BUNYAN VELO The Bikepacking Journal Issue No. 07
BUNYAN VELO ISSUE No. 07 – OCTOBER 2017
The Bikepacking Journal
CREATIVE DIRECTOR
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Lucas Winzenburg
www.bunyanvelo.com lucas@bunyanvelo.com
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Bunyan Velo 4545 South Monaco St. Unit 126 Denver, CO 80237 USA
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Mike Riemer, Tanner Warnick, Mark Sirek, Theresa McDevitt, Sophie Jefferson, Scott Felter, Jerry Bowles, Martina Brimmer, Jason Goodman, Randi Jo Smith, Tim and Odia Krueger, Devin O’Brien, Peter Discoe, Lynn and Mark Speral, Vince Asta, Pat Murphy, Whitney Ford-Terry, Neža Peterca, and Brad Cole. CONTRIBUTORS
Mikkel Soya Bølstad Joel Caldwell Joe Cruz Olivia Cuenca Zach Dolinaj
Colt Fetters Alex Gandy Dakota Graff Marius Nilsen Ben Page Jona Riechmann
Sarah Swallow Tom Swallow Morgan Taylor Eric Timmerman Franziska Wernsing
PHOTO CREDITS
Cover: Ben Page Opposite: Eric Timmerman Following: Lucas Winzenburg
COPYRIGHT
All content copyright 2017 Bunyan Velo. Contributions have been used with permission and are copyright original sources. No unauthorized reproduction without written consent.
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MADE IN MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA
EDITOR’S NOTE We’re back? We’re back! Phew, it feels damn good to be able to share another issue of Bunyan Velo with you today. This time around, Zach rides his first 100-mile day, then does it again every day for a month. Ben struggles to traverse the land of the horse on two wheels. Sarah and Tom are among the first people to pedal the new Baja Divide route. Alex is repeatedly inspired by the kindness of strangers he meets along the road from Istanbul to Bangkok. Joe, Joel, Logan, and I can barely process the intense beauty we find while riding (and sometimes pushing) our bikes across Kyrgyzstan. All of us ultimately find our lives enriched by the places and people we encounter from the saddle. It’s now been nearly five years since I had the idea to create a magazine dedicated to experiencing the world by bicycle, and what a ride it’s been. If this is your first time opening Bunyan Velo, welcome! You’ve got some catching up to do, and I hope you’ll stick around. To those of you who have been patiently waiting for this new issue, thanks for coming back. It’s good to see you again. Please consider supporting this independent publication by sharing it with a friend, making a small donation, or purchasing a copy at bunyanvelo.com. Onward, Lucas Winzenburg Founder and Creative Director
CONTENTS BUNYAN VELO 07
10 ZANSKAR Eric Timmerman and Olivia Cuenca
28
A DRESS REHEARSAL Alex Gandy
42
WHEN THE SKY Joe Cruz and Joel Caldwell
70
PINT DREAMS Dakota Graff
84 CRUST Mikkel Soya Bølstad
102
FOUR IS BETTER THAN TWO Ben Page
116
ONWARD TO A WILDFIRE Zach Dolinaj
130
FROM A TO P Franziska Wernsing and Jona Riechmann
144
TEA SHOP TOURING Colt Fetters
158 HOMECOMING Morgan Taylor
168
HALL OF THE MOUNTAIN KING Marius Nilsen
184
THE INAUGURAL RIDE Sarah Swallow and Tom Swallow
Zanskar Written and photographed by Eric Timmerman and Olivia Cuenca
S
andwiched between the Zanskar and Great Himalayan Ranges, a rugged road snakes through the upper Suru Valley, traverses the windswept 14,500-foot Pensi La, and eventually dead-ends in Zanskar. We pedaled there, to one of the most remote places in Ladakh, the land of high passes, deep in the Indian Himalaya. As the views intensified, the road crumbled into a sea of dirt and rock. We rattled down the road lined with simple mud-housed villages rich in grass, wheat, and barley. Families were busy in the fields slashing the harvest by hand using crude, rusted sickles. The grass and wheat they were cutting would be dried and stored to feed the animals through the barren months. Stacks of cow dung sat drying along the streets, soon to be kindling for a warm fire. Summer is a time of rejuvenation for the land and preparation for the impending winter. Seven months of inhospitable winter isolate the Zanskar valley from the outside world. The sole road closes and families live in the one room warmed by a stove with barely any electricity. The harsh conditions in this isolated region of Ladakh have kept its beautiful people, Tibetan culture, and stunning landscapes untainted for centuries. The small villages that dot the valley rarely see foreigners. As we pedaled by, children rushed to the streets, reaching for high-fives and demanding, “One chocolate!� Finding anyone to speak English with was difficult, but we easily negotiated lodging and food through simple words and hand signals. Our basic meals of dal and rice and beds of thin pads with rugs on the floor were simple but adequate.
Bunyan Velo 12
A Dress Rehearsal Written and photographed by Alex Gandy
B
roken spokes, upset stomachs, inner-tube melting heat, a dog bite, stolen wallet, malnutrition, and chronic exhaustion in environments that often seemed deeply opposed to supporting human life. The steady flow of challenges and predicaments I faced as I cycled from Istanbul to Bangkok were far removed from the convenience and safety of my everyday life. People often tell me how the thought of living like this, with the potential for disaster always looming large and out of your control, is the stuff of anxiety. Not to be pursued unnecessarily. On the contrary, those who have made the leap report finding happiness in these very same conditions. What should logically be a stressful way to live is found to be not just comfortable, but enlightening. The challenges of a grand adventure are, in many ways, an elaborate dress rehearsal of a lesson that normal life serves up with sobering abruptness and little mercy. When drinking the last of your water reserves under a scorching desert sun or clutching your tent as a winter storm tries to rip it from your grasp our frail, temporary and ultimately dispensable nature is plain to see. It is abundantly clear that no matter how highly we think of ourselves, we are limited by the same mundane necessities as every other living thing: food, water, warmth, and shelter. The universe does not care for our status. We are not deserving of special treatment, and it is more than likely that life will go on much the same without us. But instead of this knowledge being demoralising, inspiration can come from bearing witness to all that lies beyond us and seeing everything that lies outside our control.
Bunyan Velo 31
When The Sky Written by Joe Cruz, photographed by Joel Caldwell
1.
T
hey’re tiny encouragements, those dust whorls in the heat and the bits of dung and trash, brake lights on the sprinter van we hired to transport us from Bishkek, a moment ago the firm handshake of the driver with whom we share no language. This dirt patch off the edge of broken asphalt contouring along deep blue Lake Issyk-Köl, our bicycles and gear and full plastic grocery bags in excitable heaps. Now we’re stashing a week’s worth of food into frame and saddle packs, the fruit of hours trying to puzzle ingredients from pictures on the outside packaging. Finally the perpendicular road wavy with children who say hello by putting their hands up and laughing, some chase us but most just continue playing as they were, adults smile and shake an arm with genuine seeming joy, early on we pass a few cars horns honking and occupants pressed against the windshield in grinning greeting. It will transform into a two track and then a path and then just our pedalstrokes rising towards a Tien Shan ridge line that points at the sky like tips of neatly lined up spears. Glint capped peaks inevitably further away than they seem. We see our first yurt even if it’s just another farm building, a woman leaning forward a wheelbarrow between fencing, a flat green pitch for ball kicking and used now for it by a hollering half dozen, an old Subaru. We’ve come because of the legend of Kyrgyzstan’s beauty, mountains and steppe, high meadow yurt camps, Silk Roads and Soviet history, Islam and horsemen and crashing cold rivers. None of the confirmed superlatives will match our wide-eyed skipping heart wonder in the place. The first giddy expectant revolutions were at five thousand feet, by the end of tomorrow we’ll have ridden to twelve through trees and subsequently none to grey rock moraine staircases, a narrowing canyon, limpid plateau lakes. Along the way curious unfettered horses standing in the way to get a steady look at us, a herdsman’s grin, a yapping shepherd dog, the sound of mud scraping in our tread, horse manure fires from afar until we don’t see anyone anymore. Our camps will be on grass as smooth and low as a fairway, and we’ll sit in our kitchen circle whiskey drinking marveling. And in our chests we’ll ride through the realization that, whatever we expected this place to be, it’s more than that in the way that the unfurling kilometers of green levitate us.
Bunyan Velo 44
Pint Dreams Written and photographed by Dakota Graff
I
remember the first time I spoke my dream aloud. I’m not sure where it came from, but like all big dreams, it must have sat dormant for long, deep in me somewhere until something stirred it up to the surface. The day that happened, I sat at my local bar over a pint of beer and told my bartender I was going to ride my bicycle down the West Coast. Speaking something aloud like that was a big step for me because once I speak things into existence, I have to do them. It’s a pact I have with myself – to always be a man of my word, even if the only witness to this strange contract is the bartender serving me another pint. Since, that dream I had in that small bar evolved. I continued to speak it aloud to people with a similar response as the bartender. Eventually I shared it with others who had the same dream. It morphed from a short West Coast bike tour into a three-month, cross-country tour with a social cause. Two acquaintances who were fairly new to cycling became my best friends (and pretty solid bike riders, too). Together, we spent a cold Midwest winter eating a lot of pizza while poring over the plans for the following summer. We stressed over gear. We were giddy as we planned our route. We booked tickets. We started riding.
Bunyan Velo 73
Cr ust
Written and photographed by Mikkel Soya Bølstad
A
ll winter, social media has been brimming with reports about fatbikers riding the ski trails in the local mountains, accompanied by photos of their smiling faces as they cheerfully roll along. Bogged down with work, I’ve tried to live vicariously through the bits and bytes of their twowheeled escapades on the interwebs. So far, it has worked fairly well. But only barely. And only until now. With spring hitting my hometown down in the valley and blowing a warm wind across the mountains, followed by frosty nights, the reports have changed. The fatbikers aren’t just riding the trails in the mountains. They’re riding everywhere. With thaw during daytime and frost at night, a crust has started to develop. One that’s solid enough to carry both man and bike away from the ski trails and into the wild. I know. Norwegians are supposedly born with skis on their feet. It’s the dirty secret behind these past decades of world dominance on the cross country ski trails. The obvious would of course have been to grab the backcountry skis and head for the mountains. But what if I could start the trip in my home town, then slip into a side valley, leave the green grass and budding birch trees behind, and crawl up into the mountains? To winter? And finish off by ascending the highest peak in the district? On a bike? Paradoxically, the arrival of the crust coincides with a total absence of time to take advantage of it. Instead, one day after another passes by in an ever greener Kongsberg. The nightly frost disappears in the mountains and eventually the crust collapses. My hopes of summiting the local mountain peak by bike dwindle like dirty snow in the sun. It’s not going to happen. I’m too late.
Bunyan Velo 86
Four is Better T h a n Tw o Written and photographed by Ben Page
Onward to a Wildfire Written and photographed by Zach Dolinaj
tea shop touring Written and photographed by Colt Fetters
Homecoming Written and photographed by Morgan Taylor
Hall of the Mountain King Written and photographed by Marius Nilsen
the inaugural ride Written by Sarah Swallow, photographed by Sarah Swallow and Tom Swallow