Lynda : Camp Lynda

Camp Lynda Digested

Lynda — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 03:45:00 GMT

It has taken me a few days to fully digest what a smashing success the camp was. I for one had a superb time. During the whole three days there was a buzz and excitement from all participants. We had about 27 riders. Most came along for 2 days. Day three was the smallest with only 12 riders starting and nobody - not even crackhead Dave managing to complete the whole 86 mile route mapped out. Day three stats for me were 5:28 and 62 miles.

I've been enjoying reading everybody's blogs and seeing their pictures. I didn't get to ride with everybody so hearing the post ride stories over dinner and in blogs has been a treat. Seeing people have a great time doing something I created is a real special thing for me. It was the people who came that made Camp Lynda such a success. It was all about the riders. Put together a bunch of people who really love to ride their bikes and you can't go wrong I guess.

Best part of Camp Lynda - the people:

Worst part: Getting up early on day 3 (I was weak and late...)

Most scenic spot: The point at Gooseberry

The Camp concept was to come and ride at your own pace following a GPS. Huge thanks go to Dave who spent many hours putting together three days worth of tracks into a nice one click upload. There is so much more behind the scenes work on this aspect than you know unless you have tried this at home yourself. The routes received only compliments. The only folks to get lost either didn't come with a gps or didn't actually look at the screen... Everybody found their way back on course thankfully.

Marshal was one of the camp stars. I'd never met him before. He followed all the online instructions, downloaded the routes and came to camp. He rode at his own pace everyday and glowed full of ride stories at dinner time. Marshal you validated the whole camp concept and I thank you for coming.

Funniest Camp moment: I agree with Dave on this one - Adam cracked me up with his tire burping power-slide into the Barrel Roll trail head - funny.

Biggest bummer: Jeff Kerkove driving 11 hours to camp, spending the night barfing then driving 11 hours home the next day. We missed riding with you Jeff.

Top local rider award goes to Brad. The routes even put Brad on some terrain he had never ridden before. Thanks for representing the SoUtah team.

Biggest whee moment: Whooping along behind Chris, Chris and Dave on Barrel Roll on day 2.

Best post camp blog quote: Brad Keyes: "She also calls it Camp Lynda which makes it sound like we are going to have punch and cookies and maybe play lawn darts. We had no punch and cookies and we didn’t play lawn darts."

Best camp photos: Adam has super shots. Thanks for this one below. You have such rich colors in your pics. Sometime I'll have to talk with you about photos instead of bikes...

Almost everybody has said they can't wait until next year and that Camp Lynda should be a tradition. Aww warm and fuzzies.

Thank y'all for coming to my party. See you out on the trails.

Camp Lynda Day Two - Yeehah

Lynda — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 22:52:00 GMT

Head count at the start today was 24 riders. One casualty from yesterday - gore, blood, broken finger with bone through skin - get better quick Branden.

Ride stats for me today 5:04, 52 miles, 6k climbing, 294 TSS, 0.77 IF.

Dave Nice made a few of us all a gourmet breakfast - yummy... and was back at the start on his Fixie and a huge smile. Yah fixie!!

Barrel Roll was in ride perfect shape

Whee!

YeeeeHaaaw

Tall guy wee wheels...

More Pictures here

Day One Camp Lynda - Done, tick, fab

Lynda — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 23:40:00 GMT

Beauty day despite skipping the big loop in favor of and out and back to avoid the muck up by Danish Ranch. 55 miles, 5:07, 305 TSS was my ride tally. I'm a wee bit tired now.

We started off with about 25 riders. Most folks split off into smaller groups once things got rolling. At the end we had nine in our group - 3 gearies and the rest SSers! I was on my 32x20.

Milling on the trail

Chris and Dave

MonaVie gearie all stars

Folks came from Denver, California and SLC for the most part.

Post ride smiles and stories

...and butt cramps

More pics here

Camp Lynda event bible

Lynda — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 16:04:00 GMT

Everything you need to know in one post. Well, mostly.

Survival tips are here.

Archive of all Camp Lynda posts is here.

GPS files: attached to this post is a single MapSource file containing all tracks and waypoints for Camp Lynda. If you are using a garmin gps (and who isn't?) use this file in MapSource to upload the tracks so names will be preserved. If you are uploading from any other software, use the individual gpx files from previous posts.

Schedule

Day 1: Saturday, Jan 12

arrive 8:30 AM, rollout 9 AM, Desert Cyclery, 1091 N Bluff St
dinner, 6 PM Sunset Bajio Grill

Day 2: Sunday, Jan 13

arrive 8:30 AM, rollout 9 AM, Lins grocery store parking lot, 1930 W Sunset Blvd
dinner, 6 PM Mandarin Buffet

Day 3: Monday, Jan 14

arrive 7:45 AM, rollout 8 AM, Sheep Bridge. See day 3 post and gps file for details on Sheep Bridge location.
leave nothing on trail.
leave spent and grinning.

Post questions here, unless personal, then shoot an email to [email protected]">[email protected].

Camp Lynda survival tips

Lynda — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 16:43:00 GMT

Some tips to make it through the camp:

Tires: lots of prickly stuff around here, especially goatheads. Stans, Specialized Airlock tubes, Slimetubes or equivalent is recommended.

GPS files: all the files are attached to the respective day's posts. Upload them to your GPS soon so that if you have any issues/questions you can ask them.

Lodging: Days 1 and 2 will start near Sunset and Bluff. Nearest hotels are south of StG Blvd on Bluff or the blvd.

Weather: it's a wet weekend right now, but all looks clear for the camp. Don't hold me to that... Highs in the 40s/50s, early starts near freezing. Lights not needed unless you are really pushing the limits on your own.

Wet weather options: we'll ride if it rains. Most trails are shutdown in the wet tho, too much clay. Some sandier options still exist, but it could mean road. These details will be posted at the last minute if required.

Mojo: Bring it.

Dinner meeting time & locales:

Sat - 6pm, Bajio Grill, corner of Sunset & Bluff.

Sun - 6pm, Mandarin Buffet Chinese. All you can eat in prep for the big day 3 adventure.

See ya Saturday. This may be the Mormon capitol of the world, but there is still a Starbucks near the start of day 1...

Camp Lynda day 3

Dave — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 00:19:00 GMT

The meeting place for day 3 is Sheep Bridge, 8 AM. This is a dirt parking area along the Virgin river gorge just before Virgin. Heading towards Zion on Hwy 9 from Hurricane you'll see a small green street sign for "Sheep Bridge" just before the small town of Virgin - head right on that. Take the first major right to the parking area. See the attached GPS file for the exact location of the start point.

The route has plenty of options, including the short optional 16 mile Gooseberry segment I decided to include. The main course is a 45 mile loop (shown in blue below) that circumnavigates Gooseberry Mesa in a clockwise direction. We'll start on singletrack then hit a couple jeep roads in the shadows of Gooseberry before a short highway segment to Rockville. From Rockville it's up up up to the Gooseberry decision point.

The optional Goose section (in red) is a progressively technical jeep road before hitting the trail to the point overlooking most of Washington county, then coming back via the Yellow, North rim, and Windmill trails. Expect roughly 2 hours for this section...and some really enjoyable technical riding along big views.

Back on the blue main route, it's a short bit before making it to a gas station/refuel spot in Apple Valley. A couple miles of pave lead to dirt roads under Little Creek mesa. The main route finishes with a rippin descent on the Jem trail back to the start.

Not enough? The yellow loop below is the Jem/Goulds/Hurricane rim loop. All singletrack and about 25 miles, that option is for pure chronics only.

Profiles for each section.

Blue loop

Red loop

Yellow loop

This day is designed to be a biggie. The optional routes offer plenty of terrain to make it all you can bite off in the limited January daylight hours. The intended route is blue, red, blue then yellow loops - the red and yellow loops being optional - for a total of 86 possible miles. Choose your poison.

Come with cameras...and mojo.

Ergon at Camp Lynda

Lynda — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 19:37:00 GMT

Jeff Kerkove, LW Coaching athlete and Ergon marketing guru, will be attending all 3 days of Camp Lynda. For those that are also attending Jeff will allow those interested in demoing Ergon product during the 3 days of camp. Nothing like taking the products straight out into the elements!

Ergon product available for demo is as follows
Grips
GE1
GP1
GR2

Packs
BD1
BD2

If you are interested in demoing any product during the 3 day camp, please e-mail Jeff at [email protected]">[email protected] to express your interest. Note, only product requested via e-mail will be brought to St. George.

I've been running the GE1 grips on my SS for a month now. I'm picky and if sumthin' makes me grumpy it is off my bike asap. These grips are still on... They are nice and small diameter - I like that a lot. They don't have barends but do have a wee lip at the end to help remind me how far along the bars my hands are. I like that a lot too. I am a bit of a bar end addict and I mainly use them to keep my hands from slippping off the end of the bars not for extra hand positions. These lips get the job done without death impaling barend danger. Dave will tell you bar ends can break ribs clean apart.

They are clamp on too. Gives me confidence they are not going to fly off my bars or twist on me when I am cranking my single gear up a roller at 600+ watts. Uh huh!

They come in green too. I like my stealth black ones on my black Rig with the black fork. It looks fast... Disguises the fact the bike weighs in about 28 lbs...oink, oink...

Camp Lynda Day 2 details

Dave — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 18:02:00 GMT

Day 2 Jan 13, leaving 9am sharp. Start and Finish point is Lins grocery store parking lot, 1930 W Sunset Blvd, StG. Ya got your choice of Lins, and across the road Albertsons and McDonalds for pre and post ride grub. Yummy!

This is a 5-7 hour ride w/ no water on route - and no filter options. It's a dry one so come carrying your goods. If ya'll want to have water midway organize a car to be at Bloomington...but yer on yer own for that one. Park at the end of Navajo drive. Navajo drive is 2-3 hours or about 20 miles in, before the Blakes climb and a good place to bail for those looking for a shorter day.

He he he, I give you a 20 mile warmup before the big climb...

Here's the map overview - Barrel Roll singletrack, Stucki (wide singletrack), Blakes climb (big red blob on profile). Lots of shortcuts, bailouts, and extenstion options. Follow the arrows for the full route. You'll be riding further and climbing more than the gps file indicates. You can thank that 250 garmin point limit.

Barrel Roll. The sign says look at the view. The arrow/dot sign cracks me up!

View from Blakes. Ya'll love Blakes - deceptive desert climbing at it's best. Ya gotta ride it to know what I'm talking about. A wee perspective, that lil' hill on the horizon is 8,000' taller than StG.

The attached zip file below has the .gpx and Garmin file for the day.

Camp Lynda Day One Details

Dave — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 15:49:00 GMT

January 12th. Day 1 of Camp Lynda is the big Silver Reef Loop. Starting at Desert Cyclery Bike shop at 9am sharp. 1091 North Bluff Street, #1503, St George. We'll head up the road and into the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve. Catch the Powerline Trail to Mill Creek, over to Church Rocks, along Prospector Trail to Red Cliffs. A quick fill up at the campground spigot then up to Silver Reef. From there head up and up some more up the Oak Grove road and left back towards St George. Catch a final detour through Diamond Valley and back down home. About 55 miles.

Desert Cyclery, # 435-674-2929 is offering a ship and tune-up service. Ship your bike to them. They'll unpack it, tune it up and at the end of the camp pack it back in a box and ship it home for you. Cost is $55 plus the cost of shipping back to your home. For US only. Sorry BC boyz they can't ship to Canada for anything near a reasonable cost.

Church Rocks

Prospector Trail

Road heading back towards St George

Here's the overview map for day 2.

The profile says don't get too carried away in the first 20 miles ;)

The attached .zip file contains two files:

- campLynda1.gdb is the Mapsource format.
- campLynda1.gpx is the open GPX format.

The files are essentially the same aside from the format. There is more control over track naming from Mapsource so you may find that useful.

The files contain 2 tracks. This is not obvious looking at the gpx in TopoFusion, but is quite obvious in Mapsource. The region around the Church Rocks trail (roughly mile 12.5 to 15.0) is hard to follow so a short but detailed track is included for that area. The 250 point limit to tracks in the Garmin units make the dual tracks a necessity.

Camp Lynda Navigation

Dave — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 22:37:00 GMT

Check out the new "Camp Lynda" link on the left menu bar under Post Categories. Follow that link to get all Camp Lynda info and posts.

And now a word from the Camp Lynda CTO...

Disclaimer 1: Camp Lynda is a no-nonsense self-supported binge training mission. We'll do our best to ensure everyone knows the routes. A prime goal is for everyone to have flowy routes to ride for hours on end amidst new horizons without too much worry about navigation. In the end however each participant is in charge of their own destiny. The following is to help jump start your GPS technology learning should you need it but is by no means comprehensive nor a substitute for good planning and common sense. Arrive in the self-supported mindset. Do your research. Be prepared.

GPX files and teaser photos will be provided shortly for each day's route. Having and knowing how to use a mapping GPS unit is a central part of the Camp. Everyone will ride at a self-selected pace. Some days might be 5 hours for some, 8 hours for others - so you should plan on having your own GPS rather than rely on the group.

Of course the self-supported nature extends beyond navigation, but this post is designed to elevate the learning curve for those as of yet unfamiliar with GPS technology.

Items with which you'll need to be fluent before arrival:

Mapping GPS unit

Garmin eTrex Vista HCx is the best GPS I've used for these purposes. The Garmin 60 CSx is also an excellent choice, but larger and bulkier on the bars. It has no more functionality than the eTrex model. The "x" in the model name refers to micro SD expansion slot that allows huge storage capacity for base maps and a lifetime's worth of .gpx files - be sure to get this capability. There are surely many other models and brands that will get the job done. At a minimum you need topo basemaps for SW Utah and the ability to follow uploaded tracks (or routes) in the unit. OK, you could get by without the basemaps even so long as you had paper maps for the region with lat/long info.

Mapping software with GPS upload/download capability.

I've spent a lot of time each with National Geographic TOPO!, Topofusion, and Garmin Mapsource. Of the 3, I find that I use Topofusion for 95% of the tasks. It is by far the best post ride analysis tool, it's the brainchild of fellow MTB enduro nut Scott Morris, and has a fully functional free download.

Paper maps.

Depending on your comfort/experience level with your GPS, you may elect to bring paper maps as well. These can be printed from mapping software or purchased online. You can even download scans of paper maps for free directly from USGS - look for the "Map locator and downloader." The St George 30" x 60" USGS map will give a good overview of all routes, but the finer details will require 7.5 min quads.

What next? Learn to use the GPS unit. Know the difference between tracks and routes, know the storage limits of your device and how long the batteries last. Before arriving you should have already followed a track and/or route with your device. Upload the Camp Lynda routes to your GPS.

Camp Lynda day 1 is not the ideal time to learn these things...day 1 is gonna be a butt kicker ;) Know how to work with GPX files in your GPS unit and mapping software. Two great resources for learning about GPS units are the MTBR GPS and Lighting forum and Topofusion's forum (if you use TF that is...). Be sure to start with the search function at the forums as your question has likely already been covered.

Here is the route teaser - prolly only relevant at this point to locals...

Day 1: Silver Reef Loop

Day 2: Barrel Roll-Stucki-Blakes

Day 3: Gooseberry-Rockville-Jem, well kinda in a long round-a-bout way. This one will be Epic but not so committing as it has one short cut, one bail out early option and one add an extra 25 miles option if you are uber-manic.

Disclaimer 2: If it rains and the trails are sloppy we might end up riding the road for three days. uuughhh!!

Camp Lynda Dates

Lynda — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 02:37:00 GMT

Camp Lynda will be January 12-14th. That is a Saturday thru Monday. My kids get out of school early on Friday sooo everybody else must work their schedule around that ;-)

The camp will be self supported. No entry fee, no I Survived Camp Lynda t-shirt (unless you make one with your own blood :-) Everyday a route will be planned, a start time and a gps file provided. We will post the gps files well in advance. You set your own pace, ride solo or with a group, carry all your own supplies, follow a gps.

Rides will go something like this: Day One 4-6 hours. Day Two 5-7 hours. Day Three 6-8 hours. There are more trails in the area than can be covered in three days so right now I have to decide what we are not going to ride. Day One is most likely gonna be two laps on the Jem trail. Two laps of the same loop seems like a funny thing to do but I really like it. By the second lap I am getting in a groove with the trail and enjoying a second chance at everything. Two laps is a great pacing heads up too. The first lap can seem easy and the second lap you pick up the pace and feel like you are hammering but the clock often ticks off the second lap exactly the same as the first. One lap is about 25 miles and 2 - 2.5 hours. The two lap format gives a halfway bailout option and a halfway refuel at the car point. Nice features to make day one more friendly.

The plan for day three is long and hard. Finish it off with a finale you will remember...

Here are a few questions I have received so far:

What are you thinking about accommodations?

Your call. Right next to the five star Green Valley Spa is BLM land you can free camp on. Lots of Motel 8's and Best Westerns in town. Green Valley is a good spot to set up camp. Green Valley Condos are nice and reasonably priced.

How well are these trails marked, and are there good maps I could purchase for the areas you plan to ride?

Day One, The Jem Trail is marked and mapped beautifully (we will be riding the Gould's Farm/JEM/Hurricane Rim Loop). The Jem gps and detailed trail description is on www.utahmountainbiking.com. Scroll down the left menu bar to the St George area trails. Day Two and Three will be unmarked and on routes not found on maps. GPS required or some serious local trail knowledge. In fact Dave wants to take us up the Hurricane Cliffs and on the first part of his Trans Utah route on some roads I have never been on for the big finale day three.

Will we be riding Gooseberry Mesa?

No. The Goose is fun for goofing around on but this is a serious training mission.

Where should I fly into?

Las Vegas is the closest big airport. A shuttle service operates from there to St George. You can also fly directly into St George. The airport is situated on a mesa right in the middle of the city. United and Delta fly into St George.

Do I need a gps?

Yes. Ask Santa for one or you will be dependant on someone else to know the route and the spirit of this camp is self supported.

Camp Lynda

Lynda — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 17:47:00 GMT

St George is a great place to ride in the winter, well unless it is raining. Binge training is one of my fav things to do. I wanna share both, hence Camp Lynda. Come down to the desert and ride yourself silly for a few days. Go home so tired you can't think straight. Sound good? You're in?

It will be self supported, no waivers and no fee. I'll post a gpx file of the route and longer route options for the truly manic. You can ride with or solo. Dave is even talking about previewing part of his top secret Trans Utah (St George to Moab) route at the camp.

I'm polling for ideas here?

Date - what works for you?
Format - 3 or 4 days?
Other ideas?

This is what St George looks like in January. Ya might need a vest and arm warmers and if you are a desert bunny you will need tights and booties.

Jem trail in January

Zen Loop in January

Paradise Canyon in January