TT Report, Day 5: Fail While Daring Greatly

Up until now, I've had no doubt about which was the hardest day of my life. It was my first black belt test. Three hours of getting beat on, closing with a one-hour sparring session with no rest and a fresh opponent every five minutes. It's murder. It's supposed to be.

I gotta be honest: day five of this ride was worse. Because my sensei doesn't test you until you're ready. Mountains aren't so forgiving.

I know, I know. Worst Bikepacker in Australia. It's my fault I'm not ready. I didn't train nearly hard enough for this ride. I honestly believed there was no amount of prep I could do--that the ride itself was the only thing that could really prepare me for it. I still think that's true, but it would have been better going into this ride with stronger legs and stronger lungs.

I'm not taking on serious mileage here. Judbury to New Norfolk is just 41 km. On flat roads I know people who breeze through that in an hour. But I'm not one of those people. I'm a draft horse. I slog along at the same pace pretty much regardless of how much weight is on the bike, but I'm slow. And the first half of this particular 41 km stretch is straight uphill, no respite.

The riding was gorgeous. Finally a sunny day! Tasmanian plant life is the oldest in the world--Gondwanic flora, they call it, as in Gondwana, the supercontinent the dinosaurs lived on. That's right, I'm riding through a brontosaurus's bento box. The eucalyptus trees here are the tallest flowering plant on the planet. There are birds unlike any I've seen, and some even the Tasmanians say they've never seen. The lyre bird, for example, which looks a bit like the Road Runner and sounds like anything it wants to sound like.

Unrelenting ascents are always a slog. This one was worse than most. I would find out later that my dropper post was losing pressure. That means my saddle was gradually sinking, slowly enough that I didn't notice in between rests. If you've ever ridden a bike that's too small for you, you know how brutal that is on your thighs. It doesn't matter what kind of shape you're in: if the bike doesn't fit, you get tired faster.

And yes, that’s yet another episode of equipment failure. GPS, backup GPS, tire levers, seat post, and I haven't yet mentioned the constant drizzle that's been seeping in under my big cushy rubber grips. (Which I love.) I slide them off now and again, dry the handlebars, and slide them back, but they really aren't as grippy as they need to be for the best handling. This was a day I needed the best handling.

I made the mountaineer’s classic mistake: I spent more than half my energy on the climb. A lot more. Over half of climbing accidents happen on the descent because the climbers are exhausted. But because yesterday's descent was silky smooth, I made what turned out to be a colossal error in judgment: I assumed today's would be just as easy. Though I'll say this: never before have I seen a ride where down was so much harder than up.

The south side of this mountain was mostly gray and gravelly under a light blanket of snow. This was beautiful, and also expected; I saw it before I even left camp. There was plenty of fresh clear water along the way, but I didn't stop to top off my bottles because why bother? Water is heavy. Why shlep it uphill when you can just take a break at the first stream you find on the opposite side?

Well, the opposite side was a totally different landscape. I saw no clean, flowing water on the northern slope. If I understand it right, here's why: it makes a big difference what people are doing with the land. The north side is mostly forestry, the south not so much. Removing and replanting trees changes the way water runs off, which changes the face of the mountain. Now, instead of gray, gravelly stuff, I was riding through brown muck. What water I saw was a milky, murky mess, some of it flowing in shallow rivulets through the mud, most of it in ice-cold pools dug by truck tires. I would learn later that this is one of the most renowned four-by-four tracks in Tasmania.

Skirting the pools requires technique and balance. When you fail at that, or when there's just no way around, you can try biking straight through. Oh, do I wish I had video of me doing that! Knee-deep even while standing on the pedals, kicking up what I hope was a giant rooster tail. (Probably not so giant. I'm a draft horse.) But at least it felt like it looked cool.

When the pools get too deep, your last option is to hike-a-bike through. The mud pulls at your tires like it wants to keep them and ice water fills your shoes. Mine were so filthy that the next day the only way I could think to clean them was to wear them into the shower. Booster was so thoroughly caked in mud that once I got to a bike shop, the owner rushed to the door to say I couldn't bring her in.

The upshot is, mud is exhausting. The ride down was so much harder than the ride up, I'd expended too much energy, and I didn't have enough water. I was also out of peanut M&Ms, which, I mean, come on. That makes everything harder. When you're tired and under-M&Med, you start making worse choices.

In hindsight I should have quit earlier. I wanted to, but part of getting that black belt is a bunch of other black belts beating the quit out of you, so that's not an appealing choice for me. Maybe that's grit, maybe it's macho bullshit. Either way, I wanted to quit a bunch of times already that day, and the default response beaten into me is when you want to quit, that's when you don't quit. Usually it makes your life better, but not always.

Booster and I failed while daring greatly. The dare that cost us the most was charging through what turned out to be the deepest pool yet. Shin deep, then knee, then hip, then down we went. Booster bent a brake rotor and I had to switch my thinking about hypothermia from theoretical risk to genuine threat.

The best $200 I spent preparing for this adventure was a wilderness first aid course. I graduated the weekend before I left, so hyopthermia protocols were still fresh in my mind. Getting wet clothes off and dry clothes on, erecting a shelter, putting insulation between you and the ground, drinking something hot, eating something sugary to fire up your metabolism, all of those things should happen in the right order. First on the list, though, is quit doing whatever it is you're doing that's making this situation worse.

I found a middle ground between the black belt and the first responder: I almost quit. I kinda sorta quit. What I really did was change my goal: instead of getting to town, I just wanted to get below the snow line. That would earn me a (slightly) warmer place to set camp before nightfall. Most riders are so much faster than me that they'd have had hours more daylight to press on, but they're not in the running for Worst Bikepacker in Australia. Plus, as I would learn the next morning, the road from this point got much, much worse. Others could have ridden it, but not me. Not with Booster in the shape she was in, not with her in prime condition, and certainly not in the dark.

At this point I have only a vague idea of where I am: some way down from the summit, not sure how far, not willing to go further to try to find out. GPS is still no help. No phone signal. I'm kicking myself for not filtering water on the way up the mountain, and for not stopping to melt snow before getting lower down. Or at least I think I'm kicking myself, though my feet have been frozen senseless for over an hour.

But I've got a couple of things working in my favor too. First, my puffy coat, which had been strapped to my handlebars when Booster and I went down, didn't soak all the way through. Second, the dry bag it's supposed to live in (also home to my sleeping bag and everything else I need to ward off hypothermia) popped off shortly after the fall, but I saw I'd lost it (no guarantee in this sport) and found no sharp rocks had cut it open. Third, I've been carrying way too much food.

I've run out of food in the wild before, and it sucks. I came pretty close to dying of hypothermia once too, and that really sucks. One defense against that is to eat something. So I routinely travel with too much food, which in this case was exactly the right amount. There wasn't a grocery store in Judbury, so I'd planned to resupply in New Norfolk. But I still had half a pack of black beans and rice, plus a little tub of peanut butter as an emergency cache.

I still don't know how that dry bag managed to slip out of three Voile straps. I'm a little surprised it floats. And since it floats, I worried when I open it I'd find muddy ice water had seeped in. When I pack it, I push most of the air out--just about all, or so I'd thought--so if the counterpressure is enough to draw air in, it's probably enough to drink some water too. So the whole time I'm pitching the tent, I'm thinking please don't be wet please don't be wet please don't be wet. Because if it is, hypothermia is all but certain. Peanut butter and a damp puffy coat won't be enough.

Then I remember my personal locator beacon. Hitting the SOS button on that little guy is the ultimate admission of defeat. But I tell myself if the sleeping bag is wet, that's it, you're tapping out. Hit the button.