I Want Immediate Results

When I was in high school my father said once (or multiple times) that cross country skiing was "the most aerobic activity you can do," one of his many factoids of unknown veracity that is permanently lodged in my brain. 

Thus, living here in the snowy wasteland, I've always been XC-curious, but never had the gear and always had other recreation interests taking up my attention. Of all the things one can do on a groomed trail, fat biking is the least interesting, while classic skiing looks too akin to flat skinning, which I get my fill of every winter during big GTNP tours. But skate skiing is this fascinating, graceful, fast, hard sport, like running but with enhanced technology and requiring of immaculate form. 

I finally laid hands on a skate set-up this year and realized the Nordic trails in Teton Valley are stellar—there are miles and miles everywhere and although before I had an academic understanding of the value of the local nonprofit grooming organization, now I really get how wonderful it is to have regular, high-quality grooming very close by (including one track within walking distance, one within biking distance, and one accessible by bus—be still my heart). Unlike any other sport I enjoy, I can do this one alone, in repetitive loops, with headphones, for just a sweaty hour, without fear of avalanches or serious injury, and actually feel satisfied in the end. 

But now I have to learn how to do it. 

This has been the first time I've approached a new sport so methodically—I chased others in downhill skiing and backcountry skiing until I got "competent" enough, but I still regret never getting formal lessons, and I started running and riding too young to care, but as a real grown-ass adult I want to get the fundamentals right, especially because in skate skiing technique truly separates the anguished flopping from effortless gliding, and using good form right from the beginning seems really important. I took a free lesson (thanks, work) and want more, I want second-by-second body movement analysis, I want someone to tell me the secret to going really fast.

I have a few moments of deep, angsty frustration every session, but it never feels too distressing. I am an uphill athlete. I really enjoy aerobic activity and when I feel slow I always know I can do better if I try harder. 

Ever since I started mountain biking competitively I surrounded myself with people who valued being rad more than being fit, and it has dogged me ever since, the feeling that I am not rad and the knowledge that I am not the kind of person who can get past my own brain and be rad. I do love going downhill so much in any sport but in the worlds of biking and skiing, competence is inadequate—if you can't fucking send it you're not worth shit. It often frustrates me to tears, wanting so bad to send it and knowing that will never be me. 

On the other hand, I'm pretty dang good at the fitness stuff, even though I haven't tried being race-fit in years. 

I haven't had a breakthrough in skate skiing yet, but I'm so hungry for it. I want to somehow be a natural, be a stellar skier right off the bat. I'm actually using Strava to compare times on the same course on different days, to try and track incremental improvement, which I never do with other sports because it seems irrelevant. And I'm not letting myself fall into the gear nerdery just yet, because I want to get it figured out before I let myself blame my equipment (it's the start-on-a-hardtail rule). 

And then of course I can't resist eyeing the race calendar, but I know right now I can't hang, and I don't like doing races in which I can't hang. I still remember that feeling you get when you're totally blown right from the start line because you go too hard and you have no idea what you're doing. It's not fun. And that's obviously where my already tenuous form would fall completely apart. 

All I want out of racing is to impress people who will say Wow you only learned to skate this winter? You're amazing! I am at my happiest when someone tells me I'm doing a good job. I need constant positive feedback, maybe just to confirm the inner voice that is always saying I'm pretty sure I'm fucking awesome and quiet the other voice that says God why am I so lame. That is not a good enough reason to sign up for a race, so I'm resisting the urge...for now. 

So in other words, I'm obsessed with becoming a good skate skier as soon as possible so I can go really fast and hurt a lot and finish (win) races.  

Pretty sure I'm doing it wrong, but fortunately the photo is too small to confirm.

Open Season

Last week at an informal state of the snowpack talk, Don Sharaf of the American Avalanche Institute told his audience that, while the Bridger-Teton Avalanche Center forecasters don't like to turn the whole pyramid to green, it's officially open season in the Tetons. The frightening early season instabilities have healed themselves and slow, steady accumulation with negligible weird weather means the best possible snow conditions: deep and not moving.

"This kind of stability means you get your bucket of balls and just start teeing up shots," Big Don told us.

Indeed.

We had planned in advance to go use up a couple Mountain Collective days at Big Sky, so unfortunately we weren't taking as much advantage of open season as we could be, but decided to aim for a big walk on Sunday. Talking about it and poring over trip reports on the drive home from Montucky, we laid out a plan for Buck. We decided to approach the massive jutting peak from a different route than most people did, a route that added in a little chute and seemed to make more sense.

Buck is a beaut, for sure.

I had a vague sick feeling in my stomach thinking about the descent, mostly because a half decade of hyper-awareness and timidity around avalanche terrain really runs counter to the idea of skiing a huge, steep, open, east-facing aspect, completely at the mercy of those twin snow-movers, sun and wind.

But we packed all of our sharps (a whippet, ice axe, and crampons for each) and arose at 4 a.m. to tackle the peak, maybe. Our biggest fear was that the face would warm too quickly, but at the trailhead the temperature gauge read -10 degrees, and the shock of cold totally blindsided us. Our concern turned to the wisdom of leaving the dog in the car, which we usually do in the Park because it means she isn't left at home to her own devices for what could be twelve or fifteen hours. We fluffed jackets and blankets onto the seats for her and hoped the sun would emerge quickly and turn the van into a greenhouse.

After last week's mission I wondered if big tours were getting easier, but this week I wondered why I felt so shitty. We were both slow and dehydrated from a quasi-debauched Big Sky weekend with Bria and soon lost sight of the objective. Halfway up the annoyingly uneven Maverick skin track, we stopped to have that important conversation: we're not moving fast enough to tackle the summit.

Also, the standard way people get up the peak is via an airy knife ridge with 1,500 feet of exposure, and while we knew the bootpack had been well-established by purportedly fifteen skiers the day before, I loathe exposure. I'm not really cut out for ski mountaineering, obviously. We could boot up the less-exposed face instead but it'd be slower going and people might drop onto us at any time.

We skinned up a gusty, wind-slabby traverse to the top of Chute the Moon and I remembered how much I need to work on keeping my composure when the uphill is even a little bit sketchy. I fall apart every damn time.

So so so so so beautiful.

After skiing the mellow chute in crappy snow, we did another short, windy, butt-clenching climb that should have been a breeze, then pushed past that into the calmer sunshine.

Looking around the deeper part of the range in perfect visibility, it was astonishing to see ski tracks on some of the most consequential lines and faces. Wow, everyone got the memo about open season.  This weekend people tagged the biggest summits in the Tetons and tackled objectives that only get skied a few times a season, if at all. It's very inspiring, and very humbling, because I don't have the ability to climb or ski most of that stuff.

Backing off an objective but still getting to ski two couloirs in a day is pretty neato.

The line we skied, Buckshot off the north side of Buck, was very cool and very steep (for me), and because it has a big snowfield above it, I would never touch it in more dangerous conditions. As it was, the snow was edgeable but wind-battered and firm. I skied slowly, stopping often to catch my breath and shake out my legs.

We continued to admire ski lines all the way down Avalanche Canyon, then committed to the undulating luge through the trees that spat us out on Bradley Lake.

A quick snack stop on the lake. I'm so fortunate to have this one as my backcountry partner.

While we didn't even come close to the summit, it was worth the walk to look around at the majestic peaks in the range's interior. And being done by one left plenty of time for lounging in the sun, eating pizza, and bemoaning the new tanlines on my face. And the dog was fine.

Building Character: The Teton Traverse

Last weekend after a couple lackluster pre-season Shoshone laps, Dapper Dan made a surprising suggestion: a November Teton traverse. 

In the summer people often run the Teton Canyon to Death Canyon traverse, which is a pretty mellow way to get from one side of the range to the other. In mid-winter some people exit from the back of the Village, thus starting high and finding some interesting lines along the way, but the Teton to Death traverse doesn't have much appeal to skiers. 

It's still low tide in the Tetons, but Dan's proposal started to make sense; route-finding would be straightforward because the summer trails are still visible under the sparse snow, avy danger has yet to really rear its head, daylight savings is looming, and the Teton Canyon road is still open, cutting off four miles of travel. 

I did my last big ski tour on Cinco de Mayo with Cy and BriAndrew. It was a long walk to a big line, the aesthetic (and amusingly named) Fallopian Tube on Mt Woodring. Hot, footsore, recovering from some moments of intense fear, and feeling exceedingly accomplished, I packed up my winter gear, took the batteries out of my beacon, and filed away the Grand Teton National Park skiing mentality, to be retrieved no earlier than 2020 (or maybe December if the early season was really deep). 

Yep, skied that!

So imagine my surprise to find myself once again at a trailhead before dawn in single digit weather on November 2, turning on my headlamp and shouldering a pack that was stupid heavy. 

Our expectations were completely realistic. The purpose of this undertaking was conditioning, covering ground, trying out weird new set-ups (Cy had awesome AT snowblades and Dan was using XC skis and mountaineering boots, very appropriate for what was basically an XC mission), and coming home with that full body fatigue that only comes with really really big days--a fatigue that I find hard to achieve in mud season when everything is kind of meh. 

I really didn't expect to be doing long approaches before dawn in November

Skinning along the Teton Shelf at sunrise

We wore running shoes and were glad about it, because the first three miles and the last five miles of the traverse were on dry dirt or thin snow. We emerged from the Devil's Staircase and finally started skinning on the Teton Shelf just as the sun rose, illuminating beautiful couloirs above us all along the shelf. After a snack break at Mount Meek Pass we started along the Death Canyon Shelf, wondering if we'd have to follow the circuitous summer trail all the way to the head of Death Canyon. Although the south-facing cliff band below us was alarmingly scoured, we managed to find one still sketchy but not completely bare path down to the canyon. I had the dubious fortune of bringing the only normal ski set-up, although Cy skied the choke and rocky apron with flair and Dan down-climbed with the agility of a goat. 

The only "skiing" of the traverse

Looking down the chute, I knew I couldn't ski as if it were my second day of the season, melting into the backseat as I tried to remember where to point my torso. Nope, I had to draw on memories from last season when we skied several lines outside of my comfort zone and I finally became a proficient enough skier that being locked into skis felt way safer than being on foot. 

So I made tight turns and a few long side slips down the chute. It wasn't pretty but it was safe and I didn't even scratch a base beneath the chute while bopping through the boulder field blanketed in a few inches of snow. 

Those few turns were the only ones of the trip. We put skins on and learned something about Death Canyon: it's flat as fuck. Down skinning for miles and miles is fairly offensive, especially when interspersed with short techy descents that rattled Dan with his strange but sort of perfect skis. 

So...much...skinning

After another much needed snack and beer at the Patrol Cabin we set off again but soon realized that the well-traveled boulder-strewn trail did not merit skis. Back into running shoes. We each settled in to bang out those last miles, numbing our thoughts with music or Star Wars audiobooks, one foot in front of the other. Dan had left his truck at the winter trailhead, not realizing the summer trailhead was still open, so, further demoralized, we trudged down the road. Eventually some nice Jackson bros stopped and drove us the final mile to the truck, much to my relief. 

So...much...walking...with...skis

It was a hard day. Eighteen miles in ten hours. It was a little irksome that my skis only served as glorified snowshoes, greatly improving travel over flat, untouched snow but never eating up the downhill miles the way skis usually do. However, I wouldn't have chosen different conditions in which to do that traverse. In deep skiable snow the route still wouldn't be much fun, and if I tried to run it in the summer I would hate how flat it is. Why set an elaborate shuttle and go through the mountains when you can just climb to the top of them instead? 

We joked that we were prematurely preparing our bodies for ski tours that wouldn't be happening for another two months. But it felt really good to do something a little silly but very demanding, to remember my limits but to also know that I'm a stronger backcountry traveler than I ever have been. And to see the Tetons at first light from the heart of the range. 

But seriously, very beautiful

Stud Run in the Bone Zone

In my relentless pursuit of novelty, I couldn’t resist signing up for the Angry Horse gravel bike race in Bone, Idaho. I registered for the 82-mile version, the Stud Run, because, I mean, why not. And I signed Cy up too, because misery loves company.

The "town" of Bone is tucked into the Caribou foothills east of Idaho Falls. As we drove through a wind farm at 5:30 a.m., the turbines turned sluggishly and I wondered if that boded well. Turns out, yes. Barely any wind until the race ended. 

The 82-mile race was one big loop, which as you might have noticed by now is something I find deeply appealing. It's made up mostly of excellent dirt roads. I started out at a very conservative pace, chilled to the bone and annoyed by all the roadies around me. The first forty miles swooped through farmlands. Rain from the previous evening had turned some sections into slick, churned up mud but it was never quite bad enough to be problematic; rather, the mud added interest to the ceaseless up-and-downs of the ag roads. I knew that the course elevation profile was mellow at first, with a series of long climbs coming in the second half of the race, and I was impatient to be done with the rolling terrain. It made my knees hurt and these roadies kept leapfrogging with me. When the climbing started in earnest I settled in happily. I love long climbs. Also the roadies dropped me. Whatever. 

With the elevation gain we emerged into a crazy beautiful new ecosystem of aspen groves, wildflowers, and lush fields with little brooks trickling beside the road. The landscape was so hyper-saturated with green that it felt like the plants were beaming their own light onto my face and arms. The temperature was perfect and the wind never picked up. Caribou Mountain, still snowy, stood sentinel in the distance and over one rise I saw the Grand Teton on the horizon. 

Words and photos do not do it justice. It was SO BEAUTIFUL out there in Bone.

Near the end of the race we dropped into a scenic creek canyon, then had to climb ten miles out of it to the finish line. It was a slog, and scary to get on a busy highway for the first time all day. Idaho Falls drivers don't give one solitary fuck about safe passing of cyclists. The cumulative miles wore me down and my upper body felt withered and weak, but I finished the race in much higher spirits than usual. I never descended into that dark place where I hate everything and want to quit for no good reason.

It definitely helped to have my perpetual riding partner at my side. I did not want to ride with Cy the whole race, because I think those kinds of couples are gross, but he has become a real endurance athlete and I could not for the life of me drop him on any of the climbs. He was actually putting time into me on everything but I'm wickedly stubborn and consistent if nothing else. This is the first race we've done in which he crossed the finish line before me. But just barely. 

In a pretty strong field of roadie women, I placed sixth. It's kind of a shitty finish but as I’ve come to learn in recent years, I can either choose to prepare for races or I can just wing them and accept mediocrity. And every time I opt for the latter.

Anyway, the Angry Horse was a nice run-up to the premier event of the season: this weekend's Teton Ogre Adventure Race. The race directors had us all convinced that last year would be the final chapter in the Ogre book, but apparently they love hosting the challenging bike-and-trek scavenger hunt as much as we all love doing it, so it’s back for 2019. I can’t wait to see where the Ogre will take us this year.

The Spoon Couloir

Couloir skiing is what you’re supposed to do in the Tetons. You’re supposed to hunger for those long, steep, narrow strips of snow, lines that you have to ascend to assess, and lines that you’re fully committed to once you’re in them. I’m not sure, though, that I actually like couloir skiing.

Not my happy place.

Cy, Dapper Dan and I set out from Driggs early on Saturday in pursuit of the Spoon, an aesthetic couloir in GTNP that cuts through rock bulwarks on Disappointment Peak's northeast face. I hadn’t skied anything scary for a while so I was nervous. Let me clarify: the Spoon is a scary line to me, but it wouldn’t be for many skiers I know. I don’t enjoy skinning on icy surfaces, bootpacking up steep lines, or skiing in no-fall zones. I’ve been skiing couloirs for half a decade but definitely started before I was actually a competent enough skier to safely do so. Fortunately I have had supportive partners every time and definitely got real lucky

once or twice.

We were skiing with pointy accessories (an ice axe or a whippet, Black Diamond’s ingenious ski pole with a pick on the end for self arrests), a new concept to me, and one I’m not entirely comfortable with. If I need more sharp objects than just my ski edges, I’m leery of the consequences.

Skinning at dawn.

The forecast seemed to be on our side; no snow had fallen in a week and the impending storm kept getting pushed back in the day. We made quick work of the long flat skin from the Taggart Lake Trailhead to the toe of Disappointment and then booked it uphill, me lagging slightly behind those two with their long-ass legs. Cresting the shore of Surprise Lake, we were hit with big gusts funneling through the basin. The snow was polished to an icy sheen by the constant wind. We picked our way around the Amphitheater Lake basin, found softer snow in the apron of the Spoon, and put our skis on our backs. The first traverse freaked me out because I hate bootpacking sideways on steep slopes, but we decided to continue uphill after I had stopped hyperventilating. It was fast going at first, the boys punching steps into the supportive snow, but near the top of the couloir the wind intensified, slapping our faces and blinding us with vicious spindrifts.

We fought our way across the top to hide in the flattish berth of a rock. The guys were patient as I transitioned shakily, paranoid that all of my gear would be ripped from my hands by the wind and thrown into the abyss.

Cy finds some soft snow after 800 feet of hardpack.

The avalanche danger appeared to be minimal. The loading zone was scraped clean and the couloir was groomer-firm. We each skittered down the slope, and I made nary an arcing turn; my top priority was to keep my ski edges dug into the snow. Each time another gust blasted me, I sat down and plunged my whippet behind me. Pretty graceless way to ski a couloir, if you ask me.

That said, I'm a much better skier than I used to be, so the descent was uneventful. The three of us were very happy to exit the Spoon without incident and we traveled down to Delta Lake via a much nicer and almost as aesthetic second line. The snow in Glacier Gulch was soft and the terrain was playful, but I wasn’t as appreciative as I would have been with fresher legs. Somehow the trek back to the car was much longer than the ingress, but isn’t that always the case when your boots are rubbing your feet raw and you can hear the siren call of Coors?

Dapper, stoked to be in soft snow again.
Little did he know he would be split skiing the rest of the descent.

Safely off the mountain, I reflected on the fear that grips me in couloirs, and wondered if it’s worth it. Climbing and descending consequential lines scares the piss out of me for extended amounts of time and I don’t really enjoy it. Am I a real Teton skier? Should I content myself with skiing low-angle bowls and effortless powder trees? And would that be the worst thing in the world?

Or will I forget the paralyzing fear once a few weeks have passed and start perusing trip reports again, dreaming of big, beautiful lines?

I mean it is really fun sometimes.

Not the Worst Running Race Ever

When I saw the race announcement for the Palisades Ultra Trail Series I got super jazzed because it looked amazing, it was nearby in a mountain range I wanted to explore more, and it looked hard as shit. Also the marathon was a beautiful aesthetic loop with “98% singletrack” (not true, but I ain’t mad...anymore).

The race directors’ vision was to put us out there on disappearing trails deep in the Palisades. Unfortunately they had to make the tough call at the last minute to change the 50 and 100 mile courses and made them a lot crappier than the original plan. Some of the most remote sections were so overgrown and littered with blowdowns that they decided it was dangerous to put ultra racers out on the course in those conditions. Instead of big sexy loops, they had to cut back on their aspirations and trim the courses into smaller loops and out-and-backs. Logistically it was far less of a headache but I could really feel for them and the racers—I’m sure everyone was disappointed. They didn't really change the marathon course though, to my delight.

The vibe at the start was pleasantly chill. The race announcer kept goading people to stand closer to the front but everyone was hesitant. The race started with a few yards of doubletrack then we immediately turned uphill, just how I like it, and started plodding in a conga line straight up the steep, rooty, dusty hillside. I dared to burn a few matches to pass a big group of walkers so I didn’t have to climb with my nose in some dude’s ass. Soon we were high above the reservoir, contouring around south-facing slopes and enjoying big views. I heard from afar what sounded like a raucous crowd of supporters and couldn’t believe that so many people had rallied and found a good spectating spot to cheer on runners, but as I got closer I laughed: it was actually a noisy herd of sheep occupying the drainage below the trail. Oh, Idaho.

Early in the race when I was just plain stoked.

After a precipitous descent, the trail crossed through a wide bowl of scattered stone surrounded by cliffs. It seemed like part of a mountain had calved off and formed a barren stone basin in the otherwise lush landscape. Mordor radness.

Cy and I leapfrogged each other several times. I’m faster than him on downhills and he’s faster than me on uphills. Turns out we’re pretty much the same speed overall, which is cool.

The trail climbed and descended again, then we hit a flat gravel road section, which made me super disgruntled. “I hate hate hate road,” I thought in rhythm to my pounding footsteps. Fortunately the road ended with a nice big aid station. There was a dude in a diaper. One volunteer brandished a sign: “You’re doing awesome! Only a crap ton of miles left!”

The course moseyed up North Indian Creek, then took a left and headed up Garden Creek, beginning to gain elevation more efficiently. A runner popped up behind me and I thought it was a chick. Turns out it was just a womanly-looking guy.

Just as I started worrying about water, another aid station came into sight. The volunteers there had purified water from a little stream and poured the pure run-off into my hydration bladder. One of them reassured me there were less than ten miles to go, and pointed to a peak at the head of the canyon. “You just have to get to the top of that first.”

Slowly, slowly going uphill.

I grabbed some bacon and settled in for the climb. The trail was a magic little piece of tread sculpted onto steep shale slopes, rising over little plateaus and ridges on the magnificent landscape. The canyon dropped down behind us, a waterfall poured off red cliffs to my right, and I could see a steady line of runners far ahead and above me. I felt good.

A woman came into sight several switchbacks above me. She was the first chick I had seen all day and I started feeling competitive. I caught her at the top of the ridge but she started going off course, so I yelled to her to come back. Her mistake gave me a small lead but she was a fast descender and soon passed me on the rocky downhill. She introduced herself as Juli. We caught and dropped Cy and another dude, and when Cy darted off the trail for us, I could tell he was stoked to see us together. I charged down behind her, thinking there was no way I could sustain this reckless pace, but we had another moment of quick orienteering through a meadow and when I found the next course marking, she disappeared behind me. 

It was real pretty.

I was confused and stressed by her disappearance, feeling like she must be breathing down my neck and would catch me any minute. I ran faster than I wanted to through long, flattish miles of dense overgrowth with lurking rocks and vines and logs waiting to throw me to the ground if I stopped concentrating on my feet for even a second.

Race volunteers had put a ton of work into clearing the course, but the thick vegetation was stronger than their machete swipes. I pushed through slow miles of claustrophobic green corridor, aware that I could at any moment run into a moose or bear but too tired to care. My feet hurt. I was hungry. I hate flat descents. I started feeling emotional. I didn’t want Juli to catch me.

As I left the final aid station, I saw her behind me and had another little moment of panic (but also relief that she hadn’t seriously hurt herself). That was motivation enough to keep a steady, uncomfortable pace.

I finally broke out onto good trail again and put my head down for the final three miles on Big Elk Creek, trying to relax my upper body and focus on good running form. It was hot and flat. Have I mentioned I hate flat running? The half marathon course was an out-and-back that stayed on Big Elk and I thought about how terrible that sounded.

I finally saw the parking lot and staggered to the finish line. As I ran up the final flight of stairs and rang the finisher’s bell, the race announcer proclaimed that I was the second woman to finish. I almost started crying with happiness and brokenness. I fell down on the grass, as one does.

The first place woman called out “COOLIA!!” She had to remind me of who she was (the rad sister of one of my bike team moms) because I was an empty shell of a person.

I really can't believe I got second. Also, 14th out of 66 doesn't suck.

Juli finished shortly after me and Cy sprinted in just after that. Then we had to book it back to the valley for a wedding.

I had a better attitude at this race (I never decided that I hated running and would never do it again) and a better finishing kick than I used to back in the old days. I credit that to age and experience, or something. Which is good, because I’m signed up for another race in a month.