White silence

Date: July 14
Mileage: 8.1
July mileage: 295.3

When I woke up to rescue my drenched and crying black cat from the windowsill, I knew today was not going to be my lucky day. The sky was washed in liquid gray and clouds had crept down almost to sea level. The weather instantly drowned ambitions to wake up early and climb up Blackerby Ridge. Who wants to climb into soggy, foggy nothingness? I went back to sleep.

Later, some hours later, I woke up, again, groggy from too much sleep, and tried to reassess my morning plans. It seemed another damp bike ride was in order, but I could not get excited about it. When I'm in bike mode, the weather doesn't bother me as much. But lately, all I want to do is climb, higher, and it seems every day the weather hangs over my ambitions like a gray curtain.

But it's summer, short summer, and its briefness nags at me. I have so much I want to do and such a short time to do it, I might as well work on getting in shape so I can take full advantage should a good weather window ever open. The hike to Gold Ridge seemed good because it's short and well-defined and nearly impossible to get lost, even in the thickest, soupiest fog. As I rode my bike across the bridge, I saw four cruise ships moored at the dock. Not as bad as seven - but four ships definitely promised a traffic jam near mid-mountain, where the Mount Roberts Tram releases hundreds of tourists who tend to straddle the trail with cameras and generally block forward motion. Still not deterred, I pedaled up to the trailhead and set my watch. I wanted to reach the tram in a half hour.

I still can't run up this thing, but I can maintain a brisk, 4-mph pace. Even still, my heart pounded and my thoughts zoomed in on the rhythmic steps. I hardly noticed that the fireweed had started to come out, the blueberry bushes glistened with dew and the cow parsnip was nearly shoulder-high. This short summer is streamrolling by me, and I have to hike as hard as I can to keep up with it.

After two miles of seeing nobody, the trail above the tram, as expected, was packed. I try to be as courteous as possible but I often feel like I'm swimming upstream amid a swarm of lethargic salmon. So I weaved and expressed my apologies for cutting through and sometimes heard the funniest questions. One woman who did not seem to want to cross a snow field asked me if her feet would get wet. Another man said, probably to himself, that the wildflowers here weren't nearly as good as the flowers in Montana. Then, as the trail wound higher and the clouds really started to settle in, another man asked me if I thought the view would be any better at the top. "I really doubt it," I said. He seemed to waver in that spot, uncertain whether he should turn around. The view-seeking tourists thinned out. I charged higher.

The fog becomes interesting when it gets so thick that you can look down and your feet are obscured. It bunches and flows, so sometimes windows open up to points thousands of feet below, and sometimes you can't even see around the next bend. Fog makes the mountain a different world, even as dreamlike as the world above treeline is, fog takes that dream and cloaks it in colorblindness. It has no smell and no sound; it mutes the tourist chatter and masks the inferior flowers. It dampens the air to the point of equilibrium and covers every feature in papery flatness. It's a world without senses - a white silence. As I kicked my way up toward Gastineau Peak, the noise from my steps in the snow was shattering against that silence. So I stopped for the few short minutes I had left, to soak in my view of nothing.

In my memory I knew there was a real view out there, sweeping along the ridgelines, touching the ice field and Admiralty and Douglas Islands, dropping into the city and along the Channel some 3,200 feet down. And I knew that just on the other side of this curtain there were stark snowfields and spiny little tundra plants and stacked boulders. But today at the top there was only the white silence, and I can't believe I nearly missed it.

Great Divide dreams

Date: July 13
Mileage: 45.8
July mileage: 287.2

Well, Jenn Hopkins hit the Mexican border early this morning, making her the seventh and last finisher of this year's Great Divide Race. Given that this English singlespeeder who I had never heard of before last month is my new hero, I was really happy to hear she finished. But, like all endings, the news was bittersweet. This means no more call-ins, no more blog to update, no more racers to worry about and times to track. The Great Divide Race has been a huge part of my life this summer. Even beyond Geoff preparing for and competing in this year's race, which would have kept me glued to the updates in and of itself, I became intimately involved through the blog. Listening to the daily messages and attempting to transcribe them made me feel like I was right there on the sidelines, watching the racers struggle and succeed even as I went about my normal life thousands of miles away. It was great, really great, and I wanted to say thanks to Pete for letting me be involved, and also thanks to the racers for participating in the grand drama. There is a reason I no longer watch TV. Reality has forever ruined it for me.

It was hard when Geoff dropped out of the race. But the effort put in by the remaining racers, the heart and the grit, actually did help temper the disappointment - for Geoff as well as myself. I have to admit that when Pete first sent me the list of starters for the 2008 race - Geoff, Carl, Fred, a couple of previously unsuccessful GDR veterans and a bunch of people I had never heard of - I didn't expect much from this year's race. So it was even more exciting to watch John Nobile break the course record; for Carl, Rainer and Simon to pull in under 20 days; for Fred to tackle the granddaddy of the Mountain West's ultraendurance races, pretty much all of which he's finished; for Noah to finish on his second attempt and for Jenn to finish at all, given all the hardships she pushed through. A good year for sure.

And a good field - despite the recent division of Great Divide racing. Like many, I too was originally disappointed when I first learned about the creation of the Tour Divide. I feared a squabbling end to the Great Divide Race and bitter feelings remaining for most involved. But, as it turned out, both races worked out beautifully. Both attracted strong fields and both developed their own voices, their own compelling stories and inspiring efforts as the races progressed. One one hand, it's strange to divide what is really a small, small community. On the other hand, this year proved that there's not only room for two events in Great Divide racing, there may even be a need. Tour Divide has its passion and sense of community. Great Divide Race has its history and competitive spirit. Together, they coaxed more people to race this crazy route than ever before. I like to think of it as similar to the American League and the National League in baseball - separate but equal.

That said, my heart is with the Great Divide Race, and I really hope to see it survive. I noticed on the Web site there is already a "2009" stamped on the start date, so it looks like someone is thinking of giving it a go next year. This is great news for me, because it helps set some framework around my most audacious dreams, which simmer well on the backburner but tend to not stop once they start boiling over. Would I ever toe the line? Hard to say. I didn't think Geoff would actually do it when he announced his plans in June 2007, and look where we are today. I'm still not sure I'd even want to toe the line, though. Dave Harris put my conflicting feelings about the race well: "Every year I get excited for the first week of it, and then I see how much nearly everyone breaks down and it doesn’t look so attractive." The Great Divide Race does seem an impossible thing to do without digging a deep physical and financial deficit. That said, the best life experiences demand enormous debts - look at college.

Would I even stand a chance of finishing the Great Divide Race? Hard to say. Twenty-four days is a more-than-reasonable cutoff, accessible to most who are reasonably prepared, mentally determined and don't hit too many strokes of bad luck. I love the idea of riding fast as I can, pushing as hard as I can, out there alone - because no matter how many people show up at the starting line, you are in this race alone. But I also like the idea of touring with friends, soaking up companionship and scenery as the days loll by. Two very different approaches - both rewarding in their own ways. I'm still not sure which is right for me.

What I do know is this route has rendered its way into my dreams, stretching over my day-to-day thoughts like the distant horizon of the Great Divide Basin. I should see it because it's my country. I should see it because it's beautiful. I should see it because it's frightening. I should see it because it's humbling. I should see it because it's already a part of me. I should see it because otherwise it will haunt me. I should see it. Someday.

Haines

Date: July 9-12
Mileage: 20.2, 18.0, 80.7 and 6.1
July mileage: 241.4

Well, I'm back from another 36-hour trip to Haines. In hindsight, this one wasn't a wonderful idea, given the expense, Geoff's crushing fatigue, and a less-than-stellar weather forecast. It's the kind of thing that happens on a Thursday morning when two people are lazing around a messy house with diminishing motivation and a "what should we do today?" conversation that lingers over hours. When it's decided that any daylong outdoor activity would be less than fun in the cold rain, it's only a matter of time before you start scrolling the Alaska Marine Highway site and grabbing up a couple of tickets for a ferry that leaves in three hours. Then, once you board the boat, you're kinda stuck with your spur-of-the-moment decision. As the ferry inched northward, Geoff and I set up plastic chairs on the solarium and gazed out at the gray-washed seascape. "It's too bad we can't just bike there," I said. "It would be faster than this." "We could swim there faster than this," Geoff replied.

But the fact was, Geoff wasn't about to swim or bike anywhere. He still feels tired most of the time, sleeps whenever he can and is becoming increasingly frustrated by his physical fatigue. He says the feeling is similar to having huge masses of dead muscle in his legs - an excess of tissue with no power. He did not want to go biking with me. Anywhere. And although I was itching to head up to the pass, I didn't want to be gone all day on a bike ride if he was just going to nap around camp. So I motored out to the border instead, trying to hurry but not pushing too hard against my own vicarious tiredness.

I was still surprised how fast the ride went, even with me failing to take full hammering advantage of the tailwind that became a monstrous headwind on the way back. I was able to knock off the 80 miles in 4:45, including snack and photo breaks, and beat my deadline back to camp even though I rode nearly twice as far as I said I was going to. I know that's not fast by roadie standards, but even the minimal speed advantage of my own rickety, flat-bar road bike surprised me after a couple of months almost exclusively riding 29-inch knobbies. I almost feel like getting a real road bike would make cycling too easy. Where would the fun be? Certainly not in taking the edge off 40 miles of harsh headwind (oh, wait...)

But it was nice for the cycling to only take a five-hour chunk out of the weekend, and sleep and food to consume the other 31. Geoff and I toured the town and found a lot of interesting hidden nooks. We ate at a few typically overpriced, underwhelming Alaska restaurants, including a little Mexican place that seduced us with unique atmosphere but proved to be unspectacular after all. All in all, kind of a lazy, lolling weekend - which I guess is what summer is all about.