The difference of a day

Thursday night hike to the University Beacon with Bill, Norman and Josh. We slogged through slush, climbed up the wind-blasted ridge and made futile efforts to balance on the wind crust as tiny shards of ice whipped up around us. During the descent, Bill accidentally stepped off a snow shelf and hyperextended his knee. Suddenly, a simple Thursday night hike became a half-rescue effort. With no police officers in sight, we had to fashion walking aids out of sticks and walk with a pain-stricken Bill as he picked his way down the mountain. At the slower pace, sweat and fingers started to freeze. A reminder that even casual outings have a sharp edge during the winter.

Friday on a jet coasting over the Pacific Ocean for hours, too many hours, landing in the strange and alien land of O'ahu. Beat, being the jet-setting ultrarunner that he is, was signed up for the HURT 100 and let me tag along for a regrettably short weekend trip in Hawaii. I am here to serve the role as crew/pacer. We were up at 4 a.m. to get to the race start. I saw him off in the inky blackness of a low-latitude dawn, and now I'm prepping to spend the day shuttling between checkpoints to help with the race. After 12 or so hours of wending through Honolulu traffic and subsisting on bagels and coffee, I'm going take a quick evening nap if I can manage, then don my own running gear and - if all goes well - join Beat on lap 4. That's at least 20 miles of muddy technical running in heat (at least relative to what I'm used to, 75-80 degrees) and humidity, beginning after midnight and continuing into another inky black dawn.

As I sleepily make my way through Waikiki, I see people sprawled on beach chairs, swimming in clear warm water and bobbing in the gentle surf beneath blue skies. I recognize these scenes as opportunities that I'm squandering, but I no longer view it that way. One of the best parts of getting older has been a real acceptance that I'm not a product of the images and culture I was fed throughout my youth. I don't have to aspire to an MTV bikini body and an idle life of leisure with a glut of useless consumer products. I can travel all the way to Hawaii for three measly days to stay up all night, eat crappy race food and run technical trails in the mud and rain, and maybe not even touch a grain of white beach sand, and not feel bad about it. In fact, I feel pretty good about it. This is my vacation in paradise, and I'm going to live it up.

Weeknight adventures

My foot plunged deep into the dense snow and sunk to my knees. I lifted my leg up and punched in the next, groping for some kind of platform on the weak trail. Frustration crept around the edges of my mired body. I let out a sigh, thick with condensation in the cold air, and looked at the valley ahead. The Rattlesnake Mountains rose like tree-studded fortresses above the narrow canyon. The moonlight cast a bright glow on the snow, infusing the corridor with a depth and texture that was different — but in a way, more brilliant — than daylight.

I turned off my headlamp and took a few more heavy steps. Behind me, my sled floated easy and free on top of the crust — a crust I had mistakenly thought would be strong enough to hold me. Every so often I glanced back to make sure the sled was still upright. It followed me like a faithful pet, its pole wagging like a tail against the tug of my harness. I couldn’t help but laugh, and feel a strange sort of affection for my sled. It held everything I needed to survive out here, here on the edge of the Rattlesnake Wilderness, where a mere five miles of foot travel had taken me out of the city and into the heart of a silent, lonely, wild place. I had a mask to shield my face from cold wind, already near zero degrees and dropping. I had mittens to bring my tingling fingers back to life. I had food to stoke the inner furnace, water in an insulated pouch, and a sleeping bag and pad to rest when I became tired. Stars splattered the narrow strip of sky overhead. The orange glow of Missoula’s lights had faded. We were alone, my sled and me, ready to take on this winter wilderness. But we were missing one crucial piece of gear — snowshoes. Plus, I reminded myself, this was just a training run. And I was clearly not running. Reluctantly, I flipped a wide U-turn and headed back the way I came.

The next evening, I went for a run straight from my downtown office. My micro-spikes crunched on the glare ice of the river path before I veered up the mountain on the Hellgate Trail. Conditions on the snow-covered singletrack were hellish — rock-hard postholes covered in a couple inches of new powder that made it impossible to gauge foot placement. Running was an ankle-twisting, knee-wrenching exercise in futility. Even walking was technical to the point of frustration. Bill caught up to me near the saddle. We agreed to continue to the peak of Mount Sentinel and drop down the ridge. “Can’t be worse than this,” I reasoned.

Nearly all the snow had blown clean off the face of Mount Sentinel, leaving only a base of jumbled rocks protruding from glare ice. On the front side, where the mountain plunges steeply and directly into the city, there are no trees to shield against the heinous Hellgate winds. Strong gales pushed at our backs, carrying a deep and bitter chill despite “warm” temperatures in the teens.

But the larger concern was keeping our balance on the unbelievably slick surface, where even micro-spikes slipped out on the iced rocks. We joked about needing an ice ax and crampons on the same mountain that college students hike up in their Crocs in the summer. We felt like mountaineers. Conditions only worsened as we picked our way down the steep face. The switchbacking “M” trail managed to catch a bulk of the drifted snow, forcing us to either wade through thigh-deep drifts or skitter along the razor-thin edge of the ice-coated trail. Finally we abandoned the trail and dropped straight down the face, taking careful steps on an ice sheen that threatened to send us careening toward University Avenue, several hundred feet directly below, if we slipped.

About 100 vertical feet above the road, two patrol cars with flashing lights stopped in the middle of the street directly below us. Three officers stepped out, shined their lights toward us, and shouted things we could not hear in the roaring wind. “Maybe we’re in trouble because we’re off trail,” I speculated. But the whole scene was confusing. We pointed that we were going to make our way over to the main trailhead. The officers got back in their car and drove there to meet us.

As we skittered down the last of the glare ice, the three officers jogged up the stairs toward us. “Are you OK?” one asked. “We got a call that someone was flashing an SOS signal from the mountain.”

“We’re fine,” Bill answered.

“SOS?” I said. “No. I mean, we had our headlamps on. But we didn’t flash any signals. We came up the mountain a different way and didn’t know the route down was going to be so bad. But we’re fine.”

“Do you have a vehicle nearby?” the officer asked. “Do you need a ride?” The wicked wind whipped up a veritable ground blizzard in the deserted parking lot. The scene looked dire but I couldn’t help but laugh because the danger had been minimal at best.

“We came from town,” I said. “We can just walk back.”

Bill and I started running again and guffawed about the headlamp “SOS” and the grave concern on the faces of our would-be rescuers. We later learned that the information had gone out on the police scanner, the local newspaper took notice, and there was quite a hubbub about two people trapped in a storm on Mount Sentinel.

Who says you can’t have adventures on weeknights?

Pacifica

It was the kind of weekend that just kept getting better. After the 50K race we went out for a celebratory sushi dinner, at this nondescript yet fantastic Japanese place in Mountain View. I'm not a foodie and more often than not feel bewildered about why people make such a big deal out of particular types of food (meanwhile, I just like food ... lots of it ... preferably sugar.) But every so often I eat a meal that truly blows me away, and this was one of them. The kind of beautifully rendered, perfectly nuanced, savory and satisfying meal that you take pictures of, so you can post them on Facebook, so all your friends can wonder what the big deal is anyway.

Then, on Sunday, I woke up and I wasn't sore. I really wasn't. A little stiff in the calves maybe, but no blisters, no shredded quads, nothing. Six hours on my feet — like some of my medium-length hikes in Juneau — used to take a lot more out of me, at a lower level of overall effort. So I took it as a good sign that I am improving my running fitness. Beat and I enjoyed a lazy morning with several cups of cappuccino, complete with latte art, then made our way over to the coast to go hiking.

The more time I spend in the Bay area, the more I realize how beautiful and varied it is despite the urbanization (and although I also don't consider myself a "city person," I admit that San Francisco is quite beautiful and varied as an urban setting, as well.) Pacifica is nestled against the Pacific Ocean and the northern ridge of the Santa Cruz Mountains. It's within 10 miles of the heart of San Francisco, but wending through the towns small streets, you'd never suspect that. We climbed into the hills toward a mountain called North Peak. From the summit, we could see the city skyline and the Golden Gate Bridge. But to the east, a rolling topography of green mountains all but hid the massive human footprint of the East Bay. To the west, there was only an expanse of blue water sparkling in the sunlight.

From the peak we decided to make our way over to an adjacent peak, which — gasp — had no developed trail en route. We followed the faint footprint of an old jeep road, trudged up a loose rocky slope and had to bushwhack the last hundred yards or so. "Who says you can't find adventure in California," Beat proclaimed as we fought all manner of thorny bushes and jagged rocks, and probably brushed up against poison oak, too. A stiff wind blew along the ridgeline, with windchill that dropped the 40-degree air to something that felt decidedly below freezing.

Nine miles and three hours worth of sunshine later, we returned for more tasty dinner (Japanese noodle soup) and a session in the sauna that was more exhausting than the race, but did clear up the last of my racing/hiking soreness. The only flaw in the entire weekend was the plane ride home, complete with the usual air travel headaches. This always-on-the-go lifestyle and relationship has been hard on both of us, but it's more than worth it.

This race that I won

Even though it was only my second official ultramarathon, a mere three weeks after my first, I had ambitious goals for the Crystal Springs 50K. First, after figuring out that I could in fact travel 31 miles without coming down with "hurty foot" (which I will now regard as an official medical term for the condition of a cyclist's feet when they first take up running), I wanted to run a significantly higher percentage of the course than I did in the Rodeo Beach 50K and last half of the Bear 100. Even if it was a 4.5 mph jogging stride as opposed to a 4 mph speed hike, I wanted to emphasize consistency in running, as a test of my running endurance. Secondly, I wanted to improve my downhill stride, and try to relax so I could run with more fluidity and less pain. Thirdly, I wanted to finish with a time closer to the six-hour range — a big jump from my 6:58 in Rodeo Beach. Fourthly, I wanted some sunshine. No way was I traveling all the way to California and being shut out from badly needed vitamin D yet again. And lastly, I wanted to take pretty photos. That was most important. Even if it meant stopping occasionally so they didn't all come out blurry. The day I care more about a race result than the experience itself is the day that ... well ... let's face it, it's just not that likely.

The Crystal Springs 50K was held in the Santa Cruz Mountains south of San Francisco. I travel to California to visit Beat but the Bay area has the added bonus of ultramarathons nearly every weekend, even in the depth of winter. The weekend weather was extra chilly for the region, with overnight temperatures dropping into the mid-30s and frost forming on the higher hillsides. I dressed in what I thought was appropriate for those temps — tights and a long-sleeve thick polyester shirt, wool socks, hat and gloves, then carried a backpack with extra layers, food and water — because even in organized races I prefer to pretend I'm out for a self-supported training run, even if I end up solely eating peanut butter sandwich quarters and drinking Coke in tiny cups while my backpack dangles uselessly off my shoulders. And of course, the Californians all showed up wearing shorts and T-shirts and carrying a single bottle in their hands. It made me ashamed to call myself a hardy Montanan-former-Alaskan, but I figured it didn't matter. I was there to run my own race.

Things went great for the first 12 miles. I was running consistently, soaking in beams of sunlight where it broke through the fog, and making good time on my mile splits. I found my place in the pack but reeled in a couple of people, including the "girl in the cute plaid shorts ala Danni." Beat stuck with me and told me my pace was pretty hard, and said I should think about dialing it back. But I knew I felt good and I knew I could hold it. Even though I haven't been a runner for very long, I have enough experience in endurance efforts to sense when the bottom might drop out. However, I have a particular grating problem as a runner in the form of inexplicable midsection cramping on descents. Downhill grades cause a sensation that is best described as someone taking a dull knife and stabbing it deep under my rib cage. It's probably related to breathing and at least partly psychological, but when it flares up on long, steep downhills, I become both extremely slow and extremely irritable.

I groaned as I shuffled down the hill. Beat tried to offer suggestions and I got testy with him. He couldn't help but laugh at me. Angry race Jill is not unlike an angry toddler — too irrational and scrunchy-face cute to be taken all that seriously. Meanwhile, toddler gets more and more scrunchy faced and angry until finally she blurts out, "I just want to go into my pain cave. Why can't you leave me in my pain cave?" Beat laughed at loud. "No pain cave for you!" he said in his best "Soup Nazi" accent. I laughed back at the absurdity of the situation and accepted my role in it. I stopped and took four Advil, and over the next seven miles was able to recover my cramp from "searing agony" to "low-level ache" to "not much at all."

At mile 19, I finally perked up and started to breeze along the trail again. I reeled back in the women and a couple guys who had passed me during my sophomore slump. My feet felt light and fast against the strange sensation of running on actual dirt. The final 5-mile singletrack descent was truly fun. My cramp had abated and despite tired legs I picked up some speed, flying through the trees with feeling of effortless freedom, almost like being carried by wheels. The worst part about running is there's no coasting, and every difficult downhill reminds me of that. But if I can dial in a downhill run enough to move freely without pain or fear, it's one of the best feelings.

We strode across the finish line with 6:12 on the clock — not quite as close to six hours as I had hoped, but still a fair improvement on Rodeo Beach. Beat chatted with his friends (he seems to know most everyone in the Greater Bay Area trail running community) and I found my way over to the finisher's food table to make myself a massive turkey sandwich. The sandwich was almost the size of my head and nearly muffled out the race director's announcements from the other side of the pavilion. Then suddenly I heard him say, "Jill ... Horner." That sounded suspiciously like my name. Perhaps I finished third in my age group or something like that. I set down my sandwich and sheepishly walked to the front to see if Jill Horner was in fact me.

The director doled out medals to age group finishers, and then handed me a mug. The mug said, "First Place Finisher." I looked back at the race director, confused. First in what? He must have sensed my confusion because he said, "You're the first woman. Congratulations."

The girl in the cute shorts ... the woman in the black shirt ... there were several females that finished just a few minutes after me. But they were all behind me.

Huh.

Beat, who officially finished one second behind me, jokingly pouted. "I never win anything."

I held the mug in my hands and reasoned with it. It was a small race ... just a few dozen people ... and it was winter when not many people besides Susitna freaks are training with all that much gusto. But I was a Montanan in California, running dirt when I'm used to running on snow, running when I'm used to hiking and cycling, at a distance most people spend months specifically training for. And I won the race.

Maybe I'm not so terrible at running after all. I'll take it.

The art of go slow

Things are starting to come together for the Susitna 100. Beat and I bought our tickets to Anchorage, and shortly after that pressured friends Danni and Steve (who were both on the fence about even starting the race, and still may be) into buying their tickets as well. In my daydreams, we’re a motley foursome of Outsiders banded together, dragging our sleds across the frozen Susitna Valley. In more likelihood, we won’t be able or want to stick together. But either way, the Susitna 100 will be an interesting reunion since I already know a fair number of Alaskan cyclists on the roster. They’ll all have a chance to laugh at me as we cross paths at a pitiably distant point, since the new route is mostly an out-and-back.

I also am finally attempting to put my sled together. I hoped to do it sooner for training purposes, but as usual reality falls short of intentions. The sled I am using belongs to Geoff Roes, and is full of heavy reinforcements intended for use in the Iditarod Trail Invitational, where conditions are much colder and burlier than a typical Susitna race. But since I seem to have a talent for breaking gear, the burly sled should work well for me. I spent more than an hour on the phone with Geoff last night as he described the attachments and explained the different pieces. I failed to string both ropes all the way through the poles, so I didn’t get it completely put together last night, but did manage to squeeze all my Susitna gear inside the cover, and hope to be running with it by next week.

I am also beginning to feel more comfortable as a runner, if only just. I had a few good runs recently that boosted my confidence in both my footing and ability to maintain a more consistent speed over longer periods of time. But when Geoff asked me how my training was going, I instantly felt the need to apologize for my abilities, which are indeed still quite limited for a person aspiring to a 100-mile ultramarathon.

“I’m still low on the learning curve, but I’m improving,” I said. “My biggest issue is confidence. Also I sometimes feel really lousy for no real reason. I have stomach and cramping issues that I haven’t been able to pinpoint yet.”

“Do you ever go out and try to run fast, the kind of runs most people think of when they think of running — on the road?” he asked.

“Actually, no,” I said. “I started out with that yesterday, running 9- and 10-minute miles with the intention of upping the speed, but found myself veering off into the hills, and that turned to 12- and 14-minute miles on the fluffy snow climbs. I find I enjoy that kind of running so much more. It was still good intensity though. 80 to 90 percent for 90 minutes.”

“That’s good,” he said. “You really don’t need any speed for what you’re training for. All that matters is you get out there and put in time on your feet. It’s something I think most runners, even those who run ultras, don’t realize. By speed training, you might get your 9-minute miles up to 8:40. Twenty seconds is almost nothing over 100 miles. But everyone moves slowly when they feel like crap. If you can boost those slow-moving 20-minute miles up to, say, 15 minutes, that’s five minutes a mile. It’s huge, and easier to do. I used to emphasize speed work and all that, but now I just go into the mountains and spend more time running at slower speeds. It’s made the difference between being a pretty good ultrarunner, and being a great ultrarunner.”

It was an interesting insight into Geoff’s training that I never heard before. When we lived together, he spent lots of time running quarter-mile intervals around a high school track, lifting weights at the gym and suffering through all of his long runs on the road, because Juneau trails in the winter are nearly always covered in unconsolidated snow, requiring snowshoes and a walking-speed shuffle. While training for the 2008 ITI, he ran 25 laps around a flat, three-kilometer groomed cross-country ski loop while towing his sled. It was the same day I set out for an incredibly scenic 90-mile Pugsley ride, touring all the beautiful corners of Juneau. From my point of view, Geoff’s training habits required not only a fair dose of talent, but also a serious tolerance for tedious efforts. Which is why I never had any interest in running. It seemed completely unfun.

When I first met Beat, he introduced me to the strategy of (quotes mine) “moving slowly with haste” during an ultrarun. Consistent movement has always been my approach to endurance cycling — it’s achievable, adaptable, offers its own set of challenges, doesn’t demand tedious training blocks, and becomes more and more effective as events get longer. Beat helped me see how I could do the same in an endurance run. That by keeping a steady pace through all of the highs and lows and downright despair of an effort, I could achieve distances that before seemed to me to be all but impossible. And I was intrigued, because in my view running long distances is the purest form of physical activity, and allows for the greatest access to mountain and backcountry terrain (the less gear you rely on, the less restricted you are in your movement. Skis are limited to what skis can do. Bikes are limited to what bikes can do. But feet can go nearly everywhere.) And yet I had always viewed my own abilities as woefully inadequate in this regard.

Beat’s “just keep moving” (quotes mine) philosophy really made a lot of sense, and he had the experience and success to back it up. Meeting him was the turning point to switch my views from “running sucks and is hard,” to “running is a great mode of travel (but still hard.)” Which is why it was interesting to hear that Geoff holds a similar philosophy. After all, Geoff is considered an elite in the sport of ultrarunning these days. And he does have speed in his background (I believe he has a 15:10 5K PR, and 4:29-minute mile.) But these days, he chooses to leave that background behind to slog around in the mountains for hours on end — which is also what I really love to do.

And of course, it’s all relative. I probably couldn’t hold Geoff’s “slow” pace for five miles. But his is yet another example I was able to draw on when I went out for a late-evening run shortly after our conversation. I felt great for the first three miles, running “hard” but consistently to lay down some 9-minute miles. Then the wheels fell off, so to speak. I don’t know what happened yesterday — I speculate possible cumulative dehydration, or some food that didn’t agree with me, or possibly a stomach bug — but I became quite ill. I had to stop in the woods twice and decided to cut my run short. I was shuffling back toward home, wracked with painful stomach cramps, when I looked down at my Garmin and saw I was logging an 18-minute-mile pace. “I can do better than this,” I thought. I stopped shuffling and started speed hiking. The stomach cramps began to abate. My digestive system felt more settled. And I upped my pace to 14-minute miles at a much less stressful, more solid and sustainable effort. No, I wasn’t running. But I was moving slowly with purpose. And it worked.

Across the years

I was tired on New Year's Eve. There was no one reason for it, but many excuses. It had been a long week of training, running, travel, work, reduced sleep and cold, gray, otherwise completely erratic weather. By Friday morning the sun burned so bright that I had to close my eyes when I first gazed outside. Bill came stomping into my front doorway wearing his goggles and heavy boots in the late morning. "The radio said it was negative 10 when I left my house earlier today," he said, half-playfully, half-ominously.

"Ah, doesn't matter," I said with a tinge of resentment, because it doesn't really matter what gear I have or how fit I think I am - that kind of cold makes me work hard, extra hard, every time. But the world was drenched in glistening white light and enveloped by a perfect bluebird sky. To the car-bound commuters who watched us pedal through our own billowing vapor clouds probably saw our bicycle riding as excessive — excessive because it was too cold outside, and there were parties to plan, real miles to travel and hours to count. But to us, the opposite seemed excessive — excessive deprivation of fun, like going to bed before midnight on New Year's Eve.

When I was young, I loved New Year's Eve. I loved to whisper the dying seconds in my head as the crowd counted them out loud, letting beautiful and nostalgia-tinged memories slip backward like credits on a movie screen. Then, after the screams and cheers died out, I loved to take deep breaths of the crisp, cold air and believe it tasted different. I loved the sensation of everything becoming new and different within the span of two seconds, with the stars sparkling in the winter sky and the pages wiped clean, just waiting to be filled with new chapters.

Now that I am older, I realize that time is more circular than linear, and this calendar day has always only been as meaningful as the events we ascribe to it. That's why we got out for a bike ride - not for auld lang syne, but for free passage into yet another new day, memorable in its simplicity, a clear cold day with the quiet squeak of snow on Miller Creek Road and the grumbling of my heart-rate monitor that seemed to openly declare me "overtired." We rode 32 miles in four hours. I slowed so much on the frosty descent that Beat stopped often to ask what was wrong. "Nothing's wrong," I said. "I'm tired." Couldn't he hear my raspy breath or the pounding of my heart? I glanced at my HRM: 145 beats per minute, which isn't exactly extreme intensity. I put my head down and pedaled. The Rattlesnake mountains loomed in the distance, with a barrage of tiny details as sharp as icicles in the clear air.

The evening came with a three-and-a-half-hour icy car trip to Kalispell and New Year's festivities that passed in a bit of a daze. We toasted New Year's Day at 11 p.m. for Danni's friends from Chicago, then had a more subdued celebration at midnight. Somehow two more hours passed; we toasted New Year's in Juneau, and then moved upstairs at 2:30 a.m. to collapse in a stupor. I forgot to whisper the seconds as they passed or breathe the clean air of the new year. I was just too tired.

Saturday brought more cold weather, with temperatures in the single digits and decidedly more gray. We had a long slow breakfast and then Danni and her friends geared up to go resort skiing. Beat and I longed for something quieter but weren't willing to drive my Geo more than 10 miles on the icy roads, so we took his prototype sled up to nearby Patrick Canyon and set out to run a random forest service road that we had almost completely to ourselves.

Beat had a great minimalist idea for his gear sled, using a typical storage box and racing sled skis - waterproof, light, and utilizing easy-to-replace parts. Unfortunately I had forgotten how brittle plastic becomes in the bitter cold and subsequently forgot to warn him. Every single one of his zip ties eventually snapped, forcing several in-field repairs using pieces of cord he cut off one of his mittens.

During the descent, the plastic legs holding the sled runners to the box snapped clean off. Beat worked to remove all the shards from the bottom of his sled as the setting sun shot a column of light into the sky. I can't be sure but I think this was part of a "sundog," which is the term used to describe pillars or halos of bright light caused when crystals of ice in the air diffract light from the sun. It really was a beautiful moment to stand and reflect as the deep chill crept into my meager running layers.

After the sled had been converted to a plastic box dragged by two PVC pipes, I playfully dodged the swinging obstacle as we ran down the road. We rounded the corner to an open view of an incredible phosphorescent strip of deep crimson light unlike any I had ever seen. The alpenglow shimmered radioactively on the expansive crest of the Swan Mountains, far in the distance but close enough to induce involuntary yells from both Beat and me. It was one of those moments were you gasp at the beauty, take two or three woefully inadequate photographs and stare wistfully, straining to hold onto the dying light as the magic fades as quickly as it erupted. But you feel unbelievably lucky to have been there, to have slept in, eaten a long breakfast, refused to drive farther to more exciting destinations, and had your sled break a half dozen times so you could end up in that spot, at that moment, for the most perfect end to the first day of the year. It was as though we had planned it that way all along.

The rest of the run felt fantastic. I have been a woeful downhill runner but on Saturday I hit a rare stride. My micro-spikes dug into the hard-packed snow and every step felt as confident as it did light. Beat had to manage his sliding dragging box and for once I actually surged ahead of him, wrapping up six effortless miles before the light completely faded from the sky.

By Monday, my tiredness had burned through and faded, and I felt like my old perky self again. We accompanied Danni and her Chicago friends Cheryl and Chris on a snowshoe hike in Glacier National Park.

We climbed the steep Mount Brown Lookout Trail even though we knew we didn't have nearly enough daylight to reach the top of the mountain. There was ongoing debate about whether it was easier to walk with snowshoes or without, although Danni was the only one willing to give it a try.

As we made our way back toward Lake McDonald, a shimmer of yellow light in the far distance or flakes of frost on a tree branch would jog my realization - "Wow, it's 2011 already. The new year." But most of the steps were just another day in paradise, close to the things I love and moving joyfully along an endless circle of possibilities.

Frosty face

The last day of 2010 brought clear, cold conditions. It was 6 below zero when Beat, Bill and I left my house Friday for a four-hour, 32-mile snow bike ride up Miller Creek canyon. Temps climbed into the single digits as we drove north for New Year's Eve festivities in Kalispell, and hovered near zero degrees for our sled-testing 12-mile New Years Day run up Patrick Canyon. Two beautiful days yielded some incredible scenery, including the most incredible crimson red alpenglow I've ever seen, burning up the Swan Mountains as a sundog shimmered on the opposite horizon. I'll post those photos when I have more time. But beyond the intriguing scenery and general exhilaration of exercising in the cold, there's also a humorous side-effect: Flocked facial hairs.

Early in the run, before it started to obstruct my vision.

After the run, where Beat said I had a "Lady Gaga" thing going on. The run-frosted eyelashes were still preferable to the freezing that occurred on the snow bike ride, where continued efforts to thaw my eyelashes only resulted in large blocks of ice dangling in front of my eyes. May be time to invest in some goggles.

Hope everyone is having a great new year!