attempting another ten-hour day in the saddle.
To read way more about Dan’s Bay Ridge adventure, check out his site.

On the Road: Dan Sharp in Alaska

It is forever humbling, the places people go on our bikes, and the stories and photos they come back with are like treasure. Daniel Sharp is an adventurer, writer and photographer with a vivid imagination and very human storytelling style. He’s not superhuman. He doesn’t pose as the master of the wilderness he explores. His are stories we can relate to, and pictures we can dream about.

Here are some of the images from a recent trip to Alaska, with excerpts from his trip journal.

Alaska is way too big to squeeze into a single two week trip so for this, our first Alaskan adventure, we focused on the Kenai Peninsula. We flew into Anchorage, spent a couple days making sure our bikes were put together properly…

The next day we set off to ride Lost Lake Trail. The plan was to ride from the Lost Lake trailhead to Primrose campground. This is not a huge ride in terms of mileage, but this was to be our first loaded ride in Alaska, so it was a bit of a test to see how it went on legit singletrack.

The descent into Primrose was challenging with a loaded bike. At times it was steep, rocky and littered with roots. We rode most of it and walked the crazy parts. We stopped and picked blueberries.

Lost Lake was a good warm up, but now we’re ready for the real test: Resurrection Pass.

Here we go! Resurrection Pass! jingle jangle of bear bells. The first thing that struck me about the trail is that it was nothing like Lost Lake. There was sustained climbing, but it was so much gentler. This was more of a proper bikepacking trail.

We met our first bunch of marmots–they’re bascially ground hogs–they signal each other to let their crew know we’re approaching. Aside from birds, they’re the only wildlife we’ll see, which I find strange. I was hoping to see some mountain goats at least. I love the trail above treeline. It’s alpine tundra–raw and sculpted.

Tori wisely brought newspaper plastic bags to put over our socks and under our shoes. I’m amazed how well they work to keep my feet warmer and keep the wet out. Best DIY vapor barriers ever.

The last miles of the day go quickly, finding good lines over wet roots, crossing streams, splashing through puddles. Before you know it we start to signs that we’re getting close to the trailhead, signage that we saw on day one, a cabin, a group of day-hikers cheering us up the last grunty climb. I start to get that hesitation where I feel sad that I hurried back to the car, that I gobbled up the descent instead of savoring it in slow motion. We know this was special and we want to make it last.

We were able to leave our anxieties, one by one at each stream crossing and get to a point where we felt not only safe, but really comfortable living by bike on trail. The ability to take everything you need to live with you and arrive safely under your own power is such a great feeling.

See the bike Dan rides here. Come back for more of Dan’s adventures including a recent microadventure in Oregon.