what to wear when cycling in the desert

Jake Stangel

The programme was austere and elegant. I would ride a mountain bike pulling a trailer on a 77-mile loop around the Mojave National Preserve at the height of spring. Wildflowers would coating my route, and the three-24-hour interval trek would merge 2 loves—riding and camping—into my first bicycle-packing epic.

Then reality intruded. A week before my departure, a Mojave park ranger told me that my proposed route was nuts. "A very physically fit rider could exercise information technology, but I'g concerned almost the trailer you'll be pulling," she wrote in an email. "The rough route may cause the trailer to destabilize your bicycle, and there will be no water or facilities of any kind—nor will cell phones work."

I before long constitute that it didn't matter which route I took. Cheers to broken pipes and a broke regime, there were only 3 guaranteed h2o stops in the unabridged two,398-square-mile preserve, and two of those were within 10 miles of each other.

I WAS IN A SAGEBRUSH AND JOSHUA TREE Heaven, WRAPPED IN SILENCE AND LIT BY STARS.

I took a break from panicking and strategizing to pick up a few smaller items—including a fundamental-chain vial of pepper spray. I figured I might demand information technology for a rogue coyote. The Outdoorsman, the but shop in my hometown that seems to sell it, has bars on the door and shiny handguns lined up under a drinking glass counter like glazed doughnuts. "Are you lot trying to ward off four-legged or two-legged predators?" asked Blain, the clerk with a ZZ Top beard. "If it's two-legged, you might consider a .44 Magnum. Then once again," he laughed, "if you've never shot a gun, you'd probably have better luck with the pepper spray."

As I walked out with my pulverisation-pinkish cylinder of oleoresin capsicum, Blain called cheerily later me, "May yous never take to utilise it!"

His words freaked me out. I hadn't considered the potential for dangerous humans. In lieu of guns, I would have country-of-the-art gear to protect me. I'd be conveying a DeLorme inReach satellite communicator with a large red SOS push button and generous battery ability, and I had already programmed information technology then a few key friends could follow my ride online. I didn't fix it up for all of my Twitter friends to see. What if one of my followers is a Charles Manson copycat who lives on a ranch in the Mojave?

Jake Stangel

Other essentials I was bringing: 30 spare bike parts and tools recommended by an expert bike-packer friend, a minimalist tarp shelter, a superlight sleeping bag, a 5.five-gallon water container, high-powered lights, a photographic camera, and food. All of this had to fit on a Bob Ibex Plus trailer or in a twenty-liter Osprey hydration pack with a pocket for everything. When I loaded the trailer for a test ride, I looked similar something out of The Beverly Hillbillies. And that was earlier I bungeed on the h2o jug.

At least my bicycle, the Yeti 575, was hard to beat. With 5.75 inches of springy play on the front stupor, the aluminum bicycle has been around for about 10 years and is a cult classic, renowned for its cushy downhill ride. For 2014, Yeti increased the wheel size from 26 to 27.5 inches and retuned the rear shock to create more than back up as the spring in the front fork compresses.

It was giving me grief, however: Without refitting the 575 with a special rear beam, you can't properly attach a trailer. I'd ordered the custom axle but had forgotten that this new and improved 575 also had larger wheels and thus required a trailer with a larger fork. OK, no trailer. Which meant no way to comport extra water. At present I was wigging out.

But what ever goes according to program? Five minutes later I had a plan B: Fly it. Instead of following the loop route, I would gear up upward a base at Hole in the Wall, a campsite with water. Then I'd report the map and pedal from at that place to whatsoever destinations looked interesting, returning to the familiarity and comfort of my tent each night.

I set out in my car the next forenoon. 6 hundred l miles later, when I turned north off I-40 into the Mojave Preserve, my jail cell phone bars disappeared and the radio got fuzzy. This is it, I thought. I may never come across some other whizzing semi again. But then I spotted an onetime desert tortoise on the two-lane road. They tin survive for a twelvemonth without water, and then I took this as an auspicious sign. I hopped out of the car and crept toward information technology to say hello. Just I didn't become close enough to frighten it and cause it to pee through its entire total-yr water supply—surprisingly, one fashion these tortoises tin die.

The sun was sinking behind the ridge when I arrived at Hole in the Wall, set at 4,400 feet against volcanic rock cliffs with shiny black whorls that look similar melting faces. Equally I ready my shelter, I bent over a Mojave yucca and stabbed myself in the forehead. Dabbing the claret abroad, I sat on a rock and breathed in the peaceful scene. I was in a sagebrush and Joshua tree heaven, wrapped in silence and lit by stars.

The Yeti 575 is a versatile full-suspension ride platonic for exploring unknown terrain. Jake Stangel

Dawn was bright and cool. I rode 15 miles up and downwardly washboard roads, past leafless trees and behemothic boulders that looked karate-chopped by Zeus. Every bit I rode, I groped for the Osprey hydro-pack's bladder nozzle magnetically secured to my chest strap and steadily sipped from it every bit if on an oral-drip IV.

By 12:30 the temperature was a balmy 80 degrees, but the sun was so intense that it felt much hotter. Seeking shade, I returned to camp and hid under my tarp. I listened to flies buzz and tried to read but soon realized that the only way through this inferno was to lie perfectly all the same and will the cakewalk to waft my way.

At around 4 pm I prepare out again, this time backside Hole in the Wall, up gently sloping Wild Equus caballus Canyon Road. By 6 the wind had died down. The shadows were long, the light was magic. The climb past mesas and fields of fragrant sage was unyielding, but I locked out the front shock, adjusted my seat mail via a handlebar lever, and rode in comfort. With no destination in heed, I turned around at sunset at the superlative of a rising, unlocked the front shock, and let the bike fly. I pedaled every bit fast as I could back to army camp, relishing the 575'due south perfect symmetry and the beautiful freedom of life with no luggage.

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Source: https://www.wired.com/2014/07/expedition-mountain-bike-gear/