Mt Baldy the Brutal is Conquered

Storm a'brewin' on that there mountain.

Pancake rattlesnake.

Snowballs -> Prison.

These cute li'l fanged fuzzies were everywhere.

Chris trying to hitch a ride up into the morning clouds.

Dam.

Last weekend, me and some of my fellow Westside Velo dudes made our way up Mt Baldy. (I also tried to invite Brian Dolen, but he claimed he might not have the legs; he made a smart call.) For the most part, Baldy isn't a terribly hard climb. It sounds tough because it's 25 miles of continuous climbing; but it's not that steep until it really has a chance to hurt you. Basically, you do 21 miles up to Baldy Village, the basecamp of the ski resort. That wasn't so bad. Then it gets absurdly steep for the final four miles of climbing into thinner air, up to 7300 feet. After 21 miles of climbing, those last four kill you — it's just burning legs and lungs and desperately trying to catch your breath but you can't. Some guys even had to stop for oxygen. Personally, I find that offensive, yet I understand. I've never turned back or stopped, because I'm afraid if I do it once, I'll do it twice; I don't want to start that kind of habit. But in this instance I understood. The last four miles were that fucking hard.

People often look at me sideways when I mention that I can't go out Friday night because I want to wake up and do something like this. Clearly they don't see what I see.

We climbed a traffic-free road into a secluded mountain range — practically in the middle of Los Angeles — to a ski resort. We saw rattlesnakes and tarantulas crossing the road. We challenged ourselves to our limits, and succeeded, accomplished. Sometimes I prefer making memories on the bike to the repeat cycle: seeing the same people at the same parties in different places.

Climbing a mountain is fulfilling on one hand; on the other, it's purely conquering an invented challenge, and one you choose yourself. It's not as if you have to scale the mountain; it's a choice. Yet in this Nerfed-out world, this is how we express wanderlust in the most classically human way. We now explore not to claim, not to conquer, but to achieve and discover... Almost to relive and reimagine what it could've been like the first time. Maybe it's simply a celebration of testing one's limits.

Go skiing without a chairlift sometime. You might rediscover the real essence and purity of sport, the way it was before skiing became snowy rollerblading.

"Gladiators! Nerd up." Tall Paul conspicuously absent.