Humbling mountain

Above 9,000 feet the powder became bottomless, a kind of fluffed sugar that scattered under our feet. I might as well have been driving a ruler into a bin of plastic balls for all the good my ax was doing, and every step only deepened the waist-deep trench that Beat and my dad had already cut. We were moving forward at a rate of about four feet per minute, which, to put into perspective, is a 22-hour mile. And still, the upward lunging and swimming was as anaerobic as I ever go, where every minute of gasping motion required another thirty seconds of rest. Beat and Dad had already expressed their skepticism about this exercise in futility, but I persisted, pointing up to the crest of the small ridge we were climbing and saying, "But we're almost there, and then we can at least see what's up there!"

We thought Mount Timpanogos would be an ideal place to stage a longer day hike on Saturday. About three weeks ago, a huge storm hit the Wasatch Front, and nothing has happened since. This single layer of snow on top of dirt means avalanche danger is about as low as it gets during the winter months, and we were hopeful that the warm temperatures since had reduced the snowpack to a manageable level. Plus, the southern approach to Timp is the most traveled trail in the Wasatch, something of a hiker highway during the summer months, and we wagered that there might even be a packed trail all the way to the upper meadow. If the conditions didn't pan out, we reasoned, we could turn around. My dad isn't stoked on suffering and we weren't looking to get into anything "epic."

The hike started out fairly benign. We took pictures of waterfalls.

We marveled at sun halos.

We worked up a sweat.

As we climbed, the trail became less defined, until we were following a set of knee-deep tracks across the steep face of the mountain. Above us was a veritable layer cake of cliff bands glazed with ice. I couldn't discern any rational path through the vertical maze, not for hikers at least. The summer switchbacks had been smothered by feet of snow, and unless the tracks we were following went all the way to the rim, we'd have to pick out the safest route on our own.

We held to the tracks until we reached a frozen waterfall between two cliff bands. The middle ledge was only a few feet wide in spots, off-camber at about a 45-degree angle, and precariously perched above a twenty-foot sheer drop that plunged into a steep gully. One ice climber who was preparing to scale the waterfall informed us that there was about an inch of loose powder on top of glare ice where he stood. We weren't even wearing crampons, and skittering across that section in dull microspikes seemed like a death wish to me. The climber pointed to a tree-lined ridge where the summer trail went through, and suggested we might find an easier route to that ridge if we descended a few hundred feet.

The downclimb became our first little mountaineering challenge, because our upward zeal had taken us up a slope steep enough that we had to descend backward using axes as anchors. I've never had a climber's mindset, and instead of hyper-focus, I often become strangely distracted on exposed terrain. It's as though my endurance-trained brain uses similar escapist tricks to numb the discomfort when I encounter scary exposure, which, although soothing during a long run, is not what I want to have happen while staring through my legs down a seemingly vertical ladder of snow and ice. Still, winter climbing techniques are something I would definitely work on if I had more opportunities, as I do love the buzz of having conquered a difficult problem once I reach the bottom (which is where I was when I took this photo. As you can see, there's still some lesser downclimbing to be done.)

The true slog began as we sought a less-steep, less-exposed route to the rim, which we weren't even sure existed. It was clear my dad had pretty much stopped having fun the minute we pulled out the axes, but he continued to be a good sport about my sometimes overzealous desire to continue up the mountain. I didn't want to torture my dad, and I honestly didn't even care if we made it to the rim. But Mount Timpanogos had suddenly presented us with this intriguing problem, this beautiful puzzle, and I was aching to see whether we could solve it. It didn't help my dad's cause when our route became increasingly more physically demanding, until we were expending vast amounts of energy for a 1,320-minute-mile pace. There are few activities I love more than a good, ridiculous slog.

There's also a sense of realness to winter travel, a truth that I don't find to the same extent in my summer adventures. The ease and predictability of dirt, the soothing prettiness of flowers and leaves, the comfort of warm temperatures — these are all things I cherish. And yet, when winter strips these things away, leaving behind a much starker, less complacent reality, I feel like I'm seeing a new face of the mountain — perhaps the true face. Mount Timpanogos is a breezy (if long) walk-up in the summer. Now that I've seen it in the winter, I know this mountain for what it is — steep, harsh, and guarded by a fortress of cliffs.

A couple of gullies we hoped would provide access to the rim turned out to have short vertical sections that required mixed rock and ice climbing. We found one potentially climbable snow ramp that would simply take us to a ledge below another set of cliff bands, where we'd have to renew the search for walkable gullies. But by then we were well aware of how loose and bottomless the gully snow was. Even though avalanche danger was minimal, I couldn't help but imagine one of us losing purchase and tumbling down on top of the others, an avalanche of bodies. We called it good and turned back without regret. I was satisfied because at least we tried without taking unnecessary risks for our respective experience levels, and my dad was satisfied that maybe he wouldn't have to stage an intervention for his daughter who apparently goes manic over waist-deep snow slogs.

"I've never worked so hard to climb Timp," my dad observed as we made our way back to the valley, which I found to be true myself even though we weren't anywhere near the peak. In all, we were moving for seven hours, "walked" about eight or nine miles, and climbed perhaps 3,500 or 4,000 vertical feet in total over our wanderings. My quads were thrashed, my calves ached, my shoulders were sore, my hands were numb and head was swimming through a beautiful fatigue more appropriate to a very long run than an eight-mile hike.

Three hundred yards from the car, we had our first mishap — my dad took his microspikes off, slipped on ice, and wrenched his knee badly. He was okay, but it added a punctuation point to our day's lesson from the mountain — sometimes the best adventures are unintentionally epic, small in scale, and huge in humbling life experience. I appreciate being reminded how tiny I am, from time to time.

White Friday

Beat and I flew to Salt Lake City to spend Thanksgiving with a large portion of my very large extended family. Between aunts, uncles, first cousins, and their children, I think there were at least forty people crammed in my uncle's rec room. This was Beat's first big Mormon family Thanksgiving. We made jokes about eating green jello mixed with carrots and overcooked turkey, but the food was actually quite good and my family members kept the uncomfortable questions to a minimum. The funniest statement came from my 82-year-old grandmother, who, upon first meeting Beat, exclaimed, "Wow, you're much cuter than I thought you'd be!"

Before the pie was even fully distributed, my sister and some cousins and aunts started gearing up for their Black Friday shopping assault. Apparently this revered holiday tradition has now trickled into Thursday, and they were all planning to hit the stores in a few hours. In my opinion, Thanksgiving is the best holiday to spend with family (less baggage and stress than Christmas), and the fact that U.S. retailers basically just gave the middle finger to Thanksgiving made me feel a bit melancholy. Although I have my own personal issues with consumer culture, I don't have a problem with Black Friday in general. I do understand how the economic machine that I depend on to prop up my lifestyle hums along. Still, as an individual, I can think of few cultural phenomenons that I'd be less likely to enjoy. Maybe a Justin Bieber concert. But no, even at one of those I could zone out and daydream. Black Friday is just torture, simple and pure. In fact, if Hell did exist, it would absolutely be a custom-designed type of place. Some people would live out their purgatories riding bikes in 40 below weather through Antarctica-like nothingness. I, on the other hand, would spend eternity trapped in the crowds at Wal-Mart on Black Friday.

Luckily, if you don't want to spend your holiday weekend in a retail mosh pit wrestling others over cheap televisions and DVDs, it's not all that hard to get away from the crowds. My dad, Beat, and I headed east into the Wasatch Mountains to climb a 10,200-foot peak called Gobblers Knob. It was, after all, the day after Thanksgiving.

Utah has been unseasonably warm all week, and the bright sun combined with radiant heat off the snow seemed to turn Mill B Basin into an oven. The terrain varied from slush to breakable crust, requiring a number of stability maneuvers that I haven't exercised in a long time. The combination of heat, rough terrain and altitude made for a tough climb. At one point after a particularly slow slog up a slope, I finally caught up to my dad and Beat and said, "I'm struggling. I don't know if it's the elevation or heat or both." It sounded ridiculous coming from a Californian who was wearing virtually the same outfit I wore at a Bay-area 50K trail run two weeks ago, given the ambient temperature was still likely in the 40s, but there it was. I was toasted. And of course it became windy and frigid on the summit ridge. Even after applying most of our extra layers, we had only time to eat a rushed lunch of Nutella sandwiches and tortilla chips on the peak before our fingers and toes were frozen.

The mountains are always joy-inducing, regardless of conditions. And even with the "heat" and weird snowpack, today's conditions on Gobbler's Knob were just about ideal. Strangely, we only saw three other people the entire time, near the trailhead. That fact is even harder for me to understand than the lines of people wrapped around Best Buy. Because if Heaven did exist, it would absolutely be customized, and mine would be a lot like this. 

Pain in the neck

Something about the Mount Tam 50K sparked a "must run" stoke that has yet to dissipate. When I get up in the morning, I feel excited about running. I want to hit familiar trails and try to run faster; I want to seek out new routes and run longer. It's hard to say why my run stoke is so high right now, but it may have something to do with the fact that every time I've ridden a bike in recent weeks, I felt like the reduced-power slug that I probably actually am. And yet, somehow, whenever I set out on foot, I feel comparatively strong, light, and free. So I go for a run, feel great, and then the hidden knot in my neck tightens again. After every run, without fail, I've grappled with a stiff neck for a day or two. It's baffling, and annoying, because since when did a sore neck become a running injury?

This started at the Horseshoe Lake 50K, which was a little more than a month ago. I woke up the next morning with a sharp pain down the center of my neck, and assumed I had wrenched it after I was stung by a wasp during the race. The rigid stiffness faded over the course of the week, and may have gone away completely if I didn't run that road half marathon in Moab a week later. Unknown forces during that thirteen-mile fun run took my little knot and tightened it into something more permanent.

See what I did there? Even though my neck first felt sore after a trail race, I try to blame the half marathon because I think road running is the root of all running-related injuries (not really, but I do carry disproportionate prejudices against running on flat pavement.) But after The Other Half, I was stricken again by a seriously stiff neck, and it's come back to some extent after every run since. I rode my bike for 170 miles in Frog Hollow with no ill effects (at least to my neck), and yet a six-mile run a few days later left me hobbled again. I finally decided this nagging neck soreness might not go away on its own and scheduled an appointment with a massage therapist next week. Based on his opinion, I'll decide where to go from there. In the meantime, I try to limit my running to shorter routes every other day. Which is how, despite rain and colder temperatures, I ended up on a bike ride today.

Here's another habit I've formed since I moved to California that I'm not proud of — I don't ride my bike in the rain anymore. Now, granted, it only really rains here from October to March, and even then only a few times a month. But on the days it does rain, I don't ride. If I want to exercise, I go for a run. I really enjoy running in the rain, and now view non-commute biking in the rain as wholly unnecessary and bad for bikes. It's sad to me because I used to thrive — thrive — on rain riding when I was an Alaska resident. People gave me kudos for riding through snow and subzero temperatures, but it was the rain riding that really made me tough. When I was pedaling in the driving rain with thick droplets clinging to my face and an icy stream running down my back, I wasn't training to be a fit cyclist. I was training for life, to be strong, to be resilient, to be ready for anything the world could throw at me. Now I'm a wimpy Californian with a stiff neck who has to dig through the back corner of my closet to find my cycling rain gear.

I tried to muster strength up the long road climb, but I was feeling sluggish. A steady drizzle tickled my skin, but it was still too warm for rain gear. It was a blah gray day, nothing terribly scenic, and I considered bailing from my ride early. Then I reached the ridge. A storm that had just minutes before been simply gray and drizzly suddenly broke loose. The mountain was enveloped in thick fog, driving rain, and gale-force winds steamrolling eastward from the coast. The Santa Cruz Mountains form a barrier between the Pacific Coast and the warmer Santa Clara Valley, and Montebello Ridge is a prominent spine. Weather collects up there, so even if conditions are nice and calm in the valley, it can be hurricane nasty on the ridge 2,500 feet higher. Suddenly surrounded by horrible, uncomfortable, bike-rattling weather conditions, I couldn't help it. I broke into a big smile.

There was little else to do but pull up my hood, pull on my gloves, and pedal full-tilt into the angry storm. Wind buffeted my little bike and a deeper chill seeped through my wet shirt. I had the best time descending the wet Bella Vista Trail, laughing in the face of driving rain. I relished the fading light, obscuring fog, and violent wind, because they reminded me of everything I used to love about riding bikes in weather, real weather. It will batter you and drive you to distraction in too-large doses; I learned that the hard way. But in small doses, few things are more fun than riding bikes in bad weather.

The rain left me fully soaked and had to bundle up for the long descent, but as soon as I dropped out of the storm, I was treated to a stunning sunset. This photo doesn't capture the visual at all, but there was this beautiful wash of pink light over the sky and valley, and the clouds had an eerily bright tint.

Yeah, this photo didn't grab it either. Guess that's why it's good to get out there, in the cold and driving storm, to see for myself. Either way, I was buzzing after my ride, and wonder if I can now return to my regularly scheduled "ride stoke." For reasons that don't make any sense, this evening has been relatively neck pain-free.