Mountains, mountains everywhere

After seven years, what more can I say about Chamonix? It’s the birthplace of mountaineering, an idyllic French village surrounded by stunning spires of rock and ice. The trail development is extensive, the adventure opportunities endless. Buildings are centuries old, paths are beaten, even the congestion isn’t new. Much about this place became a cliche decades before I discovered it. There’s a massive trail-running festival at the end of August. My relationship with this event is … to say the least … complicated. Every year since 2012 we’ve returned so Beat can participate in a race that I despise to the core of my being. Yet I trace the lines on the course map longingly, resent that either of us can’t look away, admire Beat for facing the monster. I was going to boycott this year, really ... stay home and languish through late summer in Colorado, just to prove my disapproval. But the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc cyclone sucked me back in, easily.

I suppose this concession isn't surprising. It's the French Alps ... I'd be crazy to pass up any opportunity to visit. And after six finishes in seven starts of the Petite Trotte à Léon, Beat had proven himself capable of making good decisions and surviving such an endeavor — 300 kilometers of brutal and often dangerous terrain, in all weather, all night and day, while the race organization effectively throws darts at you. Of course the PTL is not all terrible, or even mostly terrible. A lot has improved since my foolhardy and ill-fated attempt in 2013 — not the least of which is that there are 14 more hours to complete the course. This is everything — the difference between sleep deprivation so intense that one loses their ability to focus and eventually their mind, and enough rest to simply be mind-numbingly fatigued.  Of course, it's still 24,500 meters (80,000 feet) of gain and then descent on the steepest possible grades, across crumbling knife ridges littered with scree, boulder-choked moraines, grassy slopes so steep that crampons are recommended, glacial traverses late at night with only a bit of tape to distinguish the safe route from a minefield of crevasses, and chossy scrambles with heart-stopping exposure.

Anyone who makes the mistake of asking me about UTMB or PTL will get an earful about how sad I am that I'm such a terrible mountain runner, how much I resent that I haven't been able to make a full loop around Mont Blanc, and how my fermenting frustration and the compounding commercialization of the event has drained away any remaining desire, and I might never again try. It's been four years since I last attempted UTMB. Even a self-supported hike on the TMB route doesn't really appeal, compared to all of the other things one can do in the Alps. But Beat loves PTL, even though he promises "never again" each time. So every year at the end of August, I find myself back in the throng, jostling for shoulder space on the streets of Chamonix with all of the Euro-trailers in their Salomon tights and headbands.


Meanwhile, I compensate for feelings of inadequacy by trying to outdo myself with mountain efforts, racking up as much vert as I can in the day hikes that I squeeze in between contract deadlines and inevitable race support duties. It's gotten to the point where I need to ascend more than 50,000 feet in the seven to nine days we're in town, which isn't possible to do enjoyably unless the weather is perfect and my crewing obligations are minimal enough to allow for sleep and meals somewhere in there. This year, all of the stars aligned and I reached my arbitrary goal — in eight hikes with one actual rest day. 115.8 miles. 50,479 feet of chasing the sky. 45 hours of moving time.

The whole band was back together — Beat's original PTL partner and friend, Daniel, who lives in Denver, as well as Pieter, who returned from Belgium in hopes of avenging their DNF from last year. We arrived Friday evening and thus had all day Saturday to burn. Pieter wanted to climb to La Jonction, the intersection of two glaciers tumbling off of Mont Blanc. The highest point one can travel on land ends in a chaotic jumble of ice at 8,500 feet. Climbing there from the valley nets a clean vertical mile (5,285 feet of gain) all in one five-mile-long grunt. It's an incredible route, skirting the edges of a sharp ridge with magnificent glacier views almost the entire way. There's some slightly technical maneuvers toward the top, but nothing daunting, so it's all of the fun and none of the fear. If anyone asks about a "must do" outing in Chamonix, I recommend this trail. As fresh as we all were, it only took a little over two hours to climb to the ice. Much stoke was shared among Pieter and Beat, who had a whole lot more of this to come.

The guys had registration and race prep all day Sunday, so I took advantage of the free afternoon to hike the Grand Balcon Nord, an alpine traverse high over the valley. This day was the best of the week, in that the air was brilliantly clear, there wasn't a breath of wind, and temperatures were so mild as to be undetectable. Perhaps 60-65 degrees. I felt like I was experiencing some kind of virtual reality — a mountain walking simulator. Even my legs didn't need to do much work — my knee is finally gaining strength and stability, and my breathing has been a non-issue, as my fitness cycle always seems to hit a high point in late August. The best of times. Glad I could take advantage.

I traversed the balcony and climbed to a high point overlooking Mer de Glace. The glacier has lost more than fifty vertical feet of ice since I first visited in 2012, and it's always a humbling sight — to witness something so vast changing so quickly. I hoped to descend to the ice caves to view the latest demarcation line, but the stairs below the gondola were utterly mobbed. It was like waiting in line at Disneyland. So I retreated back to quiet places — a boulder-strewn ridge hundreds of feet above the moraine, picking my way through the rocks and stealing glances at the crumbling gray ghost of what once was.

The 2019 Petite Trotte à Léon started at 8 a.m. Monday. 117 teams from around the world set out from downtown Chamonix under yet more perfect weather. Beat's team has long been "Too Dumb to Quit," but last year they had to leave the course because Pieter injured his hip, and thus quit. This year they were officially registered as "Just Too Dumb," marching across the tracking page under Swiss, Belgian and U.S. flags. Beat, as he often does, claimed debilitating dread before the race and refused to smile for the photo.

This year, there were also at least two all-American teams. That's actually a rare thing in PTL, so I looked forward to tracking them. In one team was Gavin Woody, a strong runner from Washington who alongside David Johnston won the foot division of the Iditarod Trail Invitational 350 the year I was also out there on foot, 2018. After 110 kilometers Gavin would quit the PTL, citing reasons I find deeply relatable:

"Now, I’ve done a lot of things that most people probably wouldn’t consider fun, but PTL pushed me over the edge from 'this is exhilarating and I’m so thankful to be in these beautiful mountains' to 'this is really scary and I want to get out of here.' .... There were so many opportunities where, one misstep on the sand or scree would have caused an uncontrollable slide for hundreds of feet. I knew there would be dangerous parts but I actually had no idea what we were getting into."

I carried my own hiking pack and poles to the start so I could hit the trail as soon as the guys took off. I waited for 15 minutes at an intersection I thought they would pass (they didn't) then turned the opposite direction to climb the famous "Vertical K" route, a tightly zig-zagging trail underneath the Planpraz gondola that gains a kilometer in less than five (3,300 feet in 2.6 miles.) Pieter questioned why I would want to slog this loose and ugly trail out of the valley when there are so many nicer ones, but I like the VK because it's efficient, and out in the open so there are views the whole way (at least, when you're not seeing spots because you're aiming to push your Vertical K under an hour this time, which you won't achieve because you're going to push too hard from the start and then dizzily falter on the technical chains-and-steps part of the climb.)

The Vertical K was just a small part of the day I had planned, which was a relative epic of 25-some miles with 12,000 feet of climbing. I wanted to log at least one big day this week, both as early ITI training — to reacquaint myself with difficult walking all day long — as well as a chance to explore new-to-me territory. With the Vertical K wrapped up, I ascended another 2,000 feet to Brevent and then began a long descent into the beautiful and reasonably remote Reserve Naturelle des Aiguilles Rouges.

I love being back here. It feels like something closer to wilderness, silence broken only by the sound of cascading water echoing from distant walls. The weather on this day was much hotter, already climbing into the mid-80s in town. It was cooler than that above treeline, but the sun felt strong, and my body was beginning to demand more for the miles. I hauled three liters of water up the Vertical K and went through it more quickly than expected, so I made my way to a small stream and scooped water into my filter bottle, sipping it suspiciously. It's funny, because Beat drinks straight out of the streams here, but I tend to trust the wild water in Europe less than the western U.S. There are just so many cows and sheep everywhere. And I'm weird about water.

Eventually I refilled my hydration bladder at a refuge. Now that my pack was full of liquid security, I gulped down several handfuls of peanut butter pretzels from home and felt invincible. I love being up here. The only catch is that there are no easy routes off these high benches. It's a steep gorge that plummets from 7,000 feet to 2,000 feet in almost no distance. I planned to traverse around the mountain toward the town of Servoz.

My route wrapped around Lac de Pormanez, a lovely spot that reminded me of Island Lake in Colorado's San Juan Mountains.

Then I spent some time a little lost — the map showed a trail, but it wasn't easy to trace, and I mostly made my way around a contour line above a shallow cliff. Every so often I'd come to a boulder scramble with a fixed cable bolted into the rock, and think "well, I must still be on route." When I finally found the trail it was dropping straight off the mountain, just down and down and down, into the traffic noise and heat of the valley. My torso was sticky with sweat, my pants were soaked through, my back was already bleeding where I neglected to lube around the bra line, and my legs threatened to buckle under the relentless tug of gravity. Long descents are hard, but that's the price one must pay for the heights.

To return to Chamonix, I planned to climb back to the heights, over Aiguillette des Houches. The altitude rises from 2,500 feet to 7,400 feet, so it's just another ho-hum vertical mile. This third long climb was reasonably easy, at least compared to the descent. The "trail" was an old jeep road that cut directly up the fall line on a 25-30-percent grade. Mindless stuff, which is my brain's most direct route to mindfulness — steady motion at the upper limit of my fitness, with the fatigue of a long day casting a pleasant shadow over my brain, no mental space for anything beyond the most immediate moments. Each step simply leads to the next, and I find peace here.

The road faded to a rocky trail, the grade became even more relentlessly steep, and in no time I was back on the skyline, looking toward Brevent. I'd passed by there just a few hours earlier, but it seemed so long ago, in that slow but substantial way in which time passes when you're walking all day. The light was growing long. There was no one around.

I sat for a few minutes to tighten my shoelaces and enjoy the view from Aiguillette des Houches — all of the "this is exhilarating and I'm so grateful to be in these beautiful mountains" and none of the "this is really scary and I want to get out of here." I'm grateful for these opportunities to make my own way here. I actually don't think I'll ever participate in one of these races again, as disappointed as I remain in my attempts ... although I'd make space for the Tor des Geants in a heartbeat if the opportunity arose. I lack confidence, though. Watch me make my way down the third big descent of the day, and you'd understand why.

I crossed the broad ridge as evening light began to fade. I'd hoped to make it down before dark, but it didn't seem like that was going to happen.

I passed by groups camped in enviable spots beside Refuge de Bellachat and dropped into an imposing couloir. Supposedly there was a trail all the way to valley, but I couldn't fathom where it would continue without plummeting off some cliff. Just follow the faint zig-zags, and hope for the best.

An unobstructed view toward Mont Blanc drenched in crimson light was my reward for this tricky descent. My knee was finally beginning to feel a bit tender, and the chafing on my back felt like a hot iron underneath my backpack. I rolled my weak left ankle for at least the fifth time that day. There had been a couple of bad rolls earlier, enough to cause me to fall onto the ground, but amazingly I hadn't incurred a sprain. So all in all, the day had gone well. I made my way through the busy streets of Chamonix to a pizza spot on the edge of town, and treated myself to a veggie pie with a liter of San Pellegrino all to myself. 

40

I admit this is a birthday I wanted to ignore. I mean, 40. Phew. The number might explain why I was so dog-days-of-summer tired, burnt out on sun and heat, and dreading a commitment to upcoming months of intensive training. I suppose this would be the best time to submit to a much-needed reset. But what would that say about my impending senescence, if a milestone birthday brought the perfect excuse for a silly adventure, and I just let it pass me by?

I'd first imagined the adventure one year ago, as I was jogging down Old Fall River Road after summiting three 13,000-foot peaks that just happened to be a ridge I wanted to traverse in Rocky Mountain National Park. "I did three 13ers for my 39th, which means I need to do four 14ers for my 40th!" The math didn't actually work out, and I don't even care all that much about 14ers. Mountains are mountains. But I admit, there is transcendental draw to climbing as high as one can go. The air is rarified in more ways than simple lack of oxygen.

I’m not sure when I decided that birthdays were for adventure. It was probably my 12th, when I pushed to host my own party at Magic Waters, the rundown waterpark near the prison. Being a kid with a late-summer birthday was always sort of hard. Friends were either out of town or busy with back-to-school. It felt anticlimactic to become the age that my peers had been for months. Twelve is probably the hardest age of them all, but it marked my becoming a “young woman.” I wanted to acknowledge this as something special. 

 The day of my birthday proved bleak with threatening thunderstorms. Pools cleared out as thunder rumbled, and then one of the shoddy waterslides was shut down due to an unspecified failure. A wildfire burned in the foothills, and black smoke billowed overhead. I remember gazing at the ominous sky and feeling a kind of foreboding, a gloom that lingered as adult hormones began to take hold — a sense that life was always in the process of ending … not beginning.

For my Four-14er adventure, I schemed a fairly straightforward route. The knee I injured in May remains slightly unstable, and some lingering pain was enough to justify taking no big chances with difficult terrain. I researched 14ers with reasonable proximity and routes that didn't go harder than an easy class two, and came up with Huron, Belford, Oxford and Missouri — four rubbly summits in the Sawatch Range. Sticking to standard routes would require 34 miles of hiking with 12,000 feet of climbing. Some of this could be cut off by driving a road, but even in my contrived adventures I am something of a purist, so I planned to hike every mile. I considered trying to knock it out in one day, but didn't want to risk wrenching my wobble knee on rubble in the dark. Plus, it's my birthday. This didn't have to be a sufferfest.


The day I turned 18 was my first and last experience with bungee jumping. I was accompanied by my senior-year boyfriend, Eric, who was a few years older and attended community college. He won my heart by offering to pick me up from high school every afternoon in his Saab, which saved the indignity of walking. After graduation, I returned the favor by dragging him on difficult hikes in the Wasatch Mountains. He always obliged, even when it was clear he was terrified of exposure. (In hindsight, 40-year-old me is even more fearful that he ever was, and I miss the chutzpah of my youth.) 

The final straw was the Pfeifferhorn, with its razor-thin ridge and loose-scree scramble up a vertical-looking face. During the descent, I crossed onto the steep snowfield above Lower Red Pine Lake and pulled a gallon-size Ziplock bag out of my pack. “Easier way down,” I suggested, knelt onto my “sled,” and immediately plummeted into an uncontrolled slide. I attempted to kick my body sideways — the way one stops a snowboard — and began to spin. The world gyrated in a blue and white blur. I remember feeling confident that if I couldn’t stop before I hit the lake I’d just swim, not acknowledging that my body would probably be spinning at freeway speeds when I hit the shallow water. Eventually the whirling slowed, my head stopped spinning, and I staggered onto my feet. The summit ridge was now hundreds of feet overhead. “Made it!” I called out, although Eric was too far away to hear. I wasn’t surprised when he turned to climb down the rocky side of the ridge. He still swears that he watched my limp body bounce across an exposed boulder field. He was amazed when I stood and raised my arms, apparently unscathed. We would never hike together again. 

He did, however, agree to go bungee jumping. We drove to the Fun Dome, a tower that loomed almost directly over Interstate 15. We paid for three jumps each. I remember the experience being nothing like I expected, noting like hiking big mountains. There was no thrill, no affirmation of life — just pain and nausea. This was the day I realized that I wasn’t, and would never be, an adrenaline junkie.


Thursday and Friday brought an encouraging weather window. It was a few days early, but the days surrounding my birthday were busy, and I'll avoid weekends at any chance. I found a lovely campsite just a quarter mile from the Missouri Gulch Trailhead, where I was packed and ready to start at 11:30 a.m. The campsite was ideal; it meant I'd get all of the road-walking — 12 miles' worth — out of the way on the first day. Although I'll admit that I quietly love boring, predictable road-walking. I don't have to watch where I put my feet, and there's no real concentration or effort to it. I can look up as much as I want, trace the contours of the mountains, wander through the landscape of my mind, and reflect on the past and future. Birthdays moved to the forefront of my mental reel. For a day of contrived importance during a month I never liked, I was surprised how impactful many of my birthdays have been.


If was lucky to survive to see 18, it was pure fluke that got me past 19. For the celebratory weekend, my friends and I went to the “beach” — the rocky shoreline of Jordanelle Reservoir. I had recently taken a short-lived interest in long-distance swimming, and announced plans to swim to the opposite shoreline and back. The water was cold, and I was relieved when my limbs adjusted to the shock. It took about 20 minutes of swimming to realize I was in a greater deal of trouble. My legs were so numb that I could no longer effectively kick, my shoulders were quaking, and my torso felt like a sack of refrigerated meat, too heavy to keep afloat. Survival instinct kicked in as I turned back toward shore. Fear was absent, but there was an urgency to my movements, and a primal understanding that sleepiness was my worst enemy. By the time I made it back to land, my core temperature had dropped substantially. I staggered onto the beach, feeling no relief, only numbness and blurred vision. My friends offered me a towel. There was a sharp electric jolt when my teeth finally started chattering. I huddled in direct sunlight amid 100-degree heat for the rest of the afternoon, shivering.

The jaunt up Mount Huron was fantastic. The trail cleared out by early afternoon, the skies remained friendly, and I made great time for relatively little effort. I even snagged a "CR" on a Strava segment out of 137 hikers — keeping in mind that women who label their ascents as runs aren't included in the hiking segments. Still, the recovery from my knee injury has been a little frustrating. There were times when I wondered if I'd ever be able to use it normally again. That I can still charge up a mountain at a reasonably fast clip is gratifying.

Huron is just barely a 14er at 14,003 feet. But it's high, and somewhere above 12,000 feet, I found myself wavering. After a number of years dealing with asthma and thyroid-related breathing difficulties, I've become well-acquainted with oxygen deprivation — both physical and mental effects. Low blood oxygen often begins as a mild euphoria, a feeling of transcendence, before plummeting into crushing fatigue and depression. But those early effects, I will admit, are magical. I floated through the rarified air, dancing through a semi-dream state. Such an empty, gorgeous place to have to myself, so unhindered. I can't believe this life has given me 40 years. What a gift.

The universe has often been kind to me when I didn’t deserve grace. My 21st birthday demanded a night of low-rent debauchery at the Red Garter, a rundown casino in Wendover, Nevada. My friends were at the bar when I snuck off to the roulette wheel. Empowered by my legal adulthood, I put two dollars on 21, which landed. Seventy dollars in hand, I was about to walk away, but a flutter of still-unappreciated adrenaline hit. I placed $20 back on the number 21, reasoning that the rest was more than enough winnings. To my utter astonishment, the number landed again. What I felt in that moment was less like an adrenaline rush and more like horror, as this was an obscene amount of undeserved money. 

Embarrassed, I didn’t tell my friends about the big win. A few months later, the saved money would go toward the purchase of a ’96 Geo Prism. I’d burned out the engine of my ’89 Toyota Tercel during the return trip from Wendover, while attempting to max out the speed gauge across the Bonneville Salt Flats.

I wrapped up the first leg in about seven hours, which gave me all evening to cook dinner, relax, and read my Kindle in the tent. This felt like undeserved opulence during my supposed birthday vision quest. I slept poorly though, weirdly overheated at 9,000 feet, and a little anxious about the following day. Mountains do scare me. They didn't so much when I was 18, but the fear is worsening as I age, mistakes stack up alongside experience, and my understanding of consequences deepens. Just because lifespans hit 80 or 100 years old, doesn't mean we'll get another minute. The chaotic workings of the universe decide our timeline. We have some say, though, and it's counterproductive to take risks. Risk-taking may not be the best path to a long life, but few would dispute that risks are necessary for a good life. So I seek, and also I fret.

Anticipating a long day with more uncertainty about the weather, I was back on the trail by 5:30 a.m. The trailhead parking lot was already full, and dozens of people had set out in the predawn darkness. Colorado 14er culture is amusing. I can't say I fit in with this crowd, with their alpine starts and cardboard signs bearing the altitude of each peak, but I'm here, all the same. It was a lovely morning, but the wind was already howling by sunrise. I crossed a valley scoured by recent avalanches. It looked as though a bomb had hit, with massive trees littered like toothpicks down the slope. The power of mountains ... we underestimate it, all of us.

The day I turned 24 was the day I embarked on a 3,200-mile bicycle tour to New York. Having spent most of the summer driving around Alaska and only casually hiking and mountain biking, the weight and wobbly handling of my fully loaded touring bike was an unpleasant surprise. The rim brakes squealed as we descended out of the Avenues neighborhood. We merged onto Interstate 80, sadly the only way east out of Salt Lake City. For the rest of the afternoon we pedaled that unpleasant freeway shoulder toward Park City, under the hot August sun, with barely any training on my young legs. My heart soared with an exhilarating sense of freedom. This would be my greatest adventure. Life wasn’t just ending one day at a time; it was always in the process of beginning anew.

By 8 a.m. I reached the summit of Mount Belford, a tiny nipple on a broad ridge soaring 14,203 feet over far-away oceans, and closer to 4,500 feet over Clear Creek, where I'd camped. The ridge was windy and cold, and I didn't linger.

The steep descent to the saddle between Belford and Oxford brought a bout of dizziness. I'd been too high for too long. This segment wasn't going to be quite as effortless as the previous day, but I was resolved to keep up as strong of a pace as I could manage, because the "weather" was coming — and I can't always count on the universe to be kind.

Oxford is a little lower than Belford, 14,160 feet. I hit this summit at 8:45 a.m., and tried to stuff down a protein bar. My stomach was having none of that nonsense. Ugh, altitude. The rapture of the heights had faded. Gloom and doom crept into the foreground. "It's just oxygen," I told myself, a reminder that my perceptions were shaded by body chemistry, and reality wasn't nearly so dark.

By 26 I was embroiled in a quarter-life crisis. My parents visited me in Idaho Falls and brought a birthday gift, a cabinet set for my apartment. The furniture felt like a sign that I needed to stop being so wishy-washy, set better anchors, and focus on my career and future. Two days later, my long-distance boyfriend — with whom I believed I’d finally severed ties; I was even dating other people — decided to drive all the way down from Alaska and talk me into returning with him to the Last Frontier. Adventure lust took hold, an unstoppable force set in motion. Everything after that happened in quick succession, as though the universe was making decisions for me. By mid-September I had a newspaper job, an cabin high on a ridge above Kachemak Bay, and a whole new life in Homer, Alaska.

Descending just a thousand feet made such a difference. The ridge from Belford to Elkhead Pass was stunning — high basins and peaks over every horizon. I skidded down snowfields to return to Missouri Basin, where I'd connect with the final 2,000-foot climb to my fourth peak, Missouri Mountain. My emotions were in a brighter place, but I felt solidly nauseated by this point, forcing down applesauce to keep the glucose flowing. My calves started to cramp. At times I was forced to kneel down and wait for the gripping pain to release. The route snaked through a tumble of boulders beneath a cliff face, well-defined but far from easy. Clouds began to gather overhead. The steep side-slope made me feel uneasy. The 13,000-foot mark is where the mental darkness returned. Misery mountain. It's probably best I saved this one for last.

The summit ridge was longer than I'd expected, rolling ceaselessly toward never-ending false summits. The off-camber surface was loose and rubbly, and the footing was bad. As I neared the peak, exposure became more pronounced. At times I knelt low because I didn't trust my shoes not to slip off the side. I rounded a rock outcropping just in time to see a man I'd been shadowing for some time, scrambling on all fours up the seemingly vertical side slope. His motions were frantic. Dust swirled around him as he emitted a harrowing, guttural growl. I could only surmise that he actually did slip off the trail. He recovered his stance and looked up at me. I couldn't quite see his expression, but I could sense what he was communicating. Be very careful. I didn't want to go. I didn't want to be here anymore, on this high mountain with its poor footing, clouds already rolling in, stomach and leg muscles revolting. The true summit of Missouri Mountain was now less than 500 horizontal feet away. Could I really justify turning back now? Why are mountain summits so symbolic?

By the time I hit 30, the boyfriend had broken it off for good, and I was bitterly single, somewhat homeless, and stuck in a stressful and all-consuming job in isolated and rain-soaked Juneau, Alaska. Unsurprisingly, I took this milestone birthday hard. I planned a barbecue at the house where I was crashing, inviting the few friends who hadn’t shrunk away amid the awkwardness with my ex. I dreaded this party, and posted sad memes on Facebook about how I didn’t think anyone was going to show up. The night before my birthday, I spent hours after work preparing food in my friends’ kitchen, staying up well past 3 a.m., just so I’d have the time to check out for most of the following day. My new plan was to finally tackle Mount McGinnis — and thus, make my own way "over the hill." The nipple-shaped peak over the Mendenhall Valley was one of the most prominent summits in Juneau. The 4,000-foot ascent on muddy roots and tundra was exhausting, and it rained most of the way down. Near the bottom I took an hard fall that would prove to not be my last injuring accident on a mountain on my birthday. Still, I hadn’t felt so satisfied in a long time. There was a sense that the mountains would always be there. No matter what changed in my life, mountains would remain.

Symbolism, and the stories we tell, form the base of our lives. I knew I couldn't turn my back on four 14ers at this point. Cold wind buffeted my legs as I side-stepped off the crumbling trail and climbed onto the rock outcropping, hoping the scramble would go. It was such a relief to be back on solid ground, even ground that was somewhat technical and exposed. I scooted up a few pitches that proved more tricky to down-climb with heavy fatigue, knotted calves and a wobble knee, but nothing was terribly difficult. Suddenly I was standing on top of Missouri, elevation 14,075 feet. Mountains conquered — if not fear.

I looked back at the tiny nipple of Mount Belford. The profile reminded me of Mount McGinnis, which renewed reflections on a birthday adventure that's now a decade in the past. How does so much time just slip away? I suppose that's why we seek out these memorable experiences, these connections to the stories that go on. 

How I intend to spend my mid-life crisis

 In one more week, I'll be 40 years old. As the black balloon birthday approaches at breakneck speed, I also came down with a mild case of post-adventure blues, courtesy of the Summer Bear. Hammering solo through two sleepless nights drained more out of me than I cared to admit. My hormones were depleted, and tinges of sadness trickled into the void. As a general insomniac, sleep deprivation tends to cause more sleep deprivation, and by Tuesday I was in full zombie mode. So on Wednesday, I returned to the gym. I hoped a good session would help work out some of the crimps in my back and shoulders, left over from aggressive bike-pushing. But more than that, I really look forward to visiting the gym these days. Yes, it has air conditioning, and there's that. But also, there are few places I find such definitive purpose right now — in quantifiable ways I see myself building strength, and this sparks hope.

Lat pulldowns are the quickest cure for bike-pushing aches, and adventure planning is the quickest cure for post-adventure blues. It had to be right quick, too, because I needed an adventure in time for my birthday. I couldn't let 40 come and go without doing something. The week of my actual birthday is already booked, and this coming week I could only squeeze in a day or two, preferably close to home. Without too much rumination, I got it in my head that I needed to aim for four 14ers. I climbed three 13ers for my 39th birthday, and it was a formative and rewarding experience. So four 14ers for 40 just made sense. Never mind that, with the exception of the Decalibron (yawn), bagging four such mountains is no small effort. Especially given my tentative situation with my MCL, where abilities are still being tested. Chossy rock scrambles, steep slopes covered in loose talus, and boulder hopping would be several steps too far in anything but small doses. So I needed mountains with Class 1 to easy-2 approaches, which usually means climbing all the way up and then descending all the way down a popular mountain on its main trail. Finally, I settled on four peaks in the Sawatch, where a 33-mile route with close to 12,000 feet of climbing would suffice. Even if I spread that over two days, it's a big bite compared to any other foot effort I've made in more than three months. And I've only been legitimately free of injury for about three weeks.

So, let the training begin! I climbed the west ridge of Bear Peak on Thursday, logging an encouragingly fast time. On Friday I waited until 11 a.m. to start a run up Santias, set out on the fully sun-exposed ridge when it was 92 degrees, and completely cooked myself before I was even halfway up the mountain. It was bad. I stumbled onto the summit and sat down, feeling terribly woozy. My vision was blurring, my heart was racing, and when I held my hand to my face, I could see that it was trembling. That's when I noticed my shoulders were quaking, too. "Oh shit," I said out loud. Heat exhaustion? Not a serious case, but absolutely, this was a mild bout of heat exhaustion. I crawled into a pathetic square of dappled shade beneath a scrub tree, and after 10 minutes decided it would be best to just get myself off the mountain as quickly as possible. As quickly as possible turned out to be the slowest I've ever descended Mount Santias, but I did make it down. Humbled.

Things did get better. On Saturday I allowed for a short and relatively mellow bike ride to test out my new helmet, after the Summer Bear put the terminal dent in one I've been using for nearly five years. Beat found a deal for both of us to acquire the Giro Aether MIPS — lightweight, excessive venting, and superior protection, based on a number of reviews. Light roadie helmets are best for my propensity to ride long with a sensitive neck, so I'm a fan. On Sunday, I ran 15 miles at Walker Ranch and Eldorado Canyon. It was relatively uneventful, which is exactly what I was hoping for.


Monday rolled around — my last chance at a training day before a short taper. (Ha!) I was going to return to Sanitas, but the trauma was still fresh enough to recoil at the thought of running that sun-blasted ridge again. The sky was blue and the forecast was refreshingly thunderstorm-free — and it was supposed to be 65 degrees at 10,000 feet versus 90 in town. Beat had spent Saturday night on an all-night training run around Buchanan and Pawnee Pass with his PTL partner Daniel, and I was envious of his mountain adventure. So I made a last-minute swerve to pack up my hiking backpack and head over to Brainard Lake for a jaunt up Mount Audubon.

 I felt good, encouragingly so. My knee wasn't sore or unstable in spite of the Summer Bear, followed without much rest by my highest-mileage running week of the summer (27 miles! Woo!) I was sleeping well again, and felt fully recovered.

 The wind above treeline was intense, blowing at least 40 mph most of the time. With an ambient temperature that was probably in the low 50s, the windchill was impressive. It felt legitimately cold. I relished in the thrill of shivering and goosebumps, and put off adding more layers for a long time. I eventually did pull on a hat and shell, after I'd reached the summit and my ears and fingers had long since gone numb. But before that, as I climbed into the blasting gale, I was mostly lost in a different world, only popping into the present to make mental notes of places I passed.

"The wind training here is probably just as good as Niwot, although I'll have to cross-check the slopes for avalanche exposure."

"This would be a decent place to hunker down and bivy."

"St. Vrain would be great for a long snowshoe loop."

I was thinking about the way this landscape would look in the winter, long after the lakes are frozen, the rocks are covered in snow, the windchill becomes more terrifying than thrilling, and any attempt to climb a 13,200-foot summit would be a whole lot more difficult than a four-hour hike in the summer. I find this is mostly what I think about right now — wistfully, when I have heat exhaustion, and a little more anxiously when I'm faced with the realities of a chilling gale in August. But it's my whole preoccupation: Winter training.

 As my black balloon birthday approaches, so does an important six-month deadline — the one I set for myself when I put my name on the list four months ago. "You have to decide for sure by the end of August," I scolded myself. I could get away with base-building before then, but training would have to begin in earnest when the event is just six months out. Now the date approaches. And it's time to take a dump or get off the pot, so to speak.

So what did I sign up for?

A thousand-mile walk along the Iditarod Trail, all the way to Nome.

Yes, I said walk. Ever since I completed the route with a bicycle in 2016, I've been certain that the Iditarod Trail on foot is something I wanted to do. The ultimate challenge. A most pure and raw way to experience a pure and raw place that I love. I was briefly planning to walk the route 2017, but then my health fell apart drastically, and I was diagnosed with Graves Disease. I managed a trial run in 2018, a walk to McGrath. This meager effort tore me apart so completely that I'm still trying to process the experience. I've been chipping away at writing a race report for the 2018 Iditarod Trail Invitational, if only to make sense of what happened, and to justify reasons why I could be better next time, if I allow myself a next time. But writing about it only leads to the same conclusion — "Walking to Nome is impossible."

 Here's the rub — one has 31 days to complete the 980-or-so-mile route. Thirty-one days is the race cutoff, yes, but it's also a necessary deadline to beat spring. Having spent most of March 2019 residing in Nome, I can say with some certainty that even 31 days isn't going to stay ahead of the more dangerous aspects of the melt, which arrive earlier every year (the Bering Sea shoreline broke up on March 15.) But for optimistic purposes, let's give ourselves 31 days. That's 31 miles a day, dragging a 50- to 60-pound sled, in all weather, in all conditions. One rest day, one day where storms inhibit progress, just a sprinkle of bad days here and there increase the mileage requirement substantially. And this isn't like running a 50K every day. The weight of the sled, weather challenges and variable-but-always-resistant snow conditions make it closer to hiking four 14ers with 12,000 feet of climbing.

It's not just the math that keeps me up at night, but the realities that math will bring. The necessary sleep deprivation that will drive me to those dark, discouraging places in the depths of my mind. Dealing with debilitating fatigue during storms and sketchy ice crossings, when I most need my wits to be sharp. Actually pushing limits for a month. A month! Just 1.5 days of Summer Bear gave me a terrifying taste. And the solitude — the deep and seemingly eternal solitude. This actually is one of the draws for me, but also by far one of the scariest aspects of walking to Nome. The entire field of the ITI will be ahead of me, the dog sled race will pass me by, and then I'm going to be all alone out there. Utterly alone. Encased in a depth of solitude and necessary self-sufficiency that few can grasp in the modern world.

Some will ask if Beat is planning to walk to Nome again. He is. But we won't plan to stick together. It's not what I want. The short answer is that Beat's pace would kill me, and if I forced him to stick to my pace, we might end up killing each other. I joke, but the whole reason I want to do this is for the unprecedented solitude and self-reliance. If I planned to have a partner, I'd rather that partner be my bicycle. Beat I can plan an actual fun adventure to do as a couple. I'm thinking, if I survive, New Zealand will be my demand for 2021. ;-)

But it's only been two years since I dragged my sled 312 miles in 8.5 days, which math says is just under 37 miles a day. That effort just about killed me, and the thought of trying to keep it up for three times as long is ... well ... it's impossible. As far as I know, the walk to Nome has been completed by only two other women in under 31 days. The first, Shawn McTaggart, competed the Southern Route in 2013 in 30.5 days, and the Northern Route in 2014 in 28.5 days. Loreen Hewitt, at age 58, set the record on the Northern Route in 2014, 26.25 days. I had the pleasure of accompanying Loreen for much of the route to McGrath when I first walked the short distance in 2014. I was able to observe her patterns and get a sense for her strategy. I know enough to know that Loreen is an incredible athlete, with endurance I can't match even though I'm 18 years younger than she was then. Also, her pace would kill me.

Still, I scheme. I imagine what my training will look like — strength training, and lots of it. I read reports about fastest-known-time attempts on thru-hiking routes, to get a better sense of what others do to push themselves to the limit day in and day out, without the benefits of a bicycle. And now I need to decide. Either I put my intentions out there and train as though I intend to achieve them, or withdraw my name from the roster and shrink back to lesser ambitions. I hoped the Summer Bear and its test of fortitude would help me decide, but it didn't. Perhaps four 14ers on my tentative two feet will do the trick.

The walk to Nome is impossible, though. It's still impossible. It will always be impossible.

I'm pretty sure I wrote this phrase in one of my books, but the fact that something's impossible has never been a good reason not to try.