Last Sunday after Tim and I had circumnavigated the better part of South Mountain, Tim noticed my back tire had a bulge in it. Hmmm... that can't be good. But, this phenomenon is not all that unusual for people running tubeless tires with Stan's Sealant in them. Apparently, there's a clash between the ammonia they use to stabilize the sealant's latex and whatever rubber compound they're using in the tires. Kenda tires seem to be particularly susceptible, and guess what I was running? Dang...
Here's the tire goiter at the height of growth. Sitting in the garage, it was getting bigger and bigger!! At this point, I'd actually let the air out of the tire, but the goiter had a life of it's own. After I took the tire off the rim, I found out why it still held air... the air was in between the outside and inside plys of the tire, a little air pocket inside the tire. Bizzare!!!
The cause of my tire goiter. I saw a post online the other night that the Cafe Latex brand of sealant doesn't have ammonia, but a little digging turned up that most people think the Cafe Latex couldn't plug a hole in a tire with a whole troop of boy scouts. So I'm going to give it another go and see what happens. This time I have a Maxxis tire, and I'm riding fairly often, so I'm hoping that will keep it from disintegrating before I have a few miles in it.
Here's what was in the old tire after I pulled it off. I've heard stories about big hardened balls of Stan's rolling around in there, but mine was more like really nasty snot.
The rim wasn't all that messed up... this is what it looked like after I pulled the tire and before I cleaned it up with paper towels.
The pancake air compressor I got to help get the
tubeless tire seated in the rim. You have to get a whole bunch of air into the tire all at once. I've heard of people who've been able to do this with a C02 cartridge, but sometimes you have to go at it several times and at $2 a cartridge, I can run a nail gun or a spray paint operation someday.
Mission accomplished!
Hope the air stays in there!!
High Roller!!!
Tim and I were planning to go climbing today. I had shipped him an email asking if he wanted to get his once a year climbing out of the way and he was game. We were going to head for Granite Mountain (near Prescott), but the weather promised winds of 20-30 mph with gusts near 40 mph, so we had to put that off. A few more email exchanges and Tim said he would rather go do a mountain bike ride on South Mountain. I haven't had a chance to try out the new bike on the challenging SoMo trails, so we had a plan. After some interesting U-turn practice, I finally found the road into Pima Canyon to park. We headed up the road to get onto the Desert Classic Trail. This is a pretty mellow trail for the most part. Mostly smooth, not a lot of real beating to get into, but the thing does seem to go continuously uphill, or maybe it just seems like it. We took Desert Classic all the way to it's far end (almost 10 miles) where it intersects with the Telegraph Pass Trail, then stopped and took a break to have a snack.Tackling Telegraph Pass degraded into taking the bike for a walk in a hurry. There were tons of rocks everywhere, steps over a foot high, and more hikers than you could count. So we hike-a-biked it, nearly all the way up to the pass. Hooray. Once up to the pass, we were on the summit road for South Mountain, so we just jumped on the road and took that up (and up, and up) to the Buena Vista Lookout (reached just before you head right around the corner and up to the summit towers). We took a break to strap on the armor (forearm w/elbow pads) in case of bad intereaction with a rock and headed off on the extremely rocky National Trail. There was some hike-a-biking in here too, but it soon turned in to riding again and this was where I noticed my butt was getting pretty tender. Clearly I should have worn better shorts. We soon hooked up onto the main National Trail and then it got really fun, dodging rocks and trying to stay upright through some pretty doubtful looking trail barriers, plus the odd hiker.We walked our bikes down through the infamous "Waterfall" section, where it was hard enough just getting down without slipping and falling with your bike. We fully analyzed the line through the obstacle, but that's probably going to require some full on body armor to work that out. People have broken bones attempting the Waterfall. Scary. In any case, we were back on the bikes and soon came to the Mormon-National Trail intersection. Rather than attempt the National route in our tired state, we headed left onto the Mormon Trail, which we took all the way back down to the dirt road back down Pima Canyon. Lucky for us, most of this is downhill, and we pedaled as little as possible to reach the cars 4 hours and 35 minutes after leaving them (includes the time for rest and other stops). The loop was almost 18 miles, with about 2000 feet of climbing involved. I gotta get in shape.
Getting ready to roll...
The Desert Classic... pretty smooth in places.
...but not all places.
South Mountain has some of the oldest granite in the area. There's one small climbing area, but most of it is too degraded to climb on.
Scenic...
Two goons...check out that groovy shirt!!
Around the back side of South Mountain.
The Telegraph Pass Trail.
The pass is that notch in the upper center of the picture.
Getting up the Telegraph Pass Trail.
It was horrendous. I would not recommend it to a friend.
The view back down to the flats we came from as seen from Telegraph Pass.
On the road again...
South Mountain Park has some really great views.
Those two goons again...
Armoring up at the Buena Vista overlook.
View of downtown Phoenix from Buena Vista.
Hmmm... National... Mormon... might as well take the direction the bike is facing. 
Headed down the Mormon Trail.
Some really fun riding on that trail.
After we got back to the cars, Tim pointed out that my back tire had developed at goiter at some point. Glad this didn't blow while I was hauling booty down the Mormon Trail. That could have been no fun at all. This is a sort of common occurrence due to a reaction between Stan's sealant (placed in the tire to help seal it - it's tubeless) and the tire. Bummer.
Google Earth version of the ride.
Elevation profile.
Yesterday, I took off to hike up to Granite Mountain, near Prescott, to take some photos and maybe do some climbing. It was a gorgeous day out, bluebird sky, and cool, fall temps. I didn't have a partner because Mike ditched me to do something in Sedona. Guess I can't blame him for that... there's a whole lot worse places to hang out than Sedona in the fall.
Headed up trail 261
The Granite Mountain wilderness sign...
Right side of Granite Mountain.
Center of GM.
Looking at the left side of GM. I'm headed up to the very left side where the rock isn't quite at high as the middle.
The Swamp Slabs (left side of Granite Mountain)
What a view.
Shot from Pine Tree Ledge below the Swamp Slabs.
I figured I could get better shots if I scrambled/bushwhacked over to this ledge on a rock knob just west of the Swamp Slabs. Easier said than done...
The view of the Swamp Slabs from the small ledge in the previous picture.
So... while I'm over there, I can hear someone over on Pine Tree Ledge. I figured a good chance to get some shots of them climbing something. Turned out to be a free soloer (no rope).And not a very good one.
The arrow shows where he first popped up....
Here's the solo-guy trying (he failed) to get up a slot near the top of the Green Dagger Buttress.
After trying the slot in the previous picture, he downclimbed out of it, went to the left and up another (easier?) way. This is him sort of topping out on the Green Dagger Buttress.
This is sort of the middle of the wall, probably about 150 feet off the ledge.
I'm going to guess Mr. Sketchy here had no idea where he was going. This was one of his forays to the right, looking for a way to get up the wall. I was really wondering about him at this point.
After his little detour in the last shot, he moved back left and went up the corner system above the Green Dagger Buttress. Bear in mind, this is pretty easy climbing (5.6) for the most part, and as I recall, the crack in this corner is solid, straight-forward, no big deal climbing. This photo is his highpoint. After going down, then back up, he decided maybe it wasn't his day to do this crack and downclimbed back to the top of the GD Buttress. This is scary for a couple of reasons... first of all, you shouldn't be sketchy if you're planning to free solo, and second, you shouldn't have any problems with 5.6 climbing. This dude was missing out on both counts.
Here's a long shot of his highpoint on that part of the wall. I decided he was on his way back to the ledge, so I got my stuff and started bushwhacking back over to the ledge. After I got over there, he wasn't on the ledge... he hollers out from above me (in a 5.3 crack), "Hey Pardner, you know what time it is?"
At this point, I'm thinking "You just backed off a 5.6 crack with no rope and now you're calling attention to yourself like you're come kind of cool guy because you're up there without a rope?" No brains, but lotsa balls, I guess.
A last shot of Mr. Sketchy as I was hiking back down the trail. The red arrow shows his high point on the first corner... the yellow arrow shows where he had traversed to by the time I was hiking out. Another 5.3 crack leading up to the ledge halfway up the routes over on that far left end. I have to assume he finally made it to the top of the wall, but I'm thinking that guy is not going to live long at this rate. Or he better develop some climbing skills REAL fast.
It was my day to catch climbers on stuff. This is a pair of climbers just topping out on the Lizard Head formation, just south of Granite Mountain.
Here's the tire goiter at the height of growth. Sitting in the garage, it was getting bigger and bigger!! At this point, I'd actually let the air out of the tire, but the goiter had a life of it's own. After I took the tire off the rim, I found out why it still held air... the air was in between the outside and inside plys of the tire, a little air pocket inside the tire. Bizzare!!!
A last shot of Mr. Sketchy as I was hiking back down the trail. The red arrow shows his high point on the first corner... the yellow arrow shows where he had traversed to by the time I was hiking out. Another 5.3 crack leading up to the ledge halfway up the routes over on that far left end. I have to assume he finally made it to the top of the wall, but I'm thinking that guy is not going to live long at this rate. Or he better develop some climbing skills REAL fast.
