PTL, again

Well, I managed to distract myself sufficiently for a week-plus in Chamonix to avoid writing a blog post. I have so many photos I want to archive, so I suppose I'll start. We returned to the European Capital of Extreme Sports for Beat's sixth and what he promised would be his last Petite Trotte à Léon.

The PTL is a lot of things, but I think it's best described as "290 kilometers of nonsense." It's a high-mountain loop around Mont Blanc on a route that changes every year, following paths that are always steep, routinely rough, and not infrequently nonexistent. The route includes a rather boggling 27 kilometers of vertical gain (so 87,000 feet in 180 miles), but I'm of the opinion the numbers don't mean much. Climbing can be relaxingly easy on a steep dirt path gaining 1,500 feet per mile (which I enjoyed many times during the week.) In PTL, technical features, exposure and route-finding dominate the challenge, and often necessitate a pace amounting to less than two kilometers an hour. So 152 hours to finish this race is actually not a lot of time (and the cutoff was 136 hours in 2013 when I attempted it and timed out, which I emphasize because damn it, those 16 extra hours really would have helped.)

In short, PTL is treacherous and often dangerous terrain combined with sleep deprivation and relentless forward motion regardless of weather or conditions. It's utter nonsense, but some people thrive on nonsense. I can certainly relate.

For years after 2013 I begged Beat not to return to PTL, but by 2016 my defenses had worn down, and by this year I felt the hint, just the tiniest little hint, of FOMO. It's misplaced. Beat's proven himself capable while I continue to fall on my face and roll my ankle on relatively buffed out Colorado trails (which of course are still rocky and steep.) It's difficult to discern why I prioritize my wanderings in places where I so frequently falter. I'm like that kid at the piano recital, the one who's been practicing for years and still stabs at the keys while out-of-sync staccato notes echo through the room. "Shame, she just doesn't have an ear for music," people say about that kid. I'm that kid, with mountain running. I think about this often and wish I'd stuck with piano.

Anyway, Beat was preparing for another PTL and I was both jealous and relieved that it wasn't me. My plan as usual was to loosely follow the race, offer the minimal support where allowed, work occasionally, maybe see a friend or two during the always hugely well-attended UTMB week, and fill the rest of the time with overwhelmingly beautiful hiking. Eating and sleeping, bah ... there's always time for that later.


For our first full day in Chamonix, Beat and one of his PTL partners, Pieter, insisted on joining me for a climb to the junction of two glaciers, Bossons and Taconnaz. We rented a small chalet that was literally underneath the top of a ski jump platform, and the trailhead began 0.10 miles from the front door. It shoots immediately upward and gains 6,000 feet in five miles, which is not a small feat less than two days before a race like PTL. Clearly I am not the only one suffering from ridiculous FOMO. But it is almost impossible to pass up these views:

Looking toward Aiguille du Midi over Bossons glacier.

The Taconnaz glacier. At the tip you can see the remnants of a massive calving event that we witnessed. It sounded like a loud thunder clap, and recently arriving from Colorado, I immediately looked up at the sky. Far below the fluffy clouds, a building-sized chunk of ice peeled off the tongue of the glacier and tumbled down the rocks like an avalanche.

"You're not scrambling underneath these glaciers during PTL this year, are you?" I asked Beat.

"I don't think so," he answered, sounding uncertain.


On Sunday I made a quick trip from the chalet to Brevent, another place where you can knock out a cool vertical mile in five horizontal ones, and if you don't feel like walking down, you just buy a ticket for the cable car.


Views of Bossons and Taconnaz glaciers from the opposite side of the valley. La Jonction is the top of the round ridge in the center. Brevent stands at a similar altitude in the Aiguilles Rouges (Red Mountains.)


I still can't travel anywhere in these vast mountains without looking into a distance and reliving moments from my 2013 PTL experience. I've written about the experience in this blog, but only in fairly superficial detail. The intensity of it still haunts me, in mostly not good ways. Still, there were intensely good moments too — walking under those cliffs when they were bathed in silver moonlight, gazing up at sheer walls and wondering what possible path could lead beyond them. As it turned out, there usually was no possible path — only steep couloirs choked with boulders, and sheer astonishment that a race organization as professional as UTMB would admit participants with no provable mountain experience and send them up an indiscernible mess of rubble that was clearly going to end in a death tumble. Well.

Monday morning was the start of the 2017 edition of PTL. This year Beat started with his original teammate and Colorado friend, Daniel, and Pieter, a Belgian who he met at Tor des Geants in 2014, and has raced PTL with every year since.

Daniel grew up climbing Colorado 14'ers and is a gazelle in boulder fields, and Pieter has mountaineering experience and youthful enthusiasm, so they were a good team. Beat was an experienced trail runner but more or less a mountain novice when he started PTL in 2012. Now he's such an entrenched veteran that the mountain guides who design the PTL greet him with hugs and cheers. He tells me that he, too, used to be bothered by exposed terrain, but now he's tired and doesn't care much anymore.

After the racers jogged briefly through the streets of Chamonix and launched directly up a ski lift slope that's dubbed "the vertical kilometer," I headed out to the base of a mountain they expected to hit later in the day, Mont Buet.

Mont Buet is a 3,096-meter peak (10,100 feet) in the Red Mountains. While researching a route from the valley, I learned it's commonly referred to as "Mont Blanc for the Ladies" ... clearly by chauvinistic French men. I was a bit happy to see this characterization, though. That means Mont Buet is easy, right? I mean, it's 6,000 feet of climbing in six miles, but easy, right?



It was pretty easy — just one long boulder field to negotiate midway through the route. I was scrambling through the boulders when rain began to pelt my face, which made me grumpy. Usually I don't mind rain, but I do when there is unknown and potentially difficult (i.e. slippery) terrain ahead. It turned out to be no big deal, but spiked my stress levels enough to keep me on edge for the rest of the day.

On the way to the summit, I leap-frogged with a nice Italian couple who were fast but made frequent stops, while I trundled along at my steady turtle pace. Occasionally a hole in the clouds would let through sunlight, and the man would point and say, "look, it is sunny!"

"Na, that's just a sucker hole," I'd reply.

"What is sucker hole?"

"Oh, it's, well, a small opening in clouds that tricks you into believing it will stop raining."

"But it will still rain," the man replied knowingly.

Despite the rain and the long approach, there were still eight or nine people on the summit. Except for me and one other, they were not ladies, and Mont Buet was decidedly more gray and gravelly than Mont Blanc. But it was still a beautiful place to be. One guy offered to take my photo. I like that he didn't zoom in at all, so I'm just a drab little person in a big mountain backdrop.

I thought I might see the first PTL teams on my way down, but I didn't having a working GPS track for this section, and didn't have a clue where they'd come from. It could be from anywhere. Literally anywhere. PTL could require a tightrope walk across a ravine, and I wouldn't be surprised.

I made a short detour to climb above Col de Salenton because I was sure they'd walk through here, but nope. They came in from behind this mountain, somehow. So I saw no one. I trundled the long, long descent to the village of Buet and still didn't encounter any PTL teams. In the village, I lingered for a while at the Skiroc chalet, where PTL participants would be served their one daily meal that I later learned was a soup of half-cooked onions in broth. It had been more than nine hours and this was barely mile 26. Nine hours is an almost unfathomable time for the fastest team in a marathon, but PTL is not a normal race. Really, it's a sadomasochistic ritual with fleeting moments of euphoria and drawn-out hours of fear and pain. Still, I suppose I can understand why Beat claims he's not going to return every year, and goes back anyway.

38

 Sunday was my birthday. Even though the number puts me unequivocally well into my late 30s, I looked forward to the turnover. 37 was not my best year. Autumn and winter brought a descent into increasingly poor health and fitness as I desperately tried to train for the most daunting adventure I had ever planned to attempt, the Iditarod Trial Southern Route to Nome. The harder I pushed, the worse I felt ... but the sensation was something more insidious than fatigue or burnout. It felt as though I was being smothered from the inside out. Desperation kept me (relatively) quiet about my deteriorating stoke, but I genuinely hated how I felt during some of these training efforts, and hated that I was starting to hate adventure.

In February, I was diagnosed with an incurable autoimmune thyroid disease that forced me to withdraw from the race, which I considered walking away from a potentially once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. In March, while snowshoeing in Juneau, I was caught in an avalanche (which I gratefully walked away from.) Spring brought the physical rollercoaster and an understanding that, no matter what, things are never going to be quite the same. In June, feeling wildly optimistic, I DNF'd the only ultra I attempted this year, the Bryce 100. Such failures always hit the ego hard, and I spent most of July believing I'd always be (relatively) enfeebled.

In August, my outlook noticeably improved — independent of anything happening in my life and despite the timing. August is usually my least favorite month. This one was cool and green and full of wildflowers. I felt jazzed about the tiniest moments, like viewing the soft morning light over Eldorado Mountain when I had to take out the trash on Thursday morning. As I told my sister, it feels as though this dreary fog had slowly enveloped me over the past two years, and now it's beginning to fade. The gray pall cast over my thoughts and emotions is brightening. If I could stay on this mental upswing, I'd embrace whatever physical limitations had to follow. Happily, my physical health is back on the right track as well.

 If I could choose anything in the world to do on my birthday, high on that list would be "climb Lone Peak with my dad." Lone Peak is a 11,253-foot summit in the Wasatch Mountains. I consider it my "home" mountain. I grew up in its morning shadow; the peak is less than five miles due east from my childhood home — and 7,000 feet higher. As a hike, it's considered by many to be the most difficult standard route to a summit in the Wasatch, rising 6,000 feet in six miles along a chunder-filled gully of a trail called Jacob's Ladder, followed by boulder-hopping in a granite cirque, and finally a class-3 to low-4 scramble up a narrow ridge of vertically-stacked monzonite slabs.

I don't quite remember the first time my dad guided me to this peak. I believe it was the summer after I graduated from high school, 20 years ago. My early memories of Lone Peak's difficulty all surround the steep slog of Jacob's Ladder. There are fewer memories of the slabs that bother me today ... probably because I have 20 years of physical conditioning behind me now, and also two decades of risk and personal ability assessment, which have made me much more wary of exposed scrambling. Much sharper than memories of difficulty are memories of amazement and joy — the quiet Alpine forest mere miles from my crowded suburban neighborhood, the sheer granite walls above the cirque, and standing on top of a peak barely as wide as I am tall, overlooking the entire Salt Lake Valley.

My unplanned trip to Utah for my aunt's funeral just happened to put me in position for a 20th anniversary/38th birthday visit to what is still my favorite mountain. Dad was available, and we also were joined by his friend Tom. Dad had Sunday afternoon obligations so we left at the crack of dawn, enjoying clear skies and temperatures just below 70 degrees. My legs retained a dull soreness from Friday's 14er adventure, but for the most part I felt fantastic. We made quick work of Jacob's Ladder and practically bounded through the wildflower-filled cirque. Dad is in incredible shape and I couldn't quite keep up with him, but I came as close as I could hope to. There was so much oxygen up there, at 10,000 feet.

When we reached the base of the peak, Tom decided to stop and take a nap in wildflower-filled meadow. Dad and I scrambled up a steep and tricky gully — boulders covered in sand — and continued onto the ridge. This photo that my dad took gives an idea of what the summit ridge is like. It's difficult to depict the scale, but the peak is only about 15 square feet. The tilted slab leading to the peak is about five feet long, and not nearly as wide as I'd like. A tumble from this ridge might bounce you on a couple of earlier boulders, but you'd probably land in the cirque, nearly a thousand feet below.

I pulled out my camera to take a photo dad scrambling up one of the first short class-4 maneuvers, and caught an rush of vertigo. It was similar to the sensation that I battled after rolling my ankle and tumbling onto my head on Grizzly Peak on Friday — the sensation that just wouldn't go away and effectively frightened me off the mountain ridge after I summited Grays. Again I felt dizzy, then began to teeter, panicked, and dropped the camera. It bounced once on the edge of a narrow precipice and disappeared into a seemingly bottomless crevasse. My dad and I both wedged ourselves into cracks underneath car-sized boulders, scanning dark hollows for signs of a small, black object. It was nowhere to be seen. Gone. I don't know what made me more sad — that I'd lost my $500 camera (which was several years old and very well used), or that I'd lost all of my images from Lone Peak. It had been such a gorgeous morning.

My camera was gone but the vertigo persisted. Watching an object bounce and rocks and disappear did not help the sensation that gravity was yanking me in every impossible direction. If Dad hadn't been there, I would have undoubtedly lost my nerve. He patiently coached me through the monzonite puzzle, pointing out the best handholds, warning me about slippery sandy sections, and even pulling me up by the arm up a ten-foot slab when my shoulders went weak while gripping a tiny handhold. Finally we were on the peak, perched next to thousand-foot drops in three directions, nibbling on Nutella-slathered pita bread. I was happy, but still ill with unsteadiness.

Looking back on the perhaps half-dozen times I've sat on the kitchen-table-sized summit, I remembered that I pretty much always feel this way on Lone Peak — like the cirque is rushing toward me, and if I stand up, I might collapse. I probably felt this way the first time, even when my 18-year-old ignorance of innate clumsiness was there to protect me. Vertigo is not exactly an enjoyable sensation, and yet I've loved Lone Peak ever since. I used to joke with friends that I was never going to get married, but if I did, it would be on top of Lone Peak (Technically I still haven't broken that promise.) I suppose dizziness and stomach butterflies and exhilaration are exactly the sensations of love. Twenty years and countless mountains later, Lone is still my favorite.

 I had birthday dinner with my parents and sister's family. It was just like old times — grilled salmon and vegetables with corn on the cob from the same local farmer, and mom baked a German chocolate cake for dessert. It was a great birthday ... hopefully that means it's going to be a great year.


On Monday I needed to drive back to Colorado. Although I wanted to beat all the of the eclipse traffic heading south from Idaho and Wyoming, it was too much of a temptation to stay in Utah through the early afternoon and view the partial eclipse from a mountain top. I'm one of those who wasn't that interested in the eclipse until recently ... I even had an invite from friends to go camping in Wyoming during the total eclipse, and shrugged it off. (I thought I'd be too busy wrapping up some deadlines before leaving for Europe this week. At the time I didn't have plans to be in Utah.) But then I fell victim to the hype, and decided to join dad on another tough hike to a 10,000-foot mountain called Gobbler's Knob.

 My legs were definitely aching as we ascended 3,000 feet in 2.5 miles. Dad didn't seem any worse for the wear. We arrived at the summit 50 minutes before the eclipse at its fullest — I believe around 92 percent. I don't think I've ever spent more than an hour sitting on a mountain top, and really enjoyed the relaxed lounging, watching a strange early twilight descend over the surrounding mountains and valleys, and occasionally donning the eclipse glasses to watch the moon take increasingly larger bites out of the sun.

No doubt the total eclipse would have been incredible. But this was special as well — looking up at the crescent sun, feeling a chill descend and putting on a jacket, watching birds bounce nervously across tree branches, and absorbing a silence that seemed to deepen as the sun nearly disappeared.

We descended the mountain quickly, as I was still hoping to beat I-15 traffic. I thought about the ways I appreciate getting older, because each day lived adds to a wealth of experiences and memories, and a deepening of perspective. I envied Dad's limber movements down the steep trail, and hoped that one day I can be 64 the way he's 64. He's had some rough patches in life, and emerged stronger, possibly as strong as he's been. For now I'm 38 the way I can be 38, seeking strength where I can find it, and excited about the year in front of me.

Upward over the mountain

Last week, my aunt Jill died at age 53. She had multiple myeloma, a blood cancer caused by malignant plasma cells. Her cancer was incurable and aggressive. She battled for three years, trying every treatment and several clinical trials. From afar, the treatments seemed painful and isolating. She must have felt hopeless at times, but she was brave. When faced with the prospect of a painful stem cell transplant that had only a small chance of success, she said, "this might not extend my life, but it will help doctors learn more about these treatments for the future." 

We shared the same name, Jill Homer. When I was a child, she impressed on me the value of finding joy in everything. My grandmother had given me some kind of chore after Thanksgiving dinner. I don't remember the chore, only that I was unhappy because I wanted to play with my cousins. My aunt said, "Don't look at it as punishment. It's just another type of adventure." I'm paraphrasing. The word adventure is probably something my memory inserted years later. But that was my aunt. Life is a great adventure, whether you're zip-lining down from dizzying heights (a thing she decided to do shortly after being diagnosed with cancer) or doing the dishes. 

I decided to drive out to Utah for the funeral this weekend. It was a beautiful service, attended by all of my aunts and uncles and a large number of my many cousins. As the years pass, I realize more how much I value my big Mormon family with our often messy and loud gatherings, the jello salads and funeral potatoes. It was nice to spend an afternoon with them and learn more about Jill's final weeks. Death inevitably leads to reflection about the fleeting nature of life, and its sources of joy. Jill never stopped embracing beauty, even when she was in pain.


In her spirit — or really, in my spirit, but I think we shared a lot of the same values as well as a name — I took advantage of the road trip to squeeze in a little adventure on two 14ers near the Interstate, Torreys and Grays peaks. Looking at a map, it seemed there was a more interesting route than the standard trail, starting from Loveland Pass. This route included a lot of climbing and descending and two smaller (13er) peaks in the way, but bonus: You start above treeline, just below 12,000 feet. Views the whole way.

 And ridge walking! Right out of the car I felt a bit rough — nauseated, mostly. My breathing was actually fine, despite the altitude. I slogged along and tried to eat some fruit snacks, but despite the stomach grumblings I felt pretty good. Sunny day, perfect weather forecast, and a trail to two 14ers with nobody on it. What more could you ask for?

 Looking toward Torreys and Grays from Grizzly Peak. Right off this ridge was a steep descent on loose talus, and I took a fall. It wasn't that bad. I have what I consider a "bad ankle," my left ankle, which I broke when I was 19. It's been the weak one ever since. I've been rolling it a lot lately, and I rolled it on top of a loose boulder and crumpled onto a thankfully smaller pile of rocks with my head downhill. I rose with no injures (save the tailbone I bruised when I fell down the stairs last week, which still hurts.) But I was dizzy and disoriented and really, really spooked.

 Why was I so spooked? It's difficult to justify now. I wasn't hurt and this wasn't terribly difficult terrain. Despite this reality, I was remorseful. "Why do I always go to the mountains? I'm not good in the mountains at all, and they scare me. Why, oh why, oh why?"

I inched my way down Grizzly's talus field and started up a new one to summit Torreys. This route that gains 1,700 feet in less than a mile, topping out at 14,275 feet. I tried to shake how spooked I felt, unsuccessfully, and struggled mightily with this climb. I stumbled to the summit with at least 15 people on top, and pointed out my ridge route to a guy who asked where I came from.

"I'd like to do that someday, but it's not a day hike," he said.

I looked at my watch. "I've only hiked five miles so far." Three and a half hours had passed. I still had more than six hours of driving ahead of me, and this hike was already taking much longer than expected. Of course you can't go to Torreys without tagging Grays, so I was looking at eight hours of hiking, which one might think unreasonable on top of a 530-mile drive. I would disagree. My aunt Jill might disagree. But I was admittedly terrified of returning to Grizzly, and already plotting an alternative. Perhaps, I thought, the faster way back from this mountain is around it.

Holding a borrowed sign on Grays, looking disheveled as usual. Six miles in four hours. I knew if I dropped down the popular trail, I could potentially run the gravel road, bike path, and a supposed trail along Highway 6, all the way back to my car. It was 15 miles instead of six, wasn't a beautiful ridge walk, and promised to be a slog of a gradual climb from the Interstate. But if I could run, I might arrive in Utah before 1 a.m.

This descent was fun. A herd of mountain goats sauntered along the trail (I've seen mountain goats three times in Colorado, always along popular routes to 14ers. It's like they want to be around people.) The trail was rocky and steep but mostly mindless. I finally felt comfortable turning on my iPod and shuffling along, although my bad ankle was throbbing, and I was still nauseated. Running was going to prove difficult. Dang, it was going to be a long walk back to the car.

Unfortunately I didn't start to feel better, and I ran out of food because I had banked on a four- or five-hour hike, not eight. The bike path on my map turned out to be paved, which was an unpleasant surprise. I slogged along on hot and sore feet, at least managing 18-minute miles with not too much effort (curbing the nausea), and scrolling through my map while pondering potential stream bed gullies I could climb back to the ridge. ("Don't do that," I reminded myself. "You'll regret that.") There was just enough shuffling to wrap up the 20-mile hike in eight hours, and not feel too worse for the wear. Better to not be shattered before the drive.

Driving west into the setting sun, I felt slightly ashamed for how poorly I'd reacted on Grizzly. Maybe it's an inherent knowledge that something small like a weak ankle could prove deadly in the wrong place. Maybe I'm hurt because I love the mountains so much, but I'm just a feeble thing pressed against cold, sweeping indifference.

Why do I go to the mountains? Because they're beautiful. And because I'm not very good in the mountains and they scare me. My aunt Jill might point out that perspective is what matters.

Thundersummer

Claps of thunder were closing in as I raced down chunky gravel on Rainbow Lakes Road, spun out in my highest gear. Lightning hadn't yet made an appearance, but the thunder sounded close, and I was hurrying to reach an outhouse at the Sourdough Trailhead, about a mile downhill. I rounded a corner at high speed and saw the cow moose and her calf almost too late, screeching the wet brakes to a stop about 100 feet away. The moose stood on the right side of the road facing me, looking unperturbed but also unwilling to move. There was nowhere to backtrack for miles. So it would be a standoff.

"Hey moose," I called out, as though she didn't already know she was dealing with an annoying human. Lightning sliced through the sky directly in front of us. A shattering thunder boom followed within one second. The moose didn't budge. Still straddling my bike, I backed up a few feet and glanced into the woods, scouting for the darkest spot to hide from lightning with the kind of tree I could possibly climb should the moose decide to charge. Within seconds the indigo sky unleashed a shower of hail. Finally the moose and her calf took off down the road. I waited some more, wincing at the sting of marble-sized ice balls on my shoulders and hands ... but it was better than being stomped by a moose. Finally it felt safe to continue coasting down the road. Moose tracks pressed into the wet gravel for a quarter mile before they veered into the forest.

Hail was still pouring down when I reached the trailhead and ducked into outhouse, a relatively spacious and clean toilet that was as welcome as any shelter could be. I took the opportunity to pour a cascade of rocks and mud out of my shoes, and pulled on all of the same layers that I typically carry in my backpack in January — fleece pullover, waterproof shell, fleece hat, fleece mittens. As I waited out the storm for the next ten minutes, I continued to shiver. Every convulsion sent a shock of pain through my bruised back. Just three hours earlier, I'd also fallen down the stairs.

At home we have just a single set of stairs, but they're steep, uncarpeted, and about 15 feet high. I've had a few near-misses before and know better to watch my footing and hold the railing, but I was descending in socks while holding sunglasses in one hand and a GPS device in the other. Halfway down, a sock-foot slipped and I went down hard on my butt and back, bouncing down eight or nine steps before crumpling in a heap at the bottom. My backpack full of water and winter gear had twisted around and the strap was tight against my neck, almost choking me, and I was nauseated and hyperventilating. I thought I might faint. I fought to hold onto consciousness, both because I didn't want the backpack strap to suffocate me after I passed out, and because fainting after falling down the stairs at home was embarrassing enough even if I wasn't found dead in this position.

After several minutes of concentrating on breathing, I regained enough composure to stand. My butt was throbbing and my left calf had a strange knot that felt like a fist clenched against the muscle. My sunglasses and GPS had both exploded into pieces, but these luckily are "Jill-proof" items that I was able to put back together. I paced for several more minutes and concluded that I wasn't injured, just in pain. "It's not worse than crashing my bike. And I still ride after crashing my bike. So I guess I should ride."

My plan for the day wasn't a small one — 50 miles, almost 6,000 feet of climbing, and exploration on what turned out to be a swampy mess of rocky doubletrack, Forest Service Road 505. I didn't regret my decision to ride until 505, when stepping off the bike to push it around knee-deep mud puddles clenched the invisible fist around my calf muscle, and bouncing on rocks aggravated pain underneath my ribs on the left side of my back. Then the hailstorm moved in, not unexpected but still stunningly swift in its consumption of the warm, sunny afternoon. Every bruised part of my body stiffened as I shivered in an outhouse, and I still had to propel myself back to Boulder.

Thunder continued to crack overhead, and I smirked at myself and these positions I'm often in. As I grow older, there are ways in which I continue to become more reckless and less risk-averse than I was in my 20s. I mean, when I lived in Utah 15 years ago, I was terrified of thunderstorms and wouldn't even go outside for routine bike rides if the sky or forecast looked bad. Now I'm in Colorado and the forecast has looked at least somewhat bad nearly every day for a month, and I don't really mind. I figure I can mitigate risk by staying below treeline and hiding in an outhouse when necessary. Still, these certainly aren't calamity-proof solutions. Fears of calamity used to have more impact.

I suppose I've figured out that I am the type of person who will more likely perish in a preventable household accident, so why be afraid of the outdoors?

Beat, grumpy about hiding under a tree during a hailstorm on Sunday

It has been a trying summer for thunderstorm fears. The typical monsoonal moisture is being ramped up by hot and dry weather in the Pacific Northwest, causing central Colorado to become more cool and wet. Lightning risk notwithstanding, I love these conditions. The storms keep outings interesting, occasionally lend to beautiful light and dramatic scenery, foster stunning wildflower blooms, keep the air clear and smoke-free, and reduce the usual stifling heat. My friend Dave in Colorado Springs posted the other day that he had seasonal affective disorder because the stormy weather was getting him down. I replied, "Really? I usually hate August, but this one's been okay so far."

Of course, that's just weather; it does nothing to stem the growing tide of unrest in the U.S. For that, August has been a particularly disheartening month. Nothing that is happening is surprising, sadly.

We do what we can to battle disheartenment ... donate to organizations that do a better job than we could alone ... meet with friends and commiserate ... attempt to gently expand on the situation with that high school friend on Facebook who still lives a relatively privileged and sheltered existence ... research the best ways to stock the nuclear bomb shelter (oh yes, we actually have a shelter at home, built by the previous homeowner who lived in Russia during the Cold War. Not that I'd even want to be among the survivors who envy the dead.) Ah, now I'm drifting into negative thinking again. I know it doesn't help anything, so I break the feedback loop with a nice ride on quiet forest roads, where my largest threat is probably lightning.

It is wonderful to have bikes in my life, especially when I've fallen down the stairs and am banged up enough to prevent running for little while. The daily hailstorm petered out and sunbeams stabbed through breaks in the clouds. A faint rainbow formed overhead. It became a great afternoon for riding ... overcast and cool with hints of sunlight sparkling on wet grass, still green in mid-August. It is a beautiful time of year, when I learn to live in the moment. 

Mountain benders ... good for what ails you

My alarm buzzed at 6 a.m. Saturday morning, but I languished in bed until 6:30. Finally slumped onto the floor, made instant coffee and oatmeal in the microwave, threw on a still-wet daypack with soggy bars in the side pocket, and walked out the door. Directly across the street was the Horsethief trailhead. I signed my name in the trail register, destination "Bridge of Heaven. Maybe Bear Creek, if weather okay." The trail shot skyward at sustained 18- to 25-percent grades. No room to even warm up the legs. The Bridge of Heaven was 5,000 feet overhead.

A misty rain swirled through the forest. The narrow trail pushed through shoulder-high brush that was saturated in droplets, leaving me as wet as if I'd jumped in a lake. The air had warmth to it, though, even though my hands were still slightly numb from yesterday's hailstorm. Groggily I plodded skyward, holding my tingling fingers against my neck to gauge my heart rate. It seemed good — low 140s. I know fatigue lowers heart rate, but that's effectively my goal. I'm never in the mood for morning activity, but this morning definitely felt better than most. Anyway, I live for a good, old-fashioned sustained climb, where I can knock off a vertical mile right out of bed. This climb would be the last for runners in the Ouray 100 — miles 90 to 100. Brutal, to say the least. Twenty-four hours hadn't yet passed in the race, and I doubted a runner had been through here yet. "They should be glad I'm knocking all the water off the brush," I thought. 

The effects of trying to shoot a photo of wildflowers with a wet camera in the rain. As I crossed over the Bridge of Heaven, I was met with a brisk wind. Drizzling rain continued to slap my face as I pulled more layers over my saturated clothing: rain jacket — still a bit damp from yesterday — my last dry cap, mittens. "It's cold at 12,000 feet," I thought. The day promised to be gray, flatly lit, wet, and cool. "But morning rain probably means there won't be afternoon thunderstorms," I reasoned. Below the Bridge was a narrow cirque, carpeted with flowers and surrounded by a cathedral of jagged ridges. Where does it even go? I was going to find out.

Scott had given be a GPS track of a route he completed the previous week. The route dropped into the cirque, climbed to another saddle, and skirted along a ridge before descending into a broad valley. Fog cover was thick and visibility was limited, and I lost sight of the trail. For a half mile I followed Scott's track along a creek, blind to anything else but that thin purple line, completely confused about why it was veering so far away from the ridge. Where am I?

I found the trail again along the aptly-named Difficulty Creek, just as hints of sunlight were breaking up the fog. I climbed to another saddle at 12,600 feet and sat on the wet grass, eating a snack and scrolling through the map on my GPS. There was still little I could see through the clouds, but so many possibilities on the screen. The map showed the trail continuing east toward the other side of Engineer Pass, which was far away — like adding 10 or 15 miles to my day far away. Scott's track swung southwest over the tundra.

Again I was blindly following the purple line, stumbling over rocks and tussocks, and marveling at the vibrantly green tundra across this misty mountainscape — so close to Ouray, and somehow rising to a different dimension. Having seen no one on the way to Bridge of Heaven, I could safely assume I was the only human wandering through the mist for many miles.

Ouray carries the tagline "The Switzerland of America," a slogan that Beat vehemently disagrees with. However, there are definitely hints of the European Alps in these mountains, with limestone cliffs and rolling Alpine meadows. Even on this gray day with poor lighting and no chance of a good photo, the landscape was stunning. This hillside evoked fond images of a candy from my childhood, Fruit Stripe Gum. So random, the memories that stay close to your heart.

Just as I started into a steep off-trail descent, an enveloping bank of fog rolled in. I watched it with dread — "no, no, please stay over there." The mystery of the route had worn me down, and my phobias about getting lost reared their ugly head. Since there was no trail to follow and absolutely no visibility, all I had was Scott's purple line ... in which I was admittedly losing trust. It just dropped straight down this wet, grassy slope, weaving through rock bands. Were there cliffs in the way? Was there an uncrossable stream in the way? I was convinced I would be bashing my way back to Bridge of Heaven soon.

The phobia hit a fever pitch so I sat down for a few minutes to collect myself. It's always so funny to me ... in hindsight ... how I overreact when I feel "lost." I was still following the purple line, and Scott made it through, so clearly it was doable. I even had extra batteries for the GPS and enough remembered landmarks on the route to backtrack if necessary. But it's difficult for me to reconcile logic with an instinctual fear of the unknown. The fog was so thick I could barely see anything beyond my feet, and this felt like descending into a white tunnel from which the bottom might drop at any moment. My GPS map showed intimidating topo lines in every direction. I taught myself map and compass navigation in 2014, and while that mainly just provided more insight into why I should not trust my own navigational decisions, it did give me better "big picture" understanding. I scrolled through the map and pondered where I'd choose to go if there were no GPS track to follow. Cliffs, streams, cliffs. No bearings. I'd turn around.

Unsurprisingly, the route went without incident. The wet grass was quite slippery and I fell twice, but that kind of thing is to be expected with me ... which is exactly why I'm so leery of being forced onto cliffs. By the time I reached the Bear Creek Trail and Yellow Jacket Mine, the fog had cleared and the sun was out.

The Bear Creek Trail is an engineering marvel, carved into the side of a gorge by miners in the 1870s. Imagining those guys perched 700 feet over the creek, chipping away at these cliffs, is enough to make me feel pretty silly about fretting over an ambiguous GPS track. It's a little vertigo-inducing just to walk on top of this fairly wide and secure trail. About two miles from the highway, I began to see my first fellow hikers, and suddenly there were dozens of people. It was right about here that I suddenly and urgently needed to pee, and ended up scrambling up a precarious gully to get out of sight.

In total, the loop was 20 miles with more than 7,000 feet of climbing. After descending Bear Creek, I made my way back to town by way of the Ouray Perimeter Trail. I expected it to be a slog, but instead found an engaging route through a box canyon along the Uncompahgre River. What makes the water this color? I like to imagine it's gold.

The hike was slow-going but still only eight hours, which left plenty of time for an actual meal and a nap before my shift at Fellin Park, which was both an aid station for several legs, and the start/finish of the Ouray 100. All this time, runners were still grinding away at their route, more than 38 hours into the race when I showed up for my shift. The aid-station captain had one-upped me by climbing Mount Sneffels starting at 3 in the morning. She was upbeat and efficient, which made me feel a bit unneeded. But I did have fun meeting runners and hanging out with the race director, Charles, who after 40 hours operated in two modes — manically busy, and unconscious in a chair.

Around 2 a.m., the first finisher of the 50-mile race rolled in, bursting with energy. He was being closely shadowed by the second-place runner as he descended steeply from Bridge of Heaven, causing him to "miss" a switchback and fall a dozen or so feet. He was banged up and bleeding, but even more adrenaline charged because of the fall. I recognized him ... how did I know him? ... oh! Bryce 100! He was leading the Bryce 100 when I last saw him. I mentioned that, and we launched into an animated conversation about our experiences in Utah. He seemed genuinely interested to hear about my race, which was gratifying ... to be regraded as a runner. He was such a nice guy, too. I kept insisting that "I didn't finish Bryce. I was too slow. I timed out."

"Yeah, but you did 75 miles! That's great!"

Runners are the best. Really. This guy wins a 50-mile mountain race, limps into the finish at 2 a.m. covered in blood, and still takes the time to encourage an aid station volunteer.

Eszter finished just before 4 a.m., looking as fresh and strong as ever after 44 hours of near-continuous running (she said she took a couple of trailside catnaps.) The Bridge of Heaven 10-mile section took her close to eight hours, I believe, mainly because her feet were macerated from being wet for so long. I can *definitely* relate to how painful that can be. On a downhill that steep, every footfall would be agony. But she seemed to have no other issues, which is incredible. Big congrats to Eszter, who was the second woman ever to finish the Ouray 100, in three years of the race's existence (also the second this year.)

I wasn't nearly so tough, and staggered back to bed after my shift for another three hours of sleep, waking up groggy, again, just before 10 a.m. I did want to be back in Boulder around 8 p.m., but that still gave me time for a two- or three-hour hike. I chose a recommended classic, Twin Peaks.

This trail seems like a casual stroll compared to the Bridge of Heaven-to-Bear Creek route, but it still gains 3,500 feet in 3.5 miles. I set out feeling perky, heart rate steady, breathing calm. As I ascended, I felt this strange sensation in my legs. Sort of an ... ache. Was this ... tired legs? I imagined my lungs laughing at my legs for finally being the wimpy one. "What's wrong, having a little trouble down there?" For once in a long while, my breathing was good while another body part struggled. This felt amazing.

Overall it was a pretty big week of hiking. Since Monday — 83 miles, 30+ hours, 28,300 feet of climbing. Not even an Ouray 100 spread out over an entire week, but a robust effort nonetheless. My breathing and stamina, however, had actually improved throughout the week. It followed a general upward trend of well-being that I can probably attribute to several factors — happiness about being in the mountains near the top. But the overall arc is one I've experienced before, and understand that it's mainly the result of two and a half little pills that I take every morning, recently upped from two, to stop my thyroid gland from flooding my body with hormones.

When my body is on a downswing — as I felt I was for much of June and July — my perspective changes. The world becomes a little bit darker, less interesting, and there are more moments I want to escape than there are moments I'm glad to experience. These psychological impacts are something I find perplexing and disheartening. I used to believe in the autonomy of self — that my body is a vehicle I drive, and my mind is an independent operator. "Mind over matter" and its mastery became my driving motivation in endurance racing. Experiencing how deeply my mind can be affected by hormones ... chemicals ... something over which I have no control ... has been a humbling dose of reality.

So once again I'm musing about sense of self. Is there any part that I can still call "me?" When I gasp while climbing a set of stairs and brood about nuclear winter ... is that me? When I breathe easily while ascending a mountain and marvel at the simplicity of joy ... is that me? Or are these just chemical reactions to moments, from which both body and mind can't exist independently? I don't want to think about this right now. It's easier to just let go. It's always easier to let go.

At the trail's end, I perched next to the precarious gap between twin summits and watched storms roll in, again. There was a hint of sunlight on Sneffels, and much more over shimmering on Umcompahgre River Valley to the north. I could even see golden plains on the northern horizon, and imagined the Colorado River corridor, the stage for some of the best memories of my youth. This was a wonderful moment, of which I'd had more than I could count in just a week. And really, it was more than enough.