Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Faith in geography

A blister finally formed over my lower lip. This has been a painful rite of passage every spring —one that I do my best to ward off, to no avail. People whose skin can tolerate the sun just don't understand; prevention efforts are futile. I can apply lip sunscreen every time I take a sip of water; the high-altitude UV will still win. I've become that middle-aged lady who wears dorky arm *and* leg sleeves on bike rides, slathers on SPF50 to go for a run even if it is actively raining, wore a buff around my neck well before the pandemic for the sole purpose of protecting my neck, and is one REI visit away from owning one of those full-brim hiking hats that I hate for the way they obstruct vision and flap in the wind, but I'm running out of options. Still, none of these things can save my lips. Even surfer sunblock won't withstand a relentless urge to wipe away lip snot, and then I just end up with white or blue goop smeared on everything. No, the sun has won. Now I look forward to a couple more months of breaking into tears every time I raise a balsamic vinegar-soaked lettuce leaf to my mouth. 

 
I struggle with summer. Can you tell? It is my S.A.D. season for the heat and bug bites and pollen-choked air, for the hard sun and surging crowds, for the unpredictable threats of lightning and hail. This summer feels particularly sinister as it moves toward more extreme weather and a potentially bad wildfire season, and, oh yeah, one almost forgets that still lurking everywhere is a deadly virus about which little is understood, except for that it appears to be coming for us all and we've collectively decided to just get on with it. But getting on with it doesn't mean that life will go back to normal or that we can start traveling or running races again. It just means that we decide what line of magical thinking to adopt while a rampant and little-understood virus does the actual work of getting on with it. The future is nothing if not uncertain. May the odds be ever in your favor.


Okay, now I feel better having written away some of my bad mood. Honestly, I don't know why I'm so grumpy on a Tuesday evening. I'm heartened by recent societal developments, even if they are droplets of rain over the dumpster fire that's consuming 2020. But I've also improved on my resolution to spend less time scrolling through Twitter and stewing over news articles. And personally, I had a great week. I enjoyed my first social outing since March, my first overnight camping trip of summer, more ventures into the high country, and a hike above that soaringly magical 4,000-meter mark. Also, it snowed. It happened a week ago and was only the lightest of dustings. But it gifted me with a 37-degree morning in June, and for that my lips were grateful.

Amid work deadlines, I was able to get out for a quick morning jaunt to South Boulder Peak, where I could see snow frosting the ridge. It was disappearing fast despite temperatures in the 30s, with the warm ground and a misty rain to speed the melt.

 Recently my fitness has been on a bit of a downswing. I suspect high pollen season still affects my airways, and I can't boost my heart rate nearly as high as usual before heavy breathing and lightheadedness slows me down. The inhaler helps some, but what helps even more is a 37-degree morning with a dusting of snow to clear the air. I felt amazing, charging up the west ridge of Bear with lungs full of oxygen. I figured my fast pace would give me enough time to scoot over to South Boulder Peak before I needed to get back to work.

 Snowline was still clearly visible from the top of SoBo. It crept down to about 8,000 feet, the closest I've seen yet to a June winter storm hitting home. If anything this wisp of cold weather was probably just a harbinger for a particularly hot summer to come, but it was a welcome respite all the same.

For the rest of the week, I sought respite in altitude. On Wednesday I took my road bike to Brainard Lake, again. Tuesday's cold front lingered as a harsh breeze swept down Lefthand Canyon. I was simultaneously annoyed that I had to pedal so hard against a headwind and relieved that the late-morning air felt downright cold. I even wore a jacket. On Thursday evening, Beat and I set out to run the loop around Walker Ranch, and were shocked to find quiet trails. The weather was perfect, but perhaps just cool and breezy enough to deter the now almost constant crowds. Solitude in the Colorado frontcountry is a rare treat these days.

 On Friday, for the first time since March, I met up with friends for a social bike ride. Betsy invited me and Cheryl to join her on an overnight camping trip on Boreas Pass. The whole thing felt so novel — seeing people I know in real life, sharing real conversation, all while embarking on a journey to a far-away place. Even a hundred miles from home feels far away these days.

We met at a parking lot off I-70 in Frisco, and made quick work of the bike path into Breckenridge before continuing toward Boreas Pass. This route is all part of the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, and I carry mixed feelings about this section in particular. The Frisco parking lot where we started pedaling is just a few blocks from the house where I officially quit the Tour Divide in 2015. I was so sick and so disappointed; I can still feel these emotions viscerally when I ride through the streets of Frisco. Occasionally, I'll reflect on how I stomped all over my good memories of the Tour Divide when I became too ambitious about the endeavor, and wonder if I've done the same with the Iditarod. After all, despite all of the real-world problems happening everywhere, I admit I'm still preoccupied with ruminations about my 2020 race. Approaching Boreas Pass brought a host of conflicting emotions. This isn't to say I wasn't excited to be out for a little adventure, riding in the mountain sunshine with friends. I only mean that life is a spectrum of experience, and the memories that remain will inevitably cast shadows over the present.

 Boreas Pass — the first GDMBR pass I failed to reach in 2015, and a big goal should I ever return to ride the full route from Canada. It's fitting that I still have the same bike and all of the same bikepacking bags. Cheryl teased me about the grimy state of my stuff, but the bike is in better shape than it has been in years. Beat has been on a kick to upgrade all of our bikes, and I'm enjoying a new fork, new headset, new grips, and a snazzy titanium seatpost. Beat even replaced the warped brake rotors that I rode all of last summer, until I just learned to live with constant squealing. He replaced the kinked cable housing that was causing the chain to drop off the cassette every time I tried to crank up a steep hill. He also freed a loose bolt that had mysteriously found its way into the handlebars, and had been rattling around for months. My bike maintenance is atrocious, but Mootsy has been well-loved.

 Fittingly, while we were snacking and chatting near the old railroad depot, we ran into Bonnie, who is perhaps the Tour Divide's most prominent advocate. Friday also happened to be the day that the 2020 Tour Divide was set to start in Banff, before the event was effectively canceled by Canada border closures and individual state limitations. Bonnie wanted to celebrate the date, so she planned her own ride to Boreas Pass. She recently moved to Boulder, fulfilling a longtime dream to live in Colorado. Although we've been virtually connected for years and now live in the same zip code, we had yet to meet in person. I was a bit muddled and socially awkward after months of relative isolation, but it was fun to chat with her in person, finally. She took this photo of me, Betsy, and Cheryl, but I failed to get one with her in it.

 Betsy planned the route to fulfill the requirements for a virtual 70-mile gravel race she was aiming to complete. It was 90 miles in total, and she had to ride 70 on the first day. After cresting and descending Boreas Pass, we headed out for a 25-mile bonus loop through South Park. I was unenthused about this part of the ride, as I've only experienced terrible weather — smoke, hail, wind, or all of the above — in this open basin with nowhere to hide. Indeed, as soon as we crossed Highway 285, we were blasted by a strong west wind and sideways rain.

 But, as summer weather does, the storm cleared out in less than an hour. The loop turned out to be a pleasant tour through rolling grasslands with big views all around us. I do love a good swath of wide-open space.

 We returned through Como, where an older man and his wife pulled up in a truck and told me we couldn't ride our bikes to Boreas Pass because the road was closed and "it's against the law." He claimed to work for the sheriff's department and kept repeating this, suggesting that we instead make a death-defying shalom run through weekend traffic on Highway 285 and Highway 9. I'd rather take my chances with Park County jail than ride those highways at dusk, and was about to say as much when Betsy pulled up and authoritatively stated that she was certain the road was open to nonmotorized use. The man finally got tired of arguing and pulled away, probably to call the county sheriff. I pondered what it is about human nature that makes some people so determined to ruin a stranger's day.

We raced to leave Como and return to welcome solitude behind the closed gate. The final ten miles were a grind on loose gravel up an interminable railroad grade — perfect for quiet meditation. Near the pass, I stopped to filter water trickling away from a snowfield, as fresh and cold as water comes. Betsy rolled up to complete her 70-mile virtual race, smiling wide on her loaded fat bike.

 We descended about a mile find camp, which we set up in the forest near a precipitous dropoff toward Indiana Creek. We pitched our three tents well away from each other and sat in a socially distanced circle to cook and eat dinner. I filled my entire cooking pot with hot tea and sipped as we chatted well into the dark hours, mostly about dreams of future adventures. The night was bizarrely warm at 11,200 feet, but the altitude robbed us of a good night's sleep. I was about a half-hour away from giving up and going for a 4 a.m. hike up Boreas Mountain when I finally dozed off. Betsy needed to be back by noon the following day, so in the morning we pack up and coasted the 20 miles back to Frisco, wrapping up the entire trip in fewer than 24 hours. It was a brief but much-appreciated excursion.

 On Sunday, Beat and I set out for a half-day hike in the Indian Peaks. Our intended destination was South Arapaho Peak, but we were thwarted by a closed gate on Rainbow Lakes Road. Not wanting to run five miles of boring road each way, we made the somewhat strange decision to head over to Brainard Lake, where another gate closure still required a three-mile road approach to the nearest trailhead (looking back, I think we probably would have been happier aiming for what would have almost certainly been complete solitude on the Arapaho Glacier Trail, but that would have made for a 25-mile day.)

 Anyway, we set out from Brainard's winter lot and fought through the already-thick-at-9 a.m. crowds toward Mount Audubon. At 13,200 feet, Audubon is one of the most accessible 4,000-meter peaks in the region, so it's immensely popular. Beat had never been up here, thwarted several times by either thunderstorms or harsh winter weather. Indeed, Audubon seems to sit directly in the funnel of the jet stream, and the wind is always brutal. If there's a light breeze wafting across Brainard Lake, I know it's going to be blowing at least 30mph on Audubon. On this day there was more than a light breeze, and the winds up high were gale force — strong enough that I was reluctant to hold my camera in one hand for fear the wind would rip it away. The windchill was sublime.

 Views to the northwest. Beat and I spent a little time, amid shivering in the cold wind and stuffing down sandwiches, analyzing the ridge that wraps around Brainard Lake basin. It appears to be a mostly class-2 boulder crawl, with an impossible-looking but apparently doable crux over Mount Toll. We may try it soon. I waver between a strong desire to explore these mountains and the knowledge that I'm quite fearful of exposure and objectively bad at negotiating tricky terrain. These ridge traverses would be equal parts exhilarating and mentally exhausting — the trick would be getting through before stress shuts my mind down and causes my body to make an awful mistake. We'll see. As you can see, I think about this a lot. Another reason I look forward to the end of summer is that I don't need to torture myself with alpine fever dreams for another nine months.

  Views toward Rocky Mountain National Park. So many mountains!

As we began the long descent back to 85-degree heat in Boulder, I was already missing that fierce windchill. My breathing had been rough all day, and I lagged well behind Beat for much of the hike. I thought about blaming too much time at altitude, as this week was by far the most time I've spent above 10,000 feet since last summer. It could also be that I'm preoccupied with wanderlust and not paying any attention to training, and thus have put in some unintentionally big weeks — this one, for example, held 23 hours of moving time, and 23,000 feet of climbing. But I feel like I'm finally venturing back out into the world, and it helps keep the negativity at bay. 
Monday, June 08, 2020

Return to mountains

 It's been another one of those weeks, hasn't it? Despite my efforts to limit time on social media, I still caught some of the terrible videos that have been circulating. I may have spent nearly as much time crying in the bathroom as I did during those emotionally volatile weeks in mid-March. But it is beginning to seem like positive change is happening. Coronavirus may still have the upper hand, but there's reason to believe that the deeper, more persistent diseases in our society are, at the very least, rising to the surface and being exposed to the light.

I've been fairly quiet on social media because this seems like a time to watch and listen rather than interject. But in the context of this blog, I think it is important to address the issue of diversity in the outdoors. I believe outdoor endeavors can add so much beauty, joy, personal growth and understanding to people's lives. Over the years I've followed several organizations that work to empower underrepresented women to opt outside:

Black Girls Trekking: A couple of years ago, I read an article in the Guardian about the anxiety of hiking while black. Embarrassing as this is to admit, it didn't occur to me until recently just how justifiably vulnerable women of color can feel when it comes to "bad things that happen in the woods." This organization focuses on equipping individuals with knowledge and support to address these fears and confidently venture outside.

Unlikely Hikers: Jenny Bruso launched an impressive initiative with this group, which promotes the stories of underrepresented individuals and, prior to the pandemic, organized dozens of group hikes all over the country. She welcomes anybody who sees themselves as an "unlikely hiker," including people of size, people of color, people with disabilities, queer, trans, gender-nonconforming, and others.

Color Outside: This group offers workshops, retreats and coaching for people of color. 

Indigenous Women Hike: An Instagram-based community of indigenous women who find healing and connection to the land through hiking. In 2018 they led a hike on Nüümü Poyo — also known as the John Muir Trail — while exploring the often-uncomfortable truths and complex history surrounding the region. Their stories have led me to work harder to learn the names and histories of ancestral lands that I have grown to love.

Native Women's Wilderness: Another group that works to bring indigenous women together in the outdoors. The nonprofit organization has been raising funds to send COVID-19 relief packages to the Navajo Nation.

The BIPOC Bike Adventure Grant: Bikepacking Roots created this grant program to reduce barriers so black, indigenous, and people of color can discover the joys of this relatively new and admittedly homogeneous sport. The grant is set up to help recipients pursue adventure by bicycle, whatever their vision of adventure might be. It seems a worthy cause to donate a few dollars, after putting your money to work in justice-seeking organizations such as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Southern Poverty Law Center, etc.

I'm incredibly grateful for the time I was able to spend outside this week. After what feels like — and in fact, was — months away, I was finally able to venture toward the higher mountains along the Continental Divide. Our home peaks and trails have been nice, but I missed these mountains in a visceral way. I even started to dream about them ... once the anxiety dreams about the Iditarod Trail began to fade, I started seeing alpine tundra and craggy ridges in my sleep.

Anyway, on Wednesday most of the snow along Brainard Lake Road had melted, and I was finally able to coax my road bike all the way to the basin — 50 miles and 5,600 feet of almost continuous climbing toward the puffy white clouds in the sky. Physically, I've been feeling a bit off this week — I'm not sure if it's the emotional turmoil, recovery from Beat's birthday run, the fact that it's June and June is just a bad month for me, or a simple environmental shifts such as heat, pollen, etc. Really, it could be anything. My watch hasn't even been scolding me for unproductive workouts, but my fitness feels like it's slipping a bit. That's okay.

I will mention that I finally had a check-in with my endocrinologist two weeks ago. Throughout March and early April, I grappled with night sweats, more debilitating anxiety, high blood pressure, high resting heart rate, and other classic symptoms of Graves Disease — which, I acknowledged, could also be classic symptoms of being undone by an endurance race. So I waited until May to get checked, and was surprised by the results. My blood pressure had dropped to 100/60 — borderline low. My thyroid hormone levels are on the low end of normal, and my TSH is higher than it was in November, and now nearing the high end of normal range. I became concerned that the Hashimotos antibodies I carry may have been activated, but my doctor didn't seem worried. There's not much I can do about it unless my TSH skyrockets, and for the most part I feel fine, so I'm optimistic. I am also very relieved that Graves Disease hasn't relapsed, because the implications would be more serious.

On Thursday, Beat and I headed to Rocky Mountain National Park to ride Trail Ridge Road. After the park re-opened in late May, I'd hoped to head up for one ride before the highway opened to vehicles. I planned a date and Beat took the afternoon off. Then, on Wednesday night, the park announced the road would open the following morning. Blast. Beat doesn't love riding roads, so I thought he wouldn't want to deal with national park traffic — which can be the most annoying kind of traffic. But I had talked up my love of the scenery on this route enough that he still wanted to try it out.

We got a relatively late start and the weather became intermittently stormy as soon as we hit the road. We climbed toward 12,000 feet, where the wind was biting and sinister clouds gathered around the peaks. Thunder rumbled, and at times we were surrounded by curtains of rain, but managed to dodge all but a few errant sprinkles. The views were lovely but we were buffeted by a hard-gusting, quartering headwind that knocked us around quite a bit — especially me, who made the mistake of riding a gravel bike rather than a more stable mountain bike. We descended to the Alpine Visitor Center in hopes of escaping on the still-closed Old Fall River Road. We knew the gravel alternate was likely still buried in occasional snowdrifts, but we were willing to endure some hike-a-bike rather than descend with the bully wind threatening to blow us off ledges or into traffic. But the route was closed with a ranger guarding the entrance. The entire visitor center was blocked behind tape, so the only wind-break was the outhouse, which we huddled behind to eat our sandwiches. Even with a coat, I was shivering by the time we got going again. I think it was close to 90 degrees in Denver that day, but there's something about that Trail Ridge corridor that holds onto winter, almost year-round. I sure do love it up there.

Sunday brought us back, finally, to the edge of the Indian Peaks wilderness. Since April, recreationists have been out in droves and everything feels much more crowded than last year. Given my support for more inclusivity and diversity in the outdoors, I won't complain. But the recent explosion in outdoor activity has made it more difficult to find places where we can enjoy late starts and solitude in a half-day of hiking. Niwot Ridge is no secret, but it feels like one of those places. We'll take one of the last open spots in a large parking lot, push through a steady stream of family hikers along a half-mile of the Sourdough Trail, then veer over to the rugged doubletrack that climbs to the research station. Often we'll see nobody. On Sunday, we saw about a half-dozen other groups spread out over four hours.

Niwot Ridge is our go-to spot for testing winter gear, because it is home to some of the most fearsome weather in Colorado. It's a treasure trove of extreme conditions, which is why CU built a series of research stations along the ridge. Winds frequently top 90mph, and it's rare to find any winter day without a 50mph gust. Windchills dip far below zero, and it's nearly impossible to remain upright, let alone walk directly into the wind. Thus, it's perfect for Alaska training.


The research station buildings are currently locked tight. These weather-ravaged sheds look a bit apocalyptic in the best of times. The waterlogged COVID-19 signs really make it seem like a place left behind at the end of the world.

Returning to Niwot Ridge feels like coming home. But it also feels strange in June, when I can make the ascent from the trailhead to the boxcar shelter in just over an hour rather than three, and then march confidently into the teeth of the wind without feeling like it might take my life at any moment. We made quick time to far research station, about 6.5 miles from the trailhead, and continued a bit farther along the rocky and increasingly narrow ridge that rises toward Navajo Peak.

We headed up there mainly for the views, and to look for a wind-sheltered spot to eat our sandwiches. I wanted a closer look at the ridge, to assess whether I could work up the courage to climb Navajo Peak someday. The answer is no. There's a nasty-looking chimney — shown right of Beat's head — and as it turns out that's a false summit, not even all that close to the real summit. I love mountains, but I sure am afraid of mountains. I even teetered uncomfortably while picking my way along the boulders. Every summer my body gives me fewer reasons to trust it on dangerous terrain. I fear I am slipping farther away from many of my Colorado ambitions, rather than building the experience and confidence I hoped would develop when we moved here four years ago. I'll probably never attempt a mountain ultra like the Ouray 100, an Indian Peaks traverse, or the Nolans 14 line. At this point, I'll be stoked if I can coax myself up Longs Peak someday. My mountain legs just haven't materialized. The season is too short, the rocky training grounds too distant, the sense of balance too precarious, for me to hold much hope that I'll ever become a competent traveler in this world. But I can still visit. And I can still dream.

A few large snowfields remained lower on the ridge, and it was fun to break out into an awkward, loping run for the descent. The afternoon heat and rapidly rotting snowpack turned the surface into a slippery, punchy minefield perfect for destroying ankles, but I let loose all the same. I wish I could be so carefree all of the time. It feels like so much time has passed since I last relished such an unhindered sense of freedom — the wind, the snow, the vast horizon of hills and plains spread out in front of me. The wait was worth it. 
Monday, June 01, 2020

I always believed in futures

I’m unusually heartbroken about the world.

Heartbroken must be a default state for anyone who lives in the world — at least for anyone who pays attention. But I think many U.S. citizens will agree that the last week of May was one of the more heartbreaking weeks in our shared memories. It began with the Sunday New York Times headline “U.S. deaths near 100,000, an incalculable loss,” and ended with another full-banner headline, “Spreading unrest leaves a nation on edge.”

The uncertainties are amassing like storm clouds, pulsing with lightning. You count the seconds before thunder, listening to each boom grow louder as skies darken. You look across the landscape, this world you love. The grass is pale green, tinged with brown. The aspen trees are parched; their brittle leaves crackle in the gale. The mountains are a patchwork of beetle-kill spruce, with needles as orange as the flames you fear will soon consume them. This is the world you love, ravaged by drought and buckling under erosion — centuries of racial inequality, environmental destruction, cultural ennui, widening divisions, fraying leadership, a global pandemic, social isolation, and economic devastation. Now the storm has arrived.

You know that many of the circumstances that caused this drought are wrong. You acknowledge your role in its spread, especially those of us who were sheltered and privileged enough to not quite understand its reach until it arrived at our doorstep. You’re ready to stand with your garden hose and fight what you can. But you also understand that the storm doesn’t care. There’s little you can do now but watch the sky, and wait.

I felt distinctly heartbroken this week. I promised Beat I would limit the time I spent reading newspapers and hot takes on Twitter, but I couldn’t look away. Knowledge, understanding and truth are still more important to me than pleasant distraction, even as my emotional outlook spirals. I tried to concentrate on writing projects that still bring comfort and reflection, but the heartbreak was too overwhelming to make much progress. The heat of summer doubled down, bringing thunderstorms every afternoon. They came so early this year. And it’s already been such a long year. Like many, I soothe myself by counting the days until December, when everything that happened this year will be over. But I know time doesn’t work that way.

Sunday was Beat’s birthday. I’ve been more resistant to some of his recent adventure ideas — many which involve carrying a bicycle up and down brush-choked hills to reach dubious social trails — but I told him I’d join him for whatever he wanted to do this weekend. He did not surprise me with a less-than-easy answer: He wanted to run the Boulder Skyline, a popular route that tags the five prominent peaks over the city, plus an oft-overlooked hill called Anemone. But since it’s so popular — thus crowded — and since it’s now the hot, hot summer, he wanted to run it at night. As in, start at sunset and run the 26-mile loop, with all of its technical rocky trails and lurking predators, in the dark, until dawn.

“That sounds horrible,” I replied. But I had agreed to do anything he wanted.

Saturday was a bad day for thunderstorms. They began early, with thunder booming overhead before 11 a.m. Bands of strong wind and rain moved past our house throughout the afternoon. We originally planned to start running at 6 p.m. Dark clouds prompted us to move it back to 7 p.m. That time came and went as we lingered at our front door, listening to thunder rumbles.

 “As long as we’re not too close to Green when it moves overhead, we’ll probably have reasonable protection,” I reasoned. Of course, you never know. Last year, a man and woman were struck by lightning in a wooded area just over a mile from our house. The man died. This spot was directly on our route. We’d pass by in less than a half-hour. You never know what might happen. But at some point, you’re going to either decide to hide indoors all summer or take your chances with the world.

So we headed out under sprinkling rain. Beat asked if I was going to put on a rain jacket. “No, it’s still way too hot,” I grumbled. I love the outdoors but I’d probably hide from summer if I could, if I believed my mental state wouldn’t crack entirely.

We ran down our road, and I fired up my music. This red iPod Shuffle sat unused for months, ever since I spent most of a day meticulously curating a playlist. It was an unusually warm day in January, and I was laid up in bed with the respiratory virus I fought for most of the month. I thought I would need a particularly motivating playlist for my Nome attempt, so I combed through thousands of mP3s as well as old CDs and chose 250 songs that I thought would generate the best memories, the richest nostalgia. I titled the list “Iditarod 2020 — Songs for the hard times.” But then the whole Iditarod was hard. I never removed this iPod from my bag of trail electronics, where it still sat in May.

 When I turned on the red Shuffle, the first random song sparked a few tears — as many things have this week. Jimmy Eat World released “Futures” around the time I moved to Alaska. I must have listened to that album dozens of times while training through the winter for my first Susitna 100. It still evokes visceral memories of pedaling along the Homer Spit while icy waves crashed on the shoreline. The album’s title track from 2004 really feels like something for … now.

“I … I always believed in futures. 
I hoped for better in November. 
I try the same, losing lucky numbers. 
It could be a cold night for a lifetime. 

Hey now, you can’t keep saying endlessly, 
My darling, how long until this affects me? 

… 

I … I always could count on futures. 
That things would look up, and they look up. 
Why is it so hard to find a balance 
Between decent living, and the cold and real? 

The gray sky deepened; I couldn’t tell if the storm was closing in, or if this was just twilight. We climbed through a mist-shrouded forest on empty trails and arrived at the top of Green Mountain. The western mountains were fully obscured. It looked as though night had already arrived along a shadowy strip of the eastern plains. To the south was an undeniably nasty storm, a solid gray curtain lit up by frequent lightning flashes.

We started moving quickly down the mountain, but within minutes the storm was on top of us. Fierce rain pelted my shirt and face, but it was still too hot to bother with a jacket. We both counted the seconds before thunder. Six seconds. Five seconds.

“This cell isn’t that close,” I reasoned. But it felt close. We kept running. By the time we reached Flagstaff Mountain, darkness brought an illusion of calm. Curtains of lightning moved farther east, and the sky grew quiet. The half-moon illuminated the clouds, already breaking apart.

We descended toward the city lights. I found myself looking toward Denver, still shrouded by storm clouds, and wondered if we might see something alarming from this distance — a large building on fire, or plumes of black smoke. We kept running.

Our second big climb was Sanitas, a favorite of mine and everyone else in Boulder … which means it needs to be avoided if one wants to avoid crowds. I hadn’t visited since February. We moved more slowly than usual, with fatigue already settling in. I noticed uniform stone steps over what was once a chaos of boulders and roots.

 “Look at all the trail work they’ve done,” I said to Beat.

 “Huh?” he replied, and I continued. “Maybe this was all here last time. I suppose I wouldn’t necessarily notice; I’m usually redlined.”

We sat on the abandoned summit and enjoyed our sandwiches as we gazed across the mesmerizing grid of lights. The soft twinkles beneath a patchwork of moonlit clouds were so peaceful. Such a beautiful illusion. We continued down the long and runnable trail into Sunshine Canyon, then commenced the always unexpectedly harsh ascent to Anemone.

While traversing that rolling ridge, I heard the loud echo of sirens and saw a stream of spinning red and blue lights along what looked like 28th Street. That could be anything, I thought. I looked at my watch and saw it was nearly midnight. I picked up my pace to catch Beat and wish him a happy birthday. He was still moving well, while I was beginning to experience that fatigue slump where it feels like I don’t have complete control of my legs. So I was surprised, as he came back into view, to see him topple forward, feet overhead as his body pitched sideways. I sprinted toward him, fearing the worst because it looked like he hit his head. But he was okay, just scraped up and bleeding from both knees. I wondered if both of us were going to return home bloody. It’s been quite some time since I made it through a long run on these Boulder Skyline trails without some sort of mishap involving gravity. And running all of them in darkness was something I’d never tried.

 We descended to the city and cut through a park, where we stopped to fill up our drinking water from a fountain we were surprised was still functioning. I wiped the fountain down with Wet Wipes while Beat sat and did the same on his mangled palms and knees. A person with a budget bicycle slept soundly in a nearby picnic area. We continued along Sixth Street toward Chautauqua, brazenly running through one of the wealthier neighborhoods in town after 1 a.m. I thought about all of the privilege that allowed me to do so without feeling fear — that these residents were unlikely to call the cops on us, and even if they did, I wasn’t too worried about it because we weren’t doing anything wrong. I marveled that there was ever a time when I believed that not being wrong was enough. Such incredible privilege. A strong mix of emotions surged through my tired body.

The harsh beauty of our Skyline route is that it saves all of the toughest parts for last. We had just started the boulder staircase climb up Fern Canyon when we started seeing droplets and then pools of blood along the trail. The blood looked far too fresh to belong to an injured dog or hiker. It was 2 a.m. Who else was out here? Just when I started to think about predators, we came upon the carcass of a coyote pup, seemingly very recently dropped by whatever carried it up here. I looked around as primal fear took over. Did we spook a mountain lion away from its snack? Even a pup seemed like a big thing for a bobcat to carry, although this may have been the work of another coyote. Or a black bear. None of these were animals I necessarily wanted to meet in the night.

We continued crawling up Fern, and I kept hearing rustling in the brush and shining my headlamp toward pairs of eyes lurking in the shadows. Most of these incidents were probably imaginary. Strange how we’re programmed to default to fear, even when fear can’t possibly protect us.

When we reached the top of Bear Peak I felt relieved, although there was no reason to believe this spot was safer than anywhere else. The thunderstorms were long gone, and we were too many thousands of feet above the city to hear sirens. City lights spread out like a tranquil sea in front of us, as islands of residential lights twinkled amid an expanse of darkness to the west. It was a peaceful place to share with Beat when there were no other humans around for miles. In fact, we hadn’t seen another person on the trails since we started. Beat noted that this alone was worth running through the night. I agreed.

We tagged the top of South Boulder Peak, and I was beginning to believe I’d make it through this whole thing without tripping and falling or rolling my ankle. I had been so convinced it would happen that I was carrying an elastic bandage and extra Wet Wipes to mop up the inevitable blood. I am prone to catastrophic thinking. I tend to imagine worst-case scenarios so I’m either mentally prepared or pleasantly surprised. I reminded myself that I really have no way of knowing the future. It’s far past time to get on board with some optimism and direct my actions toward the future I want to believe in.

 “… Hey now, the past is told by those who win. 
My darling, what matters is what hasn’t been. 
Hey now, we’re wide awake and we’re thinking, 
My darling, believe your voice can mean something.” 

Crimson light appeared on the eastern horizon as we descended toward home. I started stumbling more and slowed my pace to be especially cautious. I’d only just embraced a glimmer of optimism. I didn’t need bloody knees now. Even though he was injured and just as sleep-deprived as me, Beat seemed elated. He thrives on these absurd adventures, which is why he chose this for his birthday.

“See, this was fun,” he teased me. He insisted on tacking on a short out-and-back to ensure we logged a marathon distance, even though we were doing a rocky grunt of a route with 8,000 feet of climbing and weren’t even really running. I was determined to avoid unnecessary striving. We both received our wish when I arrived at home with exactly 26.2 miles on my watch.

 “Happy birthday, Love,” I said as we walked back into the house, now saturated in color by the dawn sun. “Let’s get some sleep.”