American River - South Fork

Mostly family archive material.... but the little dude does a few funny stunts near the end.



American River 12' from Jason White on Vimeo.

Happiness

Took the day off for the last hurah of the summer with the kidlets before they head back to the classroom. I gotta tell ya, these jokers are my favorite people in the world, don't know how a guy can be anything but happy being surrounded with this kind of stuff.

Now that's the best kind of stuff - but not far behind it is watching your wife win a tough Mountain Bike race a few days prior. More on that later.

Heck of a bookend to a heck of a summer road tripping with the clan, we're run down and haggard, but in a good way. Getting back into the rigid schedules of the school year will take some getting used to, but Annie and I are thinking it will feel like a nice break.

Sun Valley and Sawtooths for the 4th

Headed north for a Sun Valley/City of Rocks 4th of July weekend, but ended up staying at the former once up there - too much to check out in the few days we'd allotted for it. Not the slightest bit sad that we'll have to make another trip up to get the climbing in at City of Rocks.

Few pics in reverse order of the trip....

We wrapped up the weekend in Hailey for the Independence day festivities - they make a great day of it up there. There's something about being in a small town for the 4th that I like a lot, think we may make an annual tradition of heading to a different little place every year for that weekend.

The two youngest raced their bikes just prior to the pro crit that immediately follows the parade. Here's the 4 yr old after what might be his last race on the Spiderman bike - he's outgrowing bikes about every six months it seems.

The kids favorite was the shootout show just prior to the parade - bad guys robbed the Mint building on Main St.

Rare scenes when candy wasn't being chased down and gathered during the parade. Think they outdid last years Halloween haul at this parade.

Made an excursion further up into the Sawtooth range one day. Impressive mountains, rugged....
Spent some time relaxing and paddleboarding at Redfish lake.


Spent most of the weekend in the Wood River Valley in and around Ketchum. Allison Krauss & Union Station (a band with some good banjo ranks high on my list of enjoyments), bike riding, kids first night hike, walkie talkie games in the woods - all part of a great and patriotic weekend with the family in Sun Valley and this great Country we're fortunate to live in.

2011 Teva Mountain Games

After leaving the Ironhorse Classic in Durango, we dillydallied our way towards Vail where Annie and I would partner up for some racing there the next weekend. In between, we hit up a few places that we hadn't been before, a few nights at the Pagosa Hot Springs resort, Great Sand Dune National Park, a few nights camping, and then wrapping it up with some R&R (racing and relaxing) at the Marriott Vail Mountain resort for the weekend's events at the Teva Mountain Games. Will detail the in between stuff in a later post. In the meantime, here's the detail and footage from the Teva Games. I suckered Annie into doing the trail run, making a solid case that it would be best for the team - she'd seen me running around without my shirt off at the hot springs resort the few days prior, and quickly agreed that yes, it would indeed be best for the team if I didn't do the run.

Kayak - This went smoother this year, in large part to having done one prep outing on the Green River with some of the guys a few weeks back and having to execute a few rolls in some fairly large rapids on that trip. Wasn't near as sketchy as a few years ago, and had some confidence that I could keep it upright, and even if not, could get back up right without having to bail out. The only problem with the kayak leg this year was fitness. I've mentioned on here before that unlike some of the endurance type stuff where you get some decent crossover of fitness from discipline to discipline, the only way I know of to get into decent paddling shape is to paddle, a lot. I paddled hard for about 5 minutes, and was blown, completely, shoulders and arms. It was to the point of being concerned near the bottom end of the course that I wouldn't have the strength to paddle away from holes/obstacles if something came up that needed to be avoided. You'll see the soft paddling at the bottom of the course in the video, my strength was reduced to the consistency of wet bread. Side note - the Stand up paddle boarding seems to be catching on fairly rapidly, lot's of them there this year. I have since entered my first paddle board race - coming up this weekend....

Mtn Bike - They had to keep us a little lower on the mountain this year due to snow, which cut out some sections of both the Mtn bike course and the run course. Among the sections cut out of the bike course was most of the more technical downhill stuff, and some climbing mileage that they seemed to consolidate into a nasty pitch that capped off the climbing each lap. The kind of pitch that required you to slide up and put your seat tip right where the sun don't shine, and try to keep momentum just high enough that you don't stall out and tip. Missing or hesitating for even half a pedal stroke on those steeps meant you were off the bike and walking. I was actually able to race hard that afternoon, and the race was short enough at 3 laps just under 5 miles each, that the lack of training and fitness didn't get a chance to manifest itself to the extent it had the week previous at the Iron Horse. Came away fairly pleased and a little surprised.

Trail Run - Despite this course also staying a little lower on the mountain, I'm fairly certain they had that same guy, you know him from last time... yep, that one, the bastard - set the course again. It went straight up real early, just like last time. As in redline walking efforts straight up. Annie nailed it though, ran a great race that included running across and down snow banks, mud, double track, singletrack, and no track - everything a trail race should be, and did so quickly. Her motivation? To hammer my time from a few years back, which she did easily. I told her it was because the race didn't go as high up the mountain this year, but just between you and me, I know better.

Hill climb TT - Very similar time to last time I was out there, which translates into being a little slower this year given my legs hadn't had to do that run a few hours previous. Rode the first 6.5 miles real well, but didn't have the gumption to keep going hard once on the upper section of the route and faded some. But again, was somewhat surprised and pleased that it hadn't been worse. I also enjoy TT's, at least once they're over. Really the truest measure of oneself on the bike, both physically and mentally.

So, once it was all tallied together, team Wasatch Pilates (sponsored by Annie's little Pilates biz) finished 4th of 10 in the coed division of the Ultimate Mountain Challenge. More importantly - it seemed to light a little bit of the spark that's been missing from the motivation this year. We'll see if we can parlay that into some better focus and effort going forward. We're hooked on the team racing - its' a blast to team up with Annie for this kind of stuff.

Spectating - this was the kids first year out there so we made sure to catch a little bit of everything. They didn't get near as excited about the climbing or the slopestyle riding as we did. They're fascination - the dog jumping..., they could have watched it for hours.

Overall it was a great trip - great to get away with the family and just screw off for a while, these kidlets just keep getting more fun every year.

Video hightlights:

1 - my buying a gopro camera, with the kayak race specifically in mind for it, only to reach up and turn it on, I mean off, just prior to going in the water - no on board race footage, notta, nil, zilch.

2 - Brock having a hard time getting going on the kids race. Kid's race was also brutal for the little tikes, hard course for their little legs to climb up, and they all grinded it out - proud of them.

2011 Teva Mountain Games from Jason White on Vimeo.

Easter at Goblin Valley

We headed down to Goblin Valley Easter weekend, in hopes of warm weather and some high caliber easter egg hunting. As has been the trend this year, it was cold and rained a lot, we're batting 1000 on hitting bad weather when we get out of town to escape it - those 30% chance of rain days have bucked the odds every time, without fail. The cool thing about the desert? Once the storm blows over it can go from 35* to 70* in about 45 minutes, and it did just that for us on Easter Sunday, providing for a good afternoon in the hoodoos.

The White chicks doing their yoga poses.
Easter morning the kids finished their easter egg hunt and found the booty stash about 45 seconds before the rain hit hard - we spent the next few hours huddled in the tent playing with their new stuff - which turned out to be pretty high quality time.
The day before was Little Wild Horse Canyon with Jeremy and Mandy and their kids who are schoolmates of our kids.

Log limbo near the canyon entrance.

Brock worked on his hatchet skills, still has all his toes.

Last year at Goblin Valley we were treated to an exceptional sunset. This year, for a brief period between rainstorms, we were treated to an exceptional Easter morning sunrise.

Here's the Honda Pilot ad version...

Goblin Valley has officially become one of the White family's favorite destinations. I took the new Yeti 29er bike out on it's first ride away from home, and found a whole bunch of new country to explore down there. Reminded me how much I love to jump on the bike with no idea where I'm going or going to end up, life at it's simplest, not many things better.

Red Rock Rendesvoux

A few weeks ago we all loaded up and headed for the warmth and sun of Las Vegas, a welcome excursion from the cold and snow at home. The Red Rock Rendesvoux is a rock climbing festival down at Red Rock Canyon. We'd ridden our road bikes out there but never climbed, so were excited to get on the rock and also learn some new stuff in the clinics we'd signed up for. but have a quick precursor story. Those who know me know that Annie's a lucky girl - not just because of my looks and figure, but because of my nurturing and put her first nature as a partner - you know, husband of the year type thing all the time. How do I do it - how great is it for her being married to me you ask? Let me give you an example from this trip.

We pulled into the festival around 7:00 pm after hitting the road right after the kids were out of school. The day before leaving, a friend called, and as this small world is wont to work, was also going to be in town while we were down there. I told him I'd give him a ring when we got there, and if things worked out, we'd try and get together for some go fish and old maid.

So where was I - we pulled into the festival base camp out past Red Rock Canyon around 7:00 pm. It was overcast with a little bit of wind, but warm relative to what we'd left in SLC. We got the tent set up, got checked in for our clinics the next few days, met some folks, and had everyone tucked in around 10:30 for the night. All things you should get done before heading out with your friends if your husband of the year type material. So once the kids were down and Annie confirmed she was good for the night - I left to catch up with the old friends over some cards, which may be second only to riding bikes as a means of catching up with people. They were staying at the Palazzo so that was the meeting spot. By the time we packed it in, there had been no "Hang Over" type absurdities about the night, we'd had fun, most didn't leave any poorer, and we told lot's of stories and laughed a ton. I'd had a great time. Then, while walking to my car, I checked my phone and got that husband of the year feeling. There was a text message from Annie. It was short and precise "wind broke tent poles and blowing it down, getting cold, please come help"............. She'd sent it about 3 hours ago.

It was about a 30 minute drive back out there, went fast, and about got blown off the road a few times on the way out - the wind was absolutely ripping. I pulled in, found the station gate into the festival area closed, figured out a way in with the car, and saw the carnage. Tents against fences, tents ripped off half their stakes getting shredded, and some tents holding up pretty well.

I parked and ran over to our tent expecting to find 3 terrified fatherless kids and 1 pissed off wife. The tent had indeed suffered a few broken poles, but had stayed intact enough to serve it's purpose. Sidewalls were folding during the strong gusts, enough to hit you in the face while laying down, but they'd bounce back up and the tents integrity as a shelter was holding up for the most part, for which I was both relieved and grateful - Annie and all three kidlets were asleep. Blow up mercifully avoided, could have been real bad had the rain blown in while I was gone with the car - the only back up shelter we had. My wife is a saint.

Untitled from Jason White on Vimeo.

Wish I could say it got better for the climbing, but it didn't. The winds continued to rip, the rain would come on occasion, and it was cold - not the weather we had hoped for. Our clinics were good. I was taking a trad class, wanted to learn more about protection placement, equipment, and technique. Learned some cool things and discovered a new to me piece of equipment I'm fond of called a tri cam. My instructor was named Malcolm and the guy was a wealth of experience and know how. The guy had founded Trango, a small climbing gear company that he'd sold a few years back. He also climbed on a prosthetic leg. He'd lost the original to frostbite in an Alpine accident, a story you don't get to hear told by the victim very often. Needless to say I was fairly captivated by what he had to say and teach us, despite the poor weather. There were gusts that very nearly blew me off the wall while I was on my route - it was sketchy at best.

The festival was what you'd expect at a rock climbing gathering, a mix of hippies, vagabonds, hobbyists, blue collar, white collar, and just about anything else you can think of. The cool thing about rock climbers is there's no pretense, no ego's, none of the blowhard type stuff you get in some circles. The bankers eat dinner with the hippies and both say goodnight thinking the other one has parts of life figured out better than themselves - it's both a mellow but intense cross section of people - we dig it.

The kids did some hula hooping, slacklining, and tree climbing - they're not as soft as the adults, weather never even crossed their mind other than sand in the eyes. My favorite times with the kids are when we're out in the bush somewhere, living out of the tent, with nothing but their imaginations to dictate how we spend our day.

Not really much about the climbing to talk about - learned some stuff, but stayed off the rock when we weren't in our lessons. Had some climbing pics but can't find the camera I took them on. We headed into town for days 3 and 4, stayed at Mandalay where Kylie body surfed for about 6 hours straight one day. Kylie trying to teach Mom how to time the wave for the best ride - Mom's a little early.

Wasn't the great climbing trip we'd wanted - the weather has managed to conspire against us on each attempt we've made to get away from it thus far this year. Plenty of outings scheduled this year so hopefully our luck changes - great times being had either way though.

Best & Worst of 2010

Best family outing - toss up between Yellowstone and Goblin Valley/Little Wildhorse Canyon/Calf Creek Falls trips. Best family adventure year yet, and those outings were easily the overall highlights of the year.

Most fun races - in order of rank: CX races, Adventure race, then 12 hours of Mesa Verde.

Best performance - I didn't have one that went well enough to qualify - but Annie's Mtn bike leg at the adventure race and her cyclocross season most certainly do.

Most painful mistake/lesson - Eating a stupid lite breakfast (as in 1 pack of instant cream of wheat stupid)at Park City Point to Point and getting into a fuel hole too deep to get out of early in the day. Lesson - by the time it hit me and I realized the problem, it was too late to get it fixed. Better to stay well ahead/overdo it on the fueling, than risk getting anywhere near a deficit. Close second is thinking I could run a half marathon on the back end of a half iron man distance tri more or less cold turkey and be ok. This actually hurt worse than the PCP2P situation, but the suffering lasted only about an hour vs. a whole bunch more than an hour at the bike race.

Favorite race - Iron Horse Classic

Favorite new race - had to create a seperate category as favorite race was a draw between the Iron Horse and the Moab Adventure Race with Annie, so we'll call the Moab Adventure Race the favorite new race due mainly to partnering up with my wife for it. 12 hours of Mesa Verde get's honorable mention for favorite new race in 2010.

Monopoly Adventures:

First year I've indulged in what we'll call borderline fanatical behavior - Did some sniffing around about good, stable, and promising places to live and give my kids a good launching pad into their adult lives in a favorable environment to reap what they choose to sow......... outside the US. I'll call this fanatical behavior because I'm a fairly optimistic guy, and think we've got a good chance of things working out ok here in the good ol' US of A - but... certain views and attitudes that seem to have come to the surface during this cycle in numbers I was nieve to bothered me enough that we started to think as deep as plan E and plan F and put some non-local locales on a short list of places that might be favorable in case the preferred place we've planted roots for said lauch pad becomes a less favorable option at some point. No, I'm not calling for John Galt to come and get me and the clan, and that's why we'll call this fanatical behavior, but if it reached that, I've got specific dirt, in a specific valley well clear of the blast zone on the radar.

Top biz enjoyment - seeing some of the high pucker factor decisions made back at the real scary part of this cycle working out ok. These were all relatively small in regards to capital outlay, but did it's intended job of limiting/eliminating damage taken during the initial violence in which the bottom fell out of everything back in 08', so far at least... with an emphasis on so far...

Top biz frustration - aside from going through the weird burnout/funk that seemed to hit 85% of the workforce - mine was spending a significant amount of time doing DD on potential business acquisitions (non bank related) only to not find the right one to pull the trigger on. Not certain that I wasn't just a little late to the game and maybe missed a period of once in a lifetime type opportunities in this regard - but not certain all the opportunities have been missed yet either. Have a few friends who swung at a few pitches we saw and hope they prove me to be a little gunshy, and that they hit it out of the park. Continuing to keep the ear to the tracks in this regard, but maybe not as intensly in the new year as we think we can get back to growing the biz I babysit at the bank, which makes the day job a little more stimulating and fun than the mind numbing water treading it's been through this recession. Close second here is the larger(relative term)investment in the commercial RE project that still looks to be a ways out from getting unsideways. Still thinking we may be able to make it work out real well, but the holding period is, and will continue to be for a while, longer than I'd prefer. Also dealing with some misjudgements on some competencies I thought we had in the group/management that have taken more time/attention than the passive investor position I intended my role to be. Valuable learning going on though, but it's the kind a guy bitches about until your done with it.

Overall the year felt more exhausting than I think it actually was, which I'll attribute primarily to that weird workforce funk I mentioned - weird in that during a period where a guy was happy to have a job, there sure were a lot of us who went through a phase of hating them. And aside from the abnormal amount of time spent in the burnout cave, have to call it a fine year of health and happiness, one we'll look back on as a good one.

Goblin Valley, Little Wild Horse Canyon, and Calf Creek Falls

With summer break officially ending this week with the kids heading back to school, we hit the road for one more weekend of family adventuring before getting back to the grind.

Stop one was Goblin Valley where the world class scampering among the hoodoos was only outdone by the world class evening and sunset.

Now I'm not sure if there are actual classes of scampering, but if there are, GV has to be world class. Have heard all sorts of great ideas for play down there, from easter egg hunts to capture the flag, and don't know that there's a better place for any of that stuff. Being GV rookies, we kept it simple with hide and seek and some other gimmicks the kids came up with and had a blast. The place set the kids imaginations on fire and made us parents/grown ups feel and act like part of the kidlet tribe.

Watching for inbound pirate ships or something of that nature. At the end of the trip, Goblin Valley stood atop the list as kids favorite place of the weekend - a testament to the theory of whatever inspires their imaginations the most is the best in their eyes.

Day two would be their first slot canyon experience in Little Wildhorse Canyon. It was set up perfectly with the heavy rains a few days prior leaving several good water crossings, the kids got the full slot experience. We had them (sometimes forced them) hike through the water (chilly but not cold) on the way out, then let them do it how they wanted on the way back - the obvious choice was to climb the walls...

Even the 3 yr old figured it out pretty good.

We had to tell Kylie to stay within a reasonable height, think she would have climbed out the top if we let her.

Little Wildhorse was really a great place to give the kids a taste of slot canyons - short hike in and there were some high quality narrows sections that everyone enjoyed a lot.

Around the entrance to the canyon is this little feature that just begs to be jumped. Not posting the rest of the sequence, will let you look at trajectory at the midway point and determine if you think the kids are standing in a safe spot or not.
More shots from the canyon...

Day three was Lower Calf Creek Falls, which also didn't disappoint. ...

The traditional sprint finish that seems to always happen on the waterfall hikes. Once they see it, they're off. The oldest was already stripped down to her swim suit and in the water by the time I got to it. The middle was increasing her gap on the littlest as seen here, he's trying, but just not hangin yet....

It was a little overcast, and the fall itself creates a strong breeze which made it chilly. The water was cold, but my adventure book says you've gotta swim under it for the excursion to count.

The girls wisely stuck to wading and mud pie making on the pretty great beach.

The area even had a place for a workout on the bike. If it looks steep.......

it's because it was... sign at the top of the hill after turning around to head back down.

Fun trip topped off maybe the best summer we've had as a family, the kids are all old enough and plenty capable to do just about any adventure we can drum up. Pretty excited for the next few years while we've got them all in the "sweet spot" where they still think we're cool to hang out with and don't have better things to do with their weekends.

Yellowstone

So after the Butte Bike race leg of the trip came up short, we pointed the Lampoon wagon towards Yellowstone.
The little guy thought he was half wolf by the end of trip...

Annie and Chesney hamming it up while Kylie and Brock make a teeter totter out of logs.

Ranger school graduation...

Campfire scene

Watching for the elusive freshwater whales...

This ended just as you might assume....

Trying to scare Brock that I'm gonna let him go over the fall while he's trying to convince me not to be a puss dad and let go so he can take the ride down it. Fire Hole Canyon was one of the kids favorite stops.

The SUP's turning into not just a dad toy, turns out the rest of the gang digs it too.

Pretty good hit rate on the wildlife spotting this trip as well - missed the moose, sheep, and wolves was all. You'll notice my significant but unbragged about stalking skills by the range in which these photos were taken. Seriously, the only thing keeping this place from being an impressively large petting zoo is the occasional buffalo trampling and bear scare.... of which there'd been one the week previous...

Wapiti

Osprey

These elk jackasses ruined the only scare tactic that Annie and I have ever been able to use effectively. We, along with the parks warning signs, had the kids completely convinced that they'd melt if they stepped off the paths at Mammoth. The kids first thought upon seeing this wasn't hey, check out the elk, it was letting Annie and I know that they knew that we were blowhards.

Just a canyon here, but not just a canyon - pretty spectacular

The Bison were like mosquitos - all over the place.

Mulies

Bald Eagle - this was actually one of the kids favorite.

Black Bear

Highlight was the grizz with her two cubs that were out of camera range, but fun to watch nonetheless. First time for the entire family to see one in the wild, and the cubs were putting on a good show playing in a meadow.

One of our favorite trips with the kids thus far.... and so good to get away and dumb life down to the simple pleasures for a bit.