PTL, again

Well, I managed to distract myself sufficiently for a week-plus in Chamonix to avoid writing a blog post. I have so many photos I want to archive, so I suppose I'll start. We returned to the European Capital of Extreme Sports for Beat's sixth and what he promised would be his last Petite Trotte à Léon.

The PTL is a lot of things, but I think it's best described as "290 kilometers of nonsense." It's a high-mountain loop around Mont Blanc on a route that changes every year, following paths that are always steep, routinely rough, and not infrequently nonexistent. The route includes a rather boggling 27 kilometers of vertical gain (so 87,000 feet in 180 miles), but I'm of the opinion the numbers don't mean much. Climbing can be relaxingly easy on a steep dirt path gaining 1,500 feet per mile (which I enjoyed many times during the week.) In PTL, technical features, exposure and route-finding dominate the challenge, and often necessitate a pace amounting to less than two kilometers an hour. So 152 hours to finish this race is actually not a lot of time (and the cutoff was 136 hours in 2013 when I attempted it and timed out, which I emphasize because damn it, those 16 extra hours really would have helped.)

In short, PTL is treacherous and often dangerous terrain combined with sleep deprivation and relentless forward motion regardless of weather or conditions. It's utter nonsense, but some people thrive on nonsense. I can certainly relate.

For years after 2013 I begged Beat not to return to PTL, but by 2016 my defenses had worn down, and by this year I felt the hint, just the tiniest little hint, of FOMO. It's misplaced. Beat's proven himself capable while I continue to fall on my face and roll my ankle on relatively buffed out Colorado trails (which of course are still rocky and steep.) It's difficult to discern why I prioritize my wanderings in places where I so frequently falter. I'm like that kid at the piano recital, the one who's been practicing for years and still stabs at the keys while out-of-sync staccato notes echo through the room. "Shame, she just doesn't have an ear for music," people say about that kid. I'm that kid, with mountain running. I think about this often and wish I'd stuck with piano.

Anyway, Beat was preparing for another PTL and I was both jealous and relieved that it wasn't me. My plan as usual was to loosely follow the race, offer the minimal support where allowed, work occasionally, maybe see a friend or two during the always hugely well-attended UTMB week, and fill the rest of the time with overwhelmingly beautiful hiking. Eating and sleeping, bah ... there's always time for that later.


For our first full day in Chamonix, Beat and one of his PTL partners, Pieter, insisted on joining me for a climb to the junction of two glaciers, Bossons and Taconnaz. We rented a small chalet that was literally underneath the top of a ski jump platform, and the trailhead began 0.10 miles from the front door. It shoots immediately upward and gains 6,000 feet in five miles, which is not a small feat less than two days before a race like PTL. Clearly I am not the only one suffering from ridiculous FOMO. But it is almost impossible to pass up these views:

Looking toward Aiguille du Midi over Bossons glacier.

The Taconnaz glacier. At the tip you can see the remnants of a massive calving event that we witnessed. It sounded like a loud thunder clap, and recently arriving from Colorado, I immediately looked up at the sky. Far below the fluffy clouds, a building-sized chunk of ice peeled off the tongue of the glacier and tumbled down the rocks like an avalanche.

"You're not scrambling underneath these glaciers during PTL this year, are you?" I asked Beat.

"I don't think so," he answered, sounding uncertain.


On Sunday I made a quick trip from the chalet to Brevent, another place where you can knock out a cool vertical mile in five horizontal ones, and if you don't feel like walking down, you just buy a ticket for the cable car.


Views of Bossons and Taconnaz glaciers from the opposite side of the valley. La Jonction is the top of the round ridge in the center. Brevent stands at a similar altitude in the Aiguilles Rouges (Red Mountains.)


I still can't travel anywhere in these vast mountains without looking into a distance and reliving moments from my 2013 PTL experience. I've written about the experience in this blog, but only in fairly superficial detail. The intensity of it still haunts me, in mostly not good ways. Still, there were intensely good moments too — walking under those cliffs when they were bathed in silver moonlight, gazing up at sheer walls and wondering what possible path could lead beyond them. As it turned out, there usually was no possible path — only steep couloirs choked with boulders, and sheer astonishment that a race organization as professional as UTMB would admit participants with no provable mountain experience and send them up an indiscernible mess of rubble that was clearly going to end in a death tumble. Well.

Monday morning was the start of the 2017 edition of PTL. This year Beat started with his original teammate and Colorado friend, Daniel, and Pieter, a Belgian who he met at Tor des Geants in 2014, and has raced PTL with every year since.

Daniel grew up climbing Colorado 14'ers and is a gazelle in boulder fields, and Pieter has mountaineering experience and youthful enthusiasm, so they were a good team. Beat was an experienced trail runner but more or less a mountain novice when he started PTL in 2012. Now he's such an entrenched veteran that the mountain guides who design the PTL greet him with hugs and cheers. He tells me that he, too, used to be bothered by exposed terrain, but now he's tired and doesn't care much anymore.

After the racers jogged briefly through the streets of Chamonix and launched directly up a ski lift slope that's dubbed "the vertical kilometer," I headed out to the base of a mountain they expected to hit later in the day, Mont Buet.

Mont Buet is a 3,096-meter peak (10,100 feet) in the Red Mountains. While researching a route from the valley, I learned it's commonly referred to as "Mont Blanc for the Ladies" ... clearly by chauvinistic French men. I was a bit happy to see this characterization, though. That means Mont Buet is easy, right? I mean, it's 6,000 feet of climbing in six miles, but easy, right?



It was pretty easy — just one long boulder field to negotiate midway through the route. I was scrambling through the boulders when rain began to pelt my face, which made me grumpy. Usually I don't mind rain, but I do when there is unknown and potentially difficult (i.e. slippery) terrain ahead. It turned out to be no big deal, but spiked my stress levels enough to keep me on edge for the rest of the day.

On the way to the summit, I leap-frogged with a nice Italian couple who were fast but made frequent stops, while I trundled along at my steady turtle pace. Occasionally a hole in the clouds would let through sunlight, and the man would point and say, "look, it is sunny!"

"Na, that's just a sucker hole," I'd reply.

"What is sucker hole?"

"Oh, it's, well, a small opening in clouds that tricks you into believing it will stop raining."

"But it will still rain," the man replied knowingly.

Despite the rain and the long approach, there were still eight or nine people on the summit. Except for me and one other, they were not ladies, and Mont Buet was decidedly more gray and gravelly than Mont Blanc. But it was still a beautiful place to be. One guy offered to take my photo. I like that he didn't zoom in at all, so I'm just a drab little person in a big mountain backdrop.

I thought I might see the first PTL teams on my way down, but I didn't having a working GPS track for this section, and didn't have a clue where they'd come from. It could be from anywhere. Literally anywhere. PTL could require a tightrope walk across a ravine, and I wouldn't be surprised.

I made a short detour to climb above Col de Salenton because I was sure they'd walk through here, but nope. They came in from behind this mountain, somehow. So I saw no one. I trundled the long, long descent to the village of Buet and still didn't encounter any PTL teams. In the village, I lingered for a while at the Skiroc chalet, where PTL participants would be served their one daily meal that I later learned was a soup of half-cooked onions in broth. It had been more than nine hours and this was barely mile 26. Nine hours is an almost unfathomable time for the fastest team in a marathon, but PTL is not a normal race. Really, it's a sadomasochistic ritual with fleeting moments of euphoria and drawn-out hours of fear and pain. Still, I suppose I can understand why Beat claims he's not going to return every year, and goes back anyway.

38

 Sunday was my birthday. Even though the number puts me unequivocally well into my late 30s, I looked forward to the turnover. 37 was not my best year. Autumn and winter brought a descent into increasingly poor health and fitness as I desperately tried to train for the most daunting adventure I had ever planned to attempt, the Iditarod Trial Southern Route to Nome. The harder I pushed, the worse I felt ... but the sensation was something more insidious than fatigue or burnout. It felt as though I was being smothered from the inside out. Desperation kept me (relatively) quiet about my deteriorating stoke, but I genuinely hated how I felt during some of these training efforts, and hated that I was starting to hate adventure.

In February, I was diagnosed with an incurable autoimmune thyroid disease that forced me to withdraw from the race, which I considered walking away from a potentially once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. In March, while snowshoeing in Juneau, I was caught in an avalanche (which I gratefully walked away from.) Spring brought the physical rollercoaster and an understanding that, no matter what, things are never going to be quite the same. In June, feeling wildly optimistic, I DNF'd the only ultra I attempted this year, the Bryce 100. Such failures always hit the ego hard, and I spent most of July believing I'd always be (relatively) enfeebled.

In August, my outlook noticeably improved — independent of anything happening in my life and despite the timing. August is usually my least favorite month. This one was cool and green and full of wildflowers. I felt jazzed about the tiniest moments, like viewing the soft morning light over Eldorado Mountain when I had to take out the trash on Thursday morning. As I told my sister, it feels as though this dreary fog had slowly enveloped me over the past two years, and now it's beginning to fade. The gray pall cast over my thoughts and emotions is brightening. If I could stay on this mental upswing, I'd embrace whatever physical limitations had to follow. Happily, my physical health is back on the right track as well.

 If I could choose anything in the world to do on my birthday, high on that list would be "climb Lone Peak with my dad." Lone Peak is a 11,253-foot summit in the Wasatch Mountains. I consider it my "home" mountain. I grew up in its morning shadow; the peak is less than five miles due east from my childhood home — and 7,000 feet higher. As a hike, it's considered by many to be the most difficult standard route to a summit in the Wasatch, rising 6,000 feet in six miles along a chunder-filled gully of a trail called Jacob's Ladder, followed by boulder-hopping in a granite cirque, and finally a class-3 to low-4 scramble up a narrow ridge of vertically-stacked monzonite slabs.

I don't quite remember the first time my dad guided me to this peak. I believe it was the summer after I graduated from high school, 20 years ago. My early memories of Lone Peak's difficulty all surround the steep slog of Jacob's Ladder. There are fewer memories of the slabs that bother me today ... probably because I have 20 years of physical conditioning behind me now, and also two decades of risk and personal ability assessment, which have made me much more wary of exposed scrambling. Much sharper than memories of difficulty are memories of amazement and joy — the quiet Alpine forest mere miles from my crowded suburban neighborhood, the sheer granite walls above the cirque, and standing on top of a peak barely as wide as I am tall, overlooking the entire Salt Lake Valley.

My unplanned trip to Utah for my aunt's funeral just happened to put me in position for a 20th anniversary/38th birthday visit to what is still my favorite mountain. Dad was available, and we also were joined by his friend Tom. Dad had Sunday afternoon obligations so we left at the crack of dawn, enjoying clear skies and temperatures just below 70 degrees. My legs retained a dull soreness from Friday's 14er adventure, but for the most part I felt fantastic. We made quick work of Jacob's Ladder and practically bounded through the wildflower-filled cirque. Dad is in incredible shape and I couldn't quite keep up with him, but I came as close as I could hope to. There was so much oxygen up there, at 10,000 feet.

When we reached the base of the peak, Tom decided to stop and take a nap in wildflower-filled meadow. Dad and I scrambled up a steep and tricky gully — boulders covered in sand — and continued onto the ridge. This photo that my dad took gives an idea of what the summit ridge is like. It's difficult to depict the scale, but the peak is only about 15 square feet. The tilted slab leading to the peak is about five feet long, and not nearly as wide as I'd like. A tumble from this ridge might bounce you on a couple of earlier boulders, but you'd probably land in the cirque, nearly a thousand feet below.

I pulled out my camera to take a photo dad scrambling up one of the first short class-4 maneuvers, and caught an rush of vertigo. It was similar to the sensation that I battled after rolling my ankle and tumbling onto my head on Grizzly Peak on Friday — the sensation that just wouldn't go away and effectively frightened me off the mountain ridge after I summited Grays. Again I felt dizzy, then began to teeter, panicked, and dropped the camera. It bounced once on the edge of a narrow precipice and disappeared into a seemingly bottomless crevasse. My dad and I both wedged ourselves into cracks underneath car-sized boulders, scanning dark hollows for signs of a small, black object. It was nowhere to be seen. Gone. I don't know what made me more sad — that I'd lost my $500 camera (which was several years old and very well used), or that I'd lost all of my images from Lone Peak. It had been such a gorgeous morning.

My camera was gone but the vertigo persisted. Watching an object bounce and rocks and disappear did not help the sensation that gravity was yanking me in every impossible direction. If Dad hadn't been there, I would have undoubtedly lost my nerve. He patiently coached me through the monzonite puzzle, pointing out the best handholds, warning me about slippery sandy sections, and even pulling me up by the arm up a ten-foot slab when my shoulders went weak while gripping a tiny handhold. Finally we were on the peak, perched next to thousand-foot drops in three directions, nibbling on Nutella-slathered pita bread. I was happy, but still ill with unsteadiness.

Looking back on the perhaps half-dozen times I've sat on the kitchen-table-sized summit, I remembered that I pretty much always feel this way on Lone Peak — like the cirque is rushing toward me, and if I stand up, I might collapse. I probably felt this way the first time, even when my 18-year-old ignorance of innate clumsiness was there to protect me. Vertigo is not exactly an enjoyable sensation, and yet I've loved Lone Peak ever since. I used to joke with friends that I was never going to get married, but if I did, it would be on top of Lone Peak (Technically I still haven't broken that promise.) I suppose dizziness and stomach butterflies and exhilaration are exactly the sensations of love. Twenty years and countless mountains later, Lone is still my favorite.

 I had birthday dinner with my parents and sister's family. It was just like old times — grilled salmon and vegetables with corn on the cob from the same local farmer, and mom baked a German chocolate cake for dessert. It was a great birthday ... hopefully that means it's going to be a great year.


On Monday I needed to drive back to Colorado. Although I wanted to beat all the of the eclipse traffic heading south from Idaho and Wyoming, it was too much of a temptation to stay in Utah through the early afternoon and view the partial eclipse from a mountain top. I'm one of those who wasn't that interested in the eclipse until recently ... I even had an invite from friends to go camping in Wyoming during the total eclipse, and shrugged it off. (I thought I'd be too busy wrapping up some deadlines before leaving for Europe this week. At the time I didn't have plans to be in Utah.) But then I fell victim to the hype, and decided to join dad on another tough hike to a 10,000-foot mountain called Gobbler's Knob.

 My legs were definitely aching as we ascended 3,000 feet in 2.5 miles. Dad didn't seem any worse for the wear. We arrived at the summit 50 minutes before the eclipse at its fullest — I believe around 92 percent. I don't think I've ever spent more than an hour sitting on a mountain top, and really enjoyed the relaxed lounging, watching a strange early twilight descend over the surrounding mountains and valleys, and occasionally donning the eclipse glasses to watch the moon take increasingly larger bites out of the sun.

No doubt the total eclipse would have been incredible. But this was special as well — looking up at the crescent sun, feeling a chill descend and putting on a jacket, watching birds bounce nervously across tree branches, and absorbing a silence that seemed to deepen as the sun nearly disappeared.

We descended the mountain quickly, as I was still hoping to beat I-15 traffic. I thought about the ways I appreciate getting older, because each day lived adds to a wealth of experiences and memories, and a deepening of perspective. I envied Dad's limber movements down the steep trail, and hoped that one day I can be 64 the way he's 64. He's had some rough patches in life, and emerged stronger, possibly as strong as he's been. For now I'm 38 the way I can be 38, seeking strength where I can find it, and excited about the year in front of me.

Upward over the mountain

Last week, my aunt Jill died at age 53. She had multiple myeloma, a blood cancer caused by malignant plasma cells. Her cancer was incurable and aggressive. She battled for three years, trying every treatment and several clinical trials. From afar, the treatments seemed painful and isolating. She must have felt hopeless at times, but she was brave. When faced with the prospect of a painful stem cell transplant that had only a small chance of success, she said, "this might not extend my life, but it will help doctors learn more about these treatments for the future." 

We shared the same name, Jill Homer. When I was a child, she impressed on me the value of finding joy in everything. My grandmother had given me some kind of chore after Thanksgiving dinner. I don't remember the chore, only that I was unhappy because I wanted to play with my cousins. My aunt said, "Don't look at it as punishment. It's just another type of adventure." I'm paraphrasing. The word adventure is probably something my memory inserted years later. But that was my aunt. Life is a great adventure, whether you're zip-lining down from dizzying heights (a thing she decided to do shortly after being diagnosed with cancer) or doing the dishes. 

I decided to drive out to Utah for the funeral this weekend. It was a beautiful service, attended by all of my aunts and uncles and a large number of my many cousins. As the years pass, I realize more how much I value my big Mormon family with our often messy and loud gatherings, the jello salads and funeral potatoes. It was nice to spend an afternoon with them and learn more about Jill's final weeks. Death inevitably leads to reflection about the fleeting nature of life, and its sources of joy. Jill never stopped embracing beauty, even when she was in pain.


In her spirit — or really, in my spirit, but I think we shared a lot of the same values as well as a name — I took advantage of the road trip to squeeze in a little adventure on two 14ers near the Interstate, Torreys and Grays peaks. Looking at a map, it seemed there was a more interesting route than the standard trail, starting from Loveland Pass. This route included a lot of climbing and descending and two smaller (13er) peaks in the way, but bonus: You start above treeline, just below 12,000 feet. Views the whole way.

 And ridge walking! Right out of the car I felt a bit rough — nauseated, mostly. My breathing was actually fine, despite the altitude. I slogged along and tried to eat some fruit snacks, but despite the stomach grumblings I felt pretty good. Sunny day, perfect weather forecast, and a trail to two 14ers with nobody on it. What more could you ask for?

 Looking toward Torreys and Grays from Grizzly Peak. Right off this ridge was a steep descent on loose talus, and I took a fall. It wasn't that bad. I have what I consider a "bad ankle," my left ankle, which I broke when I was 19. It's been the weak one ever since. I've been rolling it a lot lately, and I rolled it on top of a loose boulder and crumpled onto a thankfully smaller pile of rocks with my head downhill. I rose with no injures (save the tailbone I bruised when I fell down the stairs last week, which still hurts.) But I was dizzy and disoriented and really, really spooked.

 Why was I so spooked? It's difficult to justify now. I wasn't hurt and this wasn't terribly difficult terrain. Despite this reality, I was remorseful. "Why do I always go to the mountains? I'm not good in the mountains at all, and they scare me. Why, oh why, oh why?"

I inched my way down Grizzly's talus field and started up a new one to summit Torreys. This route that gains 1,700 feet in less than a mile, topping out at 14,275 feet. I tried to shake how spooked I felt, unsuccessfully, and struggled mightily with this climb. I stumbled to the summit with at least 15 people on top, and pointed out my ridge route to a guy who asked where I came from.

"I'd like to do that someday, but it's not a day hike," he said.

I looked at my watch. "I've only hiked five miles so far." Three and a half hours had passed. I still had more than six hours of driving ahead of me, and this hike was already taking much longer than expected. Of course you can't go to Torreys without tagging Grays, so I was looking at eight hours of hiking, which one might think unreasonable on top of a 530-mile drive. I would disagree. My aunt Jill might disagree. But I was admittedly terrified of returning to Grizzly, and already plotting an alternative. Perhaps, I thought, the faster way back from this mountain is around it.

Holding a borrowed sign on Grays, looking disheveled as usual. Six miles in four hours. I knew if I dropped down the popular trail, I could potentially run the gravel road, bike path, and a supposed trail along Highway 6, all the way back to my car. It was 15 miles instead of six, wasn't a beautiful ridge walk, and promised to be a slog of a gradual climb from the Interstate. But if I could run, I might arrive in Utah before 1 a.m.

This descent was fun. A herd of mountain goats sauntered along the trail (I've seen mountain goats three times in Colorado, always along popular routes to 14ers. It's like they want to be around people.) The trail was rocky and steep but mostly mindless. I finally felt comfortable turning on my iPod and shuffling along, although my bad ankle was throbbing, and I was still nauseated. Running was going to prove difficult. Dang, it was going to be a long walk back to the car.

Unfortunately I didn't start to feel better, and I ran out of food because I had banked on a four- or five-hour hike, not eight. The bike path on my map turned out to be paved, which was an unpleasant surprise. I slogged along on hot and sore feet, at least managing 18-minute miles with not too much effort (curbing the nausea), and scrolling through my map while pondering potential stream bed gullies I could climb back to the ridge. ("Don't do that," I reminded myself. "You'll regret that.") There was just enough shuffling to wrap up the 20-mile hike in eight hours, and not feel too worse for the wear. Better to not be shattered before the drive.

Driving west into the setting sun, I felt slightly ashamed for how poorly I'd reacted on Grizzly. Maybe it's an inherent knowledge that something small like a weak ankle could prove deadly in the wrong place. Maybe I'm hurt because I love the mountains so much, but I'm just a feeble thing pressed against cold, sweeping indifference.

Why do I go to the mountains? Because they're beautiful. And because I'm not very good in the mountains and they scare me. My aunt Jill might point out that perspective is what matters.