It's 8:40am on 7/25/2020, I've crashed my bike and I'm now laying face first in a water crossing. I'm soaked, head to toe. This time, I'm 22 miles and 156 minutes into the ride, a bit further than last time. Once again, Rodney is waiting on me to pick my sorry ass up out of another creek and ride this damn bike.
F those water crossings.
Organization is Key:
With Rod and I already completing The CrusherEX 225 and The CrusherEX 40, the hundred miler was next on our to do list.
We've got this down. Accurate amount of food, plus a little extra, the right amount of water storage, a filter for Yellowdog Creek, tools, spare parts, and the checkpoint list:
Even better, with the CrusherEX being on your own, we adjusted our start time from 7:00am to 6:00am to get another hour of riding in before the heat picked up too much.
The Starting Line, Forestville Trailhead:
At 6:04am, we headed out to tackle this adventure.
Hogback Summit:
We topped Hogback summit in about 23 minutes from the start line:
Rod's view on Hogback hasn't changed at all:
Q&A vid about this: What does hogback have to do with mountain biking?
I'm not certain how fast karma works, but Rod took a spill coming down Hogback. I checked up on Hogback, it seemed to sustain the hit ok.
For comparison, when we rode this on the 225, it took 94 minutes to get to mile 5 after the top of the world climb. Somewhat knowing the course, we reached the same point in 64 minutes. At this point in the day, I thought we were off to the races.
Roadside Spring:
Getting to the roadside spring should have been uneventful, but instead I crashed in a water crossing as described in the intro. When I crashed in a water crossing on the 225, I was unsure what happened. This time, I know exactly what happened. The crossing was about 30 feet long and 8 inches deep in the line I chose with a rock base and clear water. I plowed the front tire straight into a rock that was just under sticking out of the water, stopping the bike, spinning out the rear tire, and immediately dropping to the ground similar to slipping on ice. Luckily, I used my elbow and forearm to catch myself on a rock 🙄. Falling off the line also meant I fell into the deeper section. TBH, hitting the water was like hitting the edge of a pool as a kid. My arm was stinging like crazy but I needed to get back on the bike and push forward.
Also, the bike shifted like garbage the rest of the ride. By the end, the 42t and 10t cogs would not stay in gear. It's gonna need some work.
Enough of the second water crossing crash.
The roadside spring was great. Temps had already reached 80 degrees by the time we got there and the cold water was very refreshing.
From here we refilled our water and headed out.
Snowplow:
This time, finding the snowplow was uneventful. At this point, we were 4 hours and 17 minutes into the ride and feeling pretty good about getting through the rest.
Yellowdog Crossing (and Mosquito Gluch):
Covering the distance to yellowdog crossing was a bit slower than anticipated. The heat was turning up, the roads were dry, sandy, and slow. Nothing too terrible. We crossed the creek at exactly 6 hours and 30 minutes into the ride.
At the crossing, I broke out the sawyer micro filter and an 1 liter water bottle. We filtered nearly 4 liters of water in about 15 minutes topping off all bottles and packs, then headed up mosquito gulch.
Riding mosquito gulch with daylight and tire tracks significantly reduces the time frame. On the 225, we pushed bikes for nearly 2 miles through there. We still pushed about a half mile, but we got through the gulch quickly and thought we were on our way to get this done.
The Mojave Desert:
As we're leaving the forest area of mosquito gulch, Rod references that were entering the Majove desert. I'm sure anyone riding in the eastern US can likely vouch for the heat on that Saturday. This section from mile 73 leaving mosquito gulch to mile 107 entering the chunky summit was tough as it gets for any crusher ride I've done (3 previous). The wahoo measured over 90 degrees for this entire stretch.
While we both had ridden the roads once, we didn't experience the combination of heat, powdery sand, and passing traffic kicking up massive clouds of dirt. We both had unplanned stops. Tipped over attempting to force the bikes through deep sand and pushed our bikes way too much. We both drank a significant amount of water and it was getting obvious we didn't have enough to finish at this rate.
Luckily, the route went by some houses and we crossed a red house at mile 92 with people in the yard. Here is a pic of us taken from the homeowners begging for water:
The homeowners let us fill our waterpacks from their hose, and after a 10-15 minutes of chatting, we found out they have relation living Perrysburg, OH. Even in the middle of Nowhere, MI, you can still find out it's a small world.
From there, things didn't get and easier, mile 98 on a chunky sandy descent next to telephone poles:
Getting to mile 107 was absolutely terrible. It took us 3 hours and 12 minutes (total time) to cover 34 miles. For all I know, I'm still out there and writing this blog is a hallucination.
Chunky Summit:
The previous two blogs, I've raved about chucky summit and I'm going to continue to rave. This section has quite a bit of tree coverage. After being in the boiling sun for over three hours, we finally got some relief. Referencing the temps graph above, this was huge. We didn't have any power to push through this section fast, but at least we could ride the bikes with a break from the relentless sun. 😒:
Drained and tired, we actually took a break at the chunky summit sign for a few minutes to cool off. The last six miles ticked off pretty quick riding the trails back to the Forestville trail head. Looking back, every adventure ride should end like the last 12 miles of the crusher. This section takes the mind off the difficulties of the journey, the day, the year, and becomes just an enjoyment of riding bikes. Profile of that last 12 miles:
The Finish Line, Forestville Trailhead:
Done.
Stats:
- 119 miles
- 6,400 of elevation
- 11:37 total time
- Strava Link: The CrusherEX 100
Outro:
This ride was described as "The hundred miler is the best of the worst". Traversing hogback, the water crossings, the endless miles of sand, mosquito gulch, and chunky summit, all in 100 miles is an absolute action packed adventure.
This marks 3 crusher events finished, one to go: The CrusherEX 50 Run on 8/29.
