Got the bike ! my unique machine for Broad peak was built by Dean Rainbow in Bright water. The machine has 3 key components , light weight , extremely compact and very importantly its extremely simple , ie nothing to go wrong Regards plans on the mountain ,Zendo is going to take a normal bike and I am going to take this radical lightweight and easy to carry machine. we will attempt to carry both as high as we can. My bike can be carried almost fully built up which saves trying to put it together etc which maybe very difficult in the cold and on steep slopes. getting a normal bike up will be a great deal more complicated . The difficulty remains in trying to ride this machine - especially with mountaineering boots , crampons etc in the snow. On Sunday 21st , mid winters day got the first chance to test just how easy it is to carry the bike in perfect conditions on Mt Arthur , a blizzard with gale force winds. My new pack , a Kathmandu Incite 60 liters provided the base to carry the machine and I hooked it on with no modifications what so ever. Once again Sergio accompanied me and we had a great time and a great test. I had the pack loaded with gear as though on the mountain and despite gale force winds and fresh snow covering blue ice on top of Winter peak and Mt Arthur found the going good and only had a few minor slips. It was 5 hours before the load became uncomfortable but nothing dramatic and arrived back at car park after more than 6 and a 1/2 hours with only 2 crampon fitting stops. The only failure was to actually take the bike off and try it - in conditions were it was difficult to stand up on the 2 summits I decided to leave this to another day!! On another angle a good friend of mine set up a Go fund me page for this mission a link to which can be found on my front page if anyone is interested in helping contribute to the costs of this adventure.
"Nothing can be less like a mountain at one time than the same mountain at another" so Leslie Stephen wrote over a century ago. Its rather fortunate for me with such limited time available to go out its very much the reality. There's only a few training peaks within in a day of where I live but as conditions vary so much it means I often seem to be on very different ones. This Sunday I had the added fortune of some company - Sergio from Chile who's brother is a mountaineer so he already had a good idea about it all and moreover he is a former Chilean National team athlete in the steeple chase and is used to hard physical work. Much of his athletic career was spent at training camps at altitude in the mountains of Chile!! And the mountain , Mt Angelus again , another 10 plus hour day but with rather different snow conditions than last time and by traversing the ridges from South to North rather different than the West face climb!!
(Leslie Stephen was father of Virginia Wolff and Vanessa Bell)
Raining hard and a great day to catch up with the blog. Final preparations are under way with just 5 weeks to departure on 7th July. There seems to be endless administrative/bureaucratic details to attend to not to mention a string of minor things to buy and get ready for the actual trip from toothpaste to pitons. Training has largely been very local with a number of bike rides with Brad last week and a couple of trips last week up Mount Arthur , one in the middle of the night which is always a great change of perspective. My special bike should be ready soon so looking forward to testing the light weight design on a hike soon.
