Opt outside

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, just like Fall Grand Canyon is my favorite tradition, for many of the same reasons. Besides bringing the family together in a low-expectations format centered around mushy food and homemade pie (my favorite!), Thanksgiving also prompts reflection on gratitude. Expressing thankfulness is another way of compartmentalizing values. What am I thankful for? What in life do I value most? Same question. 

This Thanksgiving was particularly festive, as it brought everyone in my immediate family together for the first time in a long while. We always gather at my aunt's house near Ogden for a large traditional spread and brief catch-ups with some of my many first cousins, their kids, aunts, uncles, and my 85-year-old grandmother. It's often a noisy affair that begins in the early afternoon, so my dad, Beat and I only had a couple of hours in the morning to sneak in a hike.

 We went to the lower Bell Canyon falls amid a few inches of fresh snow and frosty temperatures. It was a quick hour-forty-five, stabbing at the steep slope and breathing cold fire. I loped down the canyon behind Beat and Dad — both faster than me — brimming with gratitude.

 For Friday, we embarked on what seems to have become our yearly tradition of climbing Gobblers Knob on Black Friday. This year, some of the hype surrounding this pseudo-holiday focused toward REI's smart marketing campaign, #optoutside. Yes, it's a social media ploy, but it's also a fun sentiment. I love the idea thousands of people venturing outdoors during what is often a cold and windy part of the shoulder season in many parts of the United States. More people still choose to battle crowds at stores on this day, and honestly I think that's fine, too — my sisters are among those who love the Black Friday sales. It's a small slice of consumer culture, and I recognize that I'm very much a part of this. But similar to expressing gratitude on Thanksgiving, it's great to actually set aside a day where you can reflect on what you value more — a cheap television, or a day outside?

 Temperatures dropped into the teens as we climbed up Butler Fork toward the fierce winds that were ripping along the ridge. Winds of 50 miles per hour were reported in the canyons earlier in the day, and I was fearful of potential hurricane-force gusts, but we seemed to find a relative window of calm amid the snow-driving weather happening all around us.


 We even found a tiny pocket of calm to sit down and enjoy a quick lunch of pita bread slathered in Nutella and peanut butter. Thanksgiving dinner is pretty good, but if everyone could taste a Nutella and peanut butter sandwich at 10,000 feet amid a windchill of 0F, lots would have a new favorite food tradition.

With our hands and feet numbed by the short stop, and shards of ice whipping around us, we started down the mountain in giddy moods. I thought about how lucky I am to share these experiences with two people I love, my closest family members, and how grateful I am for our health. Happiness is simple at its core, where reality aligns with our values. I wouldn't trade this for anything. 

ITI training, week six

Monday: Weight lifting at gym. Went for three sets this week, 12 exercises, 12 reps. I stuck with all the same weights as last Thursday and struggled with the third set. When doing these exercises, I contemplate how the movements might correlate with hours of pushing and lifting a loaded bike through unconsolidated snow. I think working toward three or even four sets might be more appropriate than simply trying to increase the amount of weight I can lift. Building moderate strength along with endurance? Seems plausible. 

Tuesday: Trail run, 0:50, 5.6 miles, 692 feet climbing. I again tried to run the Monta Vista loop quickly and only moderately succeeded — 8:55-minute-mile average. The difficulties I'm running up against now are slightly more sore and fatigued quads after long weekend rides, and I'm not willing to pound the descents. But I continue to improve in small increments on the climbs. 

Wednesday: Snowshoe, 2:08, 5.9 miles, 1,743 feet climbing. By Wednesday I was on the road without a bike, so my pedaling miles are going to be zero for two weeks. I believe that's not a problem in terms of training, as slogtastic activities such as snowshoeing are even more appropriate for the "skills" I'm attempting to boost. For consistency purposes I'm going by Strava numbers, but the software tends to short me on time — it seems if I'm moving slower than two miles an hour, I don't get counted for moving at all. I should also note that for training purposes, I count anything I do on foot as a "run." Even if I'm working on a 53-minute-mile through snow drifts, you can bet that, minute-for-minute, I'm putting more physical effort than my 9-minute-mile jaunts on trails, so I'm absolutely going to call it a two-hour run. (Or just call everything hiking. I don't really care.) Anyway, this was a tough climb to Castle Peak, starting at 7,000 feet and working my way up to 9,000 feet through slush, breakable wind crust, and shin-deep sugar. I pushed the pace (yes, at 1.5 mph) so I was blasted by the top, and my calf muscles were quivering. Actually this outing took closer to three hours of moving time, but again, I'm sticking to Strava numbers for this journal. 

Thursday: Snowshoe, 4:20, 11.7 miles, 3,050 feet climbing. Oof. This was actually a six-hour effort with only a few short stops, and I was really feeling the altitude. There were only a few inches of snow at 7,000 feet, but I was still moving at snail's pace as I waded up the Lehman Creek Trail in Great Basin National Park. Past a campground at 9,000 feet, there was more than a foot of fresh snow, and the slog really set in. Close to treeline, above 10,000 feet, I hit these snow-covered boulder fields that involved balancing on loose rocks while wearing snowshoes. I couldn't take the snowshoes off for fear I'd put my foot in a hidden hole and break my ankle in a spot where I was all by myself with only fire-starters and a space blanket as survival gear, and wind-chills were easily below 0F. Winter mountain travel is amazing but it's also extremely intimidating. For many good reasons, I constantly have the "danger, danger" sirens going off in my head, and stress adds to the fatigue I feel on these outings. I turned around about a half mile short of my destination but well past the amount of time I planned to use up for this "run." Damn, I was tired. This is such better training for the ITI than those silly bike rides I do in California. :P

Friday: Trail run, 2:06, 9.6 miles, 688 feet climbing. Calves were sore and hamstrings were tight, so I took it pretty easy on this fun jaunt into McDonald Creek Canyon along the Colorado River, near the Utah/Colorado border. There wasn't much of a trail in the canyon so this "run" involved quite a bit of hiking up and down slickrock ledges, and shuffling in the sandy wash. It was fun to embark on a desert adventure after two snowbound slogs. 

Saturday: Trail run, 1:35, 5 miles, 2,732 feet climbing. I finally made it the Boulder, and Beat and I met up with Daniel (the friend who recently lived in Frisco and helped rescue me when I was very sick during the Tour Divide, and now lives in Denver) and Joe Grant (professional ultra-runner and super nice guy who lives in Boulder) for lunch and a quick afternoon jaunt. Joe guided us on a hike up Bear Peak and we chatted about life on the Front Range. Again, I'm still calling this a run, because the pace was brisk for me and Beat (and clearly a stroll for Daniel and Joe.) I felt moderately embarrassed when I was hugging icy boulders with full-chest contact, and the Coloradans were dancing over them on their tip-toes. But this is who I am. It takes a lot more than a few snowy outings to fix clumsy. Running downhill with these guys did help push me past my comfort zone, which is a good thing. 

Sunday: Afternoon, snowshoe, 2:38, 7.6 miles, 1,082 feet climbing. Evening, weight lifting. Beat and I drove up Boulder Canyon for sightseeing, and chose a random trailhead near Niwot Mountain to go snowshoeing. We hoped to find good ridge access, but instead followed a trail that meandered through the woods in a long traverse around the mountain. Both of us were disappointed about the lack of views, but it was nice to get out for a more relaxing hike. I'm beginning to adjust to the altitude although still sucking wind at 10,000 feet. Beat had more difficulties. I also discovered our hotel has a small gym, so I spent a half hour on a free-weight routine — mostly adapted from exercises I could remember from the "Strength Training for Runners" program I did for eight weeks last fall. Shoulders were pretty sore after 30 pushups, broken up in three sets of 10. But that's far more than I was able to do at this time last year. 

Total: 13:39, 45.5 miles run, 9,978 feet climbing. Well, the numbers make this look like a pretty paltry week. It certainly didn't feel that way. But I'm glad to have this opportunity to embark on snowy adventures this week. These efforts certainly will help more toward my goals than a faster time on the Monta Vista loop. Here are a few more photos: 

Beat and I visited the Boulder Running Company, which is practically across the street from Google Boulder. I was interested in purchasing one of those Ultimate Direction hip belts named after well-known runners who live around here, but got the souvenir shirt instead. Who needs a hip belt when you can just stuff things in the pockets of a jacket and tie it around your waist?

 Joe pointed out all the notable landmarks. There was a stiff wind blowing and I'd guess the wind-chill was around 20 degrees, and Daniel was perfectly content in his T-shirt and shorts. Meanwhile, we Californians were pulling on jackets and mittens and being teased for this, because we're purportedly preparing ourselves for Alaska cold.

 Although I prefer mountains, I share a fascination for the open spaces of the prairies. Colorado's Front Range has fast access to both landscapes. I like this photo for the sharp shadow of Bear Peak spread over the foothills.

 More Bear Peak views.

 Looking west toward Indian Peaks Wilderness. There was some fierce gusty weather happening on the Continental Divide.

 Sunset on Saturday evening.

 Beat hiking on the Sourdough Trail on Sunday. We were breaking fresh trail after a mile, despite seeing a dozen cars at the trailhead, which caused Beat to comment "Coloradans sure are lazy." I had to laugh. The main issue, I think, is that skiing is still pretty thin here, and people who snowshoe are usually pretty casual about it and really do only hike a mile. We did see a few fat bike tracks, and I wondered if they veered off in a different direction. Still, I really enjoyed this outing despite the lack of views. Snowshoeing is such a difficult but soothing activity.  

More adventures in roadtripping

Beat had a business trip in Boulder this week, and since next week is Thanksgiving, we decided I'd drive out to Colorado and then head directly to Utah from there. Between work deadlines and the weekend I figured I could take three days to make the 1,300-mile journey. It's still a lot of driving, but there'd be plenty of time in there for adventuring in 72 hours. 

 On Wednesday I pulled off I-80 at Donner Summit to take another crack at Castle Peak. This is a most ideal en-route adventure, with a trailhead only a quarter mile off the interstate. The current conditions made for difficult snowshoeing — about six inches of slushy muck to the ridgeline, and then a truly energy-sapping, breakable wind crust that covered anywhere from six inches to two feet of wind-blown sugar, over rock.

 At one point I broke through the crust and wedged one snowshoe between two boulders. My foot was stuck a full leg length below an awkwardly kneeling knee, and I couldn't reach the binding. There were several nerve-wracking seconds there while I wriggled and tugged, then finally broke free.

It took an age to slog to the peak, but the reward was uninterrupted views of the northern Sierra. It sure warms my heart to see snow up here — last year this region had almost no snow in mid-January.

 Then it was on to U.S. 50 — the Loneliest Highway. The sun set not long after I passed through Fallon, which meant I had to drive across Nevada in the dark. This was disappointing — I adore the views on this route. But with only 10 or so hours of daylight to work with, something has to give.

 I stopped for the night in Great Basin National Park — my first-ever visit to this park on the Nevada-Utah border. After setting up my tent, I tried inflating my NeoAir only to discover the pad was leaking air. I spent the next hour searching for the hole so I could patch it, trying everything I could imagine. With air temperatures dipping into the low-20s, I knelt on the shoreline of Lehman Creek and dunked the entire pad in the water, searching for air bubbles. Nothing surfaced; the pad ended up coated in ice before I could dry it, and my hands went entirely numb. After giving up on the repair, I spent the next hour lying in my sleeping bag atop frozen soil and ice patches, shivering and shifting my weight in hopes that a different position would keep the ground from leeching heat from my body. I told myself this was good prep for sleeping in the cold in Alaska, as well as an important lesson about relying on inflatable pads in cold weather, but after an hour the misery won. I retreated to my car, and slept reasonably well.

 Bright but not so early the next morning, I set out from the campground to follow Lehman Creek to the bristlecone pine grove. Bristlecone pines are intriguing — both for their long lives (bristlecones in Great Basin rank among the oldest living trees in the world) and ability to thrive in the harshest environments (they grow between 10,000 and 11,000 feet, thrive in alkaline soils that exclude all other plants, but tend to fail in lower elevations.) In short, bristlecones declined to compete with anything else and moved to some of the most inhospitable environments on Earth. My kind of tree!

I'll have to admit that I didn't make it high enough to view the bristlecone pines. I forget just how much harder I have to work breaking trail on snowshoes, and how slow that can be. I started hiking at 30-minute-miles and it only became slower from there. After six miles and 3,000 feet of climbing, I'd lost any semblance of trail and found myself stumbling around on snow-covered boulder fields. There was just no easy way to navigate this terrain with or without snowshoes, and daylight was fast fading.

Sigh. Still, it was a gorgeous day. At 10,000 feet the temperatures were still below freezing, and there was a fierce wind driving the chills down to something that felt quite low. My first taste of winter this year. It's always invigorating.

I retreated feeling disappointed about the bristlecones, but I'll be back. It will be intriguing to visit these trees and compare them to another fascinating old tree — the 1,200-year-old, 300-foot-tall redwood in Portola State Park.

A 12-mile snowshoe that takes six hours sucks up a lot of daylight, and there wasn't a whole lot left to enjoy the views on my most favorite lonely highway — U.S. 6 through western Utah.

Whoa indeed. I wish I could stay longer.

Alas, eastward progress beckons. Welcome home!

One reason I enjoy traveling through these wide-open spaces is renewed perspectives about how much possibility there is out there. A glance in any direction includes intriguing ridges, craggy peaks, vast basins, and unlimited potential for adventure. I could spend the rest of my life exploring only what lies between California and Colorado along the corridor of I-80, U.S. 50, U.S. 6, and I-70 — and I'd still only see a small fraction of even that sliver of the world.

Long drives this time of year also bring out another aspect that I love about late-fall and winter: There may be less daylight to work with, but often what you get is really good.

I spent the night in Green River, Utah, and the following morning decided to go for a run in Rabbit Valley, western Colorado. It was an absolutely gorgeous morning — 35 degrees, frosty still, and clear.


I descended into McDonald Creek Canyon because I remembered hearing about Fremont rock art in this canyon, but hadn't done any research and failed to find it on my own. Still, I had fun exploring this area, running when I could but mostly scrambling around rock ledges, inadvertently wandering up side canyons, plodding in the wet, sandy wash, and slashing through tamarisk. I was determined to see the Colorado River before calling it a day.

There it is! I ran along the tracks for three quarters of a mile in hopes I'd locate a jeep trail to follow out, but huge sandstone walls made it clear there wouldn't be any cross-traffic for a while.

Emerging from the canyon, the sky looked foreboding. Cold sprinkles hit the sand, followed by snow flurries. "Oh, this isn't good," I thought. "I probably should have checked the weather earlier." It's fine weather for running, but driving? Either way, I had committed to I-70 and there was no going back.

I made it as far as Vail before the flurries turned to snow and traffic stopped. I mean stopped. I sat in one spot near mile marker 180 for more than an hour. During this time I sent many texts to Beat, who was waiting in Boulder: "This is my fault. I knew I should have taken I-80 through SLC and Wyoming. I should have gotten an earlier start this morning." That route isn't nearly as scenic, without any of the outings I'd enjoyed, but after one hour of sitting in stopped traffic I was ready to denounce the whole endeavor of adventure roadtripping.

When they finally let traffic creep through, a full blizzard was raging and the road was a mess — at least six inches of unplowed powder was stirred up in every direction, and dozens of smaller vehicles were stopped on the shoulder or stuck in the middle of the road. I was driving a Subaru Outback that admittedly has nearly-bald tires — I was ready to put on chains as soon as I could find a safe spot to do so — but it didn't really have any trouble navigating those conditions. I've driven in considerably worse weather in Alaska and Montana, but it looked like a winter apocalypse on I-70. No wonder this road has such a bad reputation. It was about to get worse.

At Silverthorne, police were directing cars off a closed section of the freeway. So instead of inching along on the interstate, traffic piled up on the unplowed streets of Silverthorne. I managed to weave through stuck vehicles to a City Market, where I drank two cups of Starbucks and refreshed the CDOT Twitter page. Three hours passed before I rejoined the traffic creep to the tunnel and down the luge toward Denver. I drove past Vail at 2 p.m., and didn't arrive in Boulder until 10:30 — eight and a half stressful hours to travel 100 miles. I may never complain about traffic in the Bay Area again (I probably still will.)

Still, it's always an adventure. And yes, still worth it.