Holding on to those past sunny days

The sun went away today, and I get the feeling that this time, it's going to be for a while. The last vestiges of the holidays have fallen away, 2009 is officially history, and I think most of us are asking ourselves, "What now?" I have a weather forecast full of sleet and snain and freezing rain, and a big question mark about where this new year is going to go. I have a lot of options. Too many options, not enough motivation, not enough courage.

Tuesday was the nicest day yet — temperatures in the high teens, no wind, pure sunlight. My body chose this time to come to come down with a heavy head cold, so my energy levels have been low. My friend Bjorn was leaving town Wednesday, so we went on a mellow goodbye walk across Mendenhall Lake. He fed me lemon ginger tea and we talked about how much he's dreading his upcoming trip, which I find hilarious, because his plan is to ride a bicycle from San Diego to somewhere on the East Coast via the southern states — basically a dream trip in my mind. What's even funnier about Bjorn's planned trip is that he's not a cyclist in any capacity. On the lake, the day before leaving, he asked me what kind of bike he should buy in California ("Um, probably a 26" rigid mountain bike with slick tires"), whether he should get one of those "fat butt" gel seats ("Um, not recommended") and where he should ride through New Mexico ("Just avoid I-10.") The final stab about Bjorn's bike trip is that it's not my bike trip, and it's going to ruin what was really my last best chance to learn basic mountaineering skills before summer sets in. No more sun, no more mountains. Suddenly, I feel more alone that ever before.

My wide-open question now is, what should I do in 2010? What do you think I should do?

Alaska slickrock

The temperature was 11 degrees with a light breeze when I pedaled down my driveway at 10:04 a.m. The back end of my snow bike bounced dramatically because I had been too lazy to pump my tires up from 6 psi. I labored along the ice-slicked pavement and veered onto the Auke Lake trail, which wove through tall hemlock trees as my frosted eyelashes blinked rapidly in a strobelight of shadow and bright sun. I crossed Back Loop Road and veered onto the Lake Creek Trail, a treacherous drainage route with a solid inch of glare ice masked by a half inch of fresh snow. I pedaled tentatively across the slick surface and stopped to cinch up my studded boots for the 1,800-foot climb. I doubted I'd be able to ride any of the steep uphill trail under those conditions, but I had this hunch that the climb would be worth it, just the same.

I stomped hard with every step to plant my boot bolts into the hard ice before skittering the bike up yet another short pitch. It was slow, and I was sweating hard — a stream of fallen droplets was frozen to the front of my fleece jacket. I hoisted my behemoth of a bike over a couple of deadfalls as a group of skiers, who were carrying their skis on their backs and wearing creepers for the hike up, caught up to me.

"Did you ride up this trail?" a friendly man asked me.

"No," I said.

"Do you think you'll be able to ride down?" a woman chimed in.

"Not without killing myself," I said.

The man looked justifiably confused. "So, um, what are you doing with the bike?"

"I'm hoping there's crust in the meadows," I said.

The man shook his head. "It's too high," he said. "There's probably still powder up top."

"Possibly," I said. "But I figured it was worth a look."

"Well, good luck," the man said. "If nothing else, it looks like a great workout getting that thing up here."

I nodded and followed behind, continuing to chat with the skiers through the final minutes of the climb. At the meadow, they stopped to put on their skis and I sheepishly wheeled my bike onto the untrammeled snow, braced for sinking failure. I sat on the seat and started pedaling. The rubber gripped nicely to the hardpack and I started pedaling harder. Suddenly, I was moving faster. And faster. Until the treacherous icy trail faded into the background and the whole unhindered freedom of Spaulding Meadow opened up wide. I carved playful figure 8s, plummeted into drainages and mashed the pedals until I was free again. I closed my eyes and dreamed of sand and redrock and desert sun, in a frozen world so similar that I almost forgot where I was.

Until I opened my eyes and remembered. And smiled.

It was a fantastic ride:

Alaska Slickrock from Jill Homer on Vimeo.

New Year's

In 1999, I spent New Year's Eve wedged into a procession of people on the Las Vegas Strip, clinging to my friend's backpack as we were involuntarily nudged through the advancing crowd like pebbles in a glacier. I remember stealing glances far above the blaze of lights, squinting in vain to see stars, and secretly hoping that Y2K would come and plunge the shimmering chaos into relatively peaceful darkness.

In 2009, I walked away from downtown Juneau with a small group of good friends, squealing with equal parts delight and shock from the sudden transition of the overheated Alaskan bar to 5-degree air, and above us the new moon blazed so bright that we could see both shadows and stars. I felt a sense of peace and well-being, even hope, for the new decade.

One of my resolutions for 2010 is a little more focus and a little less flightiness, from my writing to my riding to my simple domestic chores. But I also vowed not to turn away opportunities to spend time with friends, even if it means setting aside plans and goals. (In past winters, I have been uber-focused, much to the detriment of my social life.) So on Thursday I went for a last-of-the-decade hike with Bjorn. We returned to Thunder Mountain, both silently hoping we would see the wolf pack we spotted on solstice, even though we knew it was more than unlikely. Severe wind-loading on the snow wall kept us off the summit, but that's OK. Views aren't bad below the avalanche danger zone.

On New Year's Day, four of us managed to motivate early for a crust excursion on the Dan Moller Trail. We were a strange crew - two walkers, a skier and a bike pusher, but we chatted our way up the icy slope. Libby and Geoff K. had to break off early to return and prepare cupcakes and sliders for the party that night, but Chris D. and I continued biker/skier to the ridge. It was a cold afternoon, with my thermometer registering 7 degrees and a brisk wind blowing along the ridgeline.

The snow was, quite fantastically, horrible for both of us (since skiers love powder and snow bikers love crust, it's rare for both to be dissatisfied.) But it's been more than a week since we've had any sort of snow, and there's been quite a bit of rain in there, followed by deep freeze, and the snow was so hard and rutted out by days of use that it was body-jarring brutal. Chris described it well as similar to being pulled into coral reef and dragged along the rough, jagged bottom. I lowered Puglsey's tire pressure to 6 psi just to absorb the shock and still took a beating. A few times, I dropped into ruts so deep I couldn't bounce out and had to brake and bail. Chris, who is a skilled skier, eventually just took his skis off and walked a good deal of the downhill.

Today I returned to Dan Moller, sans bike, with the Cliff House crew - my ex Geoff, Shannon and Dan - for a snowshoe run-hike. I should clarify that the boys brought snowshoes. I didn't even bother with them because I had been up there the day before and knew that most of the trail was concrete, and suspected that even the ridge had enough crust to support my weight.

The guys planned to traverse the ridge over to Mount Jumbo, which I didn't have time to complete before work, but I still had to keep their ambitious pace to my turn-around point. Shannon put the sentiment of the day well when we crested yet another little knoll, facing the tangerine glow over the Inside Passage, and said with dramatic sarcasm, "Man, that view just sucks. I hate living here."

Shannon and I were fairly amazed that we made it from the trailhead to the high point on the ridge in just an hour and a half, and it wasn't even difficult. Geoff pointed out that it's usually easier to move faster because it takes less time, and if more people realized that, he wouldn't win so many races. Ha.

I still have no idea what 2010 will hold. There are so many uncertainties and unknowns and for now I'm committed to just roll with it, let any goals and plans come to me when I'm ready, and not try to wedge myself uncomfortably into the flow of the crowd just because I feel a compulsion to always be moving forward. Time ultimately decides, and I'm OK with that. As long as I have a little help from my friends. Happy New Year, everyone.

Endless summer

Juneau has yet to experience a very deep cold snap this winter, and we haven't had much snow. This is following a near-record-dry fall and what I have been told was a record-warm summer. Our pattern since mid-November seems to be a couple of (relatively) warm and very wet days followed by so-extended-they're-almost-disorienting periods of sunlight and what can really only be described as light freezes. Yes, I realized temperatures in the single digits and teens is more than a light freeze. But in direct sunlight, when you're pedaling or climbing so hard you can feel the heat thrashing its way out of your clothing layers, this winter almost feels like summer.

This is the forest at 1,200 feet above sea level on Dec. 30. By this time of year, this elevation should be a few feet deep in snow. But this year ... happy green plants, bare dirt, sunlight glowing on ice-free bark ... what month is this? It's really quite odd. Global warming? Or maybe just timing. This is my fourth winter in Juneau. The first three were near-record snowfall years. The 2006-07 season actually is the record. The whole of my Juneau winter experience has been snow after rain after snow after rain, a constant struggle in slush and fluff. And of course I like snow. But I like it even better packed down, well-frozen, good for riding bikes and hiking. This is my kind of winter.

I went up to the Sun Bowl today at an unforgivably slow pace. I'm not sure what made me so slow. Perhaps the conditions? There is actually a lot of ice on the ground - pure, clear ice that is quite slippery unless you take great measures to go around it. And for some unknown reason, when I did hit snow, I refused to slip on my snowshoes just to see how far I could skitter across the hardpack before I punched into rotten gristle up to my hips. But it was three hours to the base of the ridge, and when I looked at my watch, I actually yelped, because I honestly thought it was more than an hour earlier. A steady stream of wind-driven powder poured off the ridge and I figured I was probably better off in my slowness, because it forced me to avoid what was probably a brutal below-zero windchill that would certainly destroy my delusion of summer.

Back down the mountain with sweaty hair frozen like a helmet to my head, and crampons on my feet because I really was struggling mightily with that ground ice. But the ride out was wonderful, crackling on the studded tires, balaclava pulled over my face, seeing through the frozen surface into a world of heat and light.

It only took a month, but

I finally got all of my book orders out today. Thank you again to everyone who ordered one, and stuck with me after the frustrating Fed Ex delay. If you don't receive your book(s) in the next few days, please e-mail me because it should be on its way. Even with a handful of cancellations, I still nearly sold out of a fairly hefty order.

This whole Christmas book sale experiment, while frustrating, has actually given me quite a bit of a boost for my new project. After my small disaster in the 2009 ITI and break-up with Geoff, I had pretty much put "Ghost Trails" behind me. But a trickle of Amazon.com sales throughout the year and this recent surge puts my total sales over 1,100 — not bad for a self-published book promoted solely by the author on a single blog. Given that royalties for self-published books are pretty hefty, that number divided by the amount of time I put into that book is almost an income - almost. But it does give me confidence to work on a new project, because I honestly think this one is shaping up better than the first, and I figure the worst I can do is self-publish it and I'll still likely recoup my time. But I plan to spend a little more time on the finished product this time around and hopefully find a commercial publisher.

Today I did a tempo road ride (on the Karate Monkey with studded tires) out to mile 33, about 46 miles round trip. The weather was gorgeous and I almost felt guilty "wasting" it on a road ride. But I just felt like putting in some steady, hard miles. I still train entirely on feel (moreso now than before because I don't even have a working odometer anymore), but I tried to keep my heart rate just below anaerobic, in that 75 to 80 percent range (though, of course, I'm just guessing on that front. I still avoid heart rate monitors or any other kind of technological measure of fitness because I'm now convinced more than ever that the kind of training I like to do, for the kind of events I like to train for, is all in my mind, anyway.) So my level of exertion today was just below "ouch" but still above the level that allows for any deep thought (beyond "Dang, I really overdressed today" and "Ice is pretty.") It felt really good to get out and push hard, possibly the first time I've made a solid effort to do so in months.

I really want to train again - good, focused training, and I think I'm nearly ready to start. I hope I'm ready. And yet, my head remains in the clouds, my heart in the mountains.

Support this blog by buying my book! Signed copies only $11.95 plus shipping.

NOTE: I sold out of my current batch but have another on the way. I contacted the company and they should be sending it USPS, so I expect it in a week or so, accounting for publishing time. If you would like to order a book and have not yet done so, turnover time will be about 10-12 days.

2009 in photos

2009 has been a volatile year for me. I committed to leaving Juneau and at the last minute decided to stay. I took a more demanding management position at my place of employment. Then I flew to Anchorage for the Iditarod Trail Invitational, where I made the grave misstep of dunking my leg in a lake and pushing onward for seven hours in subzero temperatures, slowly freezing my right foot. I paid the price for my mistake in both the deep disappointment of dropping out of an adventure race I had poured my heart and soul into on the first day, and the surprisingly long recovery from frostbite that nearly took the tips of my toes. In April came the abrupt break-up with my companion of most of the past decade. I took leave from my job, traveled south and spent the summer reconnecting with my family and commiserating with my bicycle. In June I headed to Banff to start the Tour Divide, often touted as "the longest mountain bike race in the world," feeling lonely and underprepared and fairly certain I didn't have the mental stamina to make it out of Canada. In July, I arrived at the Mexican border to finish the race with the women's record for the Banff-to-border route. In mid-summer, I returned to Juneau, made peace with my ex-boyfriend and my demanding job, rediscovered mountains, met cool new people, lost cool new people, learned to use crampons, dreamed of learning to climb, dreamed of bicycle touring in far-away climes, and vowed to take on new challenges in 2010. This year was in some ways incredible and other ways horrible. I never wish to repeat it, but I do hope to take everything I've learned into the new decade.

As is my year-end tradition, I'm posting my favorite photos of 2009, one for each month. These aren't necessarily my best, my most unique or my most artistic photos of each month. They're just my favorites, often for the emotions and memories they're connected to as much as the images they capture. So here's my "Year in Photos:"

January, "False Outer Point:" During the first two months of the year, I was doing a lot of specific training for the Iditarod Trail Invitational. Once or twice a week I rode intervals from end to end on Douglas Island and recovered coming home. Usually, with my outdoor activities, I'm either in a good fitness routine or a good photography routine. This was a rare moment of both.

February, "Stoked:" This remains my Juneau favorite bike ride, ever. The Dan Moller Trail had been recently groomed, and inexplicably no one had been up there afterward. I rode the perfectly smooth, packed trail all the way to the ridge, caught my first glimpse of the sun over Stephen's Passage and proceeded to bomb down the silky, steep route at 30+ mph. I describe it to my skier friends as "the perfect powder run" — the one time where all the right conditions came together for a flawless climb and descent on the Pugsley. I vowed to hold that buzz in my heart for when things got bad during the Iditarod Trail Invitational, which started one week later.

March, "The Race:" March was a particularly weak month for photos. I was laid up with frostbite and a really tough schedule in my new position at the Empire; I rarely got outside. This photo is of Anchorage cyclist Sean Grady on the first day of the Iditarod Trail Invitational, March 1. I spent a mere 12 hours on the trail before I was forced to drop out, but I still cherish those short hours in the race for containing both incredible cycling and a powerful life lesson.

April, "First Hike:" I took this photo on the Douglas Island Ridge toward the middle of April during the first outing in which I was able to walk on my frostbite foot for more than a few minutes. After nearly six weeks mostly off my feet, I ended up going much longer than was prudent, as is my custom. That single tree in the lower right is what makes this photo for me - a sprig of life in a frozen desert.

May, "Breakdown in Marin:" This is my favorite self portrait ever, not because it is a great image of me or the scenery, but because it effectively captures the emotions of the moment. Geoff and I were simultaneously traveling south and breaking up, and for me the crux point of both came in the Marin Headlands outside San Francisco. I was crewing for Geoff in the Miwok 100K, and trying to kill a four-hour lull with a mountain bike ride. It was a horrible day in early May: Fog, heavy rain, wind and temperatures in the low 40s. I was accelerating quickly down a fire road when I hit a wet metal pipe sticking out of the gravel and slammed directly into the ground at about 25 mph - probably the highest-speed bicycle crash of my life. For at least 10 minutes,, I was convinced that I broke my arm. The intense physical pain ignited a much deeper, more powerful mental anguish that put me in a very dark place for what seemed like a very long time. I curled up beneath a bush off the side of the road and let it churn through, and when I "came to," I stood up and took this photo. I'm still not sure what possessed me to take it, but I'm glad I did.

June, "Summitville:" This was a dynamic day, both my highest physical elevation and lowest mental point in the Tour Divide. I pedaled out of Del Norte, Colorado, elevation 7,800, and climbed to nearly 12,000 feet, the site of an eerie and toxic mining ghost town called Summitville. These clouds are the beginning of an intensely violent thunderstorm that pummeled me with heavy rain, hail, and endless streaks of lightning above timberline. Soaked to the skin in plummeting temperatures, I became so wracked with shivering that I could hardly steer my bike straight. After a terrifying and severely cold hour, I caught up to the ambulance that held my friend and fellow Divide rider, Pete, who had been hit head-on by a truck. He wasn't critically injured in the crash, but I did not know that at the time, and as I came to believe the worst, I fell into a dark place of grief for my friend and apathy for my dreams.

July, "The Fourth of July:" How I managed to keep my head in the game and stick with the Tour Divide after Summitville is still a mystery to me, but this photo represents as close to an answer as I have been able to find. I was two days out from the border in a remote part of the high New Mexico desert, just outside Gila National Forest, when I was engulfed by two spectacular thunderstorms. Near-constant streaks of lightning exploded all around me, but I inexplicably remained in the calm space between the massive storms. The last hints of sunlight slipped below the mountains and the sky erupted in a blaze of light. Across a 360-degree panorama, rainbows shimmered through sheets of rain and clouds bled crimson and orange. It was incredible, and impossible - beyond impossible - to capture in a photograph. But what really made the experience special was climbing into the foothills and glancing back to view the last hints of lightning-streaked sunset over the valley, and seeing in the far distance the tiny blasts of Independence Day fireworks over a ranch. It spoke to the smallness of humanity amid the powerful expanse of time and space.

August, "First Hints of Fall:" I came back to Juneau in mid-July, a little burnt out on bicycling and captivated by all the mountain walks within a short distance of my home. I took this photo on Blackerby Ridge on the first day of a seven-day mountain binge in late August and early September. I think it nicely captures the trail, the dashes of color, the wisps of clouds and the Mendenhall Wetlands 3,500 feet below.

September, "Dan on Grandchild:" My friend Dan Lesh and I climbed up the Grandchild Ridge on a foggy, rainy afternoon in mid-September and started hiking down just as the storm broke into a spectacular display of clouds and sunlight.

October, "Above the Fog:" Yes, I realize all my late-year photos are mountain landscapes. What can I say? They're very photogenic. I took this photo just above the Mount Roberts tram terminal during a "three peak" day that eventually landed me on Sheep Mountain. This is actually very early in a trek that just got better and better as the day wore on, but this remains my favorite photo from it.

November, "Warm Light on a Winter's Day:" This is yet another photo looking west from the Douglas Island Ridge, but wow, that was a day just filled with incredible light.

December, "Solstice With Wolves:" Of all the months this year, I had the hardest time picking a favorite photo from December. The one at the top of this post is my very favorite, a self portrait I shot during sunset just before descending Blackerby Ridge. In this one, my friend Bjorn and I are checking out the myriad tracks from a pack of wolves we saw on top of Thunder Mountain on the solstice. I like the play of light and shadow in this photo, and because of Bjorn's position, it almost looks like he is one making the canine prints.

Joy to the snow bikers

All is quiet on Christmas Day. The city is dark. The roads are empty. The trail is dusted in a fresh layer of White Christmas, packed only by the tiny paws of a single dog team. I have to leave Canada on Boxing Day, go back to a place where Christmas is gray and 39 degrees and heavy rain. But everything in Whitehorse is still holiday card perfect: minus 10 degrees Celsius, light winds, and hints of winter sunlight trying ever so cheerfully to peek out of the thinning snowstorm clouds.

Sierra, Anthony and I set out for a snow bike ride. Sierra is fairly ill and Anthony admits that the night before contained too many ribs and glasses of wine, but the conditions are too perfect to pass up. I met Sierra and Anthony at a 24-hour bike race in 2007. That was the race I discovered kindred spirits in Yukon mountain bikers - people mad about cycling and yet totally lax about it at the same time, just like me. Since then, they've adopted me as sort of an American cousin. Now, every so often I drop in to Whitehorse, usually half-plowed by yet another endurance cycling pursuit, and they take me in without complaint, let me use their sauna, give me a big bed to sleep in, and feed me until I burst. Then we all go for a ride.

Even though I only see them a couple times a year, it made a strange amount of sense to visit them on Christmas. And if it's Christmas Day, well, it only makes sense to go for a bike ride. Sierra rides a Pugsley painted white and embellished with glow-in-the-dark snowflakes and glittering spoke lights. She wears a pink hat with little pig ears and a snout. We pedal through the powder and joke about dinner: "Lutefisk pretty much just tastes like herring bait that was left out in the sun for a few days," I muse. "Honestly, I was expecting something more ... poisonous."

"You have no idea!" Anthony says. "This year's batch was actually one of the better ones."

Thoughts of Christmas fade away as we cross a frozen lake and begin the long climb. The trail is soft and I have to punch it with everything I have just to inch up the semi-steep pitches - like pedaling up a sand dune. The steep ones we have to walk. Sweat drips into tiny craters in the snow and we pull off every layer we can either stuff away or wrap around our bodies. The sun comes out and it almost feels like summer.

But the landscape looks like something incredibly different. Different than the places I know and love in Juneau, because this place is harsh and wide, and opens into seemingly forgotten corners of the continent. Riding through here reminds me of the Susitna Valley and the Farewell Burn and makes me ache for the faraway places I will never forget. We crest a wide pass and Anthony points out the names of new places I plan to etch into my memory. "That over there I think is Lake Lebarge," he says. "Like in Sam McGee!" I say, and I let myself believe that if we only had the hours to drop into the valley far below us, we'd find a way to travel back in time.

All is quiet on Christmas Day. We turn away from the yawning wilderness and ride home.