It's easy

For the past two weeks, we have been mired in what my more settled friends call "A Real Juneau Winter." The three winters I'd experienced here before, with their relentless powder dumps, hundreds of inches of seasonal snow accumulation and occasional below-zero days — all of those were apparently fake Juneau winters. This one is the real deal. And it is not pretty.

Actually, that's not entirely true. December, with its long stretches of clear and cold weather, was exceptionally pretty, even though my skier friends whined about the lack of snow. But January thus far has lacked both sun and snow, plunging us into almost unlivable conditions with temperatures in the mid-30s and wintry mixtures of sleet, ice and heavy rain. I was almost lucky to be stuck inside with the flu for more than a week; that alone may have spared me a deep case of Seasonal Affective Disorder. As it's been, I've been riding my bicycle a lot since I came out of my flu haze. (I mean, relative to the beautiful sunny days of December, in which I spent a majority of my time just trying to get up into the mountains via any method possible.) Now that the weather is preventing enjoyable mountain excursions, I have been putting in miles. Good miles. Hard miles. Satisfying miles.

A friend of mine passed me in his car on Saturday and later mentioned the brief encounter.

"I saw you out near Tea Harbor. Man, that looked miserable," he said.

"Miserable? Really? I don't remember it being so bad."

"Are you kidding?" he said. "It was pouring. I think we got more than an inch of rain that day. And it was like, what, 36 degrees? Maybe 38?

"Yeah," I said. "I guess it was kind of wet."

He shook his head. "How do you do it?"

I just shrugged. I've lived in Juneau for three and a half years now, and I don't even give the weather all that much thought anymore. I always check the forecast the night before, and if it calls for temperatures in the 30s with rain (which it usually does), I just don a fleece pullover and polyester long johns, my Gortex or PVC coat, Red Ledge rain pants, NEOS overboots (with sneakers and one pair of wool socks), fleece mittens and a headband. Even with the pathetic fenders on my mountain bike, my set-up allows me to stay dry for one hour, damp through hour three, soaked but warm through hour five, and if it's still raining, after that I have to start racing against the chill. If the rain turns to snow or sleet (which it usually does), I have studded tires, along with my trusty goggles and dry gloves in the bike's frame bag. It's rare these days that I experience even a few minutes of cold-related discomfort when it's 35 degrees and raining. All the clothes and gear I need to ward it off are right there. It takes me five minutes to put them on. Another two to lube my bike, and I just go. It's easy.

To tell you the truth, I kinda miss the challenge.

In defense of passion lost

I still remember the date of my first time snowboarding: Oct. 28, 1996. It was the first day of the first season in which Park City Mountain Resort allowed snowboarders onto its slopes. After a long history as a ski-only resort, Park City landed the privilege to host the 2002 Olympic snowboarding events, probably in no small part because it finally relented to letting non-Olympic snowboarders on its lifts.

The season opened early that year, and my knuckle-dragging friends wanted to be among the first to defile Park City’s pristine slopes with their boards. And even though I had no board-riding abilities of any sort, I loved the idea of horrifying rich ski snobs and witnessing Utah snow sports history in the process, and I wanted to be part of it.

I wanted it so badly that I took $300 I had amassed slowly and painfully while working for $4.25 an hour as an Albertson’s grocery bagger and cart dragger, and purchased an Airwalk snowboard and bindings. I stashed the set-up in the bushes in front of my parents' house and worked up an elaborate lie about why I needed my college-age friends to drive me to school the next morning (I was a senior in high school at the time, and Oct. 28 was a school day.) We stuffed five people and five boards into a Honda Civic and took off for Park City.

I still remember the exhilarating freedom of that autumn morning - the bright sunlight, the seltzer-flavored air, the giddy conversation, the stereo blasting AFI full volume into a day full of promise. As we stood at the bottom of the lift, one of my friends helped me determine which foot to strap into the bindings by pushing me forward without telling me exactly what he meant to do. As I panicked and caught myself, he determined I was “regular.” (I’m actually a goofy-oriented rider.) He helped me cinch up my bindings and we were off.

The lift ride was long. “Shouldn’t I be on the bunny lift or something?” I asked. They assured me I would be fine. We disembarked and I immediately fell flat on my face. When I looked up, every single one of my friends was gone.

And thus I was abandoned at the top of Park City with no clue how to get myself down. What followed still remains one of the more frustrating experiences of my life, a mixture of terror and pain amid long minutes of hovering on the horizon lines of steep slopes, inching down on my butt, standing, sliding, falling, tumbling, standing, and falling again. Eventually, a benevolent stranger taught me how to ride my toe edge and zig-zag down. When I finally reached the bottom, I got right back that same lift, battered but determined.

I came home so bruised and stiff that I had no choice but to admit to my parents that I had lied to them and skipped out of school to go snowboarding. I couldn’t sit down without excruciating pain for nearly a week. But inexplicably, I was hooked. I went snowboarding as often as I could afford with what little time and money I had in 1997 and 1998. I was always a timid, conservative rider, but I did eventually learn to carve powder turns through the trees and even tried a few small jumps.

In subsequent years, college and work and other demands took over. I started doing most of my riding at night, where it was cheap and convenient on the lit slopes of Brighton. There, in the tunnel vision of pale yellow groomers, the freedom and exhilaration I found in snowboarding started to wane. On the occasion I could get up there during the day, I found myself more interested in lingering on the ridge with its sweeping views of the Heber valley than I was in conquering the Snake Creek moguls. At night, I was more intrigued by the minus-20-degree stillness of an extreme cold snap than I was in blasting over the slick surface of the snow. And slowly, I started to realize that I was more interested in being in the mountains than I was in sliding down them.

The last winter I snowboarded more than once or twice in a season was 2001-2002. The following summer, I took $300 I had amassed a little less slowly and painfully while working for $11 an hour as the Tooele Transcript-Bulletin’s community news editor, and bought my first bicycle.

Sometimes I wonder how my snowboarding passion slipped away. I lent out my beloved Airwalk only to have it left behind at the resort, lost forever. I purchased another board from a friend, only to leave it out all summer long until the white surface had yellowed and the edges had rusted. I became rusty myself, increasingly more timid and subsequently worse. The winter of 2008-2009 was the first since 1996 that I didn't strap on a snowboard, even once.

On Thursday, I set out for my first long bike ride since I came down with the flu, basically my first long bike ride of the new year. In heavy snow followed by heavy rain, I spent the afternoon pedaling through four-inch-deep slush atop slick ice. The ride was grinding and tentative and cold, and I only managed a little over 60 miles in five hours. But I came home feeling satisfied, pleasantly tired and wholly alive.

On Friday, I decided to go snowboarding with my friends. We showed up early for "first chair." There was fresh powder on the slopes but the falling snow was quickly turning to sleet, and the fog had descended so thick that the white-out vertigo made me nostalgic for the tunnel vision of my night skiing days. Five skiers and I followed each other's turns in a coordinated posse that reminded me of my high school days of yore. After two years of abstinence, it was tough to get my "snow legs" back, but eventually we ventured off the groomers and tore through narrow corridors full of chop as the sleet glazed a deep layer of "Juneau powder" with hard ice. I enjoyed it for the same reasons I would enjoy an evening of bowling with a large group of friends. It was fun, definitely. Challenging, certainly. But passion? Satisfaction? All these rewards I can glean from a 60-mile slush ride that for all practical purposes should be miserable, are for some reason missing from my more recent snowboarding experiences - even the times I hiked it up the mountain myself before riding down.

I do think I could develop a lasting passion for snowboarding through backcountry excursions, but my skill set is a long way from allowing me to embark on the deeper backcountry I crave. Developing these skills would require many more days of lift-served boarding, honing my turns, gaining more confidence on the steeps, and practicing in deep powder. I'm just not sure I have the passion to develop the skills I need.

I'm also dubious about how much learning to ski will change my mind, although I would like to learn to ski. Skiing is a more versatile mode of travel, good for long traverses of places I'd really like to explore, like the Juneau Icefield. But I sincerely doubt that simply changing the hardware is going to suddenly turn me into a powder hound. Especially if I have no desire to let lifts cart me up to places where I can learn it.

Still, I have no intention of giving up snowboarding, just as I would never dream of swearing off bowling. It's a fun diversion, and a good way to spend time with friends. I just feel more certain now that passions my 17-year-old self cherished have changed.

Coming up for air

When I started feeling hints of a sore throat a week ago Monday, I joked with my coworkers that I was getting "The Swine." By Wednesday, I was on the floor. I barely got out of bed on Thursday; I just lulled around my room in a feverish delirium. Friday was only a little better. I finally dragged myself to the gym on Sunday but seriously sore muscles and lightheadedness chased me off the treadmill after only a half hour. By Monday, I had just about had it with "The Swine." I know it's not the end of the world. It's just that I'm one of those people who never gets sick. About once a year, I pick up a mild cold for a day or two, but that's usually it. It's been five years since I even had something strong enough to keep me off my bike or from going to work. So coming down with the flu, whether or not it was actually the swine flu, hit me hard.

Today I woke up to a lot of new snow and a car mostly buried in the driveway, so I decided to ride Pugsley to work. It had been a week since I had been on a bike, or even outside for more than a few seconds at a time. My muscles still ached and my sinuses were still clogged, but the simple commute into the office felt amazing. I pedaled hard, surpassing the muscle aches, sweating out the rest of my fever, smiling at all the fresh-fallen snow and gulping down the moist 25-degree air that felt both refreshing and - after last week's cold snap - downright balmy. Nothing sets up a singularly amazing bike ride like a week of "The Swine." In a couple more hours here, I'll set out to ride 11 miles home amid a snow-blanketed night. Just thinking about it makes me feel giddy.

Besides making my rather boring commute suddenly feel like a dream ride, another benefit of having the flu for a week is that my Divide writing project has taken off. I might as well just start calling it a book, because whether or not it's ever published, it's certainly long. One wouldn't think that a person could write 100,000 words about the lead-up and execution of a single bike ride. I wouldn't have thought so either, but I've surpassed 80,000 words and I'm not even out of Colorado. (I started this thing back in September, but I've generated the bulk of it in the past three weeks.) There were a couple nights in the past week where I felt too sick to sleep, so I took my mind off my crappy condition by laying in my bed with my chin still resting on a pillow, whisking myself away to better days by typing on my tiny laptop computer. Not sure how many of those words are actually coherent. I may end up needing to rework most of it. But the big benefit of the flu writing experiment was how deeply involved I became. I feel like I stepped wholly outside myself and disappeared into the recent past, overcome with a wash of experiences and memories and sometimes brutal honesty that I just had to let out. Like I said, I don't know how viable the project is outside my flu delirium. But, in its own way, this past week inside has been an incredible experience.

I almost hate to let the momentum slide, but it's really about time I start riding my bike again. The White Mountains 100 is a frighteningly close two months away.

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.