This was a race I was looking forward in much the same way that Nikko looks forward to getting an flu shot.
A few things went wrong in my lead up to this run. One of my goals of this year was to ride a 1000+km bike ride. Initially, I was looking at the DBC's Gold Rush Randonee... then Sigman said he was going to sign up for the BC Bike Race... which was at the same time. So then I proposed that we should do SFR's Spring 1000km ride. By this time we were having record snowfall and Squaw had already announced that they would remain open on weekends until the 4th of July... so I assumed this race would get pushed back and rescheduled.
But it didn't... and yes it was a lot of running on snow, and yes there were skiers and boarders on the mountain while we ran. A bit ridiculous IMO.
Anyhoo, I wasn't that worried about the 1000k as I've done many brevets and long rides every year. But this would be my longest race, my first ultra race, and I hadn't run consistently over the last few years. So I focused much of my training leading up this race just getting time on my feet. Not necessarily long tempo runs, but just slow runs, with plenty of hills, getting used to walking. This plan was conceived by Sam, Seth and I... but Sam couldn't do it as Ollie qualified for regionals in some climbing comp (Go Ollie!). So Seth and I were planning to head up with the fam and spend the weekend up in Tahoe.
Seth told me that his fam wouldn't be making it, so he'd be going solo... and about the same time I had been told that one of my high school buddies was planning to have his bachelor party in Zephyr Cove that weekend. So... I figured I'd recover from the 1000k/50k by drinking beer, tossing bags, playing spikeball with about 20 of my buddies. Which worked out quite well...
Got there a few days early to start working on the house, and loosen up my legs which were recovering from the 1000k last weekend...
My deck took quite a beating this winter...
but at least my house didn't blow up like this one...
Warming hut still open! I remember having to walk down quite a ways to get to this one mid-season.
Finally got to Long Lake... which was a bit too cold for the day.
I was tempted... but not at 7:30 pm with 5 mi to go...
The next day, I did a bunch of work from the cabin while the deck was being worked on... and in the evening I drove into Reno to get some more supplies at Wal-mart and rode some trails with Nick.
Fun trails within minutes of downtown.
Definitely not real...
After riding, Miley and I had a beer and grabbed a Shawarma downtown... and soon I drove to the bachelor party. Some folks were already getting ready for bed (Jake...) as they were tired from playing in the beach all day. This place was rediculous... 4 stories with an elevator, a pool, hot tub, etc...
Pool with a fountain...
really, really bad tequila...
Next day...
After playing a million games of bags and spike ball... I took off so that I could get some sleep. Plus I knew I had an early morning... I met Seth at Pahatsi and we went to bed early. I slept outside on the deck, which was lovely.
Race day... we ran into Steve, Drew, and saw a few other familiar faces. We figured we might as well start in the back so that we can pace ourselves. But turns out passing folks the whole time takes a lot of energy...
Long lines of folks... I think I must've passed 150 folks.
Here's the "stairway to heaven"...
by the second lap folks were shredding the perfect spring snow. I was very, very jealous...
I finished my first lap at 3:30. I told myself that if I finished by 4 hours, I'd keep on going... as I was ready to bail and head back to the party... but had to keep on chugging along. After that lap, I waited for 10 min to see if I could find Seth... but couldn't so I kept on going. Came in at 7:14.
Splitboard Stevee and his lovely daughter...
Seth coming in for the finish. I was 20 min from leaving to be honest...
Seth had bonked, overheated, and was a bit miserable...
We went and cooled off in Cushing's pond along with the doggies...
and remote controlled boats... this one was towed behind a remote control car... seriously...
While the skiers were in their shorts, bikinis full on party at Squaw...
And after the race, I went right back to the party and played a few games of spike ball...
Here's the course...
I think this course played to my forte. There wasn't a whole lot of running, but tons of hiking up steep snowy hills and running down slushy snow melt. This was a bit like doing Shasta but missing the whole point by just running down vs skiing down... with aid stations and surrounded by masochists.
I was really planning to bail and go back to the party after one lap, but I told myself that if I did one lap in 3.5 hours and I felt ok, I'd have no reason to bail. So I finished the first lap in about 3:28... so after waiting to see if I'd see Seth for 10 min, I took off the second lap.
For this race, we just started off near the back of the pack, figuring we'd just take it easy all day... but
In the end I felt pretty good and came in at 7:14:02, which put me in 55th out of 175. Not to bad egh?
There were some famous runners doing the race, and some famous non-runners like Emily Harrington, who I ran a bit of the second lap with.
After our complementary dinner (pizza, pasta)... we went our separate ways. Seth, back to his fam... and me back to Spikeball. All in all, it turned out to be quite a fun weekend.
“There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.” -Hemingway
I'm not too familiar with bullfighting or motor racing, but this past weekend I quit playing games and participated in the sport of mountaineering as defined by the thinly controlled alcoholic Nobel prize winner.
I had been looking forward to this weekend of climbing. The first weekend of climbing since last September when I did N. Peak and some routes on Daff dome. Really wasn't prepared for this, and haven't done anything like this since Steve and I did the Palisades Traverse back in 2008... I was certainly in better climbing shape back then. part 2, part 3, and part 4
We had originally planned to hike out to Charlotte Dome, but Wed evening Nick gave me a call and persuaded me to go along with the adventure. Nick was lamenting on the fact that he had recently made a breakthrough in his climbing where these trips weren't as anxiety ridden any more. He didn't get knots in his stomach thinking about the epic ahead. He would just be excited. That's great! ... I thought... but Nick then went on to suggest the Traverse as just the thought of it made his palms clammy. Huh? So... you'd rather be anxious than excited? Then Nick articulately explained himself by saying that after doing a trip where you are anxious beforehand just makes it that much more rewarding. What a masochist...
Found the last spot in the Twin Lakes TH parking lot... kind of a tight squeeze...
Anyway, I didn't have my eyes set on any particular climb, I just love being in the mountains, feeling the granite with my hands, and sharing the experience with a trusted partner. So with palms sweaty, I went along with the plan. But told Nick that he'd probably have to lead the majority of the route as I'd be quite slow since I hadn't climbed for so long.
As our guide we had printed out "A Climber's Guide to the High Sierra, by Hervery H. Voge" from 1954! Pretty short descriptions, but still probably had the best description of our route as Miley forgot to print out the applicable sections from the Secor guide.
here's the illustration from that guide.
As recommended by one of Miley's mentors Bela, the founder of ASI, we decided to go from Blacksmith to Matterhorn, the reverse of Croft's described solo in his book, the Good, the Great, the Awesome (BTW, this was rated, "Awesome"). Honestly S to N, N to S, it'd be a very similar experience either way...
Here's a pic of Stevee stoked to be passed by Croft while we were climbing Cardinal Pinnacle the day before our Small Palisades Traverse.
Croft described their adventure. “I loved the whole thing except the gullies and raps. It seemed like in every gully on the Sawblade to the Three Teeth there was some dirty, frozen ‘kitty litter’ chimney or crack that wasn’t any fun. There were a few spots that you had to be real careful with teetering blocks. My favorite part about the route was being on the ridge the whole time—it felt like you never left a summit. Summiting the Doodad and traversing the Dragtooth was an excellent finale to the ridge.”
On our hike up the talus fields to the base of Blacksmith Peak, there were numerous teetering blocks. One actually pinned my left foot and probably weighed 50 lbs. I could have let it roll over my foot, but that would've hurt like hell, so I yelled at Nick and with his help lifted the block just enough for me to slide my foot out... phew.
Fireweed growing out of the cracks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epilobium_angustifolium
Blacksmith Peak from Glacier Lake. Here's a cool TR with Dave Nettle of an FA on the peak. Blacksmith is quite an impressive looking peak and I would love to go back to do the North Arete (10a) sometime.
Climbing up the snowfield up to the notch between Blacksmith Peak and Eocene Peak...
Here's the whole crest from Blacksmith Peak. Nick and I were getting ready to start scrambling up Blacksmith Peak (Class 4) with our limited daylight.
Check out this massive landslide on aptly named "Slide Canyon"...
looking back down at Glacier Lake.
and the Cleaver with Twin Lakes behind it.
Summit of Blacksmith Peak 6 pm.
and the crest traverse begins!
After a quick rap, we decided to start roping up and simul climbing...
One of my favorite shots from the trip. This is when I learned that traverses take a LONG time. We were still on Blacksmith Peak 2 hours after we summitted, even when we were simil-climbing...
As the sun was setting we were doing our final rappel and downclimbing down to Glacier Col between Blacksmith Peak and the Cleaver.
After hiking down a 100 yards and collecting snow, we made dinner, melted snow, and got ready to pass out for the night.
Too bad my sleeping pad got a huge hole in it... so my sleeping pad for the night involved the 70m rope + Nick's backpack. We also had a sheet of Tyvek which was really loud, but kept us pretty warm.
Some pics from touring the Sawtooths the other weekend with Miley, Funk & Splitboard. Here's a shot of Kettle Peak from the Incredible Hulk. You can see the chute Nick and I skied coming down the middle of Kettle. To the right is Hunewill, I believe... from day 1
Here's Nick coming up Kettle peak with the Hulk in the background. We booted up a chute that you can't really see in the pic above. We skied down that on our first lap, then did the other one for our second lap.... from day 2
The weather was quite, "unsettled" the entire trip. Here's nick and the Hulk on day 3 of our tour heading up to the end of Little Slide Canyon. Pretty cool light for photos... not so much for skiing.
Since I haven't posted from the last two weekends, so I'm gonna post this vid as I feel it DESERVEs many, many more views. From April of this year... Bernard is an amazing photographer, check out his blog at
www.snowyphotos.com he's busy at camp, so hasn't been updating it recently.
So... we've been busy closing on a house! Weehaw! So I haven't been able to take trips the last two weekends. Also congrats to J-dub and Lauren, who got married this past weekend...
