The following is a true story, only the names have been changed, to protect the guilty.

Saturday, March 22, 2014

Ropes Course

As the weather has started to warm around here and my lack of a job has afforded me a little free time, I have been venturing out mid week with anyone who will join me. About a week ago I was accompanied by Best in Schow for a fun day dangling form a rope, riding fat-bikes, and also some snowshoeing.



Rap one of a two part descent  
  The route I cooked up served no other purpose but to ride around to different places do a rappel and continue on. I'm not a fan of backtracking.... ever.....If i can, I always like to do a loop. This meant the bikes were along for the rappel as well. It may seem silly to lower the bikes, but keeping with the idea of forward movement meant they came with on a couple of the drops.
Mouth of a cave ?

His leg is supposed to be on the other side of that rope

  We did five raps total, two of which we lowered our bikes down. The first rap was the same one AF and I did last summer on our bike, boat, rope adventure, only now the route is solid ice, which meant we didn't get wet.
I knew this ladder would come in handy when I built it

On the road again

Derailer side up ^

  Two of the raps were a short down and back with our bikes locked up at the top. It was a two part rap in which we dropped down an ice fall, pulled the rope, walked about a hundred feet, dropped into a storm drain and set up for another rap. This one was unique in that we had the feeling of rappelling out of the mouth of a cave. The out and back also created a need for the ladder I built for the Fat-Bike Adventure Ride on our climb back out.
What happened to derailer side up ?

Lunch in the White House

This tree will do
 The third rap was also one AF and I did last summer and the same one Best in Schow and I visited only days before. Why go back to the same place? Because it's fun and if you use your imagination there are different ways to experience the same place.
Easy does it

Slippery Pete
    
 The last of the drops was done via a short hike on the snowshoes and included a visit to The White House. The last one was also new to me... I have decided to name it Slippery Pete in continuation of Minnesota Canyoneering routes that no one really cares about anyway. After the last rap we hustled back to our bikes and back to our vehicles......I made it home minutes before my kids got off the bus........whew    

1 comment:

  1. I moved to Minneapolis in 2015, and I'm curious about "Minnesota Canyoneering routes that no one really cares about." I've been looking at a lot of maps this winter, wondering if there may even be places worth doing more than once.

    Any advice?

    ReplyDelete