Italy, day six

On Tuesday I had a good block of daylight between my life base trips, so I decided to squeeze in my long hike for the week. I mapped a route following the Tor des Geants course backward to Col de Malatra, which is the last pass in the race, then crossing overland to complete a loop over two passes, for a total of three big climbs and a good chunk of distance. I slept late because, to be honest, sleep has been a rare commodity during this trip, as food has also been. The food is delicious when I can get it, but Italian culture is not conducive to an on-the-go lifestyle, with its mid-day store closures and complete lack of convenience stores and supermarkets. I often have a very difficult time acquiring food when I need it the most, and have taken to eating bread and jam sandwiches for more meals than I care to admit. At this point my stomach doesn't even really care about pizza and authentic pasta, it just wants calories. It's funny to come all the way to Italy and lose almost all interest in the quality of food in favor of quantity. My Americanism shines through.

But, yes, I at least got a more normal amount of sleep (read, more than four hours) and got going around 10 a.m. I passed the Tor des Geants course markers on my way out the Trail du Mont Blanc, preparing for the race finish. It was more than 48 hours into the 200-mile race and no one was even close to finishing. Ultimately the winner would come in at 6 p.m. Wednesday, a finishing time of 81 hours. Consider this against the 100-mile Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc, which the top runners finish in just over 20 hours.

The climb to Col de Malatra was long, nearly 12 miles on a rolling traverse that included about 6,500 feet of climbing. But besides the TDG flags it was just me out there, lost in a massive Alpine moonscape.

The col itself was just a narrow notch in a veritable wall. At 2,925 meters, it's the third highest pass on the course.

Looking through the notch to the other side.

I saw mountain bike tracks on this trail. Six thousand feet of descending — must be a grunt to get the bikes up here but fully awesome to ride down. I was certainly jealous.

I left the trail and started my traverse, with two passes and lots more climbing still in front of me.

I crested Col Sapin at about 6 p.m., having walked nearly continuously for eight hours. I didn't make many stops because I didn't really have any food beyond a couple of jam sandwiches and some candy I scrounged out of Beat's rejected race food pile. I vowed to make a real effort to go grocery shopping the following day.

My legs were incredibly tired and feet sore on the final descent, which I spent contemplating the scale of the Tor des Geants, again. After all, I had only hiked three passes, and the second two were comparably small.

I finally tromped back to my apartment at 8 p.m. after 24 miles and 11,300 feet of climbing — a truly challenging and beautiful solo outing. It was too late to go to the now-closed grocery store and I was too tired and hungry to deal with the leisurely (read: drawn-out) waits and dainty portions of the local restaurants, so I scrounged some Barilla pasta and a can of crushed tomatoes for dinner. It was the most delicious dinner ever. As Beat has said about his own limited food choices in the Tor des Geants, there's no seasoning quite like hunger.

Italy, day five

My fifth day in Italy was a challenge of coordination, as Martina and I both wanted to meet our men at the second life base in the skiing town of Cogne and also do a bit of hiking ourselves. I made my second attempt at navigating the roads of northern Italy, which has only been remotely possible thanks to a GPS device that Beat purchased during his last race in France. If it wasn't for GPS, I'd probably be driving in circles down in Torino at this point. I'm still learning to read traffic signs, none of the roads are marked, and even if they were, and every street has a name at least sixteen syllables long, beginning with Strada and continuing on for several seconds in GPS's soothing female voice. The most amazing thing about driving here is the A5 highway, which is mostly routed directly through the mountains in a series of tunnels. The mountain roads are all incredibly winding and narrow and barely squeeze between centuries-old stone buildings. Even the driving here is treacherous, beautiful and exciting.

Martina and I hiked toward Col Loson, which at 3,200 meters is the highest pass on the course. I only made it five miles to 8,000 feet elevation before I caught up with Beat, who was coming down the pass two hours earlier than I expected. He was noticeably tired and limping a bit, and said that he felt more worked than he did after the 2009 Hardrock 100, just 100 kilometers into the Tor des Geants with 230 more to go.

But he did still look strong going down the steep trail toward Cogne. Col Loson looses more than 6,000 feet of pure elevation from the top of the pass to the valley. Although Col Loson has one of the more dramatic elevation changes, there are 24 similar passes in this race. Twenty four.

I was still able to catch Beat smiling on occasion.

Beat inside the life base, trying to fix his feet. My job at each of these life bases, which are generally spaced 35-50 kilometers apart, is to bring him things that he requests, massage his shoulders, fetch food, and nod sympathetically as he spews long stream-of-consciousness monologs about the why that last pass was the worst of the lot, so much worse than he remembered from last year.

But even amid the pain and fatigue, he was anxious to move on. This I can understand. It's not just about beautiful scenery and challenge — if it was, Beat would just do what I'm doing, hiking when I feel like hiking and sipping espressos at cafes while I wait for racers to come through town. The suffering is an important part of the experience, a way to draw deeper meaning and understanding from the barrage of sensory input and reduced inhibitions. I can appreciate what Beat is trying to do even as I struggle to fathom it.

Italy, day four

On paper, the Tor des Geants is a 200-mile foot race with 80,000 feet of climbing. But on its rugged surface, this loop around the Aosta Valley is so much more than its insufficient numbers. It's miles of boulder fields and crumbling shale and 40-percent grades. It's calf-shredding climbing followed my quad-crushing descents. It's 4,000 vertical feet of trail so steep that your heels never touch the ground, cresting on narrow cols before plunging off seemingly impossible cliffs. Exposure, leaping steps and knee agony are just a small battles in the grand scheme of this unfathomable physical and mental war.

The race started at a merciful 10 a.m. Sunday morning. A large crowd had gathered in downtown Courmayeur as church bells range through the cool air. It was cloudy and humid but the excitement was electric.

Beat, Harry and Steve at the start. There were more than 500 racers lining up for the Tor des Geants. Because he's a 2010 finisher, Beat received a special race number with his finishing position, 98.

After cheering the guys on, I wrapped up a few chores and then headed out for a quick trip up to Col Arp, which is the first pass in the race. It rained intermittently and even though the race started just hours earlier, the trail was completely deserted. The sweepers had even cleaned up the course markings, leaving no sign of the 500 people who passed through here.

I had to hurry in order to meet Beat at the first life base, so I veered onto an adjacent fire road so I could run (the trails here are much too steep for someone like me to even attempt more than a determined hike, both up or down.) I climbed to 8,500 feet, again, before rushing back down to town as fast as my legs could carry me while the sky grew darker and the air colder. It says something about the scale of the mountains here that you can't even run from town to a minor pass without logging 5,000 feet of climbing on the ol' GPS. Both runners and mountain bikers who live here and recreate on a regular basis must be in amazing shape. The sky opened up to a spectacular downpour just as I reached my front door.

Despite the rain and cold, Beat seemed in good spirits at the first life base, with 50 kilometers of difficulty behind him. He arrived with Anne Ver Hoef and said they spent a good deal of the miles traveling together and discussing the Iditarod Trail Invitational, a 350-mile race in Alaska that both are registered for in 2012. Anne has competed in the ITI before and said the TDG is harder. Having seen small sections of the TDG, I have no doubt about this.

Italy, day three

I am falling far behind on my vacation picture posting. Between my travels between Tor des Geants checkpoints to support Beat and exploring trails myself, I've been on the move almost continuously since Sunday. I have a few hours here before I try to meet Beat and the last life base, about fifty kilometers from the race finish. He's battling foot pain and stomach issues, but it otherwise moving strong and is a few hours ahead of his 2010 pace. I'll post more about the race in the next few days.

On Saturday morning, Beat, Steve and Harry were entrenched in last-minute preparations ahead of the Sunday start, and wanted us out of their hair. Martina and I mapped out a loop following the Trail du Mont Blanc, looping around a higher ridge to Col Sapin and back to town on the other side of the bowl.

We were feeling a bit silly as we headed up the steep trail to the refugio, and joked with fan-girl gushing about "following Killian's footprints" on the UTMB. I packed a full "ultralight" overnight pack with a sleeping bag, mat, bivy, warm winter clothing, food, lights and three liters of water to test my Raidlight pack against steep hiking and running. It probably weighed somewhere in the range of twenty pounds, but I didn't even really notice the weight against the fantastic morning weather and beautiful scenery. I even ran about two miles along the ridge and back. The experiment boosted my confidence about the prospect of "fastpacking," or actually running while carrying full self-support gear.

Livestock is ubiquitous in these mountains. I think Alps cows are happy cows, which would explain why the yogurt and gelato is so much better here than it is in the States.

Heading down a minor peak to Col Sapin, at 8,500 feet elevation. We came back in time to join the boys for their pre-race meeting and pasta party, and met a contingent of North American friends including Anne Ver Hoef from Anchorage (who I know through winter racing) and Angela from Calgary, who I spent a week with during my Maah Dah Hey camping trip in May. It was a full reunion of ultra friends, and everyone was excited for Sunday morning.

Italy, day two

Beat and I are sharing an apartment with three of our friends, Steve and Harry, who also are running in the Tor des Geants, and Martina, who is joining me in a supportive role for the guys while we indulge in freelance hiking and copious amounts of Italian delicacies. It's a tiny apartment with one small bathroom, and we've all settled into it like the bickering family we almost are. Our Italian neighbors are endlessly friendly, always inviting us over for coffee and assuring my race-nervous boyfriend and friends that "You, you men are the real men."

On Friday Beat, who was supposed to be tapering, was not too keen on another 6,000 feet of climbing for the day, but we wanted to get up into the mountains. Steve and Harry joined us on an indulgent ride up the Mont Blanc gondola. The little box swept us up the impossible cliffs and across a glacier to a station built into the rocks at 3,840 meters, the Aiguille du Midi Chamonix.

It was a gorgeous day, and the view from our little box was jaw-dropping. I prefer to work for my views, but I can't deny that Mont Blanc is one of the most incredible places I have ever had the privilege to visit.

We peered down into crevasses and expressed envy for the ant-sized trekkers making their way across the glacier. I actually brought my ice ax and crampons in hopes that I could explore a bit of the glacier while the guys ate lunch, but the access from the gondola station was too perilous to go it alone. Read: Incredibly exposed knife ridge, less than a foot wide, with death drops on both sides. Every trekker we saw traversing that ridge was using ropes, and I am hardly an experienced mountaineer. Oh well. Next time I visit Mont Blanc, I vowed, I will be more experienced and prepared, and I will start from the bottom and climb to the top.

I joined the guys for lunch at this fancy French restaurant called 3840, which is the elevation of the gondola station in meters. It's a fun experience to dine on wild mushroom soup and delicious five-cheese pasta at 12,000 feet, looking out the window at a snow-swept moonscape punctured by jagged rocks. I highly recommend it to anyone, especially those of us who are used to huddling in the wind and trying to use thick mittens to stuff frozen Pop Tarts in our mouths in these types of places. It's a strange but wonderful cultural experience.

Looking down toward Chamonix, France, about 9,000 feet below. Auguille de Midi Chamonix sits right on the border of Italy and France, one of those places where they actually paint a white line that you can hop across singing, "Now I'm in Italy. Now I'm in France."

Looking down the glacier toward Italy.

Mont Blanc, at 4,810 meters (15,782 feet) is the highest peak in the Alps. What an incredible mountain.

I can't wait to go back, human-powered next time.

Italy, day one

It is currently 11 a.m. Sunday, September 11, in Courmayeur, Italy. Church bells are chiming in the square where I just watched three very nervous friends start the 200-mile epic that is the Tor des Geants. I found an internet cafe, a couple hits of espresso and a few quiet moments to upload some pictures to my blog.

Beat and I flew into Zurich on Wednesday afternoon and drove through the northern Alps to Chamonix, France, then through a tunnel that cuts through the heart of Mont Blanc to Courmayeur, Italy. Jet lag had us up at 4:30 a.m. after a fitful night of sleep, so we wandered the deserted streets of town as the first hints of dawn rose over the mountains. I was in a bit of a stupor, sleep-deprived and confused, struggling to read storefront signs before I remembered I can not read Italian, and gazing up at the jagged pinnacles of Mont Blanc that towered more than 11,000 feet over my head.

We crossed town and started up the trail that serves as the race course for the Tor des Geants. We passed a group of trail signs that listed destinations in terms of how hours and minutes of hiking time it would take to reach them. I asked Beat why they didn't list actual distances. "Because that doesn't matter," he said. Sure enough, the trail shot toward the sky. Everything is so steep here that distance has been rendered meaningless — climbing and descending endless mountains is all there is. I tried to comprehend what this meant for 200 real miles.

As we crawled up the trail, dripping sweat in the cool morning air, we passed a number of stone huts in various states of use and decay. Having become accustomed to undeveloped wilderness in Alaska and Montana, it was strange to see so much humanity sprinkled throughout these rugged mountains. "What did people do with all of these structures?" I wondered aloud. "Did they actually live up here?" A few cows sauntered past, ringing those famous Alps cow bells. "People probably still live up here," Beat said.

We tried to nap in the afternoon, unsuccessfully, and then walked out the front door of our rented apartment toward Mont Cormet, Courmayeur's "house mountain" (our term) because of its proximity to town.

We started at 4,000 feet elevation and climbed to 8,500 feet in what was likely less than three miles — again, a meaningless measure of distance here in the Alps. Our total climbing on the day was close to 6,000 feet, and we weren't even actively seeking out a tough effort. It was just an exploration day, a rest day, our first day in Italy.

It was difficult to take it all in, to comprehend the scale of these massive mountains and the depth of the history and culture steeped within. I was grateful that I had more than a week in this place to try.

courmayeur

I intended to write a blog post before I left,but time got away from me. now i am attempting to send a message from my kindle. beat and i are in italy, where he is gearing up to run 200 miles in the tor des geants and i plan to binge on hiking, espresso and photo taking. this is my first time outside north america and already a bit of a culture shock. hopefully i will eventually find internet so i can update m photo blog.