Ride Report: Bristlecone 200

My alarm goes off at its typical 5 am. I’m jammed into the bed of the ’94 Toyota pickup truck that I’ve just learned has a bed about 2″ longer than I am tall. If I’m not perfectly centered, I hit one end or the other. I had drunkenly put the topper on before crawling in hoping that it would keep the dew off. It did that, but the condensation on the inside got my shit wet anyway.

I contemplate getting up, but instead, I settle back into the semblance of rest that I’ve been feigning all night. About 30 minutes later, I can hear people stirring. Well, shit. I think to myself. I guess we’re doing this thing.

I crawl out of the truck. The dew drips off the backflap of the topper soaking my puffy coat. Everything is dripping wet. The dew I was concerned about when crawling into bed was definitely present through the night. John T digger is up and as promised has a kettle on. Thank god, I could certainly use something warm.

A few more vehicles have shown up and a couple more trickle in as we are readying our gear, jamming calories into our feed holes and sipping coffee. The start is pegged for 7 am, but we are about a half mile or so above the start line. Rules plus missing people motivate a few of us to plunge back to the start line in the cold air for an “official” start. We run into Dave “Hairball” Harris, the one and only and purveyor of this route, on the way down. We reach the sign with some time to spare, at least enough to tinkle and talk about how much this climb is probably gonna hurt.

The Garmin clicks over to 7 and with little fanfare, we start pedaling back up the road. A pedal that will take us about 2 hours to top out on. As we pedal back to the camp, the rest of the group starts to congregate and 9 of us roll out. The pace is friendly, people are chatting, giving each other shit. There is a nervous energy. From my perspective, it’s less about the competition and more about the personal challenge each of us has signed up for. The Pain Cave is waiting for us. We all know it and we are all willingly pedaling toward it.

Bristlecone 200

As the name suggests, this is a 200-mile bikepacking race/personal challenge. It winds itself through Southern Utah through some of the most beautiful and rugged terrain. The distance is implied, the level of difficulty is not. This route should not be underestimated. With 25K feet of climbing, there is plenty of up. That up is usually quite steep and often littered with downed trees that participants must drag their loaded bikes up and over and through. This is not only physically taxing, but often exceeds the mental fortitude required.

The idea for this ride was concocted from the inner sanctum of Dave Harris’ brain. We don’t pretend to understand everything that goes on in there, but good things tend to come out. It uses oft ignored or unknown trails to link up amazing spaces. You start on Character Building Hill aka Second Left Hand Canyon. The climb hurts but it’s hard to be pissed with the views you are exposed to. This climb ends at the rowdiness of Bunker Creek, a fast, flowing descent to Panguitch Lake.

From there, the route winds its way around Red Canyon with its red hoodoos and amazing trails before jumping onto the Grandview and taking you across the Paunsaugunt. This eventually gets you to the Virgin River Rim Trail providing views of Zion and definitely testing your muster. Dash in a little Marathon Trail followed by the ruckus Dark Hollow descent back down to the bottom of Second Left Hand Canyon. What do you get? A wild ride.

Of those that dare to attempt this route, there exists a select few who have actually finished.

Many may remember this route as the Dixie 200 or the Dixie Lite. The name was changed for obvious reasons a few years ago and the Bristlecone 200, a name contrived by Lynda Wallenfels, became the ride. After many years of organizing and saying go, Hairball decided he’d had enough and handed the ride off to the Alliance for this year’s edition.

The Participants

As mentioned above, there were 9 people foolish hardy enough to line up.

• John Taylor
• Shelby Meinkey
• Nate Washburn
• Karl Jarvis
• Kenny Jones
• Brad Keyes
• Moose Knuckler
• Elijah Hughes
• And of course, Dave Harris

The Taker of Knees

I lined up for the Bristlecone beaming with optimism.

About 6 or 7 weeks ago, while training for this ride, I had decided that lining up for the Brian Head Odyssey would be a great way to train. On my 4th or so ride on that course, whilst climbing back up Bunker Creek, my knee began to twinge. It wasn’t painful, but I could tell something wasn’t quite right. At that point, bailing is pretty hard and we were almost done with the hard stuff. I pushed on through as the twinge turned to a slight inconsistent pain and then, as you probably predicted, a consistent pain. By the time we hit the car, it was pretty sore.

And it only got worse after sitting in the car for an hour to get home.

I knew at that point that my Odyssey ride was over. I started nursing the knee, small runs and rides and lots of stretching. After a few weeks, and a couple times bailing on rides to keep it happy, I had gone a few weeks without pain. I thought why not, if it’s good, it’s good. Let’s ride.

And it was good, no pain, no twinge, just me and a loaded bike making my way through the Southern Utah backcountry. Then, almost like it was planned, mile thirty clicked over on the Garmin. Twinge. Then slight pain. And then by mile 34, consistent pain.

There was a gate we had to open/close to get through one spot. I stopped and got off the bike. Walking I was fine. I thought, I’ll just push through no big deal. Then I step on the pedal, pain. Not intense pain mind you, but enough that I was plenty worried about it just getting worse and worse and then having to deal with it for even longer after the ride. I made the call. I wasn’t gonna ruin my knew and future plans. Papa Brinkerhoff picked me up 10 miles later in Panguitch.

This year’s edition of the Bristlecone also took 2 other knees, John Taylor and Kenny Jones also dropped out due to knee pain. The Bristlecone 200, Taker of Knees.

So How’d it go?

Seeing that I dropped out about halfway through Day 1, I don’t have much in firsthand experience to report on the rest of the ride. Luckily, many of those who kept pedaling were more than gracious enough to provide me with some photos and their thoughts from the ride.

Photos below were taken by the rider.

Karl Jarvis

Karl was the first person to finish just before midnight on Day 2. Awesome effort. He summed up his experience in a reel you can see here.

Brad Keyes

Brad was the 2nd person to finish the route, but he DQ’d himself by showing up with both a camera crew and emotional support. We still got his thoughts below.

Brad said,

You and I have both ridden bikes in some rad places around the world but, damn! Ain’t nothing like that route Harris put together anywhere! Hard AF! Worth every pedal stroke. The shit you see out there that isn’t possible to see any other way blew my mind. One of a kind mtb route for sure

Me n Kenny had a good time yoyo’ing with 17yr old Nate. Night 2 at Strawberry Point, we were a couple hours ahead of him and bedding down for the night and Kenny was really worried about him out there by himself in the dark. Just dozing off and his lights woke us up, Kenny jumped out of bed trying to help him any way he could and the kid is like,” I’m good, gonna head on up the trail a bit and crash”

Nate Washburn

Nate was the 3rd person to complete the route and 2nd person who did it without any outside support. He was the first minor to finish. That’s right, Nate is only 17. He rode the entirety of the route on a loaded Stumpjumper Evo and finished this heinous endeavor. I’d watch out for this guy, he’s probably gonna rip up the bikepacking circuit if he keeps this up.

Shelby Meinkey

John Taylor

Some thoughts from the weekend- for me it was a classic experience, it had the high of feeling good and railing swoopy single track on a loaded bike in a beautiful place with perfect dirt- nothing beats that in my book. And also the lows, with any hard thing there is always the low, and how you dig out of it is a journey in itself. The lows weren’t too bad for me, except just bummed my body didn’t cooperate, but you know how that goes. It was great to ride with new friends and old, and digging deep, watching everyone around you go through the process and succeed in their own way, no matter if they completed the route or not. And of course, being comfortable being uncomfortable, feeling free with no strings, even just for a moment.

Elijah Hughes

Kenny Jones

Kenny and Brad rode together or mostly. Both on singlespeeds being chased by their camera crew and emotional support teams.

Kenny summed up his ride like this,

For me the ride was The Most of many things.  

The most beautiful landscapes.

The most difficult physicality.

The most accumulative climbing.

The most breaths taken with heart pounding.

The most continuous hours spent pedaling.

The most downfall of trees in my path.

The most dopamine hits to my brain. 

and in the end, the most knee pain ever endured until it surpassed my ability to cope.

Kudos to anyone that attempts this ride and hats off to finishers.

Dave Harris

And of course, here’s Dave’s report.

Bristlecone for me had a split personality this year.

The first I am quite familiar with. My vision for the event was to create a route that would be short enough to do in a long weekend, included hard things, and introduced the riders to some of the best parts of Utah. In short, a great intro to bikepack racing.  The “hard things” part is a key ingredient. Overcoming the hard parts make the finish all the more sweeter. The finish rate this year is typical for the event, 3 out of 8. All 8 had a grand adventure…to me this is the best part, creating something that pushes people to challenge their limits.

The second personality was that of a personal challenge. I have never lined up solo at the Bristlecone/Dixie 200. It never seemed quite right since I know the route so well, I’ve been exploring these trails since 2008 and organizing the event since inception in 2010. Handing the organizing off to Moose and John freed me of those limitations, so I decided to go for a fast time. I setup split goals to finish before dark on day 2 and carried everything I’d need aside from water. I had a time goal, not a finish goal. 

The ride had so many highlights. Karl and I rode 2nd lefthand together, then leapfrogged the rest of the time. I rode up to him on the Fremont and his bike was creaking so loud, it sounded like breaking carbon. He was a bit faster than me and I was a bit more efficient, turtle and hare for 24 hours – it was quite fun! I’m always awed by the landscapes of the route, especially from the Fremont to the bottom of Pole Canyon. So unique, and riding Cassidy, Thunder Mountain and some of the Grandview in the daylight this year was a real treat. A pretty good rain came down top of Thunder which turned into a 2 hour mist afterwards, creating a double rainbow over the pink cliffs above Grandview. It’s hard to get there – which makes it all the more special. Hard things. 

Short sleep in Proctor and time to get going. The sections of Grandview on top of the Paunsaugunt in the dark were so fun! One of my favorite trails to my surprise. The Pole Canyon descent was unrecognizable, the wet summer and lack of use had it overgrown to the point of covering the trail entirely. The rains a few hours prior were still on all the foliage, it was like riding through a car wash. It was still dark and I lost the trail a few times.

Goal-wise, things were right on track to Red Canyon, which surprised me. The wet summer has torn up trails in many places. The Grandview was another story with 10 foot deep crumbly walled ravines crossing the trail. One of them took me 20 minutes to figure out. It got real out there. Those ravines are a new “feature” of a trail that sees little traffic and less maintenance. The same happened to the Grandview on the south end of the Paunsaugunt which was my favorite part of the course – those ravines are a main reason that section was removed. So, hmmm.

I made one critical mistake, taking an Aeroe rack without much prior testing. I learned all about the negative impact on handling of unsprung weight, then it broke 3am Saturday. Broke my own rule, no new equipment in the 2 weeks prior! I didn’t get the sweet satisfaction of a finish. My dropper failed on the VRRT, combined with the rack snafu I pulled the plug at Navajo. I did challenge my ever changing limits, and enjoyed a few moments out there that make you stop in your tracks and say ahhhhh. Totally worth it.

See you next year?

By all accounts, it was a perfect weekend. The weather had a chill in the morning and evening and was about perfect during the day. And while almost all riders dropped out at differing times, everyone was positive, stoked about what they had ridden and seen and ultimately, will probably be lining up again next year.

Embrace Chaos. Seek Discomfort.