Grand Canyon 2016

After twelve years, I didn't know if there would be anything left to write about the Grand Canyon. It's become my favorite tradition — one I wouldn't trade for any number of adventures around the world. But that doesn't make it a story. It's like coconut cream pie. Every year for as long as I can remember, my mother made coconut cream pie for Thanksgiving. I've eaten dozens of pieces in my lifetime. Coconut cream was my late grandfather's favorite, and every bite brings a rush of nostalgia about riding on his lawnmower, or climbing the old walnut tree. I suppose that's why we have traditions. They're an anchor to something tangible as we drift over a sea of memories. 

It was autumn 2004 when my dad invited me to join him and a large group of his acquaintances on a "Rim to Rim" hike across the Grand Canyon. This was before I stumbled into endurance training, and the prospect was deeply intimidating. I was 25 years old, going through a difficult period in my life, and on the cusp of uprooting everything and moving to Idaho Falls. The weeks leading up to that trip were shrouded in anxiety and angst, but all those feelings faded as the sun rose over the North Rim and revealed sheer canyon walls bathed in golden light.

Completing that first Rim to Rim with Dad was empowering, and helped spur big life decisions. By 2005, of course, most of those decisions had already fallen apart. I was back in the relationship I'd attempted to leave, and surprised everyone (including myself) by moving with him to Homer, Alaska. I interviewed for an Alaska job in August, and one of my conditions was a week off in October so I could fly home for a second hike across the Grand Canyon. The tradition was born.

In 2007, Dad's sister joined us for an unusually early mid-September trip. Temperatures never climbed out of the 60s, and torrential rain and hail followed us up the North Kaibab Trail. Waterfalls gushed off the canyon walls, pummeling the trail in sticks and rocks. My aunt was struggling but stoic during the long march. A few years later she battled and defeated breast cancer, and continues to run half-marathons with her daughters.

 There were the years I missed — 2009, because I couldn't take any more time off work after racing the Tour Divide. 2010, because my grandfather died. His funeral was the day we would have hiked the canyon. 2013, because of the government shutdown. 2014, because I had a torn LCL, so instead I drove the shuttle with my mom. Looking back, Fall Grand Canyon isn't so much of an annual tradition, as it is something to strive for. It's not a given that it will work out, but when it does, it's amazing.

This year, for the first time, Beat joined us. It was his first-ever trip to the Grand Canyon. Driving from Boulder, his attitude was nothing like mine was during my first visit, when all I did was fret about whether I'd be able to haul myself out of the canyon. No, he was scheming rim-to-rim-to-rim-to-rims and such, which never had a chance of working out because we were on a tight time crunch.

 Instead we stuck to the plan to hike from north to south on Friday, and south to north on Saturday. Also joining us was my dad's hiking buddy Raj, who Beat goaded into a sub-six-hour south-to-north traverse on day two.

 Not too much has changed in the past twelve years, but apparently the National Park Service recently placed some rather graphic warning signs. I think most ultrarunners would agree that this hiker is about to feel better.

 Friday evening on the South Rim. It's become tradition to head out to an overlook to watch the sunset (and in this case moonrise) before returning to the hotel cafeteria to eat traditional dinners (I always get the vegetarian chili bowl, and Dad orders chicken pot pie.)

 Morning on the South Kaibab Trail. Beat and Raj were already long gone on their run, while Dad and I enjoyed a more leisurely hike with a morning lemonade break at Phantom Ranch, and lunch at Cottonwood campground.

 We saw temperatures as high as 97 degrees on Friday, and it was still toasty on Saturday.

 It was a mere two years ago that Dad was intimidated by the prospect of two rim-to-rims in two days, but now he seems to take it all in stride. The water had been shut off after the Manzanita rest area, so we blitzed the last five miles and 4,000 feet of climbing without stopping. A decade ago, I remember wondering when Dad might start slowing down. He's 63 now and only getting stronger. I know he's stronger than me. But he insists that he will never attempt a nonstop rim-to-rim-to-rim. "That's when the fun-o-meter starts to go down," he said.

That's fine with me. I'm just happy to hike with my dad. Maybe soon we'll try the Tonto Trail. Maybe a few years down the road, we'll ride mules with my mom to Phantom Ranch. As long as the tradition continues, I'm grateful. 

High mountain air

Well, I'm at my allergists' office for my first round of "cluster" immunotherapy, where I'm subjecting myself to five courses of shots over the next three hours while monitoring allergic reactions. Should be fun! I figure while I'm waiting, I'll update my blog.

On Thursday morning, our neighborhood received its first snowfall of the season. Beat left before dawn to fly to California for the weekend. I was surprisingly jealous of his trip. The past few weeks have brought a higher degree of homesickness for the Bay Area. Perhaps this sparked after returning from Europe to Boulder and having it all finally sink in that this is where I permanently reside. Perhaps it's the way I feel when I'm exercising — a bit downtrodden, a bit anxious about my breathing — and remembering how effortlessly I used to breeze up hills in California (of course it was never actually effortless. Nostalgia is a liar like that.) Perhaps it's just sadness for the passing of time, an acknowledgement that all of my California experiences spread out across five years are now gone forever, and I'm never going to get them back. For whatever reason I'm homesick for a place where I don't even want to live anymore, but my friends there sent me photos of redwood groves, and this made me feel melancholy.

Instead, I set out on Thursday to follow the snow as it melted away from the lower elevations. The previous day I got both an pneumonia shot and a flu shot, and I was feeling especially downtrodden with a left arm so sore I could scarcely lift it to drive. But that early winter air tasted so good that I had to find some more, so I headed out to Eldora to hike up 4th of July Road.

It was a little silly to put all that effort into walking on a road, but mild flu-like symptoms made it too difficult to run, and there was too much ice to drive any higher. Instead I ambled along the quiet corridor as thick snow squalls blew in and then suddenly cleared, again and again. This made me happy. What is it about walking that makes everything feel more centered?


Just had my first round of shots. Suddenly my shoulders feel sore and I'm lightheaded. I wonder if this is an actual reaction or in my head? With my recent health issues, I'm conflicted about what's real and what's imagined. That uncertainty extends to most aspects of life, when you think about it.

On Friday, temperatures at home rose into the sixties, and I wondered whether I could find more of that tasty winter air. I set my sights on an easy 13,200-foot peak that I hadn't yet visited, Mount Audubon. The previous day I'd felt overheated while walking a mellow grade in 35-degree weather, so I admittedly packed too lightly — a softshell jacket, cap, mittens, and buff. I headed up to the trailhead in the mid-afternoon.

The temperature at 10,000 feet was 37 degrees, and the wind was breathtaking. It ripped through the parking lot as I stuffed a couple of granola bars into my pack. I knew I was a bit underprepared, but I'd driven all the way there and paid ten dollars to enter the park. I figured I could at least hike to treeline and see how things went. 

Predictably I heated up considerably while wading through thick slush in the forest, bolstering my confidence. At 11,500 feet, the wind hit gale force. It swept down the mountain with such ferocity that I could scarcely breathe when I faced it directly, and felt like I was pushing against a wall of ice. But I was intrigued. My experiences with cold weather have made me more bold than I probably should be, but I wasn't anywhere close to my limit and decided I could turn around anytime. So I continued to crawl upward with my chin buried in my light jacket, eyes squinted almost shut behind sunglasses, ears becoming slightly sore beneath a flimsy hat. The thin cover of snow was heavily drifted — bare in spots, knee-deep in others. I couldn't find the trail so I followed one set of tracks. I found the maker of the tracks reclining just below the ridge. He was heavily bundled up with his back to the wind, but looked comfortable. I asked him whether he went to the top. He had, but the upper slope was "very treacherous."

"It's snow around boulders," he said. "Easy to fall through."

I knew exactly the kind of conditions he described, so I told him I planned to go for just twenty more minutes before turning around. That was my time limit for returning before dark.

Still, I had a bit of summit fever, and continued up the mountain past my own cutoff. My strategy for the treacherous boulders was to hopscotch the exposed rocks, trying to avoid the snow of unknown depth. In my haste, I finally planted a foot into a drift, where it immediately plunged into a knee-deep hole and twisted painfully. I winced and pulled myself onto a boulder to take the weight off my throbbing ankle. It didn't feel sprained, which was lucky. But in the short time I sat there, the wind ripped most of the heat from my body and I started shivering rapidly. I was wearing all of the clothing I had with me, with only a space blanket as backup. The realization finally hit that if I hurt myself, things would become dire quickly. As soon as I stood up, I turned around — 200 feet shy of the summit.

On the way down, I moved extremely carefully to avoid twisting my ankle again. Without the heat-generating effort of the climb, I slowly lost feeling in my fingers. My shoulders ached with cold. But I felt as centered as the day prior. The frosted mountains were tinged with pink light, and a vast expanse of now-familiar hills and plains spread out in front of me. It was calming to be in this place in this moment, even with temperatures in the low 20s and a relentless wind pushing against my back. I should have brought a coat.

Just got the second round of shots. Now I feel a bit nauseated and my heart rate has increased, thought that may be because I'm writing about feeling very cold. Anyway, on Saturday temperatures were again in the 60s and I went for a bike ride in shorts, yet still longed for more of that high mountain air. My friends from Fairbanks, Corrine and Eric, arrived in the evening. Since my parking pass was good through Sunday, I suggested a short hike to one of the Brainard Lakes.

"Probably just four miles or so," I promised my Alaskan friends — who live at 1,000 feet. "We can take it slow."

We got a late start Sunday morning and traffic was heavy on the highway. This and the nice weather caused us to shy away from Brainard Lakes — one of the most popular trailheads in the area — because we feared crowds. Instead we veered toward Eldora, where we still had to park in town, a mile from the trailhead. I told Corrine and Eric about this fantastic run I did here in June, the "High Lonesome Loop."

"We should hike to King Lake," I suggested, knowing it would be 12 miles round trip. "It will be longish, but worth it."

Maybe predictably, when we arrived at the lake and looked up at the Continental Divide, Corrine and Eric wanted to go there. At the pass, temperatures were mild and the wind was nothing more than a soft breeze — shockingly different from Friday's weather. We saw two guys who told us they hiked from Devil's Lake, and the ridge was "covered in a few inches of slush." (I had expected deep, wind-hardened drifts.) Even though I was thinking, "the ridge walk would be awesome," I didn't say anything because we'd already hiked seven miles, the ridge skirted 12,000 feet, and my poor friends had just arrived from the lowlands. But I didn't even have to say anything, because it was Eric who suggested, "Let's just go around the loop. We know we all want to."

The ridge walk was fantastic. The Divide was inexplicably warm and windless, and snow-frosted mountains stretched out in all directions. My friends had to slow down in the thin air, but I felt the best that I've felt since I returned to Colorado. I'm pretty much convinced now that high mountain air is the cure for breathing woes, although friends and medical providers insist that allergy shots work better.

It did get late and we had to hike the last three miles in the dark with two headlamps between the three of us. The hike ended up being eighteen miles, which was truly not what I had in mind, but I think everyone enjoyed the long walk — even if I was perhaps the only one who really enjoyed the thin mountain air.

Third round of shots. They keep upping the dose and this one sort of burns. Well. It's all an experiment, or experience. Meanwhile, I'm scheming my next return to the high country. 

October already

As I tiptoe toward some semblance of training, I'm having a bit of déjà vu for last October. There's this realization that Winter Is Coming, I have less than five months to get my act together, and my workouts are still completely unpredictable. There are days I feel great and charge up hills. Other days I stumble along, convinced that I am irreversibly out of shape, and perhaps I should concede this fact and stop trying so hard. Embrace the sedentary life. What's so bad about that, really?

These episodes would be more disconcerting if I wasn't in such a similar place last year.

I followed up with my allergist today, and my lung function tests measured a fair amount lower than they did in August. The numbers are more similar to October 2015, which is when I first went to see an asthma doctor in Palo Alto. It's difficult to say why I haven't improved. Unfortunately I was bad with my medications in September, so there's no way to gauge whether they're working or not. I will start immunotherapy in two weeks, with an accelerated treatment that sounds particularly unfun. It requires sitting in a room at the clinic for three hours, writhing in discomfort with an epi-pen ready in case of anaphylaxis. BUT, the main treatment will be over soon enough that I can still go to Alaska for a month in March. Priorities.

So that's where I am in "training" right now. Since I'm still having difficult days, I've been taking it relatively easy. I think my dad is worried my fitness is so poor that I won't make it across the Grand Canyon for our annual rim-to-rim (and back the next day), which is just over a week from now. I don't think my fitness is that bad. But I do acknowledge that once these fun diversions are done, I really need to focus on the Iditarod. I'm going to join a small gym in town, with a plan to put more emphasis on weight training this year. If I am having "overtraining" issues (which seems unlikely, as this past summer has been my laziest in years), weight training will be a good way to build strength while minimizing impact on my weak little lungs.

Still, I'm glad I can manage regular outdoor outings. It has been a beautiful couple of weeks. Autumn color and light give everything a new richness. A cold winter wind has been blasting through the valley. Crawling up Bear Peak this evening, I could see a thick layer of snow on the Continental Divide. I guess I missed my window to climb a 14'er this year, but no matter. I'm excited. Winter air is the best air.

Also, thank you to those who purchased my photo book. I actually had a rush of orders and sold out my first batch, but have another on the way that should arrive by the end of the week. So if there's a small delay, I apologize. Sending another book into the world is always a little nerve-wracking. What if it's terrible? What if everyone hates it? You know, the usual concerns. This in conjunction with fitness angst is apparently bad for self-esteem, which is the main reason I've been mostly avoiding my blog and social media since I returned to Colorado (except for book promotions. Sorry about that. Necessary evil.)

But yes, October is here! Everything got a lot better around this time last year. I'm confident it will again.

There are still more books available at this link: http://www.arcticglasspress.net/agp/?wpsc-product=into-the-north-wind

Thanks again!