Wyo Rando Roundup 2015

I'm told that I am crazy by those who don't understand. You see, Alli and I like to ski up mountains...for fun. Yup, crazy. But the best part is coming back down...

In our first year here in stunningly beautiful Jackson, Wyoming, I decided to pick up my Skimo game. Skimo is the cool way to refer to ski mountaineering racing. Definitely use the shortened term if you want to impress your friends. I've done a few races in the past, some which may even be mentioned on this blog, but I've been so out of touch with this site recently that I can't remember.

Anyway, elevating my Skimo pursuits meant purchasing some specialized equipment, which is heavily discussed elsewhere in the blog-o-sphere. Who doesn't like upgrading their gear? In general, my new equipment is designed to be light (small, skinny skis and light boots), fast (stylish lycra racing suit), and efficient (skimo pack). You'll see them in the pics below.

My first race as a lycra-suit-wearing individual was a weekend series located in the Teton area dubbed the Wyoming Randonee Roundup on January 10-11, 2015. This event has three events at each of the local ski areas: Grand Targhee, Snow King, and Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. The GT race was held on Saturday morning followed by a "sprint style" race at Snow King that night. Then the burly JHMR race began early Sunday morning. I had a fairly good performance for my first race. I found out that my training has gone really well this season and identified some good areas to focus on for the next race. Fueling was a particular struggle and will need to be fine-tuned in the future. GUs are just really hard to choke down at the transition stations.

Hope you enjoy the pictures! I was really lucky to have a support/fan club/photographer follow me around that weekend (I love you Alli!).

Halfway through the first climb up Grand Targhee.

Ripping skins at the top. 

Skinning above the beautiful Snake River Valley on the second climb of the JHMR race. Smiles!

Ripping skins at the top of Rendezvous Peak (aka the top of the JHMR Tram) the highest point of the race right before an amazing ski down.

At the finish line. 3 hours and 33 minutes

Tired boy hanging out in the events tent after it was all over. 

Successful M Summit

Successful M Summit event for all of us Nepalers! The weather held very nicely, none of us had injuries, and everyone reached their goals. That's what I'm talking about!

And that's not all: we had a table with water and gatorade set up at the trail head. Our efforts on the trail today sparked many a conversation with people out for a Saturday hike, both at the water cooler and on the trail. You get a lot of shocked looks when you tell someone you are working on your 7th lap up to the top.

And kids (adults too, for that matter) loved figuring out that they had seen you before on the trail. Everyone was impressed and wanted to hear about why we were running and what we were going to do in Nepal.

What a great group of people I get to travel and work with: everyone has a upbeat personality and is pumped for the trip. And everyone took ownership of this event to raise awareness, raise funds, and train for hiking in the mountains.

As I mentioned earlier, everyone reached their goals. I was personally able to hike/run/scramble up to the M ten different times. A rough calculation in my head tells me that our group summitted the M at least 80 times! Thanks to everyone for the encouragement and support.

Kyler was such a trooper: she ran 5 laps with me and kept up for the most part. She and I were pretty tired and hungry when we got home. Right now, both of us have had food in our bellies and a little bit of rest. Now I'm off to the shower, cheers!

Summit the M for Nepal

 It's almost here! Our Summit the M event starts tomorrow at 10 am and goes until 3. Our team of Nepalers will be at the M hiking, running, and otherwise making our way up to the iconic M located at the foot of the Bridger Mountains just north of Bozeman. We're gunning for as many laps as we can get and hoping to raise funds in the process.

The M trail (at least the loop that I will be doing) has about 800 ft elevation gain and covers 2 miles. I'll be trying to do 10 laps. Please consider being a part of this effort. Sponsor me per lap for as little or as much as you like. What about 10 cents? What about 50 cents? Every little bit helps and I might need a little incentive to get that last lap or two tomorrow. I have a spreadsheet for sponsorship here. Thank you so much!

If you're in the Bozeman area come out and brave whatever weather happens tomorrow and hike the M yourself. Come and meet us and see what we're all about. If you're not in the Bozeman area...I'm really sorry. :) Please come and visit some time!

Sunset at the M, Fall 2011.

Doing Field Work

Whew! The last month has been a crazy conglomeration of skiing, training, Denali practice, work, traveling, and weddings. In this post I wanted to highlight the last couple of days of "field work" to prep for Denali.

The pictures are from three different trips: 1) hauling sleds up the local ski resort, Big Mountain, to work on roped travel and our sled haul system. 2) hiking with heavy packs up and down BM to get some vertical and then practicing our crevasse rescue system. 3) backcountry skiing/traversing in the Jewel Basin covering over 10 miles and 4500 feet in a soft snow shred-fest.

The upside-down sled says it all: our sled system initially was not
working and I was ready to cut them loose and send them down the hill
on their own. Good mental practice to tell you the truth. It was windy
and things were not going right. But Dad has an uncanny ability
to stay positive and smile. Thankfully we figured out a better system
and made it back to the truck with no injuries or emotional trauma!

The next day we were setting up our tent and cutting a foam
floor for added insulation. 

Different tent? When we set up the good ol' North Face, we both
looked at the old fabric (I mean, it was my parents wedding present)
and shuddered at the potential of a ripped tent in -20 degree weather.
We promptly ordered a newer tent, which is going to be sweet. Check out
the Hilleburg Allak online if you want some better info on it.

Once again at Big Mountain "hanging out" on a cornice lip
practicing saving someone (Dad's pack in this case) after a crevasse
fall.  

Dad's turn at a rescue. Our cook tent, a Black Diamond Mega-light,
is in the immediate foreground and the gorgeous Flathead Valley
beyond that.

Standing at the summit of Mt. Aneas in the Jewel Basin, the highest
point of our tour. There is so much snow still in them there hills.
We skied from the summit to the east. See the tracks in the next pic.

Dad pretty pumped up after some flawless skiing.  Summit of
Aneas is behind him. Look directly above Dad and to the right of the
highest point on the ridge to see our tracks. Who said telemarkers
couldn't shred with the best of them?

Dad coming up the ridge to our second high point. Aneas is the prominent peak on left
of the far ridge. Running around on skis in the high country is an absolute blast. 

We feel in great shape for the High One. Shredding snow here in Montana gives us confidence to tackle things in Alaska (as well as gives some confidence to my mom...). Hopefully Denali goes easy on us and we are allowed passage on its flanks. We want our attitudes to be not one of conquerors, but of humble admirers of the mountains, blessed to be among them at all and closer than we've ever been to the Creator of it all.

Snow Cave Camping

It's been about two months now, but Dad and I took an overnight snow-camping expedition into the Middle Fork as a training excursion for Denali. Our goal at first was to do a traverse of of the Great Bear Wilderness, summitting 4 peaks in the process. However, it took us longer to get to the first pass than we thought and the travel of the ridge was excruciatingly slow. So we bailed on the traverse, went and dug a snow cave, made some dinner, and slept soundly. The next morning we had at least 2 inches of new snow on our camp and visibility was very poor. We went up on the side of Mt. Penrose as high as we felt comfortable with the wind slab potential and skied back to camp. Then we stumbled back down the valley, barely able to see in off-white, ping-pong ball conditions. Down lower the fresh snow was super unstable and we fled back to the trees avoiding sliding snow as much as possible.

Trip in review: no traverse, horrible skiing conditions, but a fantastic overnight trip to prepare for our Alaska expedition.

Dad on the gnarly ridge heading toward Nyack Mountain.
The cornices were bad enough that travel was too slow to continue
our intended traverse.

Snuggled up in a puffy waiting hot water for dinner.

Digging the snow cave.

Home away from home for the night. It was a lot warmer and less wet
than I had always pictured snow caves. Just one of those things: you
never know unless you try something.  

Toasting good times, warm clothes, and hot co!

Trying to ski on the inside of ping-pong ball...even the trees were
difficult and after the trees you can see there was nothing to break
up the terrain. 

Denali Update

So it's now more like 99% for sure that we will be heading to Alaska this coming June and romping around on the highest mountain in North America. We bought our plane ticket to Anchorage, planning to leave on June 14th and returning to Kalispell on July 8th. 

Loading a pack with water and metal weights to get to 50 pounds. 

With that kind of commitment, Dad and I are full-bore with training and preparation for the expedition. We've started walking around the neighborhood and at a local state park with heavy packs on our backs to prep for heavy loads on the mountain. This is in addition to continuing our strength and cardio training. I've been told by several friends that I will be more than prepared for the climb. That makes me feel good about my fitness. However, I want to get to the mountain and feel not only like I can climb the peak in the most efficient manner possible, but feel good enough that I could summit it twice and ski from the top. This keeps me going when I sweating it out in the gym or out on the trail.

Practicing in the basement setting up a z-drag system. I'm shown here
pulling that heavy pack across the floor. 

Since we'll be spending about 3 weeks on a rather large glacier we are practicing our crevasse rescue and glacier travel skills. Our plan is to pull sleds with 60% of our weight and then carry packs with the other 40%. Pulling sleds offer some more logistics and an element of risk if you were to fall into a crevasse, but we're willing to take the slight risk so as to not be carrying 100+ pounds on our backs while on skis. In the case of a crevasse fall and our partner being unable to ascend out of the ice, we plan on setting up a Z-Drag system (3 to 1 pulley system) with a 2 to 1 piggy-back giving us a mechanical advantage of 6 to 1. I haven't spent enough time in the weight room if I can't pull my skinny-winny Dad out of an ice-hole with that kind of added pulling power!

A diagram of the rescue haul system that we plan on using. I can't figure out how to crop it, so it's an awkwardly large image. I hope to fix this in the future. 

With all of that we are still kind of figuring this whole climbing-Denali thing out. There is still a lot to accomplish in a month before we leave with regards to gear purchasing and set-up. But that's part of the fun.

On the back porch, enjoying the intermittent sunshine, and planning some of
the many details of the trip.

Born to Run

Numerous times I have told friends that I would never consider running a marathon. It's not that I don't enjoy running, I just didn't see wanting to put in the time to run enough to finish a 26.2 mile race. I thought it would take too much away from climbing, biking, or other activities that I love to do more. Then I read the book Born to Run by Christopher McDougall, and now I want to run an Ultra!

The book follows the development of a race held in the remote, rugged mountains of Copper Canyon in North Central Mexico on trails used by the Tarahumara people. The Tarahumara are the "Running People," living and breathing for churning their legs over rocky earth. This race brings together top Ultra runners from the U.S. with the locals, and even though the story gets excited when it looks like all the work is going to fall apart, the showdown goes down.


Intertwined throughout this story are side-notes about the running community, in a sense explaining why we were "born to run". There are sections on nutrition/diet, the trend of barefoot running, a great story about the Leadville 100, and a whole treatise on why humans have evolved to run. McDougall goes so far as to say that running is a "silver bullet" to treat the health problems rampant in the States: obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, etc. But over all of this is a theme of enjoyment while running. The secret of great Ultra runners like the Tarahumara or Scott Jurek is they run because they love to run. McDougall describes a look of joy on their faces.

Images used from Runner's World.com

I think that's what I've been missing. Many of my friends run and I can see an incredible cross over into other sports that I do as well as being a great way to cover a lot of ground efficiently. The whole "light and fast" attitude is becoming more and more appealing. The desire to run is now there, I just have to find the joy. I think my problem in the past has been doing all my running on roads and in neighborhoods. It makes it really convenient, but I need to get out and run some trails enjoying the mountains that I love to be in anyway.

Hauling Heavy Sleds

I've done some more modifying of our sled pulling system that we might use to climb Denali. It's still really simple, which I like: less parts to break, cheap, and easy to construct. It'll be easier if I just narrate through the pictures.

Showing the basic components of our sled pulling system. We are training with PVC pipe but will most likely use metal conduit on Denali for strength reasons. If you fall down the PVC will break but the conduit would only bend. Worst case scenario either way but still a concern. The pipe has an eye bolt through the end which is connected to the sled by running the "eye" through a U-bolt on the sides of the sled. This hopefully will provide a rigid connection transferring more of my precious energy into work done on the sled. It will also provide more control for the ski down. The knotted loop of rope acts as a break when sliding downhill with a load. I'm surprised how well it works: you almost have to pull the sled down the hill. This might be more work than just letting it slide but more than worth it to have more control. 

I tied a loop around the center of the poles to hold them in a crossed position. The cord is run through a hole in one pipe to hopefully secure it to the middle of the X. I've heard that this will help in steering, but we found that it helps get the sled onto your pack: it just holds the pipes together so your essentially messing with them as a unit, not individually.

I found a package of cheap bungees on sale at the hardware store, and used them as the connection via 'biners to our packs. The idea was to have some stretch so as to not feel a jolt from the weight of the sled every step, but these bungees are cheap and I didn't feel like it helped a whole lot. They also didn't provide very much support when skiing down. My next goal is to try and find a way to have a rigid connection to our packs. This would make skiing down a lot less hassle and hopefully even take away the jolting bounce of the load.

We went and did some "weight training" at Big Mountain last Friday, taking some mini-laps up a headwall on the lower mountain. The picture is looking behind me at Dad. We're carrying 30-40 lb packs and have 70 lb sand bags in our sleds to try and simulate loads on Denali. It was pretty tough.

PS. A big "shout out" to my mom who has been coming with Dad and I on Friday nights to practice skinning up the mountain. Mom got her first pair of backcountry skis, bindings, and boots for Christmas and is training hard for an upcoming trip to Canada at the end of March. I heard yesterday from a Canadian that the snow in BC is incredible. I can't wait!