Gasping for goals

Like many people, I'm adrift right now. A thick fog has obscured the horizon, and it feels strange to try to set a course. What will life look like in 2021? Is it even worth training for a race, or trying to finish any one of my now-silly-seeming book projects? Every day seems to bring new waves of absurdity, and it's tempting to at least daydream about abandoning ship and taking my chances with the abyss. Marrying Beat has been a comforting anchor to toss into this maelstrom of a year, but there's still a lot of uncertainty out there. I've become better at taking deep breaths, observing what's directly in front of me, and acknowledging the beauty I see and the gratitude I feel. But I've gotten so used to anticipation, to planning, to goals. What does one even do with a day, if not make progress toward a foreseeable future? 

It helped to remember that there were a few more things I wanted to do with summer before snow swept over the mountains. Despite that September snow that now feels like it happened years ago, summer has dragged into a particularly long, hot, and smoky October. Beat recently purchased one of those Purple Air sensors, and these days I check the Air Quality Index before I even bother checking the weather. If pollution has climbed into the orange zone (above 100), I avoid going outside ... although lately, I've become increasingly stubborn about this. I see shadows of the person I was when I was living in Juneau, where it was often 37 degrees and raining. Even though I knew there was pretty much no way to avoid becoming hypothermic (I tried everything), I'd go out for long bike rides anyway. I'd accept and then suffer the consequences because I want to do what I want to do. Smoky days are like that, but with lung-searing particulate matter that may have long-term health consequences. Those days of wet underwear and uncontrolled shivering seem so quaint. 

Air quality was nudging dangerously close to the orange zone when Beat and I set out last Sunday morning to do the second thing on my top-three list: The Pawnee-Buchanan loop. This Front Range classic ascends two passes over the Continental Divide and packs 7,200 feet of climbing into 27 miles. I'd had some trouble recovering from the beating my legs took during our "Big Lonesome" bushwhack, and air quality had been poor all week. But I took faith in a forecast for strong west winds, which I hoped would drive out the smoke from fires that were mainly burning to the south and north of these mountains. 

Of course, fires have been burning great swaths of forest since July. Most of the West is shrouded in smoke by now. The wind was merely a conveyer, driving smog that had settled into the valleys directly into our path. While driving to the trailhead in the hot and smoky predawn darkness, I became deeply nauseated. I blamed car sickness, but really, it was closer to pollution reactions I experienced earlier in the summer. We arrived at Brainard Lake just after 7 a.m. and the parking lot was already full. We took the last spot among dozens of cars with tailgates swung open and babies screaming from all directions. Beat seemed agitated and I knew he was going to take off like a flash to gain distance from the crowds. I choked down bile and pushed to keep up with him. 

I think there might have been a time, in the distant past now, when feeling so terrible at the start of a marathon hike would have caused me to concede that it wasn't my day. But I'd infused these arbitrary goals with a racing mindset. In a race, nausea is not enough of a setback to justify quitting. You've just got to power through. And maybe if you're lucky, your body will give you a little reset in the form of vomiting. But this was not that kind of nausea — not anchored in my digestive system, at least. This was a vague yet full-body queasiness, clinging to a bit of a headache, that I imagine the beginning of a migraine might feel like. What else could cause this sort of reaction besides smoke? I took a few big sips of water and continued shuffling over the loose rocks littering the trail.

I began to feel better as we ascended a mire of moondust and ball-bearing gravel to gain Buchanan Pass. Winds were still relatively light and inversions still held most of the smoke to the valleys. We descended into the golden forest along Buchanan Creek, which we were pleased to find hadn't been knocked down by the straight-line winds that ravaged nearby valleys a month earlier. That must have been such a strange storm. I imagined fingers of microbursts flattening one drainage while sparing another. 

We commenced the 4,000-foot ascent to Pawnee Pass, and I turned on an audiobook of Stephen Hawking's "Brief Answers to Big Questions." I recall reading the theoretical physicist's "A Brief History of Time" a seeming hundred years ago when I was a college student roiled in a faith crisis. Now, like then, I found great comfort in Hawking's frank discussions of nebulous ideas rooted in complex science. It's a lot to chew on when your brain is addled with fatigue and clouded with smog, but it's also more nourishing to digest in this state. An affirmation of: "The universe is infinite, time is a construct, you're nothing more than a story you tell yourself, and that's okay." 

On this day, my story was a bit of a hero's tale where I overcome the smog of body and soul and conquer a mountain. I like this story, which is why I pursue it often. I know it's silly and fleeting, but then again, so is much of this story we call life. 

As we ascended into a fortress of rock shrouded in haze, Beat seemed to flag as well. Pawnee Pass is an impressive col, carved into formidable cliffs where passage appears unlikely until you're standing on top of the Divide. The trail is narrow and it's difficult to focus on anything but the obstacles directly in my path: the rocks and rubble, the dropoffs, the steep grade. But when I turn my gaze skyward, I'm struck by an all-encompassing awe that consumes any emotional wavering or physical complaint. In the scope of the unknowable, I can almost see where all of these disparate pieces link together. Hawking has a quote for this, too: 

“So, remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult may life seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up.” 

We made our way over the pass as the autumn daylight grew long, darkening the smog layer over the plains. When I caught up to a Beat he was sitting on a rock, looking nonchalant. But then he told me he took a tumble, jamming his thumb and slamming his chest into sharp rocks. The chest hit knocked the wind out of his sails. His hand was bleeding. He'd spend the rest of the week unable to lie comfortably in bed while nursing a deep bruise. Usually, I'm the one to take these sorts of hits, so I empathize. It sucks to have to limp out afterward. It sucks to face however many days or weeks of injury because of a moment's lapse of balance. But there's nothing else you can do. Just keep moving forward. 

Beat and I spent the next few days recovering — he trying his hardest not to roll over in bed, and me waiting for that burning sensation in my lungs to subside. The parched and hot weather continued, with Denver enduring its first October 90s in more than a century. But there was a storm on the horizon, slated to drop snow on the mountains on Sunday. I hoped for many feet of snow but also acknowledged that this might close my window for summer mountain goals. One goal that stayed on my shortlist despite its redundancy and silliness was to leave home on my bike, ride all the way to the top of Mount Evans, and return home that day. I mapped out a loop that added up to 148 miles with 18,000 feet of climbing. Phew! 

The impending storm made it clear that I only had Thursday or Friday to attempt this silliness. Air quality is tough to predict; it's a localized condition affected by wind direction more than anything else. But with heat and low humidity intensifying all of the nearby fires, it seemed likely to me that the air was only going to become worse until it snowed. The forecast predicted stronger southwest winds on Thursday, which would add quite a bit of resistance to the Evans climb, but stood a chance of driving away smoke from the fires to the north. Either way, it was a gamble. I was split evenly on stay or go when I went to bed. Five minutes before my 5 a.m. alarm, I woke up in a start and checked the AQI on my phone before I'd even fully opened my eyes. 164. That's bad. I laid back down, blinking into the hot blackness of the morning. 

"You know what, who cares?" I grumbled quietly and sat back up. "There's no bad weather, only bad mask-wearing." 

I got out of bed and went through the motions. I ate some banana-maple oatmeal that I'd strongly regret for the first eight hours of the day. Then I wheeled my bike into the driveway at 6 a.m. The predawn sky was a blackboard dusted in chalky haze, high smog mixed with distant light pollution. The half-moon glowed overhead in an alarming shade of pumpkin orange. The air smelled like smoke. I have a terrible sense of smell, to the point where I have my doubts that I'd even notice this particular symptom should I ever come down with COVID, but I could smell smoke. 

"Sorry lungs, we're doing this," I thought. 

I started out with a KN95 mask on. My plan was to wear this mask at intervals throughout the ride to mitigate exposure. Of course, I gave up on it about two miles from my house and didn't bother to put it on again until I finished the climb up Gap Road, three hours into the day. It is just too hard to push my exhaled breath out of that mask, and mild asthma was already making exhaling difficult. I climbed along the rural roads of Gilpin County, passing more Trump signs than I have ever seen in Colorado before drifting onto intimidating backcountry jeep roads. I hoped they weren't private. I hoped they didn't dead-end on the property of an unfriendly gun owner. The bike bucked and shimmied as I surfed through deep sand, finally spilling out onto Virginia Canyon Road, a gravel track that was a lot rougher than I remembered. I reached Idaho Springs feeling fairly exhausted, coughing from airway inflammation. This is usually where a hard ride to Mount Evans starts. The summit was only 27 miles and a solid 7,000 feet of climbing away. 

For this long day out, I downloaded two audiobooks: "What Unites Us" by Dan Rather, and "Where There's a Will" by Emily Chappell. Dan Rather's book was a comforting stream of commentary, like a warm cup of ginger tea for my unsettled mind. Dan Rather was a childhood hero of mine. Really, I admired all of the news anchors on television as well as the faceless bylines of the columnists I read in the Salt Lake Tribune. I've been an avid consumer of journalism for as long as I can remember. Now I long for those days that seem like a hundred years ago, when we trusted our news sources, when an investigative reporter's exhaustive pursuit of truth still held clout over the people who spout baseless opinions about what they want to be true. Now Dan Rather is nearly 90 years old and still commenting on current events via social media. He has some of the more realistic and yet hopeful observations of most of the journalists I follow, so I'll seek out his Facebook account whenever something particularly disheartening has happened. He is my breath of fresh air. I enjoyed the seven hours I spent with him via this audiobook he wrote and recorded back in 2017. It reads like a blueprint for the next three years. The notion that he so clearly saw what was coming, and still maintains hope, gives me something to cling to as well.  

Just after 3 p.m., I rolled past Summit Lake at 12,800 feet and waved to the last two cyclists I'd see that day. I was the last person on the mountain, grinding what felt like the last strands of leg muscle into every pedal stroke and breathing through increasingly ragged lungs. By now "What Unites Us" had ended and rolled over to Emily Chappell's account of the Transcontinental Race across Europe, which she narrates herself with lyrical storytelling. I became a bit weepy early in the book, well before the truly crushing events commenced, when she was still dealing merely with the insecurities and physical pains of the race. For much of the climb, I had to step off my bike so I could stretch my back and take careful bites of a peanut butter sandwich between nauseated gulps. During one of these stops, when I was still about two interminable miles from the summit, she described post-race depression in a way that unexpectedly launched the waterworks. 

"The world is right there — just past your fingertips — but you can't reach it, no matter how close it seems, and how easy it should be just to step forward, or kick harder, or stretch a tiny bit farther, and grasp it in your hand." 

I reached the summit just after 4 p.m., which was the exact time I'd projected when I mapped out this ride, but in the moment felt irresponsibly late and shamefully slow. I had the entire mountain to myself now. A southwest wind neared gale force at 14,000 feet, but it still wasn't cold. I could no longer smell smoke, but I could see it all around me. There were no views of Denver or even the Indian Peaks. All I could see was this gray haze, and above it, the pyrocumulus cloud of the Cameron Peak Fire blowing up more than 75 miles away. I paused my audiobook player and sat on the platform where the summit sign used to be, choking down the rest of my sandwich. After Colorado decided to keep the road closed through 2020, the governor issued an order to remove the sign and review a possible name change. Mount Evans was named for a territorial governor who was implicated in, and later defended, the Sand Creek Massacre, in which as many as 500 Cheyenne and Arapaho Native Americans were murdered. It all so ... just ... argh! Why does it have to be this way? Why does everything we love in America have to simultaneously be rotten at the roots and burning out of control? 

I'd already gotten my cry out of the way, so I turned my back to the Cameron Peak Fire and finished my sandwich while looking for mountain goats. It seemed they'd moved on for the season. What do mountain goats do all winter long? I've long wondered but never taken the time to research it. I made a mental note to Google it later and put on a jacket for the upcoming 10,000-foot descent. It was the first time in more than ten hours I wasn't either climbing or hanging on for dear life on a rocky or dusty downhill, and I relished the sense of relief as I coasted the lonely road at speeds that for too long seemed unfathomable. Normally I find the Mount Evans pavement jarring, but it's all relative. I was floating on air, and I was happy. I really was. It takes some real energy for me to work out my demons these days. But when they've finally settled somewhere far away in a distant haze, the tranquility is sublime. 

I wish I could say the remaining eight hours of the ride were equally peaceful. Shortly after a brief climb above Echo Lake, a wasp hit my face and stung the side of my nose. For the remainder of the descent into Bergan Park, things were bad. I couldn't even open my left eye and had tears streaming out of my right eye. My skin pulsed with pain. I thought my entire face would swell into an unrecognizable blob. But as these things do, the fierce pain eventually subsided and nothing much happened to my face. By the time I had to turn on my headlights, I was able to open both eyes again. I dodged an alarming stream of Thursday-night traffic on Lookout Mountain, including a clearly drunk guy who darted right in front of me while screaming "biker, hey biker!" (I abruptly swerved and did not stop. No way.) I became lost while winding through the maze of Golden, finally happened on a gas station that elicited a yelp of glee (I had been out of water for a while.) Inside the gas station, I wandered around in a daze unable to decide on anything, and instead of purchasing anything appetizing, walked out with two blue Gatorades and a peanut butter cookie. ("Why? I'm sick of peanut butter.") I was still lost and looking for bike paths when I wandered onto the singletrack of North Table Mountain and thought ... eh, why not? So I bounced and bucked on my gravel bike with my tired legs and still-teary eyes, finally greeting the busy shoulder of Highway 93 with a sigh of relief. It was all downhill from here, except for all of those rolling climbs, and, oh yeah, the 2,500-foot ascent to the top of Flagstaff Road with its 14-percent grades that still wouldn't quite bring me home. My lungs whistled with every breath. I took the Walk of Shame on the Wall of Pain and was stopped twice by cars full of college students who I presume were heading to lookouts. I was tired of everyone and bleary-eyed, but when I turned around to look at city lights shrouded in haze, I felt like I could see clearly again. 

"That's the world. It's everywhere around you. Maybe it's dark and shrouded in uncertainty, but as long as you can move forward, there are no limits."

Shades of the apocalypse

I was quarantined for four days but it felt like weeks — sleeping alone, jogging along empty dirt roads, and ruminating on doomsday until I felt genuine gratitude for 2020, because "these are probably still the good times." During these darkening autumn days still singed with record heat and wildfire smoke, I decided that should health prevail, I was going to finish up the summer endurance projects I mapped out at the beginning of the season. I wanted to run the Pawnee-Buchanan loop, ride to the top of Mount Evans from home, and finally connect Devil's Thumb Pass to the elusive Caribou Pass on a loop I called "Big Lonesome." 

Big Lonesome was the most interesting and also arguably the easiest endeavor on my list — 28 miles with 7,200 feet of climbing, but all on trail and topping out just above 12,000 feet. Compared to the endless block talus, chunder gullies, steep ridges, and relentless high altitude of our recent mountain traverses, Big Lonesome would be a piece of cake. "We can even run some of it," I said to Beat, as though actual runnable terrain was the most compelling part of all. 

Monday's forecast called for real cold. A high of 37 at 9,000 feet, which would mean if the wind was cranking at 12,000 feet, it was going to be brrrrr. I speculated as much to Beat — "remember Niwot Ridge in January?" and packed insulated shorts and a balaclava on top of my usual mountain layers. Beat still wore his thin bib shorts, insisting that "my legs rarely get cold." Let me just state for the record that this argument baffles me. Legs are part of the same vascular system as everything else in the body. Cold wind on exposed skin will cool blood rapidly, and that cold blood is going to end up in your core. Where does this reasoning from shorts enthusiasts even come from? 

The temperature for our 7:15 a.m. start was 24 degrees, causing Beat to scrunch up his face as soon as we stepped out of the car. I thought it felt amazing. The crispest of crisp autumn mornings — the kind where I'm cozy in my pants and vest, but when a breeze brushes my face, I can almost taste a sharp infusion of energy. This exhilaration was almost immediately followed by sadness. I recently spent far too much alone time reading about climate change research, which shows how even mild cold will become increasingly rare  — confined to higher latitudes, deeper winter, and unpredictable shifts in the Arctic Vortex. Whenever I think about change, I feel a preemptive sense of loss. But I refused to stifle the frosty zing of mountain air with dull heartache. Not today. One lesson 2020 has taught me is to not pin anything on an uncertain future. All we have is now.

This cold and stunningly clear morning was more than enough. The summer crowds have largely faded, and we only passed one other couple near Hessie townsite during our blitz to Devil's Thumb Pass. Fall colors in the region are muted this year, with only patches of gold amid the faded green of aspen groves. The tundra is now copper and beige. As we crested the Continental Divide, I remembered the way this ridge used to burst with life, when it was a thick carpet of green speckled with wildflowers, just three months ago. Change is swift, here and everywhere. 

The breeze was already brisk at 9 a.m., and my water hose froze. After criticizing Beat's shorts, I ended up feeling underdressed myself. I had plenty of layers in my backpack, but I felt a strange reluctance to stop for the jacket and balaclava that dominated my thoughts. Why? Beat was marching, and I wanted to keep up. The wind was cranking, and I didn't want to stop moving. Beat noted that he could smell smoke, but my sinuses were so clogged that I no longer bothered trying to breathe through my nose. I just put my head down and marched, and hoped the wind would relent soon.

"We're heading back down into the trees," Beat reasoned when I asked whether he planned to put on a jacket. 

"All downhill from here," I quipped. I appreciated that this mountain adventure only briefly tagged the frigid alpine zones. I looked forward to easy trail miles as opposed to an arduous ridge traverse. My legs felt peppy and my feet more nimble than usual. I was able to dance around rocks and pick up speed as we descended toward the valley. Running! In the mountains! There's no better feeling. If I had been looking at something besides the ground, I might have noticed the bigger picture — a ripple of flattened trees, perhaps, or the ominous haze darkening the horizon. Living in the moment is exhilarating, but in hindsight, some forward-thinking can prevent a lot of misery. 

We soon dropped below treeline and almost immediately encountered piles of uprooted trees strewn across the trail. Deadfall is a frequent obstacle in these pine beetle-ravaged forests, so I didn't think much of it. But within a half-mile, we found ourselves climbing over fallen giants, wending around 15-foot-high walls of roots and dirt, and groping for weaknesses amid impenetrable tangles of branches. 

"This is dangerous," Beat argued. The deadfall pile continued down-canyon as far as we could see. Massive tree trunks had snapped and splintered into treacherous blades. Some trees were suspended more than six feet off the ground, propped up by still-healthy limbs. Going over or under these precariously suspended widowmakers seemed like, well, a death wish.

"It has to be avalanche debris," I reasoned, imagining a spring slide driving concrete-like blocks of snow and ice down from Devil's Thumb Pass. Wet slides can be destructive but they don't travel far, usually. I felt confident that if we could find a way around the pile, we'd be free of the tangle and back to running easy on the trail. 

"This trail is part of the CDT," I reasoned. "It's a major trail." 

We picked our way to the edge of the canyon, climbed until the slope became too steep to support solid footing, then descended back to the slightly more stable ground only to encounter yet more impenetrable deadfall. The trail itself was entirely buried. I could trace the track on my GPS, but from 200 feet away, all I could see was mayhem, as though someone dropped a bomb here. Deadfall wasn't confined to the creekbed; it extended hundreds of feet up the mountainside. Evidence was mounting that this was not the work of an avalanche, but I'd created such a convincing story in my mind that it was difficult to see past it. 

"We just need to get lower in the valley," I reasoned. "There's this road on the map; it's not far."

Beat reminded me that at our pace — crawling up and down sideslopes at a half-mile per hour — any distance was far. Maybe the road was buried as well. Maybe the mayhem went on for miles. How could we know? 

I blustered back that such a scenario was so unlikely. "I was here just three years ago, with Leslie when she hiked the CDT. It was an easy cruiser trail then. How could it possibly change so much in three years?"

We continued along the sideslope, balancing precariously across a loose rockslide before dropping back to the bomb blast. It was only getting worse. The road marked on my GPS was nowhere to be found. I vocally conceded defeat, but then Beat suggested climbing to the top of the ridge to seek cleaner ground. From there, we looked down on an open swamp that looked not terribly far away, and I knew this was where the trail turned north and climbed out of this godforsaken drainage. It had to get better from there. Still, it was clear the ridge dropped precipitously from where we stood, and it seemed unlikely we'd find a way down it without getting cliffed out. 

"I don't want to go back through what we've been through, but ..." Beat hesitated.

"Neither do I," I replied. "But ... what is it they call this?" I scoured my fatigued brain for the term. "Sunk cost fallacy! You know, when you've invested so much, and you don't want to lose what you've invested because you're convinced you're so close to your reward, so you invest just a little bit more. But all this leads to is more loss."

"Let's see if there's a way down," Beat suggested. "And set a turnaround time."

The descent off the ridge wasn't as bad as we were expecting, although there was one more unstable rockslide where Beat nearly gave in and I urged him forward. We reconnected with the trail, which brought vocal rejoicing. But within a hundred yards we were hopping matchsticks again, and then huge tree trunks, and then we were back in an expansive mire of destruction. We picked our way to both sides of the valley and found no way around. Here, I was the one to concede defeat. "I'm out of ideas. Let's turn around." I need to state for the record that at this crucial junction, it was Beat's idea to try to crawl over the deadfall pile. Both of us ripped pants and skewered limbs during the battle, and my knees came out badly bruised. But we didn't want to go back. We really didn't want to go back. 

We found our way back to the trail just as it began to veer uphill, and I felt a wave of relief. Finally, we were free of the drainage of doom. This freedom, sadly, was extremely short-lived. The trail dropped into another drainage and ran parallel to the creek. Trees were down everywhere. 

"This isn't an avalanche," Beat said.

"No," I mumbled. "No, it's just wind. It must be. But I've never seen anything like it."

At this point, nearly six hours and only four miles had passed since we dropped off of Devil's Thumb Pass. It felt like time had ended, like we were experiencing a world after the end of the world, after the forests had fallen and humans were no longer around to sweep up the damage. This idea replaced the misguided avalanche story that had been looping through my head. After that, I saw only a macabre dreamscape —splintered wood and dried grass drenched in the eerie light of a smoke-shrouded sky.

"It's terrible, but beautiful in its own way," I thought.

I wish I could say that conditions improved shortly after that, but they did not. Beat's prediction of miles of mayhem is what came true, and he was not happy about it. There was much swearing, more skewering, slogging through swamps, and route-finding through a maze of 15-foot-high slash piles. I abhor bushwhacking and have been known to complain loudly after just a few minutes of it. But in this case, I kept my mouth shut, acknowledging my fault in the matter while quietly marveling that my "easy trail run" had somehow become more of a scramble than I could have ever imagined. 

"I really have hiked this trail before," I mumbled. "Something isn't right. Did we pick up an abandoned trail? How does something become so destroyed in just three years?"

We discussed what we'd do if we couldn't get through to Caribou Pass. If we had to spend a night out in the 20-degree weather. I thought hunkering down or descending Meadow Creek Road to Tabernash would be safer than trying to return the way we came, bashing through the mayhem in the dark. It would be miles to town, though, likely 10 to 15. Beat speculated that the road could be in as terrible shape as the trail, and I couldn't disagree with him. I'd been wrong about everything else. Did Tabernash even still exist? I couldn't be sure. 

Early evening light had saturated the sky by the time we turned off the High Lonesome Trail/CDT onto Caribou Pass Trail. Here we saw evidence of trail work — fresh sawdust sprinkled over the dirt — and we were able to walk more than a hundred yards without hopping over a downed tree or snagging torn pants on a tangle of branches. About a mile later, we encountered a crew of four young forest service employees hauling an enormous crosscut saw, along with other hand tools. We stopped a woman in the crew and asked her about the trail ahead. As we expected, they hadn't worked much beyond where we were standing, but she guessed we'd only have to negotiate a couple more miles of deadfall before we climbed above treeline. 

"This is all from that storm earlier this month," she said. "Thousands of trees came down."

Suddenly, all of my disjointed stories finally clicked together. I couldn't fathom how an entire forest could come down in just three years. But a single storm, three weeks ago — that made sense.

We told her about our descent along the High Lonesome Trail. She wasn't even aware of the damage to that trail. They'd only assessed and worked on a few miles of the most popular day hikes around Grand County. They were trying to clear as much as they could before winter, but expected to only reach a fraction. Most of this forest is designated wilderness. Power tools are prohibited, and that includes chainsaws. I got a little teary-eyed as I thanked the woman for the crew's hard work.

"I'll never take trail work for granted, ever again," I said.

She shrugged. "Hey. It's job security." 

The following day, I'd spend more than two hours digging around for information about what happened here. Surprisingly, I found little. No trail closures were listed on the U.S. Forest Service web sites, and the Continental Divide Trail Coalition included only a vague warning about trail damage in Grand County. This storm happened more than three weeks ago. It was the same strong front that dropped nearly a foot of snow on Boulder and blasted Salt Lake City with 110 mph winds. I'd heard strong winds also hit Winter Park and Steamboat Springs, but again, there was little in the way of official reporting. Finally, that same day — Sept. 29 — 9News aired a report about the damage. The report included enlightening footage and quotes from district rangers:

"What we've seen so far is tens of thousands of trees that have blown down."

"It was such a violent wind coming from the east, it laid everything down, similar to a nuclear blast."

"Where chainsaws are not allowed, it could be several summers before this is cleared out."

All information that would have been nice to know yesterday. We had berated ourselves for not researching trail conditions before embarking on our loop, but much of this information wasn't even public before we set out. How many others were caught out unaware? Out of curiosity I did some Strava stalking and was only able to find one other person who had definitely been through since the storm. He titled his run "Through the blowdown to Monarch Lake" and took more than 12 hours to travel 17 miles. 

The trail worker's assessment proved true, and we did have to climb over and under trees all the way to treeline. From there, we still had to negotiate steep and rocky terrain as a hard wind drove the chill into frigid depths. When I planned this loop, the segment I'd fretted about the most was the final traverse to Caribou Pass, which wraps around cliffs over precipitous and loose dropoffs. Twice in the past, I've tried to get through and have been stopped by snowfields. I knew if any snow lingered from the Sept. 8 storm, it would be frozen to hard ice and a definite no-go. With this knowledge, I planned the loop in this direction anyway, because I figured we could find some way over and around if the trail proved impassable. But I wasn't sure. Wouldn't it be funny if, after all that, we couldn't get through to Caribou Pass and had to turn around anyway? Luckily the snow was gone, and the traverse, while a bit spicy, was a nonissue. 

From there, it truly was just down and down and down. We could finally breathe sighs of relief, fairly certain that the popular Arapaho Pass Trail remained passable. It was a lot later than we'd planned, and eerily quiet. If we hadn't run into that trail crew, I would have probably become more convinced that my end-of-the-world daydream was, perhaps, reality.

Our loop wrapped up with four miles on Fourth of July Road. We'd both dreaded this part since it was a road slog, but in this context, I found it pleasantly enjoyable — just to shut my brain off and jog effortlessly with no obstacles in the way. Never mind that my knees ached and my legs were so tired after ten miles of climbing and crawling through a jungle maze — mostly downhill — that I was only able to boost them to 14-minute miles. We'd had an adventure, that was for sure. And that was all we could ask for in the end. 

Love on a mountain

Photo by Betsy Williford

On the 19th day of September 2020, Beat and I "did join in matrimony in accordance with the laws of the state of Colorado at _______." (What follows "at?" We had to look it up on Google. Oh, the place where we did the whole ceremony thing?) "at Bear Peak, Boulder County." With the marriage license and what turned out to be a nearly dry ballpoint pen, we scrambled to gather the signatures of our officiant and four witnesses while I dug through my pack for five working headlamps out of a dozen or so that were of questionable usage ... the whole thing went later than expected. But it was a beautiful moment — as beautiful as I could have imagined, way back when I was a teenager, and promised my mother that *if* I ever got married, as unlikely as it seemed at the time, it would definitely happen on a mountaintop. 

 

Yes, Beat and I got married. Our ceremony happened more than a week ago. I started uploading these photos last Tuesday, but I haven't been able to write about it since. Beat and I were enjoying our first week of "being legal," and I was planning an Idaho Hot Springs bikepacking trip (camping and distanced) with friends that I was intensely excited about — leaving the state feels like such an exotic novelty right now. I was packed and ready to head out the next morning when I received a call from the salon I visited right before the ceremony on Saturday — also a first for me during the pandemic — that my hairstylist tested positive for COVID-19. So instead of riding bikes or even spending my first week of wedded bliss with Beat, I scheduled a COVID test, isolated in a different part of the house, and only went out one hour per day to run along empty rural roads near my house. 

I've been wracked with guilt and shame, on top of the sudden loneliness. Although my potential exposure to COVID was mere hours before the ceremony, a timeline in which there is almost zero chance for enough virus to replicate and spread, the notion that my selfish actions could have potentially exposed friends and family has haunted me. I already knew we were taking a risk, that I was one of "those people" who held a wedding during a pandemic. Suddenly the one good thing to come out of 2020 did not seem good. 
 

This morning, I received the results of my test. Negative. It's what I was expecting since I've had no symptoms, and since the salon had a strict mask and sanitization policy. I was greatly relieved, but it doesn't change the shadow that falls over even the good things about 2020. It doesn't change the anger I feel about the outbreak currently burning through my community, ignited by the return of students to CU Boulder. It doesn't change the despair I feel about my country and our apparent zeal to achieve "herd immunity," which not only isn't going to happen, it's likely to take all of us down with it — either by way of economic disaster, mental and physical health declines, or actual death. The heat returned this week and Colorado wildfires flared up dramatically, bringing back to the Front Range some of the worst air quality in the world. I chose to use my isolated, cloistered time to read and ruminate on climate change, which led to nihilistic thoughts such as "maybe the universe will take mercy on me, and I'll kick it from COVID before November 3." Of course, I don't really believe this. Even if things become as bad as I fear, I still want to be around, to witness the great story that is Life on Earth. Love and beauty still surmount despair but a large margin. Still, my head hasn't been in a great place since Wednesday, and it was just too difficult to write about the wedding. 

Photo by Betsy Williford

Now I'm re-emerging into the realm of the living, and I remember that just over a week ago, there was this beautiful evening when all I felt was joy. Beat and I have been together for a decade now — in fact, the ten-year anniversary of our first "date" at the Bear 100 was September 24. For more than nine years we've enjoyed the spoils of a domestic partnership, which afforded us many of the benefits of marriage along with a streak of independence that I think both of us appreciated. But amid the health uncertainties of the pandemic and increasingly political uncertainties in the U.S., we decided a legal union would be preferable. We became officially engaged in July, and my excitement about this was both surprising and genuine. As it turned out, the official commitment did matter to me. Beat seemed excited as well. He joked with friends that "we need to get Jill started on her Swiss citizenship as soon as possible" — which isn't wholly a joke, but it is a nice excuse to solidify our bond. 

Photo by Lisa Cannon

We were going to wrap it up neat, tidy, and socially distanced at a courthouse, but then my parents expressed a desire to attend as witnesses. My sisters wanted to join us as well. Then I caught a whiff of romance and wanted to put together something a little more interesting. Maybe, as I had always threatened to do when I was a defiant Mormon teenager, I could get married on top of a mountain. Here in Colorado, Bear Peak is "our" mountain. It was the first peak Beat and I visited in Boulder, during our relocation investigation in 2015. As we stood on its summit for the first time, we looked west toward the Continental Divide and down to a ribbon of dirt roads dotting the hills and said, "we want to live there." Now we can see this pyramid summit from our bedroom window. Bear Peak is likely the mountain I've visited most of any mountain in the world. I thought I was getting close to 100 summits, so I checked my Strava stats — the tally is 104. Black Mountain outside Los Altos, California, might still hold more summits for me — I don't have all the data I need to figure this out — but certainly Bear will surpass this soon enough if it hasn't already.

Admittedly, Beat initially wasn't too keen on holding a ceremony on top of Bear Peak. For starters, it's a narrow and rocky summit — difficult to find the space needed to socially distance a dozen or so people. It's popular, so it was unlikely we'd find privacy. It's also hard to access from any aspect. We chose to climb the west ridge from a trailhead close to our house, so it would only be three miles round trip with about 1,200 feet of climbing. But most of that elevation must be gained in the last half mile, which is especially rocky and steep. My youngest sister is five months pregnant, my other sister is a working nurse with four children and little time for cardio, my mother has had knee problems in recent years, and my father had severe limitations on his mobility due to a herniated disc. As it all became clear just how difficult this was going to be for everyone, I tried to backpedal on my plans. But my family insisted that this was a unique opportunity, and they wanted to make it happen. 

My sisters and mother had no issues with the steep terrain. But I didn't even realize how much of a challenge this would be for my dad. I've just gotten used to him being a stronger hiker than me, even well into his sixties. Since he retired he's been more active than ever, and as recently as August was climbing mountains in the Wasatch that I still find too intimidating to attempt. But this back injury took its toll, clamping down on his sciatic nerve until he was hobbled and in constant pain. Again, when I realized how bad it had become, I tried to move the ceremony to a nice meadow near our house, but he begged me not to change anything. I know my dad, and I knew how much this would hurt his sense of pride and duty. In his place, I would probably be just as stubborn. But I sure felt conflicted, anxious, and stressed about juggling all of the logistics and contingency plans. Which I suppose is how most brides feel on their wedding day. Which is why I never really understood the appeal of weddings. Which is why I always vowed to get married on a mountaintop, far away from everything. And so the cycle never ends.

Photo by Betsy Williford

It was wonderful to see everyone in my family again. The weather was surprisingly perfect. We had that week of snow, but then temperatures roared back into the 80s. Thick haze had returned by the time my family arrived in Colorado. The views were muted and air quality was bad enough to leave me with a sore throat after Beat and I did our Bear Peak scouting hike on Thursday. Then on Saturday, the smoke cleared out for one day and temperatures fell to that not-too-hot, not-too-cold range that let everyone hike comfortably and sit comfortably as evening arrived. 

Photo by Betsy Williford

Also joining us were four good friends from the area, one friend's spouse, and a charismatic officiant that my friend Wendy helped me find at the very last minute. To accommodate everyone, I found an open, private spot just below the west side of the summit, where there was enough room for the group to perch on rocks and listen from a reasonable distance. The sunset views were incredible, but it did mean standing right next to a ledge for the ceremony. I admit that I got a little woozy amid all of the social energy and stumbled once, luckily plunging into a bush rather than off the side of the mountain. Of course, I thought, if anyone had to be carted away from my wedding in a search and rescue helicopter, odds are it would be me. 

Photo by Betsy Williford

Beat wanted to wait for Daniel, his defacto best man who had a prior engagement. So he showed up 15 minutes late after literally sprinting up the mountain, soaked in sweat and out of breath. For the hike, Beat wore his race shirt from the Bear 100, a homage to our first date in 2010, and also to draw a parallel between our first adventure (Bear 100) and the starting line for our next adventure (Bear Peak.) He changed into his best wool Iditarod Trail Invitational shirt for the ceremony, drawing the line that connects so many of our adventures in between. 

Photo by Lisa Cannon

I was seriously going to do the race shirt thing as well, but then found this cute hiking dress from prAna. The flowers were my mother's idea. The thought hadn't even occurred to me, but she coaxed me to pick some out on Saturday, so of course I went with the lovely autumn-hued blooms that didn't really match my dress, nor did either match the lucky pink socks that even Beat protested. Then there's the black mask I'm either wearing or holding in all of the photos my sisters and friends captured on their phones. Looking or acting normal has just never been my forte, but Beat (and my mother) seem to love me anyway. 

Photo by Sara Large

The ceremony itself was short and sweet. David, the officiant, gave a humorous speech about some of the lessons he's learned in 42 years of marriage as well as in ultramarathons that he's run. Beat and I read vows that recounted a favorite adventure before making a few promises. I promised love and appreciation, and may or may not have mentioned fixing bikes and taping bruised knees. Beat became emotional, which of course got my waterworks going. 

Photo by Sara Large

It was an incredible moment. The literal and metaphorical mountains we all had to summit to arrive at this place made it all the more meaningful.

I wasn't going to be truly happy until everyone was off the mountain. Beat and Daniel sprinted back down to pick up takeout for an informal outdoor dinner afterward, my friends and sisters made their way down in the waning light, and Mom, Dad and I picked our way down in full darkness. Admittedly, this was quite harrowing. Dad seemed to struggle as he took care not to slip. I gave night-hiking tips to Mom, who never before had to scramble down boulders by headlamp, or understood the way such light flattens the appearance of obstacles on a trail. Phew. After the whole thing was over, I was more exhausted than I've been yet this summer. Even our Mummy Madness traverse was nothing compared to this one ascent of a mountain I've been up a hundred-plus times. But it was beautiful, meaningful, and even amid all of the challenges that 2020 has thrown our way, worth it.