And the world, still so wild, called to me

In March I had some incredible experiences in Alaska and intended to write them down, but it’s hard to pick up a lapsed habit. My writing has slowed to the edge of nonexistence since last June; even social media has become a struggle in concentration. Often I think I shouldn't force it and instead pick up an entirely different creative outlet, like music (doubtlessly I'd drive Beat crazy with an instrument I can barely play, but they make keyboards with headphones, right? I haven't played since I was 18.) Still, I do want to renew my writing practice, even if it’s just a daily gratitude journal. But I also intend to continue irregular blogging, if only to prevent months and then years of experiences from slipping into the fuzzy confines of memory. So I figured I’d record my latest adventure and work my way backward from there. 

 Beat and I had been home from Alaska less than 24 hours when the evacuation orders began. He wasn’t even four days removed from the Iditarod Trail, where he won the 1,000-mile foot race in his sixth and fastest finish to Nome in the sixth fastest foot time ever recorded on the route — 22 days, 22 hours, and 42 minutes — on March 22, 2022, no less. I went to excessive lengths to meet him there, including returning to Denver from Alaska shortly after finishing my race (my original plan) and then flying back less than a week later. But in the end, a single flight was canceled and I couldn’t get to Nome in time. Beat finished his journey just as my rebooked flight was descending into Anchorage from Fairbanks. He was mere seconds away from the burled arch when flight attendants insisted I stow my laptop and I couldn't refresh the Nome Cam any longer. I missed it. I’d see him in Nome that night, and for the next two days as he ate and slept while I wandered along the edge of the frozen sea and wondered what was real and what was a dream. 

Two days after the fire, snow and frost returned. The mist wafting from the dry ground looked like smoke. It was especially beautiful because it was not.

 We returned to Denver on March 25, with Beat still very much in a daze and me deciding that yes, the past month was probably all a dream. The following morning I set out for a trail run, unacclimated to both spring and altitude and wilting in the 75-degree heat. I’d barely cooled off and opened up my daily dose of Hellscape (Twitter) when I caught news of a fire in the open space west of Boulder. Winds were gusting to 50 mph and humidity was in the single digits. Echoes of the Dec. 30 Marshall Fire rang in my head, and sure enough, within the hour nearly all of South Boulder had evacuated. Things looked grim enough, but then the winds shifted from north to northeast, and suddenly Eldorado Canyon was in danger. It wouldn’t take a lot for flames to race up the canyon toward us. And sure enough, our neighborhood ended up on the edge of the evacuation zone. Beat and I hadn’t even unpacked our Alaska bags yet. We had to grab items to repack into wildfire escape bags. 

I don’t have words to describe how much I dread the coming summer. I used to feel about summer the way I imagine most people feel about winter. I'm heat-sensitive, fair-skinned, and allergic to many types of pollen and bug bites. For me, summer used to mean a few months of discomfort and more preparation when it came time to recreate outside. (Seriously; I can just throw on a shirt, tights, hat and gloves for a two-hour run when it’s 25 degrees. If it’s 90, I need a backpack with 2-3 liters of ice water, sun sleeves for arms and legs, full neck covering, sunscreen, sunglasses, allergy medication, bug spray, blah blah, etc.) 

That was all fine when it was all there was to it. But these days, I can’t help but view summer as an approaching apocalypse. Will the air fill with wildfire smoke and trip my asthma in a way that leaves me fearing for my life when I’m hours from help? (This happened to me in Utah in August 2021.) Will all of the public land surrounding me be closed for weeks? (This happened in Boulder County in October 2020.) Will my house burn to the ground? The fact that this region has already seen one catastrophic fire and one (now two!) near-misses in a season that effectively counts as winter does not inspire confidence that summer won’t be a disaster. 

 It is heartening that the NCAR Fire was a near-miss. Having learned a hard lesson from the Marshall Fire, the mobilization of firefighting resources was quick and extensive. Air tankers arrived from Texas and firefighters on the ground attacked the advancing flames, preventing them from consuming nearby neighborhoods. The shifting winds were also a blessing, even if they made for an anxious few hours for those of us in the western foothills. When another fire erupted in a similar spot one week later, everyone in the county collectively wondered if this is just what life is now — choking on smoke amid a year-round fire season, packing our go-bags in backpacks in case the flames advance so quickly that we need to escape on foot. 

 All of this is to say that I was already near my anxiety tipping point earlier in March, and in one hazy swoop, this fire undid all of the good meditative work I’d managed by racking up Alaska Air miles and dragging a sled for 100 miles around the White Mountains north of Fairbanks. I recognize that I need to find more sustainable coping mechanisms than expensive travel and physically draining endurance efforts, but I immediately looked toward a potential chaser for early April. I’d been wanting to visit my Mom, so what could I do in Utah? 

The White Rim: 100 miles of rugged jeep roads around the perimeter of Island in the Sky in Canyonlands National Park. It’s become a popular multi-day route for mountain bikers, as well as a single-day blitz for racer types. I’ve never fully understood the urge to ride this route as fast as possible, even though I understand the thrill of racing. It’s just that White Rim is so difficult to access to begin with, and it’s so gorgeous. Why travel all the way there just to stare at the ground the entire time? (And don’t tell me this isn’t what you’re doing when you’re trying to pedal semi-technical rocky and sandy terrain as fast as possible.) For this reason, I only tried to ride the route in a day once, as part of a three-day trip along the Kokopelli Trail and then White Rim while I was training for the Tour Divide in 2009. I ran out of water and had a terrible experience. Perhaps that’s the actual reason I’ve embraced multi-day tours ever since. 

I do love the White Rim, and logistically one day is the simplest way to experience it. The permit is easy to obtain and you don't need to plan and pack days' worth of water and food. My post-Alaska endurance was solid and it seemed a shame not to use it before the pollen and smoke of summer whisk all of my fitness away. My experience on the Iditarod Trail proved I could manage long days in the saddle without debilitating back pain, although I’d still need to carry a lot of water for 100 miles of pedaling in the desert with only winter conditioning behind me. As I drove west on March 31, another brilliant idea struck. I’d probably have enough time to hike down to the rim from Island in the Sky that evening. 

I purchased two 1.5-liter bottles of water from a gas station and arrived at Gooseberry trailhead just before 5 p.m. The weather on the rim was somewhat harrowing — fierce wind, rain, even a little sleet. It was 37 degrees. I was still banking on perfect weather for April 1 — indeed, the Moab forecast called for lows around freezing and a high of a mere 65 degrees under clear skies. In weather like that, I wouldn’t even need the 6-7 liters of water I’d planned for, but I am far too frightened of the desert to give it any benefit of the doubt. The effort to cache three liters on my route was a decent grunt, though, descending more than 1,500 feet in just a mile while switchbacking along a precipitous cliff that looks vertical from afar. 

I trudged another mile and a half down a sandy wash until I reached the road, then found a nice rock outcropping that I’d doubtlessly recognize, but also marked a GPS waypoint and took a bunch of photos just in case because, again, the desert deserves the height of doubt. A couple of jeeps drove past just after I hid my cache. I smiled and waved as the passengers gawked at me like I was an alien beamed down from above. It was an hour before sunset and I was dozens of miles from the nearest exit point on the road. If you didn’t know about the hiking trails from the rim, you’d probably assume hikers down here were very lost. 

I barely slept at camp that night. I was so excited. At one point I stumbled out of the tent in my sock feet to marvel at the night sky, the stars upon stars and the swirling Milky Way, rendered in that startling clarity I have only witnessed in the desert. As I made my way back I managed to step directly on a tent stake, all but impaling my foot. The cut wasn’t deep but it did bleed, and for the next week, a deep bruise burned with pain, similar to having a sharp rock in my shoe that I couldn’t remove. Well. It just wouldn’t be a proper Jill adventure if everything about it was perfect. 

 Of course, I finally managed to fall asleep just before my 5 a.m. alarm buzzed. The morning was deeply cold, well below freezing. I stuffed hand warmers in both shoes and mittens even as I packed four liters of liquid fear in my bike bags. Ah, the desert, the simultaneously frozen and thirsty land. Coffee and oatmeal boosted me forward, although my legs were wobbly at first. I hadn’t really been back on a bike since I left the Iditarod Trail in McGrath, what was it, three weeks ago? Four? Did it even happen? 

My stake-impaled foot burned and my cold leg muscles balked, but eventually, I got the pedals turning. Soon I was flying down Mineral Bottom Road, the stars upon stars burning overhead, singing at the top of my lungs to “Wild” by Spoon. 

And the world, still so wild, called to me. 

I was lost, I’d been kept on my knees.

I plummeted toward the Green River just as the first golden strips of light crept down the canyon walls. It would be a few more hours before the morning warmed enough to remove my puffy jacket, but I was already sucking down water because, well, I had a lot to consume. I crossed the national park boundary at mile 20, finally beginning to feel warmed up. The road along the Green River is narrow and sandy, undulating with short but steep pitches in and out of washes. I watched my power meter regularly spike above 300 watts, but then my legs said no more of that, and I had to walk on my sore foot. 

Still, I felt nothing but pure, exhilarating joy. I was riding my bike in a place that I loved. There was no agenda. There was nothing to fear. There was only motion and breath, time and space — the simplest, purest way to be. The long, undulating climb toward Murphy’s Hogback took me deeper into this flow, reflecting on the ethereal nature of time and space. Here, time seemed to slow, stop, and bend back upon itself. I was a terrestrial body existing in this space, but what if it could simultaneously be another time? I remembered the stories my father told me as a child, about riding his motorcycle around the White Rim with his father and brothers. My imagination conjured a vivid image of this space in 1985, my father as a young man, my grandfather in his prime. Dad was smiling, that brilliant, heart-breaking smile. His hair was a wild mop of blond as he removed that ridiculous thrift-store helmet he used to wear. Dust settled around the knobby tires of their Honda dirt bikes as my grandfather and uncles pulled up beside him. They were laughing. They were so happy. My heart swelled as I imagined this, as though these were my memories, as though we were here together. Right here, right now. 

 “He was here, and all that’s separating us is time,” I thought. “That’s all. Thirty-something years. It’s most of my life so far, but relative to the timeline of the universe, it’s simultaneous.” 

The more I envisioned myself as an infinitesimal speck swirling through infinite space, the more I marveled at the incredible chance that I should end up as a human in this world with the father that I had. My heart swelled with gratitude, and then the fearsome final pitch of the Hogback jolted me back to reality. The final climb to Murphy's is one mile of truly impossible grades, but the racer-types can clean the Hogback, so maybe I could. I laid my sore foot into the pedal and spiked my power meter to 300 watts, 400 watts, higher than I can even go on my trainer when I’m trying to win a virtual sprint. My swelling heart all but exploded, my vision when dark, and I practically toppled over before I gave into my truth and put a foot down.

The remaining push was more grueling than I remembered, and I felt fairly toasted at the top of the Hogback, just 50 miles into my 100-mile ride. I limped to a campsite outhouse and then toppled next to my bike, checking my shoe just in case there was a real rock in there (nope, still just an open wound.)

“Way to burn all your matches early,” I thought with a smirk, but I wasn’t worried. I had drinking water. I had trail mix. I had the otherworldly red cliffs and deep blue sky and shimmering ribbon of the Green River far below. I had time. I had an overabundance of time. And while none of us know how much time we ultimately have, I can tell myself a story about the fluidity of time and almost feel free of it, almost believe I’m motorcycling with my father in 1985, separated only by a thin veil of consciousness. 

Murphy’s dipped into a few more rollers before flattening out to a line that traces to the true edge of the White Rim, skirting mere feet from sheer cliffs along a sandstone bench that can be difficult to navigate. Afternoon had arrived and I began to see other humans, mainly unladen mountain bikers traveling with vehicles, and a few independent jeeps. I was a little annoyed at the broken solitude. My long morning reverie faded and I couldn’t quite retain my gorgeous fantasies, but perhaps that was fatigue setting in as well. The temperature stayed comfortable, even cool with a stiff breeze out of the north. I came upon the Boulder group of five traveling clockwise, including Beat’s co-worker Dale. They had the same idea as me the previous day, to hike water in from the rim, which is how I knew they were going to be out here. I asked Dale if they found their cache. 

 “Yeah, but all we needed was the beer,” he said. 

Both of our water fears had been unfounded. The desert was going to allow easy passage today. Of course, 100 miles on a mountain bike is never truly easy, thus the wisdom of stashing beer. 

 I located the cache at mile 66. My ongoing flow had been so satisfying that I felt reluctant to stop pedaling and hike up to the rocks where I’d left my water, but of course, I wasn’t going to leave plastic bottles as trash. I sat beside the rock outcropping and tried to guzzle as much as I could because I didn’t want to waste this hard-earned fluid but I also didn’t want to carry it out. I laughed about my human fragility that drove me to cache my fears, even in my own body. Soon my stomach was heavy with sloshing liquid. That didn’t seem great either, but I wasn’t worried. For the first time in seeming months, I was entirely free of pain. 

Still, my legs continued to become more sluggish for the rolling climbs to Shafer, which culminate in a grueling grunt of a three-mile climb that starts at mile 90. The road switchbacks up another impossible cliff, not unlike the Island in the Sky hiking trails, necessitating double-digit grades for most of the climb. It’s so narrow and precipitous that if you were in a vehicle you’d probably believe you were about to plunge off the edge — at least this is what I’d believe. On a bike, all you feel is the up, seemingly endless up. 

I no longer had the oomph for 400 watts, but at the same time, I didn’t feel pain. Sure, my legs were heavy, and I still hadn’t expelled all of the excess water that was now causing serious bloat, but my back didn’t hurt. This was a revelation because my back hurt a fair amount on the Iditarod Trail, and I hadn’t tested it since. It was as though I was being carried through my own imagination, as though this reality was actually a story I was telling myself — all beauty, no pain. 

And then I was on the rim, with the snow-capped La Sals framing an expansive horizon, and the sun-drenched red mesa of Island in the Sky stretched out in front of me. It was still before 5 p.m., which meant I was going to wrap up my ride in less than 12 hours. To be clear, this is still about double the record. But it was quite a bit less time than I was expecting, given I’d planned to ride comfortable and take a bunch of photos — which, with the exception of my failed effort to clean Murphy’s Hogback, is pretty much what I did. It had been a full, satisfying 12 hours, but it had also been a blip, an instantaneous flash, and it was already over. Time. What even is time? 

I arrived back at camp with plenty of daylight to spare. I was almost disappointed, as I’d looked forward to bookends of stars upon stars. I was beyond grateful that I’d embarked on this adventure, that the universe saw fit to make April Fools Day the most perfect day possible, and that my body cooperated with the wild machinations of my mind. If the desert can be gracious, perhaps summer can pass in peace as well. Of course, the anxiety didn’t end for me, it never does, but a more expansive perspective is always a good thing.

Making plans in the sand as the tides roll in

I am having a February. I think many people in the Northern Latitudes will agree that February is a most gloomy month, depicted well in the movie “Groundhog Day” and summed up by Bill Murray as Phil Connors: “It’s gonna be cold, it’s gonna be gray, and it’s gonna last you for the rest of your life.” 

Even though I personally love winter weather, and even though I live in Colorado which is glaringly sunny about 96 percent of the time, and even though it’s finally snowing again after too many tinder-dry months brought a fiery, apocalyptic end to 2021 … there’s just something about February, isn’t there?  

“Why are you so upset?” 

This is a question I ask myself often these days, wiping tears from my eyes when I have no direct reason to be sad, cursing the rerouted wiring in my brain. My mind feels like a jumbled mess, cables frayed by the cuts of little traumas, permanently knotted behind accumulating losses, no longer leading to the self I once understood. Meanwhile, my body finally started coming together. Three months of sharp back pain abruptly changed when I slipped down my stairs at home late the night of January 17. I injured two toes in the fall — likely broke the little one — and bashed my lower back. This forced me to stop hiking, rest some, and then actually get back on my bike. I’d more or less avoided riding outdoors since my back started hurting (and I developed a bit of road anxiety) after the truck collision in October. The stair fall resulted in new core issues that manifested in my left hip, but once I dealt with those, the biking felt — dare I say — good.

By February 7, it was time to start walking again. I’d been limping around in a medical sandal and had successfully kept weight off the right side of my right foot for three weeks. I carefully slid on stiff-soled hiking boots then hobbled out the door while admonishing myself to stop hobbling. It was a nice afternoon, sunny and 40 degrees. It felt cold. My steps were weird and tentative. There was ice on the road, prompting painful shimmies from my still-stiff hip. I neglected to bring a jacket and had to beg one off Beat as he returned from a run, as I was only able to move at a frustratingly slow pace of 2.5 mph. I hated feeling so weak and vulnerable. 

I’d started listening to the audiobook of “Nerve” by Eva Holland, which was supposed to be about confronting our misbehaving neurons. First, the author dealt with the death of her mother from a stroke at age 60. In visceral detail, Eva described what happened after the family removed life support. 

 “No,” I whimpered, and then more loudly, “NO NO!” as Eva watched her mother’s unconscious and dying body gasp for air. My toes ached. My weakened right leg shook like a baby lamb as I staggered and sobbed. After a minute I pulled myself together, shut off the triggering audio, and limped home. 

Beat met me at the door. “Tim had to be rescued,” he announced. 

“What?” 

The backstory: The previous afternoon, our friend and Alaska adventure mentor Tim Hewitt started a solo journey in Nome, planning to walk upwards of 2,000 miles to Knik and then back on the Iditarod Trail. With such a great distance, he had a tight schedule to keep. The weather in Nome had been dangerously windy all week; I’d been following the Strava reports of Nome biking friends, and wondered if Tim would have to postpone. When the North Wind blows, the narrow drainage along Solomon Creek will funnel the gusts until they reach hurricane force, sometimes over 100 mph. But Tim has dealt with The Blowhole before. He did not expect the North Wind to lift his sled off the ground and whisk his entire duffel into seabound oblivion. Suddenly he had nothing but the clothes he was wearing — no water, no extra layers, not even a headlamp. He had to pick his way through the darkness for miles, goggles removed so he could simply see through the blowing snow, and still falling over continuously on glare ice. He made it to a shelter cabin, but a Nome SAR volunteer reported that he was “super frostbitten with a swollen shut eye.” 

That was all we knew on Monday night. (A report and follow-up about Tim's condition are linked here.) I limped to the shower, where I no longer had to fight back tears. 

 “Tim is okay. He’ll be okay. Why are you so upset?” But I couldn’t stop crying. 

On February 9, I knew it was imperative to teach myself to walk again. I planned a five-mile loop from my physical therapist’s office in Louisville. I already had an appointment for PT on my back, and Louisville offers well-developed pedestrian paths with less ice and fewer hills than home. I wore normal shoes. My steps felt better. My gait was more controlled. My speed was a breezy 3.5 mph. The temperature had spiked to 58 degrees; even in a T-shirt, it felt hot, uncomfortably so in February. The Coal Creek path wound through a cottonwood grove and emerged in a neighborhood. The streets were abandoned: no people, no cars parked in the driveways, only the occasional sound of a pounding hammer to break the eerie silence. 

Then I turned another corner and met the devastation — full city blocks leveled by the Marshall Fire that roared through here on Dec. 30, destroying nearly a thousand homes. Driven by 100 mph winds, the fire burned a patchwork of grassy hills and suburbs. The lines of delineation between what burned and what was spared were nonsensical. Hotels and shopping centers disappeared but little parking lot shacks were left standing. Entire neighborhoods were torched but there would be a single home somehow unscathed in the midst. And all of this happened in the middle of winter, miles from the nearest forest, to homeowners who lacked adequate fire insurance because no one in a hundred years would have expected Louisville to burn in a wildfire. Amazingly the loss of life was minimal, but the damage is sobering. It feels like a window into the apocalypse, a glimpse of the climate change future that awaits us all. And I know, I know, none of us can know the future. It does no good to imagine catastrophe. But how can I not imagine it, when catastrophe is already here, hiding in plain sight around seemingly benign corners? 

February 10. I needed to decide once and for all whether I’m going to ride the Iditarod Trail Invitational. I mean, I can’t decide and probably won’t decide. It will just be another one of those years where I show up at the start undecided, or maybe I’ll surprise my past self and let my rewired brain make a completely different choice. But if I’m going to slump my way to the starting line, I need to be prepared for any and every catastrophe. So I took my fat bike to Brainard Lake, where the West Wind was cranking. The biking was pretty crappy. I’m out of practice, and riding atop drifted snow is like balancing on a thousand tiny and slippery ball bearings. I did fine on the foot-packed road, where a wider path didn’t hold me to a tight line, but I crashed several times on singletrack. I’d rip through the woods only to cross into an open meadow where the trail had disappeared entirely beneath windswept snow, and down I went. 

A little frustrated, I decided I’d just push my bike up to Lefthand Reservoir, a path mainly packed by alpine skiers because it gains a thousand feet in just over a mile. Just three days earlier I hadn't felt competent to simply stroll down my road, and now I was wearing my big boots while hoisting a heavy bike up a steep trail that had been scraped smooth by metal ski edges. A 50 mph headwind roared from the Divide. Blowing snow cut through my buff; the taste was sharp, almost metallic. The right lens fell out of my sunglasses and I didn’t even notice. Eventually, I thought, “my eye hurts; what’s wrong?” Then I put my hand to my face and realized the lens was missing. I found and replaced it, but even after just a few minutes of wind exposure, my eye continued to hurt for days. I thought about Tim Hewitt and how painful his injuries must be. 

As I approached the dam, I could tell I was walking into the heart of the tempest. I couldn’t even see the Continental Divide beneath of wall of wind-whipped snow. The photo makes the gale look like fluffy low-lying clouds. I assure you it is not. Still, gaining experience is good, so I pushed to the top of the dam. I hoped to continue just a few hundred yards, pushing my bike while exposed to the full fury of the West Wind. It was blowing at least 70 mph according to a weather station one ridge over. Gusts shoved me sideways when I tried to push into the wind, then grabbed my bike and lifted both wheels into the air. The entire 30-something-pound fat bike was blowing like a flag in the wind as I desperately clung to the handlebars, feet skidding on bare gravel as gusts threatened to shove me off the dam if I didn’t let go of my bike. 

I wrestled the bike to the ground and crawled off the dam, filled with exhilaration and wonder. I thought of those famous words that doomed British explorer Robert Falcon Scott wrote in his journal upon reaching the South Pole on January 17, 1912: “Great God! This is an awful place!” 

I thought about Tim Hewitt, who lost his gear to such a wind and had to battle for miles afterward. What would I do if I couldn’t just blaze down Lefthand Reservoir Road and leave this awful place? It would be a catastrophe. 

February 13. Two weeks to go until the ITI, and thus my last shot at a training ride. I loaded my gear in the car and left at 5 a.m. to crawl through Sunday ski traffic before crossing back over the Divide to Leadville. The forecast called for a warm day, 33 degrees. Under direct sunlight at 10,000 feet, that feels like something closer to 80. I’ll sweat in my base layer until I hit the shade or a wind-exposed slope and then freeze. Repeat. 

My bike was heavy. It was likely even heavier than my bike when I first rode the Iditarod in 2008; since then I’ve developed more experience and thus fears that I need to pack. I’m going to side-eye anyone who insists I don’t need my stuff. They don’t have to put their own safety and comfort in the trust of this less-than-trustworthy engine (by which I mean my brain, but also my under-trained legs.) 

Anyway, I was slow starting out but at least trail conditions were great — that is until I climbed to the more obscure old mining roads where snowmobilers on deep-track mountain sleds had gouged the soft trail into a morass of mashed potatoes. The West Wind was cranking — less harrowing than it had been at Brainard Lake, but still a stiff and shockingly cold breeze that added dissonance to the melting trail. I mashed pedals and swerved, drove my heart rate up to 170 bpm, then oozed off the bike to hike. Repeat. Nine hours later I was exhausted. Way more exhausted than seemed justifiable after a mere 35 miles, even if it did take nine hours.

The sun set over the Sawatch Range as I pedaled across the highway toward Turquoise Lake. The plan was to ride around the lake and then camp near the dam. The loop is 16 miles and I thought it would take four more hours. But as soon as I hit the lake track, my tires bogged down in some of the deepest snow chunder I’ve encountered. It had been warm all day and snowmobiles had churned up chunks of snow, impossible berms, and deep ruts. 

 I couldn’t find a rideable line. That was it. It was not a big deal. I had everything I needed and could camp anytime I wanted; it’s not like I had to push through exhaustion for 16 miles before stopping for the night. Still, I tried to keep my meager goal, flailing for three miles before the trail pitched steeply uphill. With my heart rate again near maximum capacity, I swerved and tipped off the bike, landing sore foot and then face down in the snow. 

That was it. It was not a big deal. But a dark shadow swept over my mind and suddenly I was crumpled in the fetal position, sobbing, wracked with chest pain. This sharp pain I recognized as an acute ache that I first experienced following my father’s death. Now, eight months later, it's broadened, sweeping over a larger range of thoughts. A soft trail is not a reason to give in to despair, but there is something about the combo of frustration and fatigue that crushes the scaffolding I've built around my grief, subsequently collapsing all of my emotions. The more fragile my body feels, the more vulnerable my mind becomes.

I promised myself I’d walk for one more hour after the meltdown, to relearn my old strategies for pulling myself together. But I couldn’t stop crying. Finally, I found a nice spot to camp, high above the frozen lake, beneath ice-tinged spruce trees glittering in the moonlight. The temperature plummeted quickly under clear skies, dropping to near zero. I was perfectly cozy in my big coat and enjoyed a leisurely dinner and hot chocolate, gazing at stars in the sky. This, I thought, would surely make me feel better. But as soon as I crawled into my warm and cozy sleeping bag, the tears erupted all over again. 

 Why was I so upset? Genuinely, I couldn’t parse it out. When I closed my eyes and let my mind relax, my thoughts trickled back to upsetting memories — the burned Louisville neighborhoods, the black sky during the 2020 East Troublesome Fire, the early pandemic, the eerie ghost town that was Sea-Tac Airport in March 2020, the Iditarod Trail ten days before that, huddled in my sleeping bag and strung out by exhaustion when it was 45 below. 

Finally I dozed off, only to wake up startled by vague nightmares. One finally stuck: Beat and I were in the Iditarod together, inside a large unfinished building that had been a checkpoint in 2014. It was crowded, lots of familiar faces, and everyone was getting ready to go. My camp stove was in pieces and I couldn’t put it back together. Beat was frustrated with me; the fix should have been simple. He wouldn’t wait anymore. He stormed off. I stood just in time to witness him trip and fall down a set of stairs that were exactly like our stairs at home, only four times longer. He was somersaulting. He was going to die. I awoke gasping in my bivy sack. I couldn’t breathe. I had to push out of the sleeping bag and lay in the snow in my base layer, unprotected from the zero-degree air, still gasping. 

 Finally, I pulled myself back together and sat up. It was a beautiful night rendered in dramatic detail beneath a nearly full moon. Still, my mind couldn’t break free from its shadow. What is the point of seeking beautiful places if we can’t even step outside of ourselves? 

 “Great God! This is an awful place, and terrible enough for us to have labored to it without the reward of priority.” 

After the terrible anxiety dream and subsequent panic attack, I managed to sleep until sunrise. It was a beautiful day. I was feeling better. I made coffee and headed out. My plan had been to just head home, but I decided to embrace a 4 mph average pace and explore the more obscure trails around Turquoise Lake: A ski track leading high up to a mountain hut on the wilderness boundary; a summer boat launch where a faint snowmobile track wended along the shoreline for some distance; and finally, Hagerman Pass Road. The road was reasonably well-packed but discovered a little too late to explore for long. 

The only snowmobilers I met all day passed me around mile four of Hagerman. Two men that looked and sounded like Alaska Natives, but I didn’t ask, stopped to chat and have a smoke. They told me the trail had been groomed to a “cabin” near the pass, about three miles farther and a lot of feet higher. Because of wind-drifting, conditions could be treacherous for their machines. They didn’t want to get stuck, but they were going to check it out anyway. They continued smoking, seemingly in no hurry.

 I wished them luck and stopped to make a late lunch. The West Wind had kicked back up and there was nowhere all that protected from it, but it seemed a good spot to practice using my stove in the wind. I heated up Cup Noodles with coffee and sat in the sunlight, taking in a sweeping mountain vista and grinning. This felt more like the old me. The one that found joy in hard things. The one that got knocked down but could always get back up.  

Still, my night had been … disturbing. I acknowledge that I need to be more proactive with my mental health. There is a combination of mild but ongoing anxiety and depression that I am not managing well. Wishing it away is not going to work. Crying, panicking, and being generally terrorized by my own mind while out in the middle of nowhere is also, frankly, an alarming prospect. And yet, I have self-care and coping mechanisms in my arsenal. I now have a better awareness of triggers and ideas about heading off the monster before it tackles me. 

I certainly don’t want to give in to the monster, to let it control my life, to let it deprive me of the soaring joys of Cup Noodles beneath the Continental Divide, or all of the joys I could potentially find on the Iditarod Trail. It’s not like I have to be fast in Alaska, just persistent. I have no ego invested in this game, not in my current state, so I’ll quit if it’s too hard. I finally broke free of the worst of my back pain. My foot is sore but better. I can walk. I can push my bike. I’m healed! And yet, I’m still broken. 

How does one decide? What is an irrational fear and what is an acceptable risk? What is a punishment and what is a reward? Aren’t we all a little bit broken? Don't we all face an unknowable future? Aren’t we all susceptible to loss? Do we have any other choice but to hold onto hope? 

“Great God! This is an awful place and terrible enough to have labored to it without the reward of priority. Well, it is something to have got here, and the wind may be our friend tomorrow. Now for the run home and desperate struggle. I wonder if we can do it.”

2021 in numbers

 

2021 was a weird training year for nearly everyone. Early in the year, a lot of us were still "virtual racing" and it wasn't clear that any of our scheduled events would actually go. I charged into 2021 with vigor and subsequently collapsed, more than once. I accomplished a couple of athletic goals that I could maybe feel proud about. But no ... not really. I'm in a strange place right now — do I still want to dabble in the occasional race? Do I want to go all-in for something specific so I can focus my training in a way that will at least be new and interesting? Do I want to quit racing altogether? 

One thing I do know is that "training" gives me a daily meditation and yes, a small sense of purpose, without which I may not have weathered 2021. After June, it stopped mattering whether I was training for anything. I just kept going, with whatever time I could spare in the day, working around whatever little physical injury I was nursing. I rarely felt tired or sore — managing everything else about life was more difficult by orders of magnitude, so exercise was a way to "rest." 

By early October, I realized I was on pace to hit a longtime goal, which is climbing one million feet in a calendar year (1 million feet is the cumulative total between all of my workouts.) I quickly let the idea go after being hit by the side mirror of a truck on Oct. 10, which resulted in back pain and limited my tolerance for cycling and wearing a backpack. Over Thanksgiving, when I still had nearly 100,000 feet to go, I swung around again and thought "why not?" Here was a ready-made excuse to stomp up and down mountains to my heart's content. So I formulated "Climb-cember" and set out to log at least 4,000 feet of climbing every day until the Solstice. (I wanted to wrap up the goal before we headed to Alaska.) 

I loved "Climb-cember." I didn't have to justify any of the silly things I was doing — marching up Ennis Peak in Utah a couple of times or repeats on the Eldo Canyon overlook trail in a subzero windchill. My daily meditation gained tangible purpose, which was of course just the purpose of an arbitrary goal. But it was all-around wonderful. 

It helped that December gifted me with unseasonal weather that made summer activities possible during the darkest month of the year. By December 19, I only had 5,000 feet left to go. With a glance at the forecast and consideration of the dismally low snow totals thus far this season, it occurred to me that I could log my final vertical mile with an audacious mountain bike ascent of a Colorado 14er, Mount Evans. I mentioned my plans to Eszter as we were ascending Green Mountain two days prior, and she was game to join. 

We started out from Idaho Springs on a 28-degree morning with a light breeze sweeping down the canyon. Neither of us was well-acclimated to the cold, and my back became stiff and sore early in the ride. I will admit, completing a seven-hour ride with 7,000 feet of climbing and three liters of water on my back after two months of minimal riding was not great for my ongoing recovery, but I deemed this adventure worth it (and still do.) 

We chatted and pedaled for hours, turned serious to fight the buffeting headwind above treeline, stopped to watch bighorn sheep until our hands froze, took one coffee break in the middle of the road, and reached the 14,265-foot summit one day before Winter Solstice. Ambient temperatures were in the low teens with an oh-shit windchill. We had nothing but two hours of descending in front of us. I brought all of my puffiest layers to weather the chill — Eszter said I looked like Michelin Man — and regretted nothing. I had reached my million-feet goal unceremoniously somewhere around 12,500 feet and looked forward to coasting through the rest of the year (in Alaska, dragging a loaded sled through styrofoam snow at 25 below.) 

With that, here are my stats for the year:

2021 in numbers:

Bike: 5,225 miles with 549,078 feet climbing

Run/Hike: 1,613 miles with 464,745 feet climbing

Total: 6,838 miles with 1,013,823 feet climbing

Total hours: 1,036 (43 days and 4 hours)

❅❅❅❅❅

Usually, when I write this post, I break down my month-to-month stats. I didn't feel like doing that this year, so for my own entertainment, I looked over my Strava calendar and chose a notable workout from each month. 

January 8: Pb Pursuit

Snow ride

Leadville, Colorado

125 miles, 11,693 feet climbing

Elapsed time: 30 hours, 8 minutes

The Fat Pursuit, a 200-kilometer winter bike race in Island Park, Idaho, had been cancelled and moved to "virtual" status. A few friends and I figured we could mimic the conditions of a high-altitude snow race to near-perfection in Leadville, where deep snow and punchy climbs torn up by paddle-track mountain snowmobiles are the norm. It's exhaustively slow and difficult cycling, but the scenery is stunning! I proposed a figure-eight route that was 41 miles with 4,000 feet of climbing, to be ridden three times. Five of us started our "Pb Pursuit" at the crack of noon. I was the only one who stuck it out to the end, as the whole thing was quite silly, but I had so much fun. My favorite parts were riding through the zero-degree night around a moonlit Turquoise Lake, taking a four-hour nap in my big sleeping bag, and of course the first few hours when we all stuck together, laughing and sweating in the weirdly hot glare of a sunny winter day at 10,000 feet. 

February 11: Old Man Winter Bike Rally

Winter "gravel" ride

Lyons, Colorado

63 miles, 5,151 feet climbing

Elapsed time: 5 hours, 12 minutes

I am a fan of virtual racing. Not necessarily the type where you take something like the 2,800-mile Tour Divide and ride a similar distance over many months on your indoor trainer (come on, that's just a different thing altogether.) But when you can challenge a popular course without the crowds at your leisure, that's good fun! The morning I picked to challenge the Old Man Winter 100K route turned out to be a poor choice. It was much colder than it had been in previous weeks, so my water bottles froze. And the air quality was terrible, causing breathing issues that day and (I believe) a spike in anxiety and deterioration in mental health following the ride. Still, I tried. My stretch goal was five hours and I nearly hit it for the official course (5:03. I know that seems slow for 100K, but keep in mind I never train to ride flat terrain with any speed, my bike had studded tires to slow the paved climb, and then there were two full miles of hiking through rotton ankle-deep snow. So I consider it a good time for a winter ride.) Anyway, despite the consequences that in hindsight were quite bad, I did enjoy my "race."

March 5: Glacier Gorge explores, winter edition

Snowshoe hike

Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado

17.3 miles, 3,904 feet climbing

Elapsed time: 8 hours, 9 minutes

The weeks after February 11 were a rough time for my mental health, but mountain excursions in March helped boost my brain closer to baseline. This was one of my favorites — avalanche risk had settled several days after a storm but there wasn't much in the way of broken trail. I set my own track for a long solo trudge amid the stunning skyline above Glacier Gorge. 

April 10: Grand Staircase bikepack day three

Bikepacking

Grand Staircase Escalante National Mounument, Utah

50.7 miles, 5,246 feet climbing

Elapsed time: 9 hours, 45 minutes

In April, my friend Erika and I set out for a three-day trip around the Grand Staircase Escalante bikepacking loop, a 160-mile route through the incredibly remote southeastern corner of Utah. It's a gorgeous route that I would do again, but the terrain is difficult, the services are few, and the sand can be soul sucking. Erika and I were unintentionally separated the second night. She opted to ride the highway back to Escalante, so I ended up solo on what turned out to be the most difficult day of the trip — rolling along a high rim on barely-used doubletrack, far from any glimmer of a water source, in 85-degree heat. I had just four liters of water left from the 10 I'd packed from Big Water the previous day. In the late morning, miles from where I'd seen the last vehicle, I met a little dog who was alone, skinny and very thirsty. I gave him some beef jerky and water in a folded ziplock bag. After initially running and hiding from me, he lapped up my offering and then followed me for the next ten miles. He was visibly straining to keep up when I was moving at riding speeds, and darted into the meager shade for rest whenever I slowed to push. I still had 25 miles to ride to Escalante and feared what might happen if he followed me the whole way. I continued sharing water with him, but I didn't have much to spare ... at that point, I didn't even have enough to keep myself happy. Happily, I encountered a local couple in an enormous truck — the crumbling road was supposedly closed to vehicle traffic, so I didn't expect to see anyone. I flagged them down. The elderly man, who reminded me so much of my paternal grandfather, was initially surly about the prospect of rescuing this dog, but still spent 20 minutes working with me to corral the reluctant canine into his cab. A couple of hours later, I did end up running out of water, but thankfully rode by the single remaining patch of snow on the mountain exactly when I needed it most. It was, all in all, a most fortuitous day. 

May 14: Independence Pass from Mushroom Gulch

Gravel ride

Buena Vista, Colorado

118.6 miles, 7,759 feet climbing

Elapsed time: 10 hours, 14 minutes

I was meeting friends in Buena Vista for an 80-mile gravel ride, and decided to head out a day early and complete a long solo ride to log 200 miles in two days. What was I training for? I don't even remember, but I did have summer ambitions before everything fell apart. This ten-hour ride was particularly enjoyable — just gorgeous scenery and appropriate difficulty while mostly feeling good the entire day. I did a lot of ruminating about life and the universe while listening to a Carl Sagan book, and emerged with a positive outlook — easy to cultivate when Covid seemed to finally be waning, air quality was pristine, and prospects for the rest of the year looked bright. May 2021 was a good month. I miss it. 

June 13: Ride to End ALZ

Road ride

Fort Collins, Colorado

100.1 miles, 5,505 feet climbing

Elapsed time: 6 hours, 52 minutes

I had effectively forgotten about this ride before I scrolled through my Strava calendar the other day. It was three days before my dad died. A California friend recruited Beat and me to join his team to raise money for the Alzheimer's Association. We completed a virtual event in April, and then the organization invited me back to an in-person event in June. I signed up for the century, because of course, and managed to raise more than $3,000 for Alzheimer's research between the two events. This was a hot day with a huge climb in the middle, my time to shine. (Most of the ~four dozen 100-mile participants were from out of town and not acclimated to the altitude.) I rode steady but well and (I believe) finished in fourth position overall, but of course it was not a race so I will never know for sure. 

July 5: Evening LCC

Road ride.

Sandy, Utah.

34.9 miles, 5,023 feet climbing

Elapsed time: 3 hours, 21 minutes

When I think of the weeks between mid-June and mid-July, all I remember is the hot heat, oppressive sun, summer haze and zombie daze that I could only shake myself out of, somewhat, during hard climbs on my gravel bike. I spent four weeks in Utah to help Mom transition to her new life without Dad. Much of the time was spent sitting in rooms, sorting through stuff with Mom and crying with my sisters. I barely slept and was often up well before dawn pedaling the empty streets of Draper and Alpine. In the evening, after dinner, I made a regular habit of climbing Little Cottonwood Canyon until the sun set and then descending into the twilight. The darkness, quiet and chilled mountain air brought me a measure of peace that I didn't find anywhere else. 

August 23: Orsières to Glacier d'Orny

Hike

Orsières, Switzerland

16.9 miles. 8,807 feet climbing

Elapsed time: 9 hours, 32 minutes

My father's death and subsequent life difficulties left me unexcited and anxious about traveling to Europe and Beat's plans to race another PTL (An extreme 200-mile mountain ultra with a lot of difficult terrain and exposure.) Luckily I was in a perfect position to turn to my best coping mechanism, marching up and down mountains. During the week of August 23 to August 29, I logged 111 miles with 48,968 feet of climbing, all on foot. PTL started the morning of August 23 in the idyllic Swiss village of Orsières. After Beat and his team took off, I marched away from PTL's starting banner and straight up the closest trail that would take me as high as possible. It was, for the most part, a dreary and foggy day with light rain and stiff winds. Beat's team was mired in low visibility as they crawled along the horrific sawtooth of a crumbling knife ridge on the other side of the valley. In the meantime, I managed to find the most brilliant sucker hole and then climb above the clouds for jaw-dropping views of Glacier d'Orny and the Trient ice field (shown with an impressive 3,170-meter mountain hut, Cabane du'Trient, in the foreground.) I was feeling sparks of real joy, an almost alien sensation that I hadn't experienced in more than two months. 

September 19: Rochers de Naye for our anniversary

Hike

Villenueve, Switzerland

13.5 miles, 5,561 feet climbing

Elapsed time: 5 hours, 24 minutes

We visited many stunning and scenic places in Switzerland and Germany during our month in Europe this year. But honestly, one of my favorite outings was a fogged-in summit over Lake Geneva during my final day in Switzerland. We were en route to Geneva so I could get a COVID test and catch a flight first thing in the morning, but I wanted to mark our anniversary. (Beat was pretty cute about it whenever I mentioned our anniversary. He asked, more than once, "So what is this? The tenth?" and I replied, "No, it's our wedding anniversary. Our first wedding anniversary. Remember how we got married last year?" After a solid month of ideal weather, we were finally hit with a typical autumn day in the Alps: Temperatures near freezing, high winds, spitting rain, sleet, and zero visibility. It didn't even matter. We had so much fun! How lucky am I to have this man in my life?

October 9: Top of the World with Lisa and Sara

Hike

Aliso Viejo, California

8.1 miles, 1,179 feet climbing

Elapsed time: 3 hours and 34 minutes 

The first weekend in October was supposed to be the annual rim-to-rim crossing of the Grand Canyon with my Dad. And for the first time, my sisters were on board to join. It was not to be, and this year was too soon for the three of us (although I hope it happens someday, perhaps next year.) Instead, we blocked out the weekend to spend together at Sara's home in Orange County. My sisters had long dropped their Grand Canyon training regimen so didn't expect much hiking, but we ended up out for an excursion every day. These hikes were really special — beautiful California hills, the Pacific, and great conversations with my sisters. Our final hike took us to a lovely overlook above Laguna Beach called "Top of the World." It's notable to me now that on October 9 I was on top of the world, and my very next Strava activity was titled “First time I’ve been hit by a truck.” Seriously, 2021.

November 26: Gobbler’s Knob with Raj and Beat

Hike

Big Cottonwood Canyon, Utah

8 miles. 3,176 feet climbing

Elapsed time: 3 hours, 57 minutes

Of everything I tried to help process my grief after Dad's death, this hike was among the most meaningful. For much of the past decade, Dad and I kept a Thanksgiving tradition of hiking to the summit of Gobbler's Knob on Black Friday. I wanted to carry on the tradition with Beat and a Salt Lake friend who was a good friend of my Dad's, Raj. The whole climb proved to be so much more difficult than I expected — all of the memories washing over me, followed by the suffocating shock of having to face Mount Raymond at close range. The emotional pain overshadowed what was already a physically painful endeavor, thanks to my sore back, sloppy trail conditions and a large backpack. I was a mess, but Beat and Raj were very supportive, and ultimately we did reach the top. The peace and gratitude I found was well worth the difficulty.

December 24: Colorado Creek cabin trip in

Sled-drag

White Mountains, Alaska

13.4 miles, 1,427 feet climbing

Elapsed time: 6 hours, 22 minutes

After a strange 21 months of absence, Beat and I finally made it back to Alaska. As the initial shock of grief wanes, it's been interesting to experience a seemingly longer-term shift in my psyche. My appetite for adventure just isn't there. I continue to crave the meditative benefits of movement — Climb-cember proved a huge success in this regard — but my head and heart seem to have lost the capacity for bigger, bolder endeavors. So I have made no solid plans for 2022, and am struggling with what to do about the Iditarod. 

Early in 2021, I signed up to bike to Nome (I'm now a definite no on that. It's a leap too far.) I'm currently set on sticking with the short race to McGrath, most likely on a bike, just because a week in the frozen wilderness may prove beneficial and wonderful ... or it may just be another emotional disaster, like the Utah Mixed Epic. I'm genuinely frightened about that prospect, especially now that my brain has rebooted to a setting that doesn't recognize any part of dragging a bike through the snow for 300 miles as particularly desireable. Seriously, what have I been doing for the past 16 years?

But ... I did enjoy our trip to Alaska. The weather was unworkable and we had to scale back our backcountry plans dramatically, but I still enjoyed being out in one of my favorite places in the world, the White Mountains, when it was 26 below and the only sound was the squeak of my feet on the cold snow, or a distant echo of footsteps from an animal seemingly miles away. 

It's difficult to feel ambitious right now, and even more difficult to feel optimistic. But I do look forward to the small moments in 2022, the simple pleasures, the beauty in my backyard. 

Happy New Year; I am grateful we've all made it this far.