Tag Archives: thrill

Raging in Portland

Rider: Matt Wickenheiser Photo by: Justin Hall

Mountain biking, for me, is a solo event.  So I feel some apprehension when I ride into the parking lot to see a dozen cars parked with bikes on top.  Normally I blame my work schedule for my lack of riding partners, but that’s only partly true.   My thirst for alone-time derails any real attempt at finding people to ride with.
Tonight, however, I’m heading out with the Rage on Portland group, a loose organization of riders who consistently meet up to ride.  I do these rides once or twice a year.  As I begin talking to the Ragers getting their bikes ready for the trail, I remember why.  There is a subdued energy surrounding these people.  They love trails.  They love riding them.  And they love riding them together.
We set out and I drop in mid pack.  I represent the center-point in this group of twenty-five–somewhere between the hammers and the cruisers, somewhere between the twenty-ish woman on her ninth ride ever and a sixty-five-year-old man who’d been riding since before I was born.
There is a lot of chatting on the road.  Then, we drop into the dense Maine woods.  Sound disappears.  Our tires roll over dry dirt and pine needles.  The occasional rustle of dry leaves breaks the silence.  The line of riders weaves like a multi-colored serpent through the forest.  It’s like a dance where my personal experience gets swallowed up in the greater experience of the group.  The line bunches up as we slow to say hi to a hiker with a border collie and thank her for letting us pass.  once past, the line stretches until I can’t see either end.
The banter picks up when we stop at trail junctions to wait for the rest of the group.  While I’ve met most of these guys before, I don’t know any of them well enough to engage in the ribbing that goes on.  Instead, I take it all in, learning about the people I’m with.  Brian spends a lot of time crashing.  Mike is riding strong after fracturing his hip in a crash the summer before and Katrina could kick all of our asses on a bike or climbing a rock face. There are riders who just got back from Moab and riders dreaming of making the trip to Kingdom Trails a couple of hours away.  Even though I know nothing of their off-the-bike lives, I feel like I know them all.  And they seem to know me–the important parts, at least.
Maybe the bike is the only thing that unites us.  I doubt it, but it doesn’t seem to matter.  We set off again, pedaling into the woods.  The only real competition amongst us is with the sun racing toward sunset.  I follow the leaders, trying to memorize where the new trails are so when I come out here again, by myself, I can find them.  The task is impossible in the labyrinth of trees.  It doesn’t matter, I tell myself.  I promise myself this is the year I put away my loner tendencies and begin riding with the group.

A Climber Falls (A story of Beginnings)

(on the slopes of Volcan Villarrica, Chile, 1999)

Volcan Villarrica, Chile

When I see the man fall, I am imagining my own feet slipping on the icy snow and my deadly plummet toward the jagged rocks far below.  I am climbing the face of Chile’s Volcan Villarrica with the a group of other travelers from around the world hoping to look into the heart of one of the most active volcanoes on Earth.  The surrounding landscape, just coming out of the morning fog that made it look like green islands rising from a silver sea, stands crinkled and lush from thousands of years of tectonic activity.  As the fog recedes, lake Villarrica glitters in the sunshine.

Thousands of feet overhead, the caldera of Villarrica smokes and beckons with the promise of a rare glimpse into Earth’s fiery center.  So we climb, switching back and forth across the steepest terrain I’ve ever been on, using the foot-holes our guide kicks into the grainy snow as stairs.  The snow shifts under my feet when I step down and I have to concentrate to keep my balance.  I grip the head of my ice axe, digging the shaft into the snow like a cane.  My heart races with the thought of falling toward the line of sharp volcanic rocks a hundred feet below.  Then, the man, a paunchy, mustachioed, tourist topples over.  He tumbles down the steep snowfield, leaving his ice-axe, stuck in the snow like a signpost, behind.  We gape as the man falls further and further, performing acrobatic somersaults and flips as he bounces down the slope.  In several languages, everyone shares a communal thought, I’m going to see a man die today.

A few short yards from where the snow ends and the sharp, volcanic rock takes over, the man slaps down into a face-first, spread-eagle dive and begins to slide.  He puts his arms over his head, bracing for impact.  The impact never comes.  He grinds to a halt mere inches from slamming into the rock.  The paunchy tourist, clearly shaken from the fall, stands and waves back at us with a goofy grin.  He is the embodiment of Chilean machismo.

The line of climbers begins to move forward again, one foot in front of the other toward the ledge high above.  My legs and hands shake, and I grip my axe tighter with each step higher.  The beauty of Chile’s lakes region, with its other smoking volcanoes and lush valleys is lost on me while I climb.  I am focused only on keeping my feet in the holes made by a guide who, because of language, I can’t even speak to.  I cross the washed-out step where the tourist began his ill-fated descent.  The adrenalin surging through my veins makes me feel lightheaded.  I realize, looking down that almost vertical face, that I like it.