Death Valley Trail Marathon - first half of course (to Red Pass)

I rode my psyclocross bike along part of the 2010 Death Valley Trail Marathon course, during the race, in order to take photos – these are available here for the public at large (and the participants in particular).

The course consists of a jeep/4WD road and hence I thought some cyclocross action would be appropriate (running along on foot and hauling the camera would have been too much of a stretch for my frail system); however, I somewhat misunderestimated things (to quote a former world leader): the dirt road consists of mostly very loose gravel, and features brake bumps that seemed to have been spaced in such way to make any descent on my modified road bike as painful as possible. Oh, and there are the White and Red Passes – ask the runners how these feel (on the bike, not all too bad, though Red Pass was tough on my somewhat traction-challenged two-wheeler).

The views are fantastic, of course, this is Death Valley after all. First you venture through arid expanses where sage brush is the dominant life form. Then, after cresting White Pass and summitting Red Pass, vistas of Titus Canyon looming deep down below open up.

I turned around at this point since I needed to pick up a vehicle at the start and was a bit strapped for time (it would have otherwise made a great mixed road/dirt loop on the bike); I then drove to the other end of Titus Canyon to wrap up the photoshoot.

Note: I included a few photos below – note that the geotagging on most is pretty messed up since I used different cameras and forgot to sync the time/date on them. I also added photos taken at the finish for which there is no GPS data to tag it to.