Mountain mojo

 
I feel like my head is finally starting to emerge from the depths — you know, the murky place where the anxiety monster is always within striking distance and everything is dark and heavy. I don't know whether it was any of the 17 different things I tried that helped, or whether it was just the passing of time, as is usually the case. I do know that Monday morning, I woke up with a crushing dehydration headache and a sore Achilles, and this felt fantastic. Why? Because these minor physical maladies are highly preferable to the prickly numbness brought on by a creeping dread of the unknown, haunting my sleep for no reason. Is it gone for good? Probably not. But I will say that Monday, March 8 was my first somewhat-normal-feeling morning since February 13. 

I did start a new asthma medication on Wednesday. It's also probably too soon for that to have taken full effect. But I did feel a spike in stamina this week, no doubt working in tandem with warm weather that I either hate to love or love to hate — I have decidedly mixed feelings about the approach of summer. Winter is simple for me. Summer is complicated. Is there an endurance goal I want to pursue? More and more, I'm thinking if that goal is Colorado-based, the answer is no. I don't know how my worsening allergies will affect my breathing, whether air pollution has a harsher effect on my mental health than I can quantify, or how well I'll weather long days under the high-altitude sun, plodding through air thick with smoke and dust. Since I'm not sure when I'll feel okay about traveling, I am mulling a summer that will likely be a lot like summer 2020 — small adventures close to home. This reality is fine, but not particularly inspiring. 

Like many people in this pandemic, I feel like I have been untethered from my past life and am drifting farther out to sea. The question remains — whether to try to reel myself back in, or keep drifting and learn what else is out there?

Still, as the sun sets later each day and the rich, piney smells of spring begin to permeate the afternoons, I'm reminded of the simple joys of anchoring myself in the present. Why do I need some grand future adventure to pull me through the mundanity of the day-to-day? Why not be content with the day-to-day? I certainly have a lot of privilege in that regard. Sure, domestic life gets me down. It does. As my prescription medications and daily supplements stack up, I joke with Beat that I'm becoming the Mormon housewife I never wanted to be. But I still have an incredible freedom to move through the world as I choose. The world right in front of me contains more beauty and wonder than I could absorb in a lifetime. Why do I feel the compulsion to look farther? 

On Friday, I grabbed an opportunity to visit Rocky Mountain National Park. It's such a cliche — given it's the third most-visited park in the U.S., there's nothing original about my love — but I adore everything about this place. When wildfire tore through the park in October 2020, I watched the news updates in torment, as though this distant event was singeing a piece of my soul. My love, it seemed, blossomed during explorations in the pandemic summer. It was then I realized that RMNP could well be one of my soul places — like Canyonlands in Utah, and for its own special reasons, the Susitna River Valley of Alaska — where my heart flutters simply at the thought of being in its midst. I didn't quite realize the depth of my emotion until the East Troublesome Fire. In November, I visited the park for the first time post-fire — the entire burn area was still closed — and rode my fat bike up a snow-covered Old Fall River Road. When I saw distant evidence of fire damage and wispy clouds overhead that sort of looked like smoke, it all broke my heart just a little bit. I hadn't been back since. 

For my first visit of 2021, I decided to return to one of my favorite outings of summer 2020: Climbing various drainages to alpine lakes in Glacier Gorge. My first branch was to Dream and Emerald Lakes, but the trails were uncomfortably crowded. Ah, the price of loving the same thing everyone else loves. So I turned around early and veered up Glacier Creek. The people who broke the trail skipped the summer path on top of the shelf above the creek, and instead walked and skied straight up the drainage. This was a fun shift in perspective. So GORGEous. 

From there, the trailblazers cut straight across The Loch because why not? I approached a solo hiker who had suddenly realized he was standing on a frozen lake and had himself become frozen with fear. I recognized his stiff demeanor as something that happens to me when I'm smacked by one of my phobias — and ice is a strong phobia that still takes near-constant focus for me to overcome — so I stopped to ask if he was okay. 

"Is this safe?" he asked with a waver in his voice. 

"The ice seems solid and a lot of people have been across," I replied, pointing ahead to the broken trail. "But if you don't feel comfortable, you can go back on the safe ice you've already crossed. The summer trail follows the shoreline on the right." 

He nodded but didn't make a motion to continue in either direction. I decided to keep hiking, guessing he'd watch to make sure I wasn't going to crash through thin ice and then follow my line. But when I turned around again, I didn't see him. He went back. 

I made it as far as the waterfall below Lake of Glass before meeting my comfort-level limit: The class-three scramble up a series of head-high rock steps to a shelf only thirty feet higher. But with only snowshoes — no microspikes or crampons — and a visible confirmation of glare ice beneath the snow, it was thirty feet too far. Returning down the trail, I recognized the purple cap of the hiker I met on the Loch. 

"Hey, you made it," I exclaimed, and he grinned as we both kept walking. I was seriously proud of that dude: He encountered a challenge he couldn't surmount, but instead of quitting or taking unnecessary chances, he found a way around it. I wondered if he'd turn around at the waterfall, or whether he simply wouldn't be as bothered by ice-slicked heights. 

I returned to the trail intersection and continued up Glacier Gorge. A long track across Mills Lake ended in a patchwork of overflow at the far end of the lake. It was incredibly warm (40s) and lake water had streamed onto the ice, covering the surface in light ochre slush. The ice underneath felt as solid as before, but I continued with the skittering caution I always take on overflow, ready to skitter backward at the first hint of a crack. As overflow goes, I'd give it a 3 out of 10 on the scary scale. Still, no one else had ventured beyond this section recently. The snow surrounding Jewel Lake was untrammeled and I couldn't find any evidence of tracks along the GPS-verified summer trail. Suddenly, I was all alone in this vastly popular park that is still vast enough to swallow all hints of humanity. It was a thrilling sensation. 

I decided to continue breaking trail along the summer path, only to find it impossible to follow. Every time I glanced down at my GPS, I was off track by at least a hundred feet. The valley was rippled with small streambeds and strewn with deadfall that became more tangled the closer I ventured to Glacier Creek. The swamps surrounding the streambeds were a minefield of hidden hollows, waiting to swallow my legs whole when I ventured onto the wrong patch of crust. A couple of times a snowshoe became almost hopelessly stuck in the tangle of brush below, clinging to branches as I thrashed and writhed. It was disconcerting enough that after the second time it happened, I loosened my shoelaces and the top of my gaiters, just in case I needed to pull a foot out of the trapped snowshoe and extract it by hand. It was frustrating, but not dangerous, so I continued up-canyon, eventually landing on a logical corridor that — surprise surprise — GPS would later confirm as the summer trail. 

I made my way to Black Lake, where the valley appears to rise abruptly in a near-vertical wall. Maps also show that the trail ends here, but I knew from summer explorations that a social trail continued beside a steep cascade to the left. The snow seemed stable amid these warm temperatures, and while the cascade is steep, it's not steeper than 30 degrees, so I decided to check it out. 

Indeed, there was a nice ramp rising toward the upper valley. But it was insidious, too, with blue ice hidden beneath only an inch of snow where the frozen cascade tumbled down the slope. I hit this ice with a snowshoe and froze as stiff as the hiker I'd met earlier, afraid to make any moves. If I slipped it was going to be a long slide down, and I did not have an ax — not that it would have helped with so little snow over the ice. Trembling, I pressed the precarious snowshoe's cleats as hard as I could into the ice and returned my free foot back to its anchor in slightly deeper snow. After that foot weighted more securely, I skittered to the far left of the gorge. There the powder was thigh-deep beside the trees, so I continued with a sort of swimming motion, grateful for the exhausting anchor. 

My reward for maybe not-so-smartly taking on the frozen cascade was the Upper Glacier Gorge, pristine and grand, beneath skies so clear they took on a disorienting hue of midnight blue to contrast the brightness of snow and granite. 

I continued up the valley, slowly, feeling out the path of least resistance through the thin snow cover over jumbled rocks and tundra. I took breaks to nurse greedy sips from my last bottle of water — wind was all but absent and the snow reflected a blaze of sunlight that felt as hot as summer at 11,000 feet. I enjoyed looking back at my tracks, drawing a thin line through the expanse. 

As I marched I slipped into a beautiful trance, that state I only achieve when I am locked in deep concentration on the motion of my body, setting my mind free to tumble and flow through an exhilarating stream of consciousness. The Zone. I'm reminded of a passage I read recently about finding clarity in the external world: "I stop being myself and disperse." 

As I neared the far edge of the valley, I took the final few sips of water remaining in my bottle. The return trip required six tough miles of hiking, and it was already past 4 p.m. Even as threads of my dispersed soul soared ever higher, my body knew we must turn around. But as I gazed up at Longs Peak, I felt a rush of something that has been elusive for the past month, even as I fought for it in similarly beautiful places: Pure, unobstructed joy. 

The sun had settled behind jagged peaks by the time I returned to the frozen cascade. I think this photo of the drop into Black Lake does a better job of conveying its steepness. Since I'd punched a series of anchors into the deep snow, I felt confident in my descending path. 

The overflow had also extended quite a bit in the three or so hours I'd been gone. Well, at least now I knew this was a particularly active flow and probably should be avoided on future treks. Weirdly, much of it had already iced over, even though the temperature couldn't have dropped more than a few degrees below freezing. At least I could skitter across without getting my shoes wet. They were effectively soaked already, and I felt a notable chill as I slowed my pace. Night was coming. I needed to keep moving. 

It is a strange sensation, to feel both ravenously thirsty and chilled at the same time. I scooped a few handfuls of snow to stuff in my mouth as I jogged down the trail, now abandoned. This felt almost exactly like the last time I was here in July, racing twilight down this same trail to catch a shuttle bus. I missed the bus then, and just the memory of this boosted my pace even though my legs ached and I had nothing to gain by reaching my car 15 minutes sooner. Still, it felt fantastic to run. I had mojo again! It had only been gone for a month, but a month without mojo feels so much longer. 

Beat had a strong case of FOMO, so we made plans to return to the park on Sunday. I almost suggested Saturday, but as soon as I came down from my mountain high, I felt rough. Dehydration clamped down and I felt headachy and groggy. My glutes and hamstrings were shredded from battles with hidden snow holes. My shoulders were sore from aggressive poling. Mmmm, slog hangover. The best kind of hangover. 

I recovered well enough for Sunday, and we set an early alarm in hopes of getting out in front of weekend crowds. The forecast for Denver called for a high of 71 degrees, the first 70+ of the year. Even Estes Park was supposed to be 55, and the wind forecast didn't look too bad — 15-20 mph. And while I should know the Continental Divide better by now, I figured it would be "basically like summer" and packed my typical July layers. Even in the summer, one needs to expect thunderstorms, hail and temps near freezing, so I carried a puffy, softshell jacket, mittens, and a buff. Remembering my scary wheezing episode on Niwot last week, I threw in a balaclava and light wind breaker at the last minute.

Our objective was Hallett Peak, a 12,720-foot summit that sits on top of the Continental Divide. If conditions were okay, we hoped to continue either south toward Otis Peak, or west along the Tonahutu Creek Trail (which we later learned is still closed due to wildfire damage) to enjoy a day up high. Temperatures had already climbed above freezing when we set out at 8 a.m. The packed trail was slicked with an icy sheen that made us glad for microspikes. 

We climbed the steep grade under the strengthening glare of morning sunlight. Sweat beaded on my skin as we pulled off hats and rolled up sleeves. As we cleared the final stands of scrub spruce at treeline, a switch flipped and the winteriest of winter winds blasted us directly from the west. We stopped three times to add more layers until I was wearing everything I had, minus the 2-ounce wind jacket and mitten shells because I can't help but always save something for a dire emergency. The balaclava was the last layer to go on. It felt amazing, instantly warming my half-frozen cheekbones and circulating warm air into my lungs. But I had nothing extra for my lower body, and my butt cheeks turned to blocks of ice.

Beat scouted a route to the summit, which was not trivial with a patchwork of boulders and snow drifts of unknown depth. The west wind raged and at times it was difficult to see through a fury of swirling snow backlit by the bright March sun. 

We made it to the summit after a brutal 1 mph battle. The temperature was definitely a few notches below freezing because my water valve kept icing up after just a few minutes, even if I blew the water back into the bladder after drinking. I kept taking sips because I wanted to avoid another painful deyhdration hangover, but exposing my lungs to the wind for even a few seconds made them feel scratchy. I would have been hosed without that balaclava. It was humorous to think about the reality that it probably was 70 degrees in Boulder at that moment. The Continental Divide does not play games. 

Views toward His Eminence, Longs Peak, and the rugged skyline above Glacier Gorge. When it's reasonable this summer, I hope to trek to Otis and Taylor Peaks. I'd love to connect McHenry's and Chief's Head, but I know it gets extra spicy in there with that class-five notch, so it's likely forever beyond my personal limit. Still, baby steps. At least the prospect of mountain adventures gets me excited for summer, even if mountains also give me anxiety. 

In March conditions, Hallett is plenty spicy. This is the view toward Tonahutu Creek Trail, traversing the broad ridge toward Sprague Mountain. That's another traverse I think I could manage with a lot of time and a little bravery — Sprague to Cracktop, Mount Julian and Terra Tomah, descending to Trail Ridge Road. Maybe I could even bike shuttle the traverse. Mmmm, I can't wait.

Views east toward the land of warmth — far, far below. 

Beat took a brief break to gulp down his coffee and hot chocolate mixture. He shared a few sips with me. Then we rushed to get off that mountain, which is to say we crept down the loosely snow-covered rocks at a snail's pace. Breaking an ankle up here would not be fun. 

I like this photo looking back at Hallett as we descended. The mountain looks like it's leaning with its back to the wind, about to peel off the ridge and blow away. 

We were so chilled that we kept the puffy coats long after we descended below treeline onto a trail that had become a greasy pile of slush, and even as we passed hikers trudging uphill with sweat-drenched faces. We didn't see many hikers though — I think we made a good gamble on a Bear Lake-area trail that would not be all that popular on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in March. 

Still, we wanted to make the most of the beautiful day, so we took a side trip toward Lake Odessa. I had vague memories of this trail from one of my longer summer runs two years earlier. It does a lot of sidesloping along the steep slope above Mill Creek, so I was glad the trail was well-broken. 

As we traversed toward Two Rivers Lake and the stunning face of Little Matterhorn, I occasionally caught side glances toward the fresh burn scar on Mount Wuh. Back in October, when the East Troublesome Fire blew up and tore through 100,000 acres in a single day, the firestorm jumped that broad and barren ridge pictured in my earlier photos. Having cleared the seemingly impossible barrier of the Continental Divide, the flames charged down Spruce Canyon toward Estes Park. The way East Troublesome was burning that day, it really seemed like it would just consume all of Rocky Mountain National Park and that would be that. It was one of several really tough October days for me — the day the Calwood Fire blew up was another — when, lacking a weighted blanket, I collapsed on the bedroom floor under my down comforter, continuously updated Twitter and quietly cried. It was traumatizing; I'm not ashamed to admit that. These fires were a physical embodiment of one of my worst fears: "Climate change is destroying everything I love in real time." Remembering the way I felt in October is helping me gain a better grasp on my anxiety flare-up in February. And viewing the aftermath of the fire on Mount Wuh — a blackened slope of toothpick tree skeletons and only thin patches of snow — was cathartic in its own way. But I did not take a photo. 

After letting this months-old grief flow through me like water, I turned my attention to the beauty in front of me, and Beat with the biggest grin on his face because this really is an incredible place. Even if every tree burned to ash, the mountains would remain. They would be changed, and every creature that moves and breathes in this world would suffer. Still, nature adapts. The world remains. 

The packed path ended at Lake Helene. The sidesloping summer trail down to Lake Odessa was indeed a precariously steep slow slope in winter conditions. The margin for error was thin — one slip could result in a slide of unknown length and increasing velocity until a tree broke the fall. So I called it. Beat was more reluctant, wanting to keep going, which I understood. I felt like I'd seen enough. The mountains had given me enough. My love — and mojo — was restored. 

Slog therapy

Since my recent bout of anxiety, recovery has been moving slowly. Mornings have been the worst. I wake up feeling strung out, as though something bad happened overnight and I can’t quite remember what it is. The morning coffee ritual strangely calms this surge of adrenaline, dissolving it into irritability that takes some focus to control — if I let down my guard, I’ll snap at Beat for no reason, and then feel guilty about it. 

By afternoon, my mind has settled into a more manageable flatness. I also call this state “beigeness” or lethargy. But it’s not fatigue, per say. It’s more like an emotional languor, an inability to access the usual joys and pleasures I take for granted when I’m not, well … depressed? I’m loathe to use that term, but this is probably what it is: a relatively mild and manageable cycle of anxiety and depression. These negative emotions aren’t anchored in any current reality that I can understand, as is usually the case with the many flavors of this condition. Things are improving, as they always do, but I sure wish I could expedite the process. 

I did go looking for biological scapegoats. I had my thyroid levels tested and learned that not only am I not hyperthyroid, I’m actually drifting father toward the hypothyroid spectrum. My T3 index is on the low end of the normal range, my T3 uptake is low, and my TSH spiked into the every-so-slightly high reference range at 4.52 uIu/mL. Back when I spent time commiserating with fellow sufferers in Graves Disease forums, pretty much everyone warned me to be wary of eventually swinging hypo. “Your body now knows how to attack your thyroid; you can’t expect it to function normally ever again,” was one memorable comment. So I guess I’m going to start tracking my numbers more closely after enjoying a couple of relatively benign years. (I sure had it good in 2019. Too bad I sort of wasted that year of peak physical health and freedom because I didn’t know what was coming.) Still, at least I’m not experiencing any overly concerning thyroid symptoms at the moment. 

 I also learned my asthma is slipping farther toward the “uncontrolled” range. This appointment with my asthma doctor was unrelated to my recent concerns. I didn’t seek it out because I’ve been having anxiety. It was my now-standard two-month checkup to test my lung capacity and adjust my allergy shot and medication strategy. My most recent skin test in July 2020 showed that improvements on my more serious allergies have stalled, and I’m developing sensitivities to new allergens. In addition, my spirometry test results continue to decline despite the fact it’s been winter (not my allergy season) for a while now. On Friday, my doctor detected wheezing in the standard stethoscope exam. This means my airways are likely inflamed most of the time. 

When I consider this, everything does start to make more sense: an irrational but genuine fear of the approaching summer season; bad dreams about wildfires; my recent allergic flare-up — sparked on Feb. 12 during my hard 100K ride in the smog — bringing on a more chronic state of asthma. Breathing difficulties spark anxiety. When I lie down at night I feel slightly short of breath, and this continues throughout the night, causing me to wake up feeling anxious. Later, when my body comes down from prolonged breathing-related anxiety, the “beigeness” follows. It all makes some sense. 

Anyway, this recent diagnosis gives me at least some hope that bringing my asthma under better control will improve everything else. My doctor recommended a new, stronger maintenance inhaler. Unfortunately, many asthma medications are backordered right now since they were found to be effective treatments for COVID (which I’m fine with, really. COVID patients need it more than me.) Still, like the vaccine, I’m not sure when this inhaler will be available to me. For now, I wait. 

Given my desire to avoid any stress that may exacerbate anxiety, shortness of breath, and the tedium of viewing the world through a beige lens, perhaps it’s unsurprising that my physical stamina and adventure motivation have been low. It remains true, though, that repetitive motion and beautiful scenery still release the happy hormones, even when they’re more deeply buried. My current state of mind means this release is fleeting — like a trickle from a pinched pipe rather than a dam burst — but it’s still been worthwhile to get outdoors for slog therapy. Here are a few photos from this week's attempts to “beat the beige.”

 

A week ago Sunday, I decided to take my fat bike for a ride through the tight web of snowshoe trails surrounding Brainard Lake. I knew before I left the house that it was going to be cold and windy. "I just need to get out of the house," I told Beat. Quietly, I hoped the weather would be even more thrillingly terrible than forecast, because "at least that will feel like something."

The weather was legitimately some of the worst I have experienced outside of Alaska. By the time I set out at 11 a.m., a nearby weather station was recording regular wind speeds above 60 mph, and gusts above 80 mph. In fact, a graph spanning the entire afternoon showed the wind never dropped below 45 mph, not even for a few seconds. Even relatively protected forest corridors were enveloped in a ground blizzard. The temperature hovered between 9 and 11 degrees, which might not sound too cold. But trust me, when the temperature "feels like" -18F, what that means is that it feels like -18F air is being forcibly injected into your body through every tiny opening in your clothing. I'd choose an ambient temperature of -18F over a -18F windchill any day. Brainard Lake is an incredibly popular recreation area, so there were still a fair number of folks out skiing and snowshoeing (I only saw one other cyclist.) I was getting a kick out of all of these fellow "poor souls" who either didn't know what they were getting into when they drove up from Denver, were way more hardcore than most snowshoe-owning Coloradoans would ever receive credit for, or, like me, were purposefully trying to tear through inner malaise with acute discomfort. 

Indeed, I was incredibly grumpy for the first hour of my ride. Fat biking is tedious, the Front Range is a hellhole, everybody out today is a complete idiot and so am I. But the longer the punishment lasted, the better I felt. Even after the water in my bottle turned to slush and prompted me to gulp it all down at hour 2.5, I still stayed out for another two hours, becoming increasingly dehydrated as I explored threads of singletrack. Spindrift would fill in tracks almost as quickly as they were laid down, so I was generally following a soft and cambered trail of fresh ski tracks along precarious slopes. Usually, I don't enjoy riding such technical winter trails because even the slightest handlebar shimmy results in a cold powder plunge and enough flailing that I bruise limbs and rip clothing. But on this day I didn't care much if any of that happened, and I ended up riding reasonably well. Everything tends to go so much better when I can just get out of my own head. 

The prettiest outing of the week was on Thursday, after a storm dumped 8-10 inches of snow at home. I was excited to break out the snowshoes and tromp fresh tracks up to Bear Peak, which is often ridiculously hard in new snow (deep drifts mask the chair-sized boulders that form a staircase to the summit, and it's tough to find footing. Snowshoes arguably just make things harder.) Still, it's such lovely spot for a four-hour, six-mile slog.

After the storm moved out, it was clear for a few hours, but then a thick fog moved in. I was glad about the fog. It infused everything with a soft grayness. Silvery wisps of frost clung to the branches of burned trees. A smooth blanket of snow masked a jumbled mess of rocks. The visual proved soothing, a sort of aspirational state for my own mind. 

Feeling out the route to the summit did prove much more challenging then I remembered. The final pitch covers 0.3 miles of distance and it took me 52 minutes to slog this out, pausing after nearly every step to brush snow from a rock and find the best spot to place my foot. It doesn't get much more tedious than that, but I was glad about the work. It was slow yet physically engaging, simultaneously mindless yet intellectually stimulating. I found myself pondering memories of my grandmother's house and the strange ways that the details are so much richer than memories of my own childhood home. Perhaps I've always struggled with familiarity, filtering it out in favor of novelty. Perhaps this is my weakness. 

The fog started to lift as I climbed, revealing a thick inversion and brilliant sunshine overhead. 

Clouds clearing to the west.

Frosty loveliness. It was much warmer above the inversion, and I didn't even notice that I'd become drenched in sweat despite moving at a snail's pace for nearly two hours.

Looking east toward the plains, still shrouded in fog. When I reached the summit there was only one other track punched into the snow from Fern Canyon and none from Shadow, so Bear Peak wasn't a particularly popular destination that afternoon. I wondered if the people down in Boulder knew how sunny it was up here, and posted something on Facebook just because ... somebody else needed to experience this. It was sublime, which I admit I am still only experiencing as "somewhat brighter than beige." But it's something. 

I climbed back to Bear just before sunset on Saturday. This is the same view toward the plains without the fog. The snow had consolidated and the same route that consumed four hours on Thursday only took a little over two, for much less effort. I was admittedly disappointed. For my brain, there's something special about slogging — efforts that are both difficult and slow, methodical and repetitive, that lull both body and mind into a pleasant numbness. It's not necessarily enjoyable all or even most of the time, but this week, it was perfect. 

Beat was game for a couple's slog on Sunday. This day was the start of the 2021 Iditarod Trail Invitational. Due to COVID concerns in rural villages, this year's race is running as a 350-mile out-and-back to the remote mountain outpost of Rohn, with no 1,000-mile race option. Beat had hoped to plan an Arctic adventure and was less interested in such a route, but he still wavered slightly on the ethical dilemma of travel in COVID times. It's the first year in ten that Beat didn't line up at the start. It's also the longest stretch of time since 2005 that I've been away from Alaska — I'm reminded now that nearly a year has passed. My failed race in 2020 has also been weighing on me ... there's a lot to unpack there. But Beat does not seem to mind missing out. He's been perfectly happy with the familiar and excited about summer. I envy him. I'm working on cultivating a better attitude to boost my mood. 

Anyway, it was his idea to hike to Niwot Ridge on Sunday, our favorite avalanche-safe mountain zone where geographical features funnel some of the strongest winds in the state. The weather forecast was colder but friendlier than the previous week, "only" calling for 10-20 mph winds in Nederland. That usually means 30-50 mph winds on Niwot. You could not climb up here on a day like last Sunday. If it's gusting to 80 mph at Brainard, the hurricane forces up here are almost unthinkable. But if Niwot is "only" gusting to 50 mph, that's about the best you can expect on a winter day on this fabulous ridge.

It was cold. Just 11 degrees at the trailhead. The Brainard weather station recorded single digits. It was probably close to zero at 12,000 feet, and that's before windchill. It was cold. 

My balaclava wasn't quite cutting it, and my windward cheek burned as my lungs started to feel scratchy. That was a concerning sensation, as it might signal as asthma attack, and I'd stupidly left my inhaler to freeze in a backpack pocket (I stuffed it down my bra after I thought of this, just in case.) These are things I'm worrying about just a little bit more since my most recent lung test, even though cold air isn't usually a trigger for me. Blah. Luckily I still had that fleece buff to pull over my face, and that seemed to do the trick. 

Blowing snow over the Continental Divide. Beat and I were both reasonably well-dressed, and once I solved the frozen cheeks and lungs issue, I wasn't uncomfortable. But the white fury is mentally difficult to endure, and even more difficult to choose to endure voluntarily. We tagged a high point on the ridge and skedaddled downhill. 

So this is where I am today — a skedaddle that looks and feels more like a trudge. I'm trying to move beyond the cycle of anxiety and depression, but I admit it keeps pulling me back in. I intend to do more slogging this week, perhaps jump back on my bike or trainer to see whether I've found some of the stamina I lost, spend more time on this writing project that brings me peace when I can focus on it, listen to good audio books, and track the Iditarod Trail Invitational but maybe not too obsessively, as there are admittedly triggers there. I know there is light at the end of this tunnel if I keep on trudging. 

Out of the depths

I want to talk about anxiety. 

It’s a common issue, considered the most common mental health disorder in the world, and is thought to affect about 4 percent of the global population. It’s much more widespread in the United States, affecting 40 million — or 18 percent of Americans. Why has anxiety become so prevalent? Lots of theories. Social media addiction, poor lifestyle habits, excess stress, artificial lighting, underreporting in the past, lowered stigma, etc. Uncontrollable risk factors include genetics, brain chemistry, personality, and life events. Nearly every human is exposed to one of these factors, but not everybody considers anxiety to be a negative force in their life. 

Where does this negative force tip the scale from “stressed out” to “generalized anxiety disorder?” I can’t answer this question, because personally, I don’t consider stress and anxiety to be directly related. Stress can exacerbate anxiety, but it doesn’t cause anxiety. So what causes anxiety? This week, more than any other week in my life so far, I feel I am nowhere near to finding an answer. 

Where does it start? Genetics and personality, most likely. I was a mildly anxious child who enjoyed some respite as a self-assured if brooding teenager. In early adulthood, I started pursuing adventure and absorbed a few traumatic experiences that I believe shaped the trajectory of my outdoor life. These experiences include becoming trapped under a raft after it flipped during a whitewater rafting trip, cowering next to boulders near the summit of the highest mountain in Utah as an electrical storm raged overhead, sprinting down an inescapable slot canyon during a heavy rainstorm, and becoming lost for several hours and nearly running out of water during a hike in the desert. 

These were all valuable learning experiences for a 21-year-old who was just starting to explore the scope of her outdoor passion. But in the months that followed that formative period — the spring of 2001 — I noticed that I felt considerably more frightened in situations that hadn’t bothered me in the slightest just months earlier, such as vertical exposure. I started to have “freak-outs” at inopportune times, such as being caught in a July snowstorm on the wrong side of an exposed ridge below Mount Borah (this is a legit scary situation, but the panic was most unhelpful.) 

More generalized anxiety rose out of these depths during what was also a rough patch in my personal life: the summer of 2002. But it didn’t follow my worst fears; it was triggered by what I considered at the time — and still do — some of the dumbest scenarios. I had a panic attack during a thunderstorm even though I was inside my house at the time. I had another panic attack when I awoke one night and realized I’d left my bedroom window open while Elizabeth Smart’s kidnapper was still at large (I lived a few blocks away in Salt Lake City at the time.) I wasn’t actually afraid of a window kidnapper or being struck by lightning on my couch. These were just random triggers, sparking a stress reaction that spiraled out of control. 

These incidents, among a few others in my “poison summer,” convinced me I had a problem. I believed my only two choices where to either be terrified of everything all of the time, or pull myself up by the boot straps and charge toward fear head-on. The summer of 2002 was when I decided to take up cycling and dove headlong into adventure by bike, completing a two-week-long, 600-mile tour by September. I was certain I’d cured myself. I could be fearless as long as I told myself it was so — “be brave, be strong.” 

I’ll have to fast-forward here, but that’s basically how I comported myself until the summer of 2015, when I got sick during the Tour Divide. It’s been a different sort of mindset since, now that I realize I definitely do not have all or even most of the control, and I’m not even solidly in the driver’s seat of my own mind. In the ensuing years, I accumulated two decades of life experience. My amygdala absorbed new traumatic events. I lost relationships and long-held assumptions. I gained security and wisdom. I should be a different person than I was then. I am different. But that same spiraling sea monster (this is how I visualize anxiety, similar to the way depression is a black dog) still lurks in the depths. 

A week ago Thursday, I was in a good place. Like everyone else in the U.S., I struggled with the stressors surrounding the pandemic, racial justice, and politics. But even the pessimist in me believes these issues are (at least for now) following a trend of improvement. I’ve been feeling fit and using hard efforts to stoke all of the positive brain chemicals. So I headed out for a hard 100K bike ride. When it comes to physical effort, “hard” is still relative for me. I engage a higher heart rate but I can still walk normally the following day, so how much did I really bury myself? 

Anyway, a few hours later I came down with a runny nose. It was pretty pronounced — a burn-through-half-a-box-of-Kleenex-in-a-night sort of sinus congestion. The air quality had been poor during my ride, so I blamed allergies. I felt fine otherwise but decided to isolate from Beat just in case I’d caught COVID. 

 The following morning, as quickly as it came on, the sinus congestion cleared and I felt mostly fine. Mostly fine … except for weirdly on edge. Like any little thing could set me off. I thought it was just basic irritability and blamed hormones — “that time of the month” sort of thing, even though it wasn’t that time of the month. 

On Saturday we woke up to my favorite type of weather — new snow and deep cold, 11 below zero. I respect how difficult the Polar Vortex has been for many people, but it was a blessing for me — finally, real moisture to put a dent in the drought, snow to add beauty to the drab sameness of pandemic life, and sharp, cold air to stimulate all of the senses. I eagerly anticipated a morning run with Beat. As we geared up, he questioned me about a hydration pack and it deteriorated into an argument. Amid the anger and perhaps remnants of sinus congestion, my respiratory rate spiked and “breathing difficulty” sparked a panic response. As the sea monster surged from its turbulent depths, my adrenaline skyrocketed and my mind went dark. All I could comprehend was running away from the monster. 

I rushed to a spare bedroom where I could lie in the dark in the fetal position and gasp for air. Beat, thinking I was merely annoyed with him, came downstairs about 20 minutes later and found me in this state. He worked to comfort me as I tried anything I could remember — grounding exercises, reciting a list of favorite songs, counting backward from 100 — to reign in the gasping and sputtering. I was frightened, deeply frightened, not only because I couldn’t breathe, but because I’d finally lost it. I’d gone crazy. I did regain control of my breathing, but by the time it happened, it was as though the monster had already clenched its jaws around me and drained my blood. I felt like I had never been so exhausted — not when I ran 100 miles that one time, or any of the times I ran 100 miles, or anything I ever did to pull my own bootstraps and prove I was brave and strong. 

I laid in the dark for a while longer and then decided I could do my mental health some good if I just got up and went for a walk. I was so exhausted that I would only commit to 15 minutes of walking. It would take me longer to get dressed for the subzero weather. But I got dressed anyway and ended up staying out for two hours. I felt weirdly blank. Not cold, not tired, not angry, not stressed, not relieved, not joyful. Just sort of … nothing. My life force was, in fact, emptied. 

My week since has largely been a lot of this: recognizing my exhaustion, trying to be gentle on all systems to encourage recovery, trying to enjoy the one week of cold weather we were probably going to see this season by getting out for walks, all while feeling baffled by my incapacity for joy. As a calming mechanism, I read a lot of Mary Oliver's poetry and even cried because I felt like I lost that part of myself — the self who never failed to find pure astonishment in the natural world. Meanwhile, as my body rebuilds cortisol and adrenaline, I’ve noticed that I feel “on edge” again. My respiratory rate and heart rate spike when I encounter tiny stressors. I’m terrified the monster will clamp down again, so I avoid anything that might cause unnecessary stress, including hard efforts while exercising. I dutifully keep my heart rate in zone one or two while slogging through shin-deep snow, reminding myself that I love this cold and snowy world. I know I love it on an intellectual level, but feeling this love is another thing altogether. 

It’s been a week since my panic attack and things are improving. I no longer feel deeply upset immediately upon waking up. I’m a little less irritable, a little closer to feeling joy again. I’m a lot less exhausted — my energy levels are almost normal, and I completed a moderately strenuous 90-minute effort on my bike trainer today without fallout. My attention span lengthened enough to read things longer than Mary Oliver poetry and start writing again … although this blog post honestly is the first remote success I’ve had with the effort. It’s difficult to talk about anxiety, but at the same time I feel the need to talk about it. As I repeated to myself multiple times while trying to reign in my panic attack, I rode my bicycle across Alaska alone in the winter once, for crying out loud. But the thing I fear the most is my own mind. 

Searching for answers — a reason not to fear — will be a difficult and possibly never-ending journey. My therapist believes in reconciling past traumas, which is why I’ve been thinking about the spring of 2001, among others. Since my Graves Disease diagnosis, I’ve wondered if there’s an autoimmune component to “flare-ups” of anxiety — that might allow me to pin blame on the short-lived sinus infection for this particularly inexplicable episode — but the autoimmune theory doesn’t have a lot of support outside the functional medicine realm. I plan to get my thyroid levels checked next week, as hyperthyroidism does have a direct link to anxiety. I’ve resolved to “take it easy” for a while, just in case I’ve been inadvertently overtraining and thus overstressing my body. I’ve made an effort to return to the meditation practice that I so dutifully cultivated last spring. 

I just want to feel joy again. To breathe deeply without fear that I’ll lose my breath. I believe I’ll get there, but I have to admit this has been one of my most difficult weeks in a while. The worst part about it is that it’s been difficult for no reason at all. There was no real challenge to overcome. There’s no satisfaction behind me, no reward in the future. It’s all drudgery, although perhaps I’ll emerge on the other end having learned something important, or gained a new appreciation for what I already have. 

 As Mary Oliver wrote, “so long as you don’t mind a little dying, how could there be a day in your whole life that doesn’t have its splash of happiness?”