Adventures in Onionism

Alaska 2026

2026-08-02T22:03:32.104-04:00

It's raining out, I'm resting my foot, and I'm tired of trying and failing to fix my refrigerator. So I'm going to write blog posts.

You'll probably remember that I went to Alaska in June. I already wrote summary thoughts (which, thank you, dear reader, engendered multiple comments) but I'll put everything here and re-organize it as well.

I flew to Fairbanks and took the Dalton Highway Express (DHE) shuttle ~12 hours north to the Brooks Range. It's not as bad as it sounds. Yes, the road was bumpy, but every single other passenger was a fellow adventurer, and the drivers had interesting Alaska experience, so I enjoyed it. (I do wish one guy had shut up for a single moment, but it was still fun despite his non-stop inane comments.)

I backpacked about 80 miles in 6 full days, went over five 5,000' passes (one of which was over 6,000), plus a couple other lower ones. I didn't see much wildlife, except for this cute fox after I was done hiking and waiting for the shuttle back to Fairbanks:

I wish I'd been able to do a bigger loop, instead of kind of finishing early and having a down day, but that's the way the weather-cookie crumbled. I had a bigger loop planned, but I'm pretty sure the extra miles and the 6,800' and 6,300' passes would not have been doable in the time I had.

I also wish I'd been been able to use PTO more efficiently. DHE has shuttles twice a week. Northbound Tuesday and Saturday. But they leave at 6AM, so you have to get there the day before, and you kind of have to get there during business hours so you can make sure to get bear spray and camping fuel locally (which you can't carry on a plane). Traveling from the east coast, that's two days right there. It would probably feel a little better if instead of Tuesday-up and following Wednesday-down, I'd done Saturday up and following Wednesday-down, but carrying that much food is tough. Or Saturday up and following Sunday down might be able to make it work a little better with PTO? I don't know. The more time the better, and the better weather, the better. Duh.

I had fun

Day 0: Drive Up. Fairbanks to Chandalar Shelf shuttle and a couple miles of hiking. A little bit stressed out since I'm really going solo, my pack is too heavy, and GPS wasn't working. It all ended up fine!

Northern Hawk Owl from the Dalton Highway

Sukakpak Peak from the Dalton Highway

Dropped off at the Chandalar Shelf airstrip

Day 1: One Pass

Snow at the pass, but it wasn't too bad. This is going to work.

First pass, 5,600'

Day 2: Three Passes

A gorgeous lake on the Divide, then two more climbs for a long day.

Day 3: High Pass in a Storm

A nice day along Your Creek, then a climb to the high point of my trip and a brief white out at the pass.

Fog rolling in, the end of good weather

Day 4: Gray Day along the River

Flat hiking along the river with ice floes.

Day 5: Easy Day

I meditated on a nice low pass and decided which way to go.

Day 6: Last Pass in Torrential Rain

It rained all night and all the next morning. The rivers were muddy and raging, and side streams were barely crossable, but I made it back to the highway.

I made it back to the higway

Day 7: Pipeline hitch-hiking

I tried hitch-hiking but the weather was bad and there were very few civilian vehicles so I also sat in a DOT gravel shed and tried to stay warm.

This might be the furthest north Spruce tree

Here's an album of all my favorite photos. Enjoy. I also wrote some thoughts on where I might go next.

Hardrock #3

2026-07-08T10:32:20.784-04:00

I flew from Fairbanks to Durango for my third running of the Hardrock 100. I mailed a bunch of race stuff from DC to friends in Ouray, and have been camping out of the rental SUV. That's all well and fine, but there's a 20K acre fire 1/4 mile from my friends' house, and another a hundred miles west, so the air has been bad. I did two of the 10 climbs (Telluride to Kroger's and Sherman to Pole Creek) and I'd like to do more, but the descent of the very first one toasted my quads, so I'm taking it easy. That and I drove all the way around to Pagosa Springs to try and find breathable air.

It rained today, however, so the air improved a lot compared to yesterday. There's only a 30% chance of rain Wednesday and none Thursday or Friday, so fingers crossed that winds stay low and the fire fighters can contain these fires and stay safe.

Semi-Thoughts

2026-07-03T12:10:34.355-04:00

What are the middle tires (the ones that often don't hit the ground) on an 18-wheeler for? Are they so the trailer doesn't get high-centered? Is it just a convenient way to carry spares? Both? Are they adjustable so that they do hit the ground and help spread the load? [EDIT: I learned later this day that yes they can be lowered when carrying heavier loads.]

Also, what's next? From Fairbanks I'll fly to Durango, Colorado to run my third Hardrock. If...

OK, I just got awesome footage of a fox crossing the river. That was amazing. (Interesting to compare to having seen wolf pups play on my last trip with no camera. Which will I remember better--through my own eyes, or only through the camera LCD screen but that I can watch again and again? Por que no los dos? That really would be best.)

Ok, back to Hardrock. Third time overall, first time in this direction. I still think the lottery system is... I'll be my most restrained self here... very bad. People who have run it 10-15 or more times have similar or better odds of people who have run it zero times but applied 10 times. (Those exact numbers might be slightly off, but I believe that's the gist of it.) Only the two winners get automatic entry. Instead of an arbitrary selection of RD picks, which are biased toward top competitors anyway, why not use a rotating selection of the qualifier races to have three "Silver Claims" (golden tickets) for the following year? Make awesome community-oriented events like Scout Mountain or Hellbender seriously competitive for a couple years? One in North America, one in Asia/Oceania, one in Europe, or some sort of geographic balance. If the permit allows, why not expand the runner field for every runner who promises to run it solo (without pacers and without crew leaving paved roads)? This isn't Barkley where nobody'd finish if the field were full of virgins. The course is marked, GPS'd, and is 25% road! (Don't hate me, Katie Scheid called that out! I don't claim credit for these ideas, Boulder Boys or Singletrack germinated them.) People love pacing and crewing Hardrock, but that's at least partially because there's only a snowball's chance they'll ever get in the race themselves. I'm running without pacers this time, and Amy will probably only crew me two or three times.

I should have applied for the open position on the board.

So I'll run it this direction, and depending how it goes this time, maybe never again, or at least not for a while. If this is my worst time of my three, maybe I'll try again in this direction in a couple years, and four times will be enough. There's plenty of hard, pretty, community-oriented, well-organized races out there. I also don't love having to use a whole week of vacation to acclimate, and spending every November putting next summer's vacation planning in the tumbler with everyone else. Sometimes controlling your own destiny is nice.

So should I come back to Alaska? I don't know if one to two weeks of PTO at a time is the optimal way to do it. This December I'll graduate into the 8 hours/pay period (5 weeks plus 1 day per year) PTO group. I'll be starting from zero after this AK/CO trip, but dogs-willing, that's time for some races and a decent adventure.

The Arizona Trail, Greater Yellowstone Loop, and Alaska come to mind.

Alaska: I've started trips from Anaktuvuk Pass and Atigun Pass, which I'm pretty sure are the only cheap way to start in a place that's good for hiking in the Brooks Range. (By cheap I mean a couple-few hundred dollars each way on top of airfare to Fairbanks. Non-cheap is more like a few thousand dollars each way in charter airfare.) There are probably cheap packrafting trips worth doing, some of which would start from Anaktuvuk Pass and solve my issue with going west out of there (I've only hiked in/out to the East of AP, but the west the most obvious hiking route is less interesting to me because of a native hunting ATV trail that apparently goes for quite a ways.) So yeah, maybe a packrafting trip from Anaktuvuk to Bettles? Or suck it up and pay for a charter flight and hike a bigger chunk of ANWR?

The AZT: This has always (or at least since I did a stretch on the Hayduke in 2020) just seemed like something I could knock out in 20 days/three weeks. It's 800 miles, so instead of my previous PCT speed of 200 miles/week for three months, I bump it up a notch to 40 miles/day for three weeks. On a hot, marked trail, that seems doable. But maybe boring? Don't I own a house in the desert? Couldn't I just go remodel the bathroom there and learn something that way? The interesting challenge would be to go more ultralight than I have recently, maybe ever. It might be more fun to do the AZT with desert-lover Amy some day when we're based nearby again.

Yellowstone Loop: I don't remember whether this was 800 or 1200 miles when I mapped it out, but that sounds about right. I wouldn't be doing 40 miles days because the trails are likely less well-maintained (there are almost certainly stupid beetle-kill/old burn sections with blowdowns like pickup sticks), plus have interesting high route and peak bagging opportunities, and I could fly there and have friends pick me up or just start walking from the airport like Mother Nature intended. So maybe half this in one go? I'm looking forward to getting to see part of this area during the Wyoming Range 100 in August. Reminder to self: buy your airplane ticket as soon as you get service!

As far as normal person vacations to, I'd love to go to Japan and back to Korea. Obviously I'd time it with Lake Biwa 100 or something like that.

Alaska Gear Thoughts:

My bigger items mostly worked. After all the rain I'm glad the Durston X-Mid is double-walled. But maybe I should shell out for the lighter Dyneema version. My ULA Catalyst is a workhorse, well deserving it's high sales numbers. But after 18 years the shoulder straps have lost some life, and technology has improved enough that I'd like to replace it with a Durston Kakwa 55. Can that be used without a pack liner and hold a bear canister horizontally? (Is horizontally actually best? I want to believe it is but IF you can fit stuff on both sides to efficiently use space does the body carry weight better vertically? Maybe hard sided bear canisters are just heavy either way!)

My Patagonia R1 fleece hoody is still kicking. New Alpha fleeces are just warmer and lighter, however, and the snagging is a non issue since I'm never walking around in a fleece without a wind breaker/water resistant layer on top. When other than kicking it around camp or around town is it that cold AND dry and NOT windy?

I brought far too much food. I haphazardly told myself I was doing a lollipop loop I could drop my bear canister after a day and just carry the Ursack. Instead I just carried both the whole time. The culprit is last minute acquisitions in Fairbanks. I had 3,000 calories/day *before* I added the Fritos and cheddar cheese and Reese's Cups. I also bought a cheap blue foam pad as a quick sit pad, which would have been OK if I'd truly cut it to butt size rather than knee to shoulder size. I call it my "blue foam of shame" as a sop to the gods of Ultralight. Gaiters are also unnecessary. Long pants (my Arc'teryx hikers are fantastic) cover just enough of the shoe to keep most stuff out, and not even gaiters will stop river silt from getting in during water crossings or fun descents of crushed slate slopes. My ditty bag was also overstuffed with useless stuff: TP (I bideted, rope, sewing thread, a Deuce of Spades (you're not supposed to dig past the gravel layer anyways). Lastly, as much as I love my Exped 5R sleeping mat and Nemo Fillo Elite pillow, I could experiment and see if something lighter gets the job done.

I'm uncertain about neoprene socks. I didn't wear them until I was basically done, so I guess you don't *need* them but I think they do keep toes warmer than just a pair of good wool socks (I mostly was fine wearing the same pair of crew length Darn Tough hiking socks the entire time, with one backup for sleeping.)

Book Thoughts: After Dickens, what's next? I saw a copy of Nelson Mandela's hefty autobio at the hostel. If that's still there when I get back, I'll do a swap. I wonder if I can be so obnoxious to my sister that she'll hit me in the head with it? (Deep cut inside family joke, I'm not sure even she'll get it, but trust me, it's a classic.)

Day 8: Chandalar Airstrip Day

2026-07-03T12:07:53.763-04:00

Don't eat who-knows-how-old TVP from last year's outfitter trip.

Anywho, it rained a lot, but not as much as the night before, so I think stream levels actually dropped. I walked around the stream a bit, then started walking/hitching south. There was not much traffic (easily 15 minutes between vehicles) and it's mostly semi trailers, which are *not* stopping. I was hiking off the road on a maintenance trail for the pipeline, waived to a work pickup truck, and he stopped! Turns out, he stopped coincidentally, but my going up and asking him induced him so say yes. And he (or his crew) also gave a ride to Gerald Klamer, a German hiker I know who happens to be around.

"Where'd you come from?"

"I hiked east into ANWR from Chandalar Airstrip."

"We just picked up a guy yesterday who did that same thing!"

"Was he German? Named Gerald?"

Small world.

Anyway, Taylor took me as far as the strip (where his airplane was stored). Unfortunately, I couldn't get further than that all day! It was too cold and rainy to stand by the side of the road constantly, so when the rain really picked up I went and sat in the DOT gravel shed. It was not my favorite.

Eventually it got sunny, but there was so little traffic I gave up and went for a walk. I tried to climb a hill across from the DOT facility, but it was (obviously) very boggy so I gave up and walked the pipeline maintenance road parallel to the airstrip. I saw the DHE shuttle go by northbound, and some more cyclists I would have liked to say hi to.

Made dinner, then tried to thumb some more, but the civilian traffic has stopped completely, and it started to rain again, so I set up my tent. Should be good to go from right here for the shuttle tomorrow, but I'll inReach to DHE to make sure.

Night 7 Finish

2026-07-03T12:07:12.041-04:00

I guess I'm done?

It rained all last night, from before I set my tent up until a brief respite in the morning. By the time I was dressed in full waterproofs, it was raining again. During the night it was not the normal "it always does this" sprinkle, but heavier. In the morning when I climbed up to the bowl where my pass was, I really needed it to be the one very low spot that I could actually see, and not further into the completely socked-in drainage. To my delight, it was. A very gentle grade, with snow completely avoidable. The slope angle shading didn't even register a color on the climb side, and that proved true. It was, however, quite cold at the summit so I couldn't hang around and enjoy my last climb.

The descent was gentle, but long, and by the time we met our first inlet creek, I realized that all the water was raging and turbid. I'm up high enough, I can choose whichever side I want, and if I pick correctly this creek goes straight to the highway where there's a bridge, so which side will give me the least worrisome inflow? I chose river left.

That worked fine for ten miles, until only a mile or two shy of the highway, a normally tranquil inlet was now opaque and raging down the hillside. It took me a bit of doing, but I managed to slowly split off branches of the stream bit by bit, and in five separate pieces it wasn't too bad. Yesterday I would have barely noticed the thing. Instead because of the rain, I had to work myself up for it and repeat my trekking-pole enabled mantra of "I am a quadruped! I am a quadruped!" as I took each deliberate step.

That was the last barrier before the highway. The rain was polite enough to stop for a few hours, so I cooked dinner (beans, of course!) and am camped within sight of the road. The weather is supposed to be meh tomorrow--not quite as bad as today, but probably not peakbagging weather. So if I can't see the summit of the mountains, I'll go check out the pipeline a bit, see where the creek I was following (the Roche Moutonnee, according to the bridge on the highway) flows into the Atigun River, and then try and hitch south, maybe to Coldfoot.

Seven nights in ANWR, pretty good.

If anyone spoils who won Western States before I can watch the Livestream from beginning to end, so help me God...

Easy Rain, Day 6

2026-07-03T12:00:58.835-04:00

Man, I should really decide if I'm counting by full days or partial days or nights camped or what.

Regardless, today was an easy day. I slept in and read some Dickens before heading out. I climbed to an easy grassy low point on a ridge and contemplated which route to go. There are infinite (too many) options. That's the one thing I like about trails--it's just one dimension and all you have to optimize for is speed. Out here, with no trails, I can do whatever the hell I want. We've already determined that's usually based on seeing as much ground as possible, but it can't seem artificial, it needs to be a nice natural line, and preferably neither too flat and boggy nor, unless the weather's good, which it's not, over 6,000 feet. So, OK do I do a few fewer miles, stay in ANWR, and see new terrain, or cross the Divide again at a pretty spot but then repeat miles I just saw, and technically be outside of ANWR? (I opted for the former.)

I'm terrible at relaxing, people. I wish the bigger loop I had drawn was just a tiny bit shorter and lower. But I packed too much food and some gear I don't need, and the route just seemed too long, and the two extra 6000+ passes (including one at 6800 traversing above a glacier/permanent snowfield) seemed unwise. So here I am with extra time and options on my hands/feet.

Also, it is raining. Not super hard, but the clouds come in real low, so I can't see very far, which makes walking far less interesting, and less safe, or at least efficient, since I'm always looking both near (for footing) and far (for route planning).

I saw a few nice birds today, but still no big game. One of the birds was sitting on its nest right at waist height in a willow, and the other seemed like a mating pair protecting a nest. All I need is for a wolf or a bear to walk by (not while I'm in my tent, please). Am I too close to the highway? Are they further north (south)? Saw more ice floes today as well, but didn't make sense to walk on them.

Hope the rain stops tomorrow. If not, I may not need to worry about this "extra time on my hands" problem.

All is well, I just tend to overthink when there's infinite options!

Gray Day

2026-07-03T11:59:51.694-04:00

Whoof. Just as I was going to bed last night, the fog rolled in. It parted for two minutes at 8am to tell me I was sleeping in, and then came right back and stayed all day. Like a marine layer only a few hundred feet above me, unmoving, cold. I bundled up more than I ever have, stopping to put on five layers up top and two layers of gloves. That sounds like more than it is since only one of my top layers insulates (t-shirt, long sleeve base layer, button up shirt, Houdini windbreaker, Montbell Versalite rain jacket). There was a tiny bit of thunder from who knows which direction, but thankfully only a few minutes of rain.

Early on I had to cross the creek a couple times, and climbed on the bench bluffs a few more times to avoid crossings, trying to stay on the north (Divide) side. Eventually once I lost enough elevation the creek widened out, but there wasn't game in the creek--maybe not enough brush to house and feed them?

I crossed the Sagavanirktok River and then started up towards the Divide in the next basin. The basin is very wide and grassy, and the creek is flowing cold and swift. I could probably cross it if I wanted, but I don't have much reason to.

Staying to the south/east side I came upon some cool river ice. I walked a wide stretch, then carefully walked another thin stretch of remnant ice between the steep hillside and the creek. One chunk was leaning into the creek as if it had toppled over away from the hillside, so I squeezed behind it and traversed the muddy hillside, while wondering what would happen if a block toppled while I was on it. Nah, I've read enough reddit/r/decks posts to know that water (usually in hot tub form) weighs a lot, the ice isn't going to notice my 140+30 pounds of self plus pack. We reached the last ice floe on my side and continued along the flat bank 10 feet or so above the creek. BOOM! A 20-yard by 5-yard chunk of ice calved off the floe just across the creek from the solid ground I was walking on.

Loud, alarming, but no effects other than a few waves and some mud in the creek.

Don't walk too close to the edge of the ice floes!

Continued the very slow ascent toward the Divide. I'm halfway done with my trip, but much closer to being back to the start. I could loop around a low peak tomorrow, but this basin isn't terribly exciting. I could go for a higher pass instead... I think I'll wait to see what the weather is like.

Not Recommended Pass and Also Not Recommended Pass

2026-07-03T11:58:01.886-04:00

Long day. Got moving reasonably early. Just as I was crossing the grassy open area to reach the bigger Your Creek, I saw a cabin nearby, so I went to investigate. To my surprise, hunting guides are allowed to have permanent structures in the Refuge. The door was unlocked but I didn't go in. It definitely was stocked, and a bear had gotten in to the other cabin storage area, so that was a mess. Anyway, good to know if I were to get injured, as there was an airstrip as well.

I quickly reached the bed of Your Creek and then it was good walking most of the day. Nice and wide, with plenty of backchannels that had tons of game tracks. Part of the creek still had snow, but the flat hard kind that happens on flat slow water (there has to be a word for it). It's great walking. (There was also a third, smaller, cabin building there.)

I saw at least three rabbits, a half dozen ptarmigan, a Canada Jay, and bear, wolf and moose tracks (but no live big game). It was a nice balance--enough brush to make animals happy, but not too much to make bushwhacking nasty.

I passed up two easier passes on the Divide and finally headed up one just shy of the source of Your Creek. The drainage turned into a bit of a narrow gorge, which was tricky, but snowbridges over the creek helped, and just plain walking in the creek cascade got it done.

I reached my chute to the pass and found a mostly rock way up, avoiding snow. Right as I finally got to around 6100 feet, I saw mist rolling over the ridge just a few hundred feet away. Wow that looks cool! Oh wait, shit, that's weather coming, we better boogy. I looked at GPS and realized CRAP I'd summited a gully or two too far down the drainage and needed to climb the ridge because the pass I was at wasn't on the Divide, just a bowl I'd passed beneath earlier this morning. I scrambled up the ridge, and contoured, and finally made it to the right ridge, if not where I'd initially planned to be. The slope angle shading showed no cliffs, but as I was doing the finally bit of ridge traverse, the mist became a near whiteout, and small hail or graupel started falling.

Fuck! Am I gonna have to bivy on this stupid ridge, because I can't see down?

It cleared briefly so that I could see a rock way down (there was plenty of snow I wanted to avoid). I went for the somewhat controlled rock and mudslide way down, and after 1500 feet or so, I was able to stop on level ground and gather myself. Of course, as soon as I was down, the sun came out.

The drainage was very rocky but I was able to stay out of the snow and avoid getting cliffed out. I found a nice bench at 4,000 feet and set up camp. I'm now on the north side of the Divide, and should I choose it, there's a very easy pass back to the south a few miles away. The high point (6100'+) is done, hopefully the hardest part with it.

Four full days left!

Second Day, June 25

2026-07-03T11:49:57.950-04:00

Wow the wind died down and the mosquitos came out. Had to pace while eating my dinner beans. I'm low in elevation after doing three passes today. Hard as hell. The first was kinda nice and took me right up to the divide with a lake at the top. I dropped only a bit, then followed another creek up to 5600 or so, a giant heap of loose slate. It was reasonably easy to avoid the snow on both sides. Then I descended and momentarily forgot that I had another pass to do shortly. Oh good, I've got flat mile along a big river--nope! Right back up, and higher than last time. Avoiding the snow was manageable on the West side, but there was a cornice (not really of the sketchy variety, just saying the drift made it all the way to the top) and looking down the East side was alarmingly white. No solid way down, and it looked like the largest basin had an avalanche at some point this winter. I tracked back and forth connecting solid ground, but was sinking in snow and getting wet and cold (the storm had held off on the climb, but finally started raining on the way down.)

Close to the end, I sunk in to my hips, fell over, and got a Charlie horse all at the same time. It sucked. Then a minute later it happened again with the other leg. Also, I was able to make the corner of a ridge, and realize that if I'd just contoured a tiny bit at the top, I could have had a rock way down most of the way. I'd seen that ridge from the top but it looked so steep I didn't want to traverse to it. Most things aren't as steep as the look from far away. Poor choices.

I stopped at the bottom of Two Charlie Horse Pass and took a multivitamin, chugged some flavored drink, and got moving. I got warm again, and had good walking until the last hour or so when it got boggy. I knew it would, I just wanted to cut across the valley rather than following the stream well out of my way.

Two of seven full days done. I hope to cross the divide tomorrow at a 6100 foot pass. If it's bad, I can come back a ways and go over lower. I think 6100 will be the high point of the trip. I highly doubt my 6800 foot pass is clear at this point, and I'm covering less ground than I expected. (That's fine, that's why I drew a bunch of shortcuts!) My pack is too heavy but it's mostly food, so I'm eating my way out of that problem.

Erratum

2026-07-02T00:54:48.393-04:00

I realized that Your Creek on the south side of the Divide yesterday is not in ANWR, hence the hunting cabin. The CalTopo baselayer I'm using the most doesn't show property delineations. ANWR is mostly north of the Divide, at least in the western half closer to the Dalton Highway.

[This post only makes sense if read after the one where I came across the hunting cabin. Posting got out of order somehow.]

First Full Day

2026-07-02T00:54:44.353-04:00

First full day. Took my time packing up. Phone GPS still wasn't working, but navigation is relatively easy in these huge valleys. I messed around with settings, and found some sort of location setting that uses nearby Bluetooth devices. My watch and InReach knew where they were--I don't know if that's what did it, but it worked. Hallelujah!

Went up to the first pass. The mosquitos were out but not terrible--didn't need to wear my headnet. Then skeeters went away and we got to the snow. I lost a trekking pole basket in one of the very first drifts I crossed. Only noticed it a few drifts later. I went back to look but it was hopeless.

Saw the heel straps from a pair of Crocs. I'm not the first person to hike here. Wonder how the croc person did on this terrain without sport-mode engaged!

The pass was steep, and slow, and my pack is much too heavy. The upper 500 feet or so had snow, but it was mostly avoidable by climbing up rock instead. I sent a pin and had a snack at the top. It took some wallowing to get through the snow on the other side, but it wasn't terrible.

Further down, the terrain was lovely. I took a break and read some Tale of Two Cities. Clouds rolled in and it started raining. I crossed a couple cold creeks and started climbing to the pass, but set up camp around 6pm at perhaps the last good campsite this side of the pass. There's an easy pass over the divide, but I'd like to stay south and keep going east on this side if possible.

Generally speaking, a great day. Tough climbing, good weather before bad, and a heavy pack, but I should be able to eat my way out of that problem. Pack felt less miserable by the end of the day, too, like I was getting used to the weight.

Start SNAFU

2026-07-02T00:54:43.549-04:00

Shuttle up the Dalton Highway wasn't bad, except for the one guy who would NOT stop talking. Loudly. Literally the entire time. C'mon man, let's just enjoy the views, OK? I put in earplugs and was able to nap a little bit but not much.

I was the last one to be dropped off. I'd turned off my phone all day to save battery. I turned it on to find exactly where I should be dropped off, and GPS wouldn't work. It still isn't.

I am too tired to adequately express how frustrating this is. I'll turn my phone off again to sleep now, and hope that it works tomorrow.

I can see the pass above me. There's a ton of snow. The low route I've been on is easy walking. Well, easy in that there's no brush to speak of. It's still a soggy tundra in the Brooks, so it's not easy generally. Just saying that if my main route is too high, there's plenty of lower stuff to do.

My pack is so heavy!

I am tired.

And we're off

2026-06-23T09:26:31.591-04:00

Three inches of snow left at the Atigun Pass measurement site this morning. Satellite imagery from the 21st definitely still has snow on my first pass at 5600 feet. Here we go!

(I mean, gnarly 12 hour shuttle ride first, but still...)

Fairbanks

2026-06-22T01:59:34.674-04:00

I'm in Fairbanks. I watched Sirāt on the airplane. Holy shit it's good. I'm at the hostel close to the airport. I've got 30 hours to buy cheese (I'm only vegetarian on trail), Fritos, a water bottle, camping fuel, bear spray, a pen, and a pad to sit on.

The snowpack reading is down to 6 inches!

Data Sources

2026-06-21T18:04:21.623-04:00

Woohoo, the snowpack measurement is down to 8".

Snowpack data:

https://www.weather.gov/aprfc/snow_depth

I used temp and precipitation data from the Alaska Climate Research Center to help me decide between June and August:

https://akclimate.org/data/air-temperature-normals/

I look at Sentinel-2 satellite imagery via a pro paid subscription to CalTopo.com: "Imagery from the Sentinel-2 satellite covers the entire earth from the same viewing angle every 5 days with a 10-m horizontal resolution. The date that the image was taken is displayed on the raw image, although you may have to zoom out a bit or pan around to find it. We license this layer and don’t know precisely when the next image in your area will be taken, but it is typically within 5 days."

Googling reveals that this is a group of EU satellites, and the data is free, so I'll have to figure out how cumbersome it is to download directly.

The FAA has a bunch of live cameras at airports: https://weathercams.faa.gov/map/-152.32484,67.53447,-151.13832,68.34012/cameraSite/14/details/camera

Alaska DOT has some road webcams:

https://511.alaska.gov/map#map-col-container

The one at Atigun Pass doesn't look too bad right now. Fingers crossed!

Alaska 2026

2026-06-21T12:26:39.883-04:00

After much deliberation I am headed back to Alaska. I am sad to miss Western States (Jim, Killian, and Zack running an hour from where I used to live? That will never happen again.) But it's probably better to have my own adventure than to spectate someone else's (even if I've admired them for ten-plus years, watching as the sport grew exponentially.)

I initially planned to go to Alaska last week, but there was a late snow storm that took the snowpack in the Brooks Range from below-average to above-record. It's mostly gone now (10" at Atigun Pass as of this morning) but ideally it would be *completely* gone. The data station at Atigun Pass is at 4750 feet or so. About 10% of my route is higher than that. I could stay lower by staying further south, but that is likely to be super brushy, gnarly bushwhacking.

I considered delaying to August, but August is typically rainier, has less daylight (everything has less daylight compared to the 24 hours of light now) and is colder. August would probably be fine, but it would have cost me a bit to change my flights, and I'm kind of sick of DC and work right now. (Can you sense that I was still waffling even until last night? It's a tough call. There's a lot going on.)

I'm flying to Fairbanks, then Tuesday morning I take the 12-hour long shuttle ride up the pipeline highway to the Brooks Range. I'll hike a loop to the East along the continental divide in ANWR, and catch the shuttle returning south Wednesday of the following week. That Friday I fly to Colorado for Hardrock #3.

I've had a nagging on-again-off-again injury in my left foot for a few months now. Maybe I'm silly but I expect backpacking will be easier on it than running.

No blog updates from the wilderness until I return to Fairbanks. Even if the weather sucks, I've got A Tale of Two Cities, John Muir's Travels in Alaska, a small flask of Amaro Averna, and a lot of Snickers bars.

Massanutten 100

2026-06-08T20:54:07.984-04:00

The second morning

Second Sunrise

Despite my having hated every minute of the Massanutten 100 the first time I ran it in 2019, I ran it again this May. The price and logistical ease made it too easy to sign up for. Plus it's put on by VHTRC and I'm starting to get to know more people in the club, so I knew I'd see friendly faces at aid stations. I enjoyed the first 50 miles, running them in 12 and a half hours. Then my feet got wet and completely macerated when my absurdly expensive shoes didn't dry out and it took me 20 hours of figuratively stepping on Legos barefoot to finish the second half. I took an hour and ten minutes off my 2019 team, but I wouldn't consider my time "good." I've got a better time in me, so I guess I'll be back again in a few years.

I'm off to the Brooks Range with Nano on Sunday. The snowpack at Atigun Pass isn't melting like I need it to, which is concerning. Here's hoping that 24 hours of sunlight does its job in the next week.

I'm Icing My Foot

2026-06-08T20:40:18.395-04:00

[I started writing this post two months ago am only finishing it now. My foot still hurts a little, but I'm still running.]

Greetings from the couch, dear reader. I have a sore throat, and I am a little worried that I have a stress fracture in my foot. I am icing it and wearing a boot, and I made an appointment with the podiatrist (but that's two months out, so I expect the situation will have changed by then.) How did this happen?

The short version is: I ran a lot.

The long version is: I ran Hashawha Hills 50K Feb 28 (see my previous blog entry), Elizabeth Furnace 50K March 14, Hone Quarry 40-miler March 28, and Gorge Waterfalls 100K April 11.

The full-length version is:

Elizabeth Furnace 50K was a nice VHTRC fatass. I got a ride out there with H & N. I started out at the very front--the instant I pulled up my shorts from a poop in the woods that happened to be in the direction of the course, people ran by me--I guess we're going! Obviously that didn't last long. I ran a decent amount of the race with H. She's faster than me on flats and moderate climbs, but slower than me on descents. The race finishes with a long rocky descent, so I finished ahead of her by a few minutes. I finished 13 minutes faster than last year.

Everyone else in VHTRC could tell you where this race is (Bird Knob? "Elizabeth Furnace," probably) but to me it's all just "the Massanuttens." Dumb and rocky, but it's a national forest not a national park, so that's where the events are. A nice day with friends.

Recovery was no big deal. I did 296 miles in February, and 366 in March (a bit of that was biking, so it's not a crazy jump.)

Amy came to town and we went to Harrisonburg for the weekend. We got an AirBnB right on the course of Hone Quarry 40-miler. The weather was absolutely perfect for running hard: 40's and sunny. I switched from pants to shorts around halfway. The course was gorgeous. Aside from there being literally no food at the finish line, it was really an excellent race. The trails there are very nice, especially compared to the "dumb and rocky" Massanuttens. With about four miles left, somebody caught up to me. Or rather, he tried to, and I said no. I started running sub 7-minute pace, my marathon PR pace. As we passed the AirBnB I yelled "hey Amy there's two miles left come pick me up!" and kept the pedal pinned to the floor. She drove past me and honked right as I cut through the final cow pasture to the church rec center field and finish line in 8:05, about 40 seconds in front of the next guy.

We drove home, I dropped off the rental car, and ran home. I ran a 99-mile training week. My left foot started hurting. Makes sense, given how I ran so hard at the end of the race on pavement, but not too concerning. It was time to taper for my big April race, Gorge Waterfalls 100K, anyway. I probably wouldn't have tapered much if I'd been feeling good, but it made sense to dial it back.

I ran 40 in the week after Hone Quarry, and then 17 in the week leading up to Gorge. I was really regretting my decision to fly to Portland the night before the race. I had a headache before I even headed to the airport. The flight was tiresome, but I slept a bit, and felt better by the time I got to my friend's house. I slept for maybe four hours, 10:30-3am, but to my pleasant surprise, I didn't feel terrible.

The race started smoothly. I took a wrong turn with some friends, but quickly resolved it. I got dropped by those friends. I fueled consistently, had a nice chat with a guy from Washington state, and finished just over 14 hours, which is my normal decent 100K time. So that's nice.

The trail goes behind waterfalls

I spent the next day walking around Portland. I got lunch with an old hiker friend and his partner. I did a sweat test at a bike shop which revealed that I am a salty sweater--the result was that I am a very salty sweater, so I should probably be taking in far more sodium when I'm running long races.

I got a little sick after the race, but not terribly so. It's now months later, I'm sorry, I don't remember much else. I think Gorge is an OK race. It's pretty, but it's not the prettiest thing in the Columbia River Gorge, and you run parallel to I-84 for the first 2/3 of the race, so it is way, way too loud for too long. It was a lot of fun to do it with several DC friends, and I got to see two Portland friends--that, and not the course--is was made it worth it to run.

Old PCT friend, Bridge of the Gods

Cold Winter

2026-03-08T21:07:00.001-04:00

Running has been hard this winter. The snowcrete storm at the end of January was followed by nine days with temps not getting above freezing. Trail running required traction devices so I got my screw shoes out of the closet, and eagerly scanned social media and run-group e-mails as we reported on trail conditions and road plowing updates. It reduced my mileage by maybe 20 miles one week and 10 another. Not that bad, but it took a lot of mental energy and reduced quality runs waiting to pass people on single-shovel width sidewalk paths and constantly scanning for ice.

I had plans to go run The Wild Oak Trail (Cold TWOT) President's Day Weekend, but the event was cancelled due to snow conditions. I also was stressed by almost getting off the wait list at the last minute for an event in Tennessee which I hadn't planned for. At the last minute since both of those were out, I decided to keep the rental car and dogsitter I had arranged and go to Shenandoah National Park and work on my #SNP500 miles.

I slept in the car at trailheads and got 100K total, mostly new-to-me trails in central and northern Shenandoah, including Big and Little Devil Stairs. I wore spikes about half of the first day, and carried them with me on days two and three but didn't need them, as the snow underfoot was nearly constant but not icy. It rained half of Sunday so I called it early. Conditions were mostly slow and crummy, but not terrible.

Filling in the #SNP500 map

It was a nice getaway, regardless of the weather, and a nice chance to get in miles.

My first race of the year ended up being Hashawha Hills 50K. It's a nice hilly course, but consistently muddy in February. I got a ride up with Heather, Mike, and Sue, and ended up running much of the first half with Heather. She dropped me at the halfway point aid station when I changed into dry shoes and socks.

The weather warmed up to a lovely 60 degrees, but after getting dropped I spent the second half barfing, and possibly getting more upset at the guy behind me's reaction than the barfing itself. "Woah, man! Are you OK?!" I'm probably being a jerk about this, but something like "You need a gel or salt pill?" would be a much more constructive comment. Pity is neither appreciated nor helpful. I'm vomiting (but also still running just as fast as you), how do you think I feel? Also, vomiting happens all the time in ultras. Again, I'm still running just as fast as you--ask if I need a gel (something specific), or give me the shaka/hang loose sign and say "yeah bro, way to keep moving!" and move on.

50K isn't that long, so I quit eating and drinking, kept moving, and I was almost done. I had a couple slow 15-minute miles, but got back to 12-or-faster that I knew would still manage to take some time off my 2019 time on the same course. I turned on some Pearl Jam and shed a few Eddie-endorphin-induced tears and went reasonably hard for the last few miles.

I finished in 5:53, which was nine and a half minutes faster than my 2019 race. Conditions may have been slightly muddier in 2019, but I'm very happy to be running even epsilon faster over age 40.

Sign of a Good Day

Being able to consistently fuel would be great, though. I took down gels consistently, but then perhaps too much liquid ("I'll just finish this bottle while I'm at the aid station") or too many aid station tater tots ("mmmm, salty!") and the liquid appeared to not actually go anywhere. I'm skeptical of the accuracy but I'm looking into sweat tests to see if knowing my sweat salinity level would help me keep my stomach in check (after just making due for 20 years.)

Up next is another 50K (Elizabeth Furnace), a 40-miler (Hone Quarry), and 100K (Gorge Waterfalls). Then the real hundos: Massanutten, Hardrock, and Wyoming Range.

P.S. It's spelled Hashawha (there's a third H) and pronounced like Joshua. Mike was right, I was wrong.

2025 Year of Running in Review

2026-01-01T13:14:00.001-05:00

How'd it go in 2025, running-wise?

Volume

As of noon on December 31st, I have run 3,061 miles. That's the most I've ever run in a year, so I feel pretty good about that. I got less vert than I did last year, and have still never cracked 450,000 feet in a year. You can see data from most of the past decade below. (2018 was low thanks to a long summer hike and 2020 had the pandemic, injury, and a long hike.)

2025 Races

At the end of 2024 I only planned out the first half of 2025: my buildup to Hardrock. Not much else in life went according to plan, but the races did:

March 8: Seneca Creek Greenway 50K

March 15: Elizabeth Furnace 50K
April 26: Lake Sonoma 50 Miler
May 9-10: Hellbender 100 Miler
July 11-12: Hardrock 100 Miler

I wasn't quite as fast at Hardrock as I was eight years ago, but I still had a good day.

In the second half of the year I ended up running two more races, where I slightly improved my times over previous results.

September 20-21: IMTUF 100 Miler

December 7: California International Marathon

So, all in all pretty good: my most mileage in a year, three hundreds, and a marathon PR.

What's on Tap for 2026?

Nano and I are hoping to go back to Alaska, and I got into Hardrock again, so those are the two headline items. I have to build up to Hardrock, but with Alaska I don't know how much PTO I'll have. I don't think I'll have enough to do the Hardrock-Ouray double. Will I even have enough to acclimate for Hardrock? Do oxygen deprivation tents work? "Yes, but with caveats" say Claude and ChatGPT.

Here's how the schedule is looking:

February 14: TWOT

February 28: Hashawa Hills 50K

March 14: Elizabeth Furnace 50K

April 11: Gorge Waterfalls 100K?

May 16: Massanutten 100?

June: Alaska

July: Hardrock

August: Wyoming Range 100?

September: Dark Divide 100?

February and March seem somewhat set TWOT 100 starts Friday morning, but I think I can just start Saturday morning instead since I'll have Monday off for Presidents Day and it's a fatass.

Much of the rest is up in the air. For April, I'm on the waitlist for Gorge Waterfalls, but that involves PTO and travel, and both the Cherry Blossom 10-miler (I'm fast already, why not break 65 minutes?) and the Istria 100-miler in Croatia (obviously even more PTO, but prettier) are the same weekend.

For May, Massanutten would be extremely easy to get to, and it's organized by my local run club, but I've done it before and did not like it. The course is so rocky and humid and slow that the whole second half my only thought was "I have to finish so I never have to come back." So should I do it again? Probably not. Should I go down to Georgia and run Cruel Jewel 100 that weekend instead? That could be just as, if not more, miserable. Is there anything else on the east coast in May or early June that's worth doing? (Laurel Highlands and Manitou's Revenge are too late in the year, they overlap with Alaska.)

Also, how am I going to train for mountainous races? I'm a little tired of the Rock Creek trails right now, and it's impossible to get consistent long climb or descents. (Repeats are of course possible but I don't think have the same effect.) I might need to buy a car so I can more easily get to Shenandoah on the weekends.

The second half of the year is totally open. I don't think any race besides Hardrock or Ouray truly requires acclimating to altitude (speaking for myself), so I should have enough PTO to fit in a couple additional races. But which ones? Will you be at any of the Hardrock qualifiers? (Not that I need a qualifier per se, it's just usually a decent signal of quality.) Suggestions/coordination welcome!

California International Marathon

2025-12-30T15:32:00.002-05:00

Pre-Race

My final race of the year was Sacramento's California International Marathon. I'd run it twice before: once in grad school on little training when I had a goal to run a marathon every year but didn't much care about my time (I've since upped that goal to a 100-miler), and in 2021 when I trained for it fairly seriously and set a PR of 2:59:18.

The West has two types of marathon courses: hilly ones and downhill ones, and then there's CIM, which is mostly flat. There's slight rollers through 15 miles or so, but the biggest is probably 30-40 feet at most, so you can still run any mile with a hill at roughly the same pace, and there's a net drop of ~350 feet.

Anyway, it's a really good course to run fast: so much so that I believe it produces the largest number of Olympic Trials Qualifiers and Boston Qualifiers of any race. That means the race is relatively crowded at the front. Here are the percentages of finishers who ran in under 3:00:00 at a few marathons in 2025. Is there another race (other than the Olympic Trials) where such a large percentage of people run so fast? I'm not aware of one.

NYC: 2,374/58,973 (4%)

CIM: 1,423/8,181 (17%)

Oakland: 22/980 (2%)

Chicago: 4,069/54,326 (7%)

Grandma's: 519/7,555 (7%)

This is partly a self-fulfilling prophecy, since people know it's a fast race, faster people choose to run it, and I assume most people believe (like I do) that it's easier to run in a pack (as long as it's not too packed) than alone. (Side note: collecting data on the whole distribution of a bunch of marathons' times would be a fun little project. Has anyone already done that?)

Anyway, that's partly why I wanted to run it again. Of course, Reno and Sacramento are close, so it's an opportunity to see my partner and friends. I flew to Reno, spent a day on an unexpected house project, and then drove to Sacramento with a stop in Auburn for the Western States 100 lottery. They randomly select three spots to runners in the lottery who are present in person, so in addition to a nice chance to see runner friends, showing up marginally improves your chance of getting in. I didn't get selected for Western States, but as I walking away and about to part ways from M & Y, a friend texted me congratulations on getting into Hardrock! So I'll be running in the San Juans in the opposite direction next year. (More on that in a future post.)

Pre-Race Expo

We stayed with friends in Fair Oaks, CA, closer to the start than any of the bus collection points, so Amy just dropped me off at an intersection near the start, allowing me to sleep in a little later. (The website and all official race information correctly states that you cannot drive to the start, but you can drive here, the intersection of Greenback Ln and Folsom-Auburn Rd, then walk the 1.25-1.5 miles up the closed-for-the-race Folsom-Auburn Rd to the start. Folsom-Auburn Rd doesn't have sidewalks so it wouldn't be that fun or safe walking it with normal traffic, but it was closed for the race so it was fine.)

The Gun Goes Off

After the customary being cold waiting in the port-a-potty line, I joined the 2:50-3:05 corral. I was happy to see a 2:55 pace group. It was a pleasant surprise to see a pace group that fast--I thought 3:00 would be the fastest--but it makes sense since 2:55 is now the Boston qualifying time for young men. Right before the start the announcer read out the names of the pace group leaders, and one of the 2:55ers was Tim Tollefson, a well known pro ultrarunner who I'd just seen helping run the Western States lottery the day before. Right after the race started I ran over to him and introduced myself (I got into Hardrock yesterday!), thanked him for pacesetting, and figured I'd try and stay a minute or two ahead of his pace for as long as I could.

The start went well. I crossed the start about a minute after the gun, and could immediately go my pace without having to spend extra energy dodging folks. I ran 6:39s for the first 5K, then 6:36s from 5K-10K, then 6:43s from 10K-15K, then 6:41s from 15K-20K, and 1:27:11 overall for the first half. Pretty much exactly where I wanted to be, on track for a 2:55 race. I was ahead of the 2:55 pace group for several miles, but close enough that I could always hear people cheering for them. Tim Tollefson grew up nearby, so people know him, plus it's the first pace group and the BQ group, and they've got a sign, and it's nice to hear pretty much anything specific from spectators along the route.

I held steady with 6:43s from half through 25K. I was in front of the 2:55 group by a few seconds, then behind, then ahead. Then around mile 15-16 grabbing and eating a gel didn't go so well, and I ran my first 6:50-or-slower mile. The 2:55 pace group sped away.

25K to 30K with 6:51s.

I ran the next mile on pace, but immediately repeated a 6:50, then 7:01, then 7:08. Dammit! I'm losing it! Nearly 30 seconds per mile! How long till the 3:00 pace group passes me? I can't let that happen! Come on, come on, come on, keep it together!

30K to 35K with 7:14s.

The bridge over the American River, literally the only non-strip mall landmark on the course. I put in headphones hoping the tunes could save me. I ran by Amy cheering me on. I was dying. People were passing me.

35K to 40K with 7:11s.

So close. The 3:00 group hadn't passed me yet. Finally, we're almost there.

Let's go, finish strong, you can still set a PR!

40K to the Finish (42K) with 6:47s, for a finish time of 2:58:48, a PR by 30 seconds, and my third time breaking three hours!

(Pretty cool splits data and visualizations from myrace.ai. My Strava activity here.)

Instantly I was cold, and in a lot of pain. I rendezvoused with Amy, M & Y, and congratulated another Berkeley econ PhD (he was faster by 4 minutes!) I limped to lunch, then we drove home to Reno.

All in all, a good race. Of course I would have loved to be more consistent and finish with the 2:55 group, but I can't be that disappointed with a PR at age 46. If I'd just hung with the 2:55 pace group from the start could I have hung on to them longer? Maybe, but when I was right in there with them it felt a little claustrophobic and I might have had to spend energy avoiding getting tangled up with other runners.

I enjoyed training. I put in the speed work, consistently doing 800 and mile repeats on my lunch break, and getting consistent volume by running to and from work. Relative to training for a mountainous hundred, marathon training is easy because it takes so much less time--my weekend long runs take 2.5 hours instead of three times that.

I'm sure I'll be back, though I don't know when. It's not a pretty course, but it's fast, and that's probably what matters most with a road course--if I want scenery I'll run trails.

Gear, Fueling, Boring Notes for the Future

I started the race with a head buff that I ditched a couple miles in. I took off my arm sleeves after a few miles, but tucked them into my waistband and put them back on towards the end. (The fog never lifted and the race stayed cold and pretty close to ideal racing conditions.) I ran the race in my old Nike Vaporfly Next% 2's, which now have 103 miles on them, and probably one or two more races left. I did most of my training in Asics Novablast 5, which have a delightfully bouncy foam for daily training. I wore Patagonia Strider Pro shorts, which did OK at holding my gels, but after the race I had chafing on my lower back from the drawstring bouncing and chafing. Thankfully my brain didn't even report this to me until after the race, but perhaps in the future I should try to train with gels in my shorts to simulate race conditions. (I did all my long training runs with a vest to carry water, gels, and my phone.) I had a little upper thigh chafing, so I'm intrigued by the possibility of a 1/2 length tights to avoid that (but ones that somehow also carry the gels?) Lastly I think it helped a lot to train with the gels I used on race day, but I didn't train wolfing them down while running a 6:40 pace. When I'm stopped at a stoplight, I can carefully roll the gel up like a tube of toothpaste getting every last drop, then unroll and reroll it a second time for the true last drop. Doing that at race pace is another matter entirely. I probably only got 1/2 to 2/3 of the contents of each gel out, and had to supplement with the race-provided gels.

None of that is a huge deal, but it might add up to a few seconds next time.

IMTUF 10 Years Later

2025-10-18T23:46:00.003-04:00

I've long said I don't like repeating races (Western States and Hardrock aside) but I decided to do IMTUF again this year. I ran it in 2015 as part of my 400-mile Onion Slam [race report].

2015 was a fire year, so the course was significantly different than the standard at the time. The start was further north at Bugdorf Hot Springs, but the new "Super Course" starts at the sound end at Jug Mountain Ranch, which makes staying at a Bay Area friend's cabin nearby much easier, and made it nice for Amy to come along and make a weekend of it, and meant I'd only seen something like 40% of the course before.

2015 v 2025 course

I trained pretty well, maxing out at two 90+ mile weeks (90+ running, 120+ if you include biking) three and four weeks before the race. I tapered and was well-rested for the race. My goal was 30 hours, compared to 31:46 in 2015. To my pleasant surprise, my friend Zak from Washington state called me the day before the race and let me know he was running too. Nano and a few of his SoCal friends were running too, so I hoped to run into him as well.

The pre-race meeting was "mandatory" but short and sweet, and Jeremy was quite enthusiastic about his race, so I didn't mind it. I got a little worried because the forecast had migrated into the hot category, and I packed more for cold. Partly due to the forecast and partly from my mind always doing a delayed updating that includes my previous trip, and my recent Minnesota trip was unusually cold. I asked everyone I could think of if they had a spare pair of arm sleeves, which I loved at Hardrock, but foolishly left out of my bag for Idaho. I couldn't find a pair so I hoped that my sun hoodie would accomplish the same thing.

The race was scheduled to start at 6 with a generous wait-until-the-porta-potty-line-is-done exact start, so I got my two morning poops in for a good start to the day. I saw Zak right before the start, and again pretty soon after. I wasn't exactly killing it, but he let me go ahead, even though he's generally faster than me. I figured I'd see him again.

The race starts off climbing a dirt road, and didn't become a conga line as it switched to singletrack (it's not a very large race). Jughandle Mountain is the first climb, and there's a nice talus section at the top that requires slowing down a bit to jump/step/climb from rock to rock with great views over a sheer drop-off on one side. The first aid station is after descending back down to the shore of Louie Lake, with great views back up to the peak.

Louie Lake

Then another and another aid station, and I remembered that, oh, yeah, 10 miles is far apart between aid stations. Thankfully I told myself from the beginning of the race that this was a high altitude eating contest. At first I was trying to keep a running tally of all the calories I was taking in, but that quickly became too complicated since I was only guessing about how many calories were in a bottle of sports drink from the aid stations, and I couldn't remember whether I counted the bottle when I started drinking it or when I finished it. So instead I just turned on my watch timer and told it to beep every 25 minutes, and I would take a gel or eat every time it went off.

The RD did a good job telling us what fuel would be on the course in advance, so I bought some in advance and trained with it. It is very simple, no flavor, 2:1 glucose to fructose. Somehow it tastes fruity to me (fructose, duh). Not exciting, but I'm fine with it. I also brought a bunch of Never Seconds (very similar) and a few Maurtens that I had left from Hardrock. I got over the dead slug consistency of Maurtens and actually like them (and wish I'd grabbed more from HR since I'm not going to pay $4 per gel for them myself.) Carbs Fuel's drink mix ratio is slightly different (1:0.8) but mostly what matters to me is that most aid stations made it reasonably strongly concentrated, the way I like it.

The second descent around mile 29 was a nice runnable switchbacking road. When I started it I was soon bunched up with three other runners. The road was dusty, so I sped up to go in front and avoid choking on their dust. I also love a good runnable descent, and I wasn't going super fast (9-10 minute miles) but I felt in my quads that I was going to regret it. I knew it, but it was fun, and I didn't want to stop or slow down, and I didn't want to be behind the three runners near me. And unfortunately I was right. By the time that downhill was done, my quads were cooked and descending was slow and painful the rest of the race. I could still climb, so that's what I had to rely on.

After this aid station was a runnable dirt road, and the only bad part was that it was getting hot. So I now had to test my sun hoody for cooling, by taking it off and dumping it fully in a nice cold creek. It was annoying and slow to take off my pack, hat, and sunglasses as well, but it was even more annoying that as I was doing this, a female runner said to me "You don't mind if I pee right here do you?" and proceeded to squat and pee directly into the creek, 10 feet downstream from me. I said neither "What the fuck is wrong with you?" nor "Uh, yes, I do mind, pee 100 feet from water like everyone else," but I thought them both.

Hearing about ultra-runners who attempt to run the AT or PCT I'm often amazed how ill-prepared (or wimpy) they are in bad weather or just what they don't know about camping that seems obvious to me since I backpacked before doing ultras. You pee 100 feet from water and you poop 200 feet from water. I'm not at all saying that needs to be strict, or I myself always follow that. Some runners pee in the trail, sometimes while running. So we're loosey goosey about it. But I've never heard of anyone choosing to squat in the creek while someone else is basically dunking themselves in it. Was the sudden urge to pee at the sound of rushing water uncontrollable? Was she a Colorado River rafter and used to being told to pee in the river since it stinks up small beaches if done on land (the solution to pollution is dilution)? People are weird and/or uninformed.

So I puzzled over that for the next while, as my sun hoody eventually dried out and the day heated up. There's a nice packed-in-by-goats aid station at mile 36, I dunked the hoody again, and Zak caught up to me. We did the next section to North Crestline at mile 47 together, and he made me laugh a few times--he has a humorous way of saying something to the effect of "yeah you didn't exactly hide your opinion on that subject matter, Garret" that recalls some hyperbolic strongly opinionated statement I made about any number of mundane topics. That helped make the hot section faster and more fun.

Fun with goats

He didn't need to stay long at the North Crestline aid station though, and I needed at least another minute. It was a gently descending, if rocky, dirt road descent out of there, and I was having trouble with it. It's a perfectly runnable section if you're in good shape, so I guessed I probably wouldn't see Zak again, and I didn't. After the road stretch is a mile and a half of the "Terrible Terrence" Trail, which isn't much of a trail, but a steep descent that was tough on my quads. I tripped and ate it once at the bottom when you're paralleling the North Fork of the Payette River. Then there's a bit of road to Upper Payette Lake and mile 55. I'd gotten to 50 miles in 13 hours and a bit, which is I was happy with. The problem is always the second half.

Along Crestline

I don't remember mile 55 to 70, but I assume they happened. Leaving the Snowslide aid station at mile 70 I knew would be a brutal climb--that was one of the few things I remembered from 2015--just an unrelenting switchback-free, loose dirt and anklebreaker gully of a climb. 1,800' in 2 miles. At least the climb wasn't sharply painful, as the descent was. Not quite as steep, but brushy, narrow, uneven, and not fun on the quads. Eventually I connected back to trail we'd been on earlier in the race for a short out and back to the only repeated aid station (mile 20 and 82). I might have hit them at a low moment (it was 4 or 5 in the morning after all) but I didn't feel like I got the emotional boost or hot food I was hoping for, so I moved on to the last climb. I had seven consecutive miles slower than 20 minutes/mile. Two of those were the aid station and a poop, but I wasn't setting land speed records when I was moving either.

It started to get light, and on the final climb up to 8,000 feet I switched from podcasts to the latest SA Cosby thriller novel, King of Ashes. It was plenty thrilling and easy to follow in my mindless state, but I don't think I'll bother listening to any more of his books--none of the characters ever have to seriously deal with consequences of their morally questionable actions. It's just "for the family" like it's a Fast & Furious movie and the "good" guys always win. Thrilling but too stupid.

The descent was fine but long. There was one short section where we veered off a road that looked like it continued down, but instead we had to climb. There was a sign that said something like "Turn left and GO UP. Yes, up! Use your anger as FUEL!!" which I sincerely appreciated, because sarcasm, anger, and making it blindingly obvious which way the course goes is indeed the best way to deal with a climb in the last few miles of a race that really does seem unnecessary, but probably is unavoidable for whatever property ownership/trail maintenance/other reason.

Clouds rolling in after sunrise

The final miles were mostly downhill to get us back to Jug Mountain Ranch, and I ran them at just under 15-minute pace. Not astounding, but I got it done, in 29:14. 40th place out of 121 finishers. I guess I'm happy with that. My only goal was to go under 30 hours, and I did it. But it's hard to be completely satisfied with such large positive splits. Such is the hedonic treadmill of life and running.

Summary:

Overall this was a great race. The course was very well marked. Basically perfectly marked. Flags before and after turns, arrows (and distances!) at key junctions, and a few sarcastic comments at the stupidest points so it was clear that yes, this really was the right way (sorry, not sorry). The trail is rough, and perhaps a bit brushy, but logged out well. Most importantly, it's beautiful, with some great alpine terrain.

When people ask me what are the best (i.e. most scenic and well-organized) 100s they can get into without lotteries, I have long said IMTUF and Bighorn, and I recently added Crazy. I feel even more strongly about that after doing IMTUF again.

Fueling:

I fueled well, eating a gel or taking caffeine or a salt tab or something nearly every 25 minutes when my watch went off. I gagged a couple-few times, but I didn't let that scare me off continuing to eat. Maybe next time I'll see if I can increase the frequency to every 20 minutes.

Gear:

I wore a brand new pair of La Sportiva Prodigio Pro shoes. I took a risk on them, having tried them on but never really run in them before race day. Risky, but I had a change of shoes in my mile 20/80 drop bag if I needed them. (I didn't.) I'd say they're almost as good as everyone says they are, and there's a reason nobody seems to be able to keep them in stock. The built-in gaiter is probably mostly good enough by itself, but I ran with a pair of gaiters over them anyway, probably overkill. I used my ancient Peter Bakwin 2.0 UD pack as usual. The aid stations mostly did not have ice so my insulated bottles were not really accomplishing much, but it worked. The aid stations are often 10-12 miles apart, so I was needed the full capacity of my two 21-ounces bottles. A wet sun hoody works to cool off in the heat, but light-colored arm sleeves are much better since you don't have to strip down so much to dunk them.

Summer is Over

2025-09-28T23:11:00.002-04:00

I just returned from an overnight trip to Shenandoah National Park. I'm slowly working away at all 500 miles of official trail in the park, as I did in Joshua Tree. It's something to do, I guess. The dogs are allowed to come with me, so that's nice, but I don't think George's hips are up for it.

Long Green Tunnel, just beginning to turn red

Margo happy at the one sunny spot

The trip to the Boundary Waters was fun. I prefer mountains, but a canoe is a nice change of pace, and I could definitely see Amy and I spending a month or more in a boat sometime if the opportunity ever arises. It would have been better if I were more confident in my chanterelle identification, since they were all over the place.

Kevlar canoes make this way easier than I remembered

Caught & Released

The trip to Western States and Hardrock back in June/July was obviously the highlight of my summer, but I just finished my third and likely final 100-miler of the year last weekend: IMTUF. I first ran it in 2015 as part of the Onion Slam (Tahoe 200, IMTUF 100, and the Bear 100 on consecutive weekends). Repeating it was definitely worth it--I'll write a full race report next time--it's just overshadowed by everything going on, work definitely included. (Ask me in person sometime. Let's just say I'm always open to new and exciting opportunities.)

I've got one quick desert weekend coming up, and then I'm running CIM in December. I'm looking forward to running less, but faster; hopefully that actually pans out.

I read Frémont: Explorer for a Restless Nation by Ferol Egan, Watership Down, by Richard Adams, and Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry. I don't count audiobooks as reading; I read these, and I liked the feel of the musty old mass market paperbacks in my hands. I liked the writing as well.

Taking Amy to see a movie made me realize how absurdly expensive movie theaters are, so I joined the local chain's unlimited subscription plan and watched a lot of bad movies at marginal cost of zero dollars, only the time that I can never recover. I disliked Americana, Honey Don't, and The Long Walk, thought Weapons was OK but not great, and really liked Eden.

BWCA Day 5: Exit

2025-09-12T11:02:00.001-04:00

We woke up at 6:00 and started packing in a light rain. I made quick oatmeal and coffee and we were off by 7:30 or so. We were half a mile from the big portage from Vera to Ensign. We went straight in and made quick work of it. Something about Ensign Lake was different. I cast a line in, MFS said maybe let it get deep and just trawl it behind the boat, and pretty much instantly I had a Walleye in the boat. It was surely the biggest fish I ever caught, though maybe I caught a big rainbow trout on the Madison in Montana when I spent a day at a friend's cabin outside Yellowstone. To Joe's dismay, I threw the fish back and it eagerly swam away. We had plenty of food left and were only a few miles from our exit pickup. A few minutes later I cast again, or rather, tried to cast and accidentally plopped the line in the water a foot from the canoe. Oh well, let it play out. Then a few seconds later a northern pike was in the boat. I squeezed it to keep it still and it barfed up its lunch, it bit me, and I put it back in the water. It took some swishing to revive it, but I think it made it home OK.

An hour or two more paddling, two infinitesimal portages, and we met our tow guy, who was there early but clearly happy to hang out and read his book while we cooked lunch at a nearby campsite. Eventually we swung by, and we motorboated back to the launch.

Back to the outfitters to scrub the black off the griddle and return the gear, back to A's uncle's for lovely meals, jumps in the cold lake and sits in the sauna, and a couple short jogs on country roads. Then the scenic drive along Lake Superior shoreline back to Duluth, and we flew our separate ways.

Overall a great trip. It's not a mountain adventure, but for a trip with friends of different ages and experience, it was great. Lends credence to my notion that someday Amy and I could paddle the Yukon and both have fun. I'm just disappointed we didn't name our boats: Fannie and Freddie? Or to keep all the boat names female, Fannie and Ginnie. (We all could be said to work in the fair housing realm.)

BWCAW Night 4: Vera Lake

2025-09-09T19:05:00.001-04:00

Woke up early and got out of camp around 7:45 when the water was still glassy. Did a series of several short portages, then one half-miler (180 or 200 "rods" an absurd unit of measure) that took the guys a while. We moved on to Vera Lake and took a break for a late lunch before attempting the next long portage, except that the clouds were really building and looked bad. So we stayed out and withing minutes it was pouring rain. I got my tent up east, then got wet trying to set up the group tarp. Three of us sat under it counting the sight/sound gap for the lightning. Mostly 4-6 seconds, a couple less than one, not that fun. The rain kept coming, so I eventually went to bed early with nothing but hot chocolate for dinner. Too wet, not worth it. The storm put on a good show, and I read a few more chapters of Lonesome Dove.