Not quite superwoman

After Sunday's amazing bike ride, I'd wondered if I was in for a week of drug-boosted awesomeness as I finished my prescription of Prednisone. On Monday I set out to "PR" my favorite 10K trail loop, and blew up near the top with a dizzy spell and hints of a returning sinus headache. When I complained to Beat about yet another bad run, he said, "You did ride for ten hours yesterday." Well, yes, there was that.

The rest of the week has confirmed that I'm not feeling or performing at a different level than usual. Perhaps all of my energy and enthusiasm on Sunday was the result of several days of real rest, and the powerful juxtaposition of "feeling like death" and "normal." Besides the slight disappointment of discovering that I have no superpowers, this week was full of time spent hacking away at a book project and compiling supplies for Beat's Iditarod race. His expedition to Nome begins in just over two weeks, which is a disconcerting realization for me, too. More than general nervousness about the dangers he'll encounter daily on the trail, I feel a sense of disconnect about remaining on the periphery of such a major event in his life.

When it comes to big expeditions, Beat and I prefer to go solo. We both feel that way — the solo, personal aspect is an integral part of the experience we're seeking. Still, as this event creeps up, I admit I feel more wistfulness than relief. Of course I'm relieved I'm not staring down that pain tunnel right now — but perhaps a larger part wishes I could join him on the trek. What's also hard for me is the fact I can't even serve a minor supportive role. Once he sets out, he's on his own — which is also exactly the way he wants it. I imagine I'll spend my time in Alaska (at least when I'm not out on my own mini-expeditions) riding my Fatback on trails within cell-phone range and waiting for satellite phone calls. As much as I despise the uselessness of fretting, I'm all too prone to falling into that trap.

Wednesday was my friend Leah's birthday, the big 3-0, so we celebrated in style with a three-hour evening ride in the Headlands. Our mellow, scenic and chatty ride turned a little more pro when ran into a group of Leah's cross-racing friends. We rode back to the bridge with a man who is something of a local legend — someone who was carving out a niche on these trails during the dawn era of mountain biking. I forget his name; he was a cool guy, but his version of a mellow and chatty pace was noticeably closer to my own red line. Subtle hints of spring have arrived in this region, with flowers blooming and bright greenery popping up everywhere. As much as I love Alaska and look forward to returning to the serenity and intrigue of winter later this month, I will miss spring in California. February and March are my favorite months here.

And then there's training. I still want to continue building for the Homer Epic 100K as well as the fitness I'll need for my snow bike trips. Despite the inconsistencies and lack of focus in my winter training, I think my endurance is solid right now — a great place to be, because it makes me feel like I can say yes to any adventure. Because we rode fairly hard on Wednesday, today I opted for a "short but steep" type of tempo run. However, at my planned turnaround point I felt too good to stop. The sun was out after a cloudy day, casting rich afternoon light on the valley below, and a cold wind urged me higher. I ended up on top of Black Mountain, and finished with 10.2 miles and 2,700 feet of climbing in 1:55 ... likely my own best time on that route. Maybe Superwoman is lurking somewhere in there after all. 

Super Sunday

Beat joked about my first foray into athletic doping, but I was unconvinced. A low-dose prescription of oral Prednisone that was still battling the rash that had spread across my body? No, all it did was reverse the zombificition my body had descended into during the week, and allowed me to sleep more than 45 minutes at a time. I was feeling normal again, that's all. Saturday's slow run after a week of low activity let me breathe easy again, and I hoped I'd continue to improve enough to embark on the solo mountain bike ride while Beat organized his Iditarod gear on Superbowl Sunday. Since it had only been two days since I was unwilling to get out of bed due to the discomfort and pain of simply moving, I kept my expectations low.

I managed a 9 a.m. start but felt sluggish for the first two hours, trying to wake up reluctant leg muscles while my head swirled in a thick mental fog. Beat and I went to a dinner party the evening before, and stayed up well past midnight eating lots of dessert, which resulted in a mild sugar hangover. At one point I decided I was just going to ride to the top of Black Mountain and descend Steven's Creek Canyon, because a 25-mile ride was still a decent comeback from how downtrodden I have been feeling for much of the past two weeks. But then I reminded myself that it was Super Bowl Sunday, providing a rare opportunity to enjoy largely deserted roads and trails on a warm and sunny Sunday afternoon.

I made it my mission to ride as much (legal) dirt and trail as I could. I looped around the trails above Steven's Creek and veered over to Long Ridge to contour the hillsides on the other side of Skyline. It's all steep climbing and descending without a break, but I noticed that as soon as my head fog finally cleared, I felt great. Not necessarily stronger than normal, but incredibly enthusiastic. Suddenly it didn't make sense to do anything but ride my bike all day long. So I turned west and descended into the expansive forests of Big Basin Redwoods State Park.

This place is located less than thirty miles from the traffic-clogged Silicon Valley, a small spine of mountains dividing a narrow peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and the San Francisco Bay. And yet it's an wonderful wildland — rugged, densely forested, and largely free of development and motorized use. Given its proximity to the Bay area, it's also surprisingly uncrowded. I love Big Basin Redwoods, and every time I visit, I wonder why I don't spend more time exploring the extensive system of trails (where, sadly, mountain bikes are restricted. But there are plenty of opportunities for long trail runs.)

The routes where bikes are allowed are all extremely strenuous — a ripple of fall-line fire roads with 20-plus-percent grades. Even I could probably run these trails faster than I can ride them, given the number of 14- and 22-minute miles my Garmin was ticking off. But I was having so much fun, locking up my brakes through a rear-wheel gravel slide or cranking up a hill until my quads gave out, that I didn't care about my pace, the accumulating hours, or growing lateness of the afternoon.

Prudence was nagging at me to turn around when I discovered the McCreary Ridge trail, a sandy shoot that plunged down the spine of a narrow ridge, with big views on all sides. It cut so aggressively down the mountain that several sections were too steep for me to ride downhill, and I knew pushing my bike back up this trail was going to be a real grunt, but I was intrigued nonetheless. There are few activities I love more than exploring by bike.

I hoped to make it all the way to the coast, but evening was encroaching. I promised myself a 3:15 p.m. turnaround and stuck to it, even though the dense redwood forest of the lower elevations beckoned me forward.

Despite my sickness last week, and a reduction in cycling miles as I've tried to amp up training for running, I felt relatively little fatigue during this ten-hour, steep and strenuous ride. Fatigue started to catch up with me in the final hours because I didn't eat much during the day, but I was a bit baffled. Where did all of this energy come from? Is it really all contained in a 20 mg dose of Prednisone? I know the drug is a steroid, but it was still battling some serious inflammation (given my rash and swelling has not yet entirely cleared up.) I don't feel manic when I'm not biking, and have been sleeping just fine (worlds away from last week's insomnia.) But Beat has been teasing me for acting more "feisty" than usual. I admit I'm a little wary of this drug, but more than anything I do not want that debilitating rash to come back, ever, so I'll finish up my seven-day dose as prescribed and chat with my doc about the side effects.

And I also believe there's a good chance that my Super Sunday owes less to the side effects of Prednisone than the renewed joy of being alive, healthy again, and moving through a beautiful world under my own power. The sun set an hour before I made it home, and I was grateful for the nearly deserted streets. 49ers fans must be plentiful here. I wonder if their team won? (Just kidding. I know who won.) I turned on my headlight and descended toward a sparkling sea of city lights, swallowing a rush of cold air through a grin I couldn't contain. It was such a great day, doping or not.

Final stats: 74.2 miles, 11,273 feet of climbing, 9:54 total time, average speed 7.5 mph. Map and more stats are here for anyone interested in the route. 

Up for air

Not much to report on the "Jill Outside" front this week. But sometimes when about a week goes by without an update, I feel I should post something on my blog lest my family begin to believe I've disappeared into another adventure, or disappeared altogether.

Nope. I've been here all this time, and for the past 36 hours my activity mostly involved sitting quite still. This week has been a bemusing slump through a trifecta of infections that seem to be unrelated to each other. The sinus pressure and cough I accepted as penance. After all, it was my idea to get a flu shot last week, which is what I decided to blame when I felt slightly off but not quite sick for days afterward, and then I went for a hard bike ride and a 31-mile run. Then I really did get sick. Okay, I deserved that. But then I quickly slipped into a world of discomfort that culminated when a mysterious rash spread across my neck, arms, lower back, and hips. It flared up rapidly and then clamped down like a vice, making it painful for me to move my upper body.

Like the hypochondriac that I can sometimes be, I trolled the Web and convinced myself I had a systemic candida infection and I was either going to die or spend the rest of the week lying in bed slathered head to toe in diaper rash paste. But like the stubborn person I am, I resolved to self-treat my rash through the weekend and call my doctor if it wasn't better by Monday. I effectively didn't fall asleep until dawn broke Friday morning, and then resisted Beat's efforts to rouse me out of bed at 10 a.m. I was awake; I just didn't feel like moving. "Call the doctor," he urged. "This is what doctors are for."

The doctor told me I was likely experiencing a plain old allergic reaction, probably from either laundry detergent or food, or really any number of things that a person can suddenly become severely allergic to. He gave me a prescription that quickly downgraded my symptoms from "morphing into a statue" to "mildly itchy and uncomfortable." Yay prednisone. But it does leave me wondering ... if it is an allergic reaction and not a immune system hiccup as I previously suspected, what am I so allergic to?

I have friends who have banged their heads against the wall for years regarding allergies. One friend battled crippling skin outbreaks that kept her home from work, and eventually cut her diet down to about six different items of food. My own diet is simple and satisfying, and remains effectively the same foods I've eaten since my childhood, but it reads like a laundry list of typical food allergy suspects — raw vegetables and fruits, dairy, a whole lotta grain, some lean protein and legumes. And of course sugary energy foods. I tend to be defensive about my eating habits because they're so out of fashion right now (it's very much a 1990s low-fat, high-calorie marathon runner diet.) But I don't really enjoy eating meat or many foods with high fat content, because both upset my digestive system, and can't imagine how any low-carb diet wouldn't disrupt my endurance lifestyle. But if you'd asked me at 3 a.m. while I was lying awake and marinating in my own misery, I would have happily agreed to a diet of grass and twigs if I thought it would make the rash go away.

I remain optimistic that this was just a one-time occurrence or perhaps the fault of my compromised immune system that's been dragging me around all week. But experiences like this do make me wonder ... good health can be lost so easily and randomly. Just how much control do I have?

I'm happy Beat talked me into acquiring steroids before the weekend started. I feel so much better already, and hopefully I can get back outside and go for a run and maybe even the long bike ride I'd been planning on Sunday. The weather has been gorgeous, and it's true that even short dips into minor illnesses exponentially increase my appreciation of health.

On running tired

All week I felt like I was on the verge of getting sick, although I could never be sure. On Wednesday I set out on what has to be my worst run since I took up running. I went to Rancho park for my favorite ten-kilometer loop, ran the first mile feeling winded at normal speed, and started to seriously lose steam in the second mile. By the end of mile two my whole body ached and my stomach was lurching, so I took a five-minute break laying on a bench overlooking the valley. It felt so nice to lie down but too chilly to stay there. I decided to cut my run short and take the easiest route back to the ranch in case my stomach really started to rebel. But I was so nauseated and dizzy that I could only run for short intervals, and when I walked it must have been slowly because I finished my shortened run a full 90 minutes after I started, with less than five miles distance. I felt wrecked.

"I'm getting sick," I told Beat, but then on Thursday I woke up and felt not any worse. So I proceeded with my plans for a evening mountain bike ride with Leah. Again I battled low energy and muscle aches, but not the extent I had on Wednesday. Still, I was certain some virus was settling in for a long stay. I admitted to Leah that Beat and I had signed up for a 50K trail race on Sunday. She shook her head and said, "No racing on Sunday," to which I whole-heartedly agreed. But then I woke up on Friday and felt not any worse, and had a relatively successful run on at Rancho on Saturday, so Sunday morning I set out to run the Steep Ravine 50K.

The phantom sickness stayed in the shadows. But like they have on every occasion I've run here, the steep trails of Mount Tam thoroughly kicked my butt. I put in what felt like a valiant effort in the first half, knowing that if it went bad (and I partially hoped it would) I could just quit after the first 25-kilometer loop. My legs couldn't produce much power, but I didn't feel nauseated, so I tried to combat my low energy by stuffing down as many Clif Shot blocks as I could stomach. They did nothing for me, absolutely nothing. Beat passed me several times on the out-and-backs, and when he asked me how I felt, I said, "bonky." I felt as though I had low blood sugar, even with a dozen Shot Blocks churning in my gut like rocks in a cement mixer.

I went out for the second 25K lap anyway and soon slipped into an endurance fog, a hazy yet happy place that is something of a guilty pleasure for me. When I'm not injured or hurting, just dog tired, the fog settles in and fills my often overdriven thoughts with sparkling lagoons and white clouds — a meditative emptiness that I can't readily achieve under normal circumstances, but comes automatically when my body feels spent. And because of the natural buildup of endurance training, I rarely experience this state during "short" efforts like 50Ks anymore. It's like any drug that one builds up a resistance to — I need more miles, and then more, and then more, until some future cracking point when I hit my endocrine system's limit, and then I will check myself into rehab and that will be that.

Okay, that last paragraph was partially in jest. This question has been on my mind recently ... the question of limits ... the question "Is there enough?" There has been a lot of chatter in the endurance community about adrenal fatigue and other longterm physical maladies caused by overtraining. Participants in the conversation include people I know well, so I've followed along with a mixture of concern, personal interest, and natural skepticism. Endurance athletes comprise such a tiny percentage of humanity that few scientific studies have been conducted on their behalf, so much of the evidence linking chronic fatigue and overexercising is anecdotal. I don't dispute the evidence, but I will say that I'm skeptical of how closely these two are really linked versus a multitude of other factors that contribute to shifts in physical health and motivation. I've read quite a few books about unintentional endurance — prisoners who walked across Siberia, polar explorers who were stranded in ice and fought for their survival for months and years, people in labor camps during the Holocaust. People who weren't trained, who weren't prepared, who weren't even willing participants, but who did amazing things anyway. People who, if they came out today and said "I did this" without any proof, would immediately be discredited. Because in the modern world, we've erected so many boundaries that it's become impossible to see beyond them.

I lean toward the belief that modern humans haven't even come close to exceeding the potential of human endurance. But the route to discovering our limits certainly isn't a direct one. It's difficult to reconcile the wishes of the mind with the needs of the body, and no rational person wants to take unknown risks with their own health. Acute overuse injuries are a concern for everyone, and I've had my share. But in my case these injuries were a result of misuse and mistakes, not much different than if I crashed my bike and injured myself in the fall. I've experienced weeks and even months of low energy and malaise after hard endurance efforts, but I've also experienced very similar symptoms after personal crises that had nothing to do with physical effort. I can't help but wonder if any physical limit I've perceived is more about a tired or fearful mind than a weakened body.

But yes, back to running the Steep Ravine 50K with a phantom illness. I was tired and began making mistakes. Less than three miles from the finish, I picked up speed on the steep descent down the Dipsea Trail. My leg muscles ached, I thought I had a blister from my new shoes, and I was ready to be done. Just as I started running at what felt like my fastest pace all day, I caught my right foot on a root, threw my left foot down too fast and at a bad angle, and in the process launched myself into the air. As I flew toward a landing that I knew was going to end horizontally several feet down the trail, I tucked in my arms and legs and made myself into a little ball, so that when I hit, I bounced. It actually worked. I slammed into the dirt with my shoulder and the side of my knee, but then rolled over to settle on my back, rather than skid into lots of bruises and trail-rash. It was still a hard hit and it took me several minutes to compose myself and pick up jogging again, but it was perhaps the most graceful fall I have ever taken. I am learning, I am.

I'm learning every day. I don't know what my personal limit will be. I hope I never find it, but if I do, I want to look back on the long adventurous process and think, "well, that was worth it." Or, maybe I will look deeper inside my own over-analytic mind and say, "Now now, you're just feeling scared."

Steep Ravine 50K: 31.2 miles, 7,088 feet of climbing, in 6:56. I've run slight variations of this butt-kicker of a course four times but this was the fastest. Maybe the phantom illness really was a figment of my imagination. 

2013 dreams, spring and early summer

Daylight is beginning to creep back into Leah's and my evening bike rides in the Marin Headlands. On Thursday we got out for our favorite loop from the bridge, watched a beautifully hazy sunset, listened to coyotes howl as burrow owls swooped through our headlight beams, and remarked how warm it was because 45 degrees and moonlight sure beat the pouring rain that was happening at my home only forty miles south. It was a typically beautiful ride, and we topped it off with some fantastic Chinese food from this unique fusion place in the Mission.

As we buzzed with endorphins and chili sauce, we schemed possible bike tours for the spring or summer. The adventure planning reminded me that I'm still making my wish list for 2013. Spring and the first part of summer are bound to be the time for a bike tour and micro-adventures, but there are a few endurance challenges that I hope to include as well:

May 11: Quicksilver 50-miler. Fifty miles is the one major ultra distance I haven't tried, and honestly, it's the distance I'm least likely to enjoy. Fifty kilometers is just short enough that I can savor a challenging run without it degrading into a slog. A hundred miles is so hard that I can embrace the slog and let it take me to all of the magical places that it will. A hard hundred kilometers or seventy miles offers some of the flighty fun of a hundred miles with less of the pain. But fifty miles — that's a tricky distance. Much longer than a "fun run" 50K, but not quite long enough to venture into ultraendurance mindgame territory. So there it is. I'm going to give fifty miles my best shot at the Quicksilver 50 in San Jose. The course has 8,500 feet of climbing, promises to be an inferno of oppressive heat, and enforces the trails' consistent runnability with a twelve-hour cut-off. Can you tell I'm looking forward to this? But I need a long training run for:

May 31: The Bryce 100. A hundred miles of high desert alpine and otherworldly redrock formations on the outskirts of Bryce Canyon National Park. May 31 is Beat's birthday, and this is how he wanted to celebrate. The course rings the rolling hills of the Paunsaugunt Plateau, ranging between 7,800 and 9,400 feet. The altitude is harsh for a sea-level dweller, and judging by some of the breathing problems I had in the Bear 100, Bryce promises to be a hypoxic struggle amid some of Utah's most breathtaking scenery. The total elevation gain is something over 14,000 feet. My goal for this race is to not pass out, be gifted with great photo-taking weather, and finish before the cut-off. My sights for the summer are set on multiday adventures, so I don't want to run myself into an injury by trying to push my speed limit. (Last month I wrote an article previewing the race.)

June or early July: Sierras fastpacking adventure. This is something I've been dreaming about since I moved to California. I hope I have a chance to pull it off this year. The grand out-there dream would be to hike/run the 220 miles of the John Muir Trail in seven or eight days. Whether I can leverage the time and planning to pull this off is the question. Eight days is lot of time in itself, and the effort will require significant recovery after a full week of going as strong as I can for twelve to sixteen hours a day. I've also received conflicting advice about how to apply for permits, so I have to spend more time looking into this. Also, I need to figue out how to actually *become* an ultralight backpacker rather than just covet their cool gear from afar while I imagine them shivering in space blankets and gnawing on twigs and moss. The John Muir Trail is realistically too much to bite off for a first-time fastpacking adventure. But I still want to plan some kind of multiday endurance challenge on foot. A three- or four-night loop in Yosemite National Park or part of the Pacific Crest Trail would be great possibilities as well.

I'll get to the rest of summer in the next post. I will say that it won't include the Tour Divide or any big bikepacking race, this year at least. As I mentioned earlier, 2013 is the year I want to test my limits on foot, because there are so many incredible places in this world that I can't access on wheels. But the wheels still hold the first spot in my heart, and I'm sure after this year's for-fun bike adventures, I'll be looking for something more challenging once again.

Backpack or sled?

Group shot at the start of our Glacier Point run. Martina skied and laughed at our poor mode of snow travel as she glided past.

Our training trip to Yosemite gave me a chance to test out a system to use in the Homer Epic 100K, a race that I haven't really started training for yet (still doing more biking than running) and that seems like a long time off but in reality is less than eight weeks from now. I have almost as much fun mulling the strategy of these types of races as I do running them (mainly because winter races are so dependent on weather and quickly changing trail conditions, that any rigid strategy is bound to fail. Creating multifaceted strategies based on a large number of possible outcomes is a fun challenge.) But I'm still undecided on one fundamental aspect of the Homer Epic — how to carry my gear.

Beat on the freshly groomed ski trail. Conditions would have been perfect if it wasn't 50 degrees out, turning the snow to slush.

One thing I knew was that I don't love pulling a sled. In the past, pulling sleds in the range of 30 to 40 pounds absolutely prevented me from running in all but the best trail conditions or fairly steep descents. I'm just not strong enough; the anchor clamps down and I end up expending double the energy for perhaps 25 percent more speed. It's not sustainable at all. I'm effectively locked in at 3 to 3.5 mph, with an energy expenditure and muscle strain that feels more like 6 mph would on dirt trails.

I looked out over this vista and all I could think of was summer ... and miles and miles of wilderness trails.

I just assumed I'd want to carry a pack in the Homer Epic, so on Saturday I loaded up a Salomon pack with the gear I'd likely carry in the race. The rules require a few common-sense pieces of clothing that I'd carry either way — a big down coat and windproof pants to keep me warm in case I am injured on the trail and have to stop or slow way down. And of course I'll need several changeable trail layers — hats, gloves, mittens, extra socks, etc. The race support includes water only, and even then there are only three checkpoints in a hundred kilometers, so I packed two liters of water and 2,500 calories, although for the race I will probably carry 3,000 or even 3,500. (And honestly believe even this is on the hungry side. I'm a big eater in the cold and bonk quickly when I slow the consumption.) Then there was my safety gear, GPS and camera, foot-fix stuff, headlamps and batteries, knife and duct tape, and med kit. And to top it off, trekking poles and snowshoes strapped to the outside. The final weight was startling. I couldn't weigh it at the start, but my guess would be 17 to 20 pounds. Which makes sense, because it was all of my Susitna gear, minus the emergency calories and sleeping bag bundle.

Yosemite Valley doesn't see much direct sunlight in January

I did not like running with a 20-pound pack. It rubbed on my shoulders to the point that my collarbone felt bruised, and felt more awkward and tedious than my heavier sled ever did in Fairbanks. I ran a fair percentage of the first 11 miles out to Glacier Point, but lost my steam after that. The stats from my GPS were 22.5 miles, 3,245 feet of climbing, 5:43 trail time. The Homer Epic is 62 miles with 6,470 feet of climbing, and has a 24 hour cut-off. Last year's two finishers on foot, who are both faster snow runners than me (and much faster than me off the snow), finished in 21:30 and 23:10 respectively. Finishing the Homer Epic is far from a given; it's going to be tight and it's going to be tough.

Group leaving Glacier Point.

Obviously I will need to do more training with that pack if I am going to carry it. And of course I can look for ways to lighten the load, but most of this gear has been mulled extensively over multiple excursions. Even if the warm gear weren't required, I'd still carry it. I'd rather stay alive in the event I can't move, than move slightly faster when I can. The snowshoes are the most expendable item, but even those I'm quite attached to. If I don't wear them the entire race because of marginal conditions, I'll probably still wear them for half of the race just to ease the strain on my undertrained ankles and knees (because I can't train by running on snow.) Beat has suggested he might make a small sled with the same design as his large Nome sled. I'd still carry my water on my back, so presumably I could get my total sled weight below 15 pounds. This might be the best option.

Ditched the pack as soon as we stopped. Photo by Beat.

Either way, it's been fun to scheme for my only winter race this year. I really do wish I had a full 100-miler to look forward to, but the simultaneous newness and nostalgia of the Homer Epic is motivation enough. Now to get to more consistent training. Ah, training. The best snow race training I can do here in the Bay area is hard jogs up steep, sustained climbs. I have all those snow bike tours I want to do in Alaska, so I should keep riding my bikes, too. 

Right place, right time

As early morning's shadow crept like a curtain down the granite cliffs across the valley, I walked across the ice-crusted snow and found a rock outcropping to claim as my exclusive seat for the show. 

Behind me, the rising sun projected a stream of golden light, creeping down the high peaks of Yosemite and illuminating the backside of Half Dome. I watched previews of color form on sparkling ice and distant snowfields, waiting patiently for the main attraction — the moment the angled light of sunrise touched the frozen mist of Yosemite Falls. 

A faint crimson was the first color to emerge, followed by a hints of yellow and green. As the sun climbed higher into the crystal blue sky, the falls burst into a full spectrum rainbow, with colorful mist floating through the air before freezing into snow and settling gently onto the slope below. Nature's version of Hawaiian shaved ice, striped with every flavor on the shelf. I smiled at the memory of eating a multi-color snow cone in the January heat of Honolulu on top of Diamond Head, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day no less, and ricocheted back to the awe that the present moment brought me to the top of an 8,000-foot granite mountain, and this colorful ice swirled around a waterfall that was 2,425 feet high. The world is continuously doling out beautiful gifts, but the most spectacular go to those who find themselves in the right place at the right time.

Not many people would consider the wind-exposed summit of Sentinel Dome in the predawn cold to be a right place, and even fewer would view the snowbound month of January to be the right time. We would likely have never found ourselves in this spot either if Beat and Steve hadn't been training for the Idiatrod, and looking for tough conditions to trek with heavy sleds and camp for a night. We headed to Yosemite National Park for the long weekend, mainly because the park is our closest access to snow. On Saturday, we ran the 22.5 miles out to Glacier Point and back as a training run, and hoped to find another packed trail to stage our camping trip the following night. But on the way back, we encountered a group of skiers who informed us they were planning to stay on Sentinel Dome that night, and recalling a wonderful hike last May, I said to Beat, "You know, spending a night on Sentinel Dome would probably be amazing."

The following day, we learned our options for sled-draggable trails were actually quite limited, and decided to return to the Glacier Point ski trail for the ten-mile trek to Sentinel Dome, elevation 8,127 feet. Steve and Beat seemed not totally stoked about making virtually the same trip twice, but I stuck to my conviction that a Sentinel Dome camp would indeed be amazing, and possibly, on this warm holiday weekend, even windy and cold.

Our mid-afternoon start put us at the top right at sunset, and we broke camp just as a wash of pink light spread over the mountains.

Photo by Beat Jegerlehner

The Sentinel Dome is the tallest landmass for many miles, offering a full panorama of a large cross-section of Yosemite, from the higher peaks to the east, to the sheer granite walls of the Yosemite Valley, to the flat expanse of California's central valley to the west, to (I'm convinced, although my friends disagree) the far-away Bay area landmark of Mount Diablo. It's nothing but views, and a whole night up high gave us nothing but time to look at them.

Photo by Beat. The landform I thought was Mount Diablo is directly to the left of my head, behind the city lights.

We fiddled with Steve's new stove as Beat melted snow for hot drinks and three revolting freeze-dried meals (honestly, I never find any of these that I like. I'm just about to give up on hot dinners when camping, which is something I've been saying for 15 years.) Despite the relatively warm temperature (around 30 degrees), the wind picked up after the sunset, and I had a difficult time staying warm without running in circles around the dome at frequent intervals.

It gave us an excuse to dance around in the snow and play with the settings on Beat's camera — also important training for his Iditarod race next month.


The wind howled through the night, but I got great sleep while curled up in my -40 sleeping bag. We woke up a half hour before sunrise to melt snow for coffee and drinking water, as well as a freeze-dried raspberry crumble dessert that I bought, because I know better than to mess with freeze-dried breakfast foods. (Or oatmeal. Not a fan. I'm usually a breakfast Clif Bar eater.)

Photo by Beat

 But I do think stoves are useful for more than just winter drinking water. True happiness is hot coffee at the top of a mountain.

The sunrise views were every bit as startling as they were at sunset, in lighter hues of red and blue.

And the Yosemite Falls light show — truly an incredible work of art.

After the show was over, there was nothing left to do but pack up the sleds and trek back to the valley with full bellies and hearts.

This isn't to say the trek back was easy. But positioning oneself in the right place and the right time rarely is. There's a good chance we'll return someday for an encore. Training makes the best excuse. 

Beat shot a short video of the waterfall rainbow, linked here.