I cranked up the hill feeling strong. Not as strong as I would like, but finally feeling recovered from my Canadian biking adventure two weeks before.
I passed Eric, who stopped to clear some brush out of the trail. He was doing it partly to be a good citizen and partly to take a break from the 2-mile climb in the 80-degree heat. Biking up behind us were Nikki and Mike and two of their dogs. The dogs were moving well, but Nikki and Mike didn’t want to run them too hard so that they wouldn’t overheat.
We were headed to the Upper Angel Creek Cabin in the Chena River State Recreation Area for a quick overnighter. We were all out for a nice weekend getaway. I was also ticking off another night for my quest to fulfill the Bikepack Every Month Challenge.
Bikepack Every Month Challenge
In April, I had signed up for the challenge, created by Kurt Refsnider, an ultra-endurance cyclist. Since I had been traveling most of June, including a hard 8-day bikepack adventure in the Canadian Rockies (which fulfilled my June bikepack challenge), I wanted to do something easier and closer to home for July.
Nikki knows about the challenge and asked to join me on my July trip. I saw that the Upper Angel Creek Cabin was available and that the weather forecast was good, so we started making plans for Saturday night. The summer trail to Upper Angel Creek Cabin is only 10 miles, so it’s fairly easy to do it as a sub-24-hour adventure. Mike, Nikki’s husband, and Eric were also interested in coming along.
Not all adventures need to be long or hard. Sometimes it’s just nice to get away for a little fun with friends. Because it was only 10 miles to the cabin, we could leave Saturday late afternoon and be back home by lunch on Sunday. A great way to get away but still have time to get things done on the weekend, too.
Pizza First!
Another advantage of a late start is that you can carry less food. We met around 3PM at the Wagner’s Pizza Bus for a late lunch/early dinner. It’s at around mile 24 of Chena Hot Springs Road and is definitely worth a stop if you are out that way. While ordering pizzas we saw that Wagner’s also offers milkshakes. Yum! Each couple ordered a small pizza and a milkshake to split. Good calories to fuel us on our way to the cabin. We each kept one piece of pizza to eat at the cabin.
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| Wagner's Pizza Bus, just off of Chena Hot Springs Road. Well worth a stop. |
With no dinner and no tents to haul, our bikes were lighter than they could have been. Doing a quick overnight trip like this makes it a lot easier to get out the door!
Challenging Trail in Places
We finally started biking at around 4:30 PM. It was quite hot, around 80F, and we felt it on that first 2-mile climb. Eric found quite a bit of brush to cut. Nikki and Mike took it easy so their dogs wouldn’t overheat, stopping at all the puddles and creeks for them to drink and cool off. That made it easier for me to keep up. I’m definitely slowing down with age and more tentative with technical terrain. I’m not happy about it, but it is what it is. I still love getting out there and that’s what counts. But needing to go slower for the dogs helped me feel like I wasn’t slowing everybody else down.
The trail is really brushy in places. Eric limited his brush clearing to the “worst of the worst,” or else he would have stayed out there all night. But even though the trail was sometimes brushy we were able to bike those parts. You just had to do a bit of dodging branches.
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| The trail is quite brushy in places |
And I’d forgotten how rocky and technical parts of this trail are. And how many creek crossings we had to navigate. I remembered just one, but there are three or four. I had to walk some of the rocky sections, which are almost always in the drainages. Even Eric found them really challenging, but he likes challenging. A couple of times he whooped after successfully navigating a section. He and Mike charged through all the stream crossings. I was more cautious, but that didn’t save me from getting wet feet. Nikki was in between – more cautious than Mike and Eric, but more daring than me. The dogs of course, loved the streams!
An Impromptu Walkabout
It wasn’t long before we were crossing the bridge over Angel Creek and biking up to the cabin. We checked out the cabin and discovered two things: It was hot inside and the windows had no screens. We debated what to do and finally decided to open the windows and door, letting the cabin cool and the bugs in. We figured we would just go on a bug-killing spree before bedtime.
After sorting out the sleeping arrangements, we sat on the front deck relaxing and sharing stories. After a while, I felt a little antsy and decided to walk around the cabin site. I started up the 4-wheeler trail behind the cabin, planning to go just a short way. Before I knew it, I was climbing further. I decided to go just far enough to get a good view. I would turn around in 15 minutes. But there was no view at that point, so I decided to go a little further. And a little further. I knew I should have told the others what I was doing but I didn’t know I was going to go that far until I did!
They grew a little worried when I had been gone for about 45 minutes. Eric was pretty sure I had done exactly what I did. He knows me well. (He even guessed correctly that I wouldn’t have started my Strava right away and would be bummed about not recording it all!) But they weren’t sure. The only thing they knew was that I had disappeared without a word.
Nikki checked out the trail to the ridge, and she would have found me if she had gone farther or I would have turned around earlier. But neither of those things happened, so she turned around without finding me. Then all three started down another trail, but as the trail got rougher and didn’t climb anywhere, they guessed that I hadn’t gone that way. Just after they got back to the cabin, they saw me coming down the ridge trail.
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| The trail behind the cabin that leads to the ridge |
Sorry to worry you guys, I know I should have told you what I was doing and invited you along, but honestly, I had no idea that I was going to head up towards the ridge until I was doing it!
By the time I got back at 9:30 PM, we were all ready for bed. And good thing, as it started raining and continued for about an hour or so. We closed the cabin windows but didn’t need to go on a bug hunt as hardly any had gotten in. (Eric was the only one who heard a mosquito that night.) The cabin was still a bit warm for sleeping, but fortunately I slept better than I usually do the first night at a cabin.
A Quicker if Damper Ride Out
We were up, had a quick breakfast, and were back on the trail before 8AM the next morning. Due to the rain the previous evening, all the brush was wet. Since I was leading, my arms and upper body were soaked within minutes. Oh well. It wasn’t cold and I had dry clothes at the car. Eric went last a few times and said he noticed that the brush was quite a bit less wet after everyone else had gone ahead.
Unfortunately, the mosquitoes were much more annoying in the morning. I didn’t want to stop much because as soon as I did, I was swarmed. I stopped at the first creek crossing to take pictures of everyone else riding through it, but I almost gave up on them because they were taking too long to get there!
Fortunately, we could mostly go fast enough to stay ahead of the mosquitoes. But they would catch us on some of the uphills. That’s a good motivator to keep moving!
We were quite a bit faster on the way out and were back at our car and on our way home by 10AM. It was a great little overnighter with good friends. And my July bikepack challenge was completed, too.
Now I just need to decide what I want to do for an August bikepack. An overnight in Denali National Park? A night at Seven Mile Lake off the Denali Highway? We will see. The weather and the mosquitoes may dictate my decision.
So, if you want to get out camping and find yourself hesitating at doing something big, consider a smaller outing. (There’s even a Lower Angel Creek Cabin at just 5 miles in.) You’ll be glad you got out to do something.
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