Bangtail Edit

Went for a mid-october bike ride on the bangtail trail. Hit some mega-puddles, busted a rear shock, ate four and a half feet of fruit rollups, and had a helluva good time… with Matt Forbes, Ren Egnew, Above Average Matt, Michele Rockwell, and Big Bertha - the baller landcruiser. Made my first edit too! Check er out…

Bangtail Bike Shenanigans from Kirra Kirra on Vimeo.

Night Bouldering

There's something about warm, starry nights that awakens some sort of latent nature-ADD. Evenings when you have to get out, go run, feel the air currents brush your skin. Last night was one of those nights. One of those rare October dusks that feels alive, that draws you from your house and sends you spinning through the dim streets by foot or longboard or bike. Mid street-twirl, a buddy called me up, having acquired three 1600 lumen bike lights (my car headlights are only 700 lumens for reference) and with a wide open schedule for the evening. We biked out to one of the Boulders, one of several climber-made public boulders sprinkled around the city of Bozeman, and set up the lights. The sharp contrast created by the lights added an element of surprise: not knowing if a promising shadow was a solid crimp or a smooth sloper fading into the night. It was my buddy's last night before a two-month-long yosemite dirt-bagging adventure, and so we celebrated in fine style with peanut butter sandwiches,  games of add-on, and a bit of dry-tooling.

Salkantay

If appreciation of a landscape increases with the effort required to arrive there, our five-day trek over the 15,000 foot Salkantay pass must have ended with absolute worship at Machu Picchu. Those days encompassed such a wide range of experiences. Starting in a tiny arid mountain village swarming with a particularly vicious species of biting fly, we followed a deep valley as it twisted up through the snowy giants of the Andes up, up, and over the barren, cairn-covered pass. Then, over the next few days we descended into the jungle, the "eyebrow" of the Amazon. We clambered into trees to pick wild bananas and avocados. We watched leaf-cutter ants meander and transparent-winged butterflies flap lazily. We slept surrounded by ancient ruins with Machu Picchu just a green saddle in the distance. To approach from so far, reliant on only our feet for transportation instead of the technology-based norm, gave us an insight into to the land and the lives of the Peruvians that we otherwise would have missed.

Torres del Paine

There is a subtle balance of independence and trust that for me is generally tipped toward self-reliance. However during our trek, the altruism that so many people showed revealed how tiring my usual shift toward autonomy can be. When the winds were whipping at 90 km/h we gripped each other to stay upright, two Germans shared their chocolate when we all reached the summit of a mountain pass, after a 31 km day of rain, the park rangers took in all our stinky boots to dry by their fire. Our group bonded as a whole as we trekked through each micro-climate, from burnt grasslands to sunlit forests, from marshy plains to arid peaks. We drank water straight from milky glacial streams, watched hawks circle lazily above, and played word games to pass the time. To be able to learn more about each other while exploring such an incredible landscape was all I could have asked for.

Argentinian Patagonia

The ultimate escape is being able to wander in nature and know you're completely alone. However, it's not an escape from reality but an escape to it. I've never been so in touch with my own mortality, yet also with my own strength, as during my week of solo backpacking. The trail crossed icy waist-deep rivers, dipped into marshy grasslands, and ascended steep moraines. Sometimes it disappeared for kilometers and I was left following wild horse trails and shoving aside shrubbery. In contrast to the rigorous adventures of daylight, the places I set my tent up at night were some of the most serene: soaking my feet in glacial water with fingerling trout nibbling my toes, waking up to the golden sun dappling my tent each morning, being surrounded by fields of every-hued lupines dancing in the breeze. Starry nights were filled with the rumble of calving glaciers, the thumps of wild horse hooves, and my head-full of thoughts. The grandeur of the landscape was numbing at times, how could I begin to comprehend the huge chunks of bleak rock spiking from the earth? The massive expanse of the ice field? The bitter wind that scoured the contours of the land? The multi-hued vegetation that has clung tenaciously to the thin soil for thousands of years? To be present in such a place…