Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Mountainbiking Mammoth Lakes - The story of an unplanned roadtrip

I am now in the states visiting Martin at Stanford. This weekend we wanted to go away, but we did not really know where and what to do. Just before leaving we decided to go mountain biking in the Sierras. The weather we forgot to check and the distance goggle maps claimed was about 5 hours.

We was planing on going early, but ended up leaving Palo Alto at around 5.30 pm-ish. This meant rush traffic about all the way to Livermore, which is normally an hour... When we then got to Yosemite national park and Tuolumne meadows it was really dark, and raining.... and misty... and windy road... And when we got to the pass over to the other side of the mountains, which is about 9 950 ft (quite high) it was also snowing. All this resulting in us using a lot more than 5 hours, and getting to bet at 2 in the morning.

Saturday, however, we where a bit tired, but got a really nice day biking :) Sunday, it was raining again. And it was really windy. And snowing at around 8500ft (Mammoth Lake is around 8000ft). We got some really nice biking anyway though. A bit cool only... :)

Since it was so cold and rainy, we decided to leave a bit early and get back to Palo Alto early. But as we came to the pass over the mountain, it was closed... And so was the two next passes north... We actually had to drive almost to Lake Tahoe to get back... Which meant an 7 hour drive... But we did get to see a lot, and we did have a lot of fun :)

Me!

Me and Martin with Mammoth Lakes in the background.
Martin.
Me biking in the snow on Sunday.
Completly soaking wet, cold and ready to go home. We got some comments when we went out biking in the horrible weather :)

At the gas station at the turn out to Tioga pass over to Yosemite... Where we stopped to ask what to do. Seems like we weren't the only ones wondering :)

Monday, October 4, 2010

Biking in the alps

This week I am on a conference in Freiburg, Germany. However, to get there I had to fly to either Frankfurt, Stuttgart or Zurich and then take the train. So ofcource that had to be exploited, so I asked Marianne if she wanted a visitor for a weekend. Marianne found out we should go mountainbiking, which is probably one of the better ideas ever. We got full suspention bikes and went to Vallis with Fabienne, Andy and Ruth. Andy showed us some of his favorite trails, which is just awsome! I have never been on a real mountain biking tour like this before, I have only been for training tours in bymarka and such, which is nice, but not as awsome as this. I am totally gonna mountain bike more!

Lunch day 1, biking part of the holy trail :D Andy, Fabienne, Ruth and Marianne

Fabienne


Andy

Pronounced Bitch :)

Biking second day, 1000m up from Binn, 2000m down to Brig. Got some snow, but totally awsome

Laban biking Switzerland