One year past

At half past 5 on Monday, July 6, 2009, I rode through the sun-baked desert toward a shimmering clump of trees called Antelope Wells, which would make today (Tuesday, although late, still technically July 6) the one-year anniversary of the day I finished the Tour Divide. In this year's race, since the only woman out there is still making her way toward the Mexican border, that means (I think) I held onto the TD women's record for one more year. Hooray! It actually still strikes me as humorous that I have my name attached to something like that - you know, the women's record holder of "the world's toughest mountain bike race" (don't mock me! This phrase just occurred to me and I think I'll use it as the lead in my book proposals.)

But still, regardless of my feelings about my own experience out there, as my dad pointed out, it's still something to be proud of. While this year's Tour Divide progressed, a lot of people asked me if I would ever ride the course again. The answer is "probably, in several years from now, if by some strange stroke of fate I'm in a good position to return when I'm 35 or 40 years old." The better question is whether I'd return to the race, or to an effort to reclaim the record. I of course recognize that my 2009 time is full of holes. I lost full days to mechanicals and injury in Wyoming and northern Colorado. I lost full days to mental anguish and mud in southern Colorado and New Mexico. And, of course, I opted for comfort over distance whenever the opportunity arose. But as I said to John Nobile when we stopped early one evening in Elkhorn Hot Springs, Montana: "This is three freakin weeks of my life. I'm going to enjoy myself." I still feel that way. Maybe more so now than last year. So while shaving days off my time would be easy in theory, it would be much more difficult in practice.

Speaking of this year's race, I was telling my mom about the strange parallels between Kent Peterson's race-ending mechanicals, and my own in the Great Divide Basin. Like Kent, my freehub began sticking as I crossed the bone-dry, remote sinkhole between Atlantic City and Rawlins. Kent and I first experienced our problems in almost the exact same spot, about 25 miles east of Atlantic City. This is just a few miles beyond a historical marker dedicated to Willie's Handcart Company, a group of Mormon pioneers who crossed the Basin in 1856. The company suffered major setbacks while crossing the plains, and dozens of pioneers died when winter caught up to them in Wyoming. Historynet.com had this to say about the Willie Handcart Company:

"The farther west the companies marched the more problems they had with axles and wheel hubs. In the humid Midwest, the climate better preserved the green wood, but as the air became drier, the unseasoned material dried too quickly and cracked."

As I told this story to my mom, she informed me that I actually have direct ancestors who traveled to Utah with the Willie Handcart Company. When my freehub began to fail, I was lucky enough to be able to coax it into Rawlins. Kent wasn't so lucky, and had to push his bike dozens of miles to Jeffery City. Now, I'm not superstitious ... and I by no means intend to imply that the spirits of my pioneer ancestors are out there exacting wheel revenge on unsuspecting cyclists ... but, if I do happen to write one of those "true life" ghost stories someday, you'll know why.

I just returned to Montana from my short weekend trip to Utah. My dad and I were able to get out for another hike on Monday morning - this time one that is arguably the best route in all of the middle Wasatch Range - the Pfeifferhorn via Red Pine Lakes. It's been at least a decade since I climbed up here. The view is as stunning as ever.

Pfeifferhorn is quite the majestic peak, guarded by crumbling knife ridges that are full of fun scrambling.

Looking out toward the Salt Lake Valley and the Twin Peaks, which my dad and I tried to climb on Saturday. If you squint, you can actually see the snow-filled couloir we decided not to ascend. Looks pretty much vertical from this perspective.

The big mountain in the distant center is Lone Peak, which is still listed on some of my early Web sites as my favorite place in all of the world.

My dad and I on top of Pfeifferhorn, at about noon Monday. The elevation is 11,326 feet - the highest I've been since the Divide. And, yes, I could feel the altitude.

Then, about nine hours later, I was here - 20 miles north of Dillon, Montana, making my way back to Missoula. I needed to pee something fierce but I raced past Dillon because I could see pink sunlight starting to emerge below the rain clouds, and I wanted to round the western mountains in time to see sunset. I was not disappointed. A six-hour, high altitude hike followed by an eight-hour drive certainly did make for a long day Monday, but it was all worth it.

Closer to home

I think it was Wednesday afternoon when I first found out about the holiday weekend. "Holiday? What is this thing you call a holiday?" Newspapers don't have holidays. We worked midnights, weekends, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and we especially worked on July 4, a day when their tends to be a lot of news opportunities between parades and fireworks and inebriated revelers. But nonprofit organizations are not like newspapers - they seem to think that people should celebrate America's independence by not coming into work. Which is just crazy talk, really, but this announcement brought up a new urgency to figure out what to do with my three-day weekend.

A quick search of Google maps revealed that Salt Lake City is a mere 500 miles from Missoula. Since my new location suddenly puts me "close" to home, I decided a trip to see the fam was in order. A July trip meant I could do some hiking with my dad, gorge on my mom's cooking and visit my sister and nephew - who has nearly doubled his size since I saw him last, and at 4 months weighs nearly 20 pounds. It also would give me an opportunity to visit my grandpa, who has dealt with a string of struggles recently, and, not to put it too delicately, probably won't be alive the next time I see him. These opportunities in life never come twice.

When people ask me where I got my adventure spirit, I always reply, "My Dad." It's not that my sisters and I grew up doing crazy outdoor adventures. In fact, I still find myself joining in the commiseration when they bring up that time he dragged us on an "insane death march hike" that was actually a mere six miles through a burnt-out forest in Yellowstone. But my dad has always been athletic and has always loved the outdoors. When I was 15, he began inviting me on his longer hikes in the Wasatch Mountains. My first big one was Mount Timpanogos. We walked 18 miles, through aspen groves, flower-carpeted meadows and high-alpine moonscapes to a wind-pummeled weather tower in the sky. If I had to pinpoint a day I fell in love with the outdoors, that was probably it.

I still love to get out with my dad whenever the opportunity arises. At age 57, he's as strong as he ever was. He and his friend, Tom, were already planning to spend Saturday hiking to the Twin Peaks when I called to let him know I was driving down for the weekend. He actually brought an ice ax for the occasion. Although he's an avid hiker, he usually just does the sensible thing and waits for the snow to melt before he heads high. Still, the window of no snow is a small one in the high country, and he's looking to expand it.

My dad has always been my mentor and teacher in the outdoors, so it was an interesting experience to stand on the other side of the divide - the one where I'm a bit more comfortable and experienced than him at something. In this case, trekking on steep snow terrain. Not that I'm all that experienced. I just bought my first ax last October. But the experience is there. Tom and I explained the self-arrest and glissading techniques. I tried to stay out in front, but around 10,000 feet, I started to struggle. My lungs just couldn't keep up with my legs, so every 50 steps or so, I found myself gasping for oxygen that just wasn't there, and I had to stop moving until I could breathe normally again. It was as though the mountain was sucking fitness right out of my body. I surrendered to slowing down, concentrating on my breathing, and absorbing the stark beauty of my high-altitude surroundings.

Around 11,000 feet, we came to the crux move of the route. As we expected, the 60-degree couloir was filled in entirely with snow. The snow was crusty and hard. Dad and Tom talked it over and decided they weren't comfortable continuing up terrain that steep. I felt more insistent. I offered to forge ahead and cut individual steps in the snow with my ax. They pointed out that climbing a couple hundred feet that way would take a fair chunk out of an afternoon that was already growing short. I finally agreed that it wasn't realistic with our equipment and experience, but it's funny how disappointed I felt about it. After all, I came to Salt Lake to hike with my dad, not climb the Twin Peaks. I have to remind myself about that - it's about the journey, not the goal.

We had a fantastic hike just the same, beautiful and challenging, and the elevation - both climbing and altitude - left me feeling sufficiently downtrodden by the time we geared up to see the local fireworks show (in Utah, most communities celebrate Independence Day on July 3 when July 4 falls on the Sunday. Yeah, it's funny. But it's my home.) I went to see my grandpa today. He was in good spirits, but it's still difficult to witness firsthand what the end of life often means - that it's slow and painful and strips away a person's vibrancy and even personality before it finally takes their body. I feel even more grateful that I can live my life now, doing the things I love, with the people I love. Thanks, Dad.

Jill Outside

A slow realization about just how limited my time really is, compounded by frustratingly unhelpful research on Web site development tips and tricks, has led me to concede that I wasn't going to be able to complete a new Web site before "Up in Alaska" got really stale. So I settled on a blogger template makeover with the name I wanted to give my new site - "Jill Outside."

In thinking about giving "Up in Alaska" a new name, I decided I definitely didn't want to tie my blog to a region. That mercifully cut out the obvious but rather lame "Down in Montana" (which doesn't make much sense, anyway, since most Americans still think of Montana as "up.") But in the end, I did tie my blog to a region - a rather large and ambiguous region - "Outside."

In Alaska, the term "Outside" is used for anything and everything that is not from Alaska. Therefore, if you don't live in Alaska, you live "Outside." I like the implication of a displaced Alaskan, exploring the wider world.

And, of course, there's the less esoteric meaning, and the overall theme and scope of my blog - being outside, as in the Great Outdoors, playing, thinking, working, suffering, hoping, dreaming - living.

So there you have it - this blog's new name. For now, it will stay at this arcticglass blogspot url. I still have a lot of work to do on the sidebar, but once I am done, it will be even more vast and hopefully just a tad more user-friendly. I could go through and delete links, but I like to have them all at my own fingertips. I believe that's the point of keeping a Web log.

So besides redesigning my Web site, and of course working five days a week now, I have been mountain biking. Yeah, that's pretty much all I do now - mountain biking with new groups and learning new trails and making pasta and going out for pizza and burritos with other mountain bikers. Right now, I am riding a mountain-bike stoke as wide as the Montana sky, which has been incredible for my state of mind during what would typically be a jarring transition to a new place. It is also probably the reason why my legs feel like shredded wheat right now; but that is probably good training for Trans Rockies. The following are pictures from my Wednesday and Thursday rides.

One of the most awesome things about working for a company like Adventure Cycling is that literally everyone I work with is passionate about cycling. It's really quite incredible; I go to work in the morning and there are three cars in the parking lot and a couple dozen bicycles propped around the courtyard. I admit I can be lazy about the process of bike commuting sometimes, but my work environment makes it almost intolerable to drive to work. As it is, I haven't even touched my car in an entire week. But beyond being just transportation cyclists, my co-workers also genuinely like to ride bikes - some quite a lot. On Wednesday, my co-worker John offered to take me on a "tour" of one of his favorite routes.

It turned out to be the tour of bears. While riding up the singletrack of the first pass (oh yes, we climbed two passes), we saw a rather large black bear pop its head out of the brush. It lowered itself and stood back up a couple more times, then crossed the trail and circled all the way around us before sauntering out of sight.

We crested the pass and descended down a long, flowing strip of singletrack before climbing back up a gravel road toward a ski resort, where we saw a smallish bear cub down a steep embankment. We stopped and held our breaths, and watched him dig around in the woods for several minutes, but we never saw mom. You probably can't see the cub in this picture; I'd crop it if I had a photo editor, which I don't right now, but the cub is that black thing in the center.

We crested our second pass right at sunset, to a view of the valley bathed in warm light. I'm 10 for 10 now on spectacular sunsets during evening mountain bike rides. It's enough to give a person a downright unhealthy addiction.

And addicting it is! I only got about four hours of sleep last night, then felt like soggy shredded wheat all day long, but still decided to rally for the Thursday night group ride another friend had told me about. This one was the co-ed crowd full of local racers, so I expected a fast-paced ride, but luckily a lot of the guys were fresh off a 24-hour race last weekend, so the ride was relatively lax.

That didn't stop us from riding 25 miles and climbing more than 3,000 feet in the process. It also didn't save us from the brutal hike-a-bike to connect one logging road to another a couple hundred feet higher.

Missoula mountain bike culture really is impressive. My group had nearly a dozen people show up for the ride. Then just as we were coming down the pass, we encountered another large group going up to another nearby high point. Suddenly, there were nearly two dozen mountain bikers gathered on a fairly remote logging road somewhere high above Missoula, on a Thursday night no less. When I lived in Juneau, I don't think I ever encountered two dozen different mountain bikers over the course of a year. Suddenly being surrounded by so many of my own kind has been nothing short of a culture shock.

Another pretty sunset, another impressive view.

I wonder if this ever gets boring? Somehow, I doubt it.