Sparkle Day

The bloated moon hung low in the west. We piled into Sam's second homeowner SUV and made the quick trip into the canyon. It was a day of utmost sparkle. The trees were thickly laced with rime. We breathed in sequins.

I was still hanging onto one of those lame little winter colds that never fully evaporates. I coughed and blew snot. My lanky companions skinned away from me. Their long legs worked up and down like pistons. I tried not to be grumpy about always getting dropped. Immediately.

Our progress slowed when the trail turned elsewhere and we had to cut up to the plateau. The only sound was the gentle collapse of powder under our skis.

We peered across the canyon at the objective. We gauged wind-loading and line choice. A lot of snow and a lot of wind had just happened. Concerning but perhaps not a deal breaker. Perhaps.

The first run was fast, a little sun affected. We straight-lined through a chute. Our fingers got cold in the shaded basin below. The climb out of the creek bed was taxing. We each felt fatigued for different reasons. The pistons pumped at half speed through untouched snow. We swapped pulls at the front.

The Grand emerged before us, an apparition with gusts of cloud wreathing it. I had a beer in my pack but I am rarely in the mood to drink on cold summits.

We picked our way carefully along the softly corniced ridge. My heart beat fast. Moving snow might lead to unmanageable consequences. No snow moved.

Cy was nervous. He was leery of the unknowns. There might be a cliff choke. The chute is a big empty expanse, an obvious slide path. He dropped first into the west-facing trees because he has an airbag. He radio'd back to us. We picked our way down. The snow was really really good.

Our nerves receded as the line revealed itself to be open. It hadn't been blasted by solar rays yet. Nothing moved under our skis. We slashed deep turns. Lovely. Not scary.

We soon had to put skins back on. It was that or wade through snow down the flat canyon. The walk out felt inexorable. My boots found new places to rub. My backpack chafed my shoulders. My nose burned. But all walks end eventually. We lounged by the car. Our gear was strewn around us in attention-seeking piles. I looked smugly at the cross-country skiers filtering in and out of the parking lot. I thought, Going uphill and downhill is far superior. 

This Decade

I'm kind of in the mood to do a decade retrospective, like everyone else, and I prefer the blog medium to more photo-heavy outlets, although I have sprinkled choice photos from the last ten years through this post. 

I start browsing The Plural of Danish, since it's appropriately just over a decade old, and I have a thesis in mind. I graduated college ten years ago; I must be a different person, I think. I've made two big moves, had several impactful relationships, bought a house, stumbled upon a career, stopped defining my life with bikes, started defining my life with a 50/50 split of bikes and skiing (quelle différence). Maybe I like myself more now. I do really like myself, and I've learned even as a woman that it's actually okay to like yourself. I like the people around me, I like my job, I just plain old like my life.

My last and best collegiate MTB nationals was ten years ago.

But I am actually a bit surprised, perusing old blogs with this thesis in mind. Turns out this is an ongoing theme in my life, the liking. Where is the earthshaking difference? While moving cross country felt so huge, like such a drastic shift in my life, so many people I know here did the same, often in worse situations, before it was cool. Moving to another community that feeds my need for connections in the same way that Brevard did was more of a natural progression than an abrupt change of direction.

Went to Arkansas.

My voice is so lively in early blogs. Cloying, sure, but much less self-aware than now. Now I always feel like I'm writing for too many people, an audience with whom I'm unwilling to share my whole self.

Went to Italy.

We are theoretically in the twilight of personal blogs and yet, according to my traffic numbers, my top ten most viewed posts all occurred in the Tetons, which indicates there is still an appetite at least among my friends for blogs about playing outside. Or it's just my mother reading trip reports over and over so she can gasp anew about all the dumb shit I do.

Moved cross-country.

I told my parents that, because I write professionally, the blog now feels like a chore, and writing in first person makes me feel like a tool. That's why my post numbers have dwindled. Seventy-three in 2009, twenty-one in 2014, eight in 2019. But it's also a good outlet for the stuff I definitely don't want to make available for mass consumption.

Thrived in Tahoe.

The biggest benefit in my job is that I've finally tapped into this boundless curiosity that I think I always had but wasn't using at all for a long time. I love doing the research and trying to wrap my head around new topics so I can reformulate them into accessible ideas for others to read about. I love gossiping with people who have power in the community after doing the work to prove I deserve their confidences. I love giving businesses an extra nudge with exposure. I love writing articles that parents want to cut out of the physical paper, even though sharing a link is so much easier.

Thriving in the Tetons.

I didn't mean for this post to be only about my job. I moved and grew and bought a house, one of my crowning accomplishments of the last five years in an economy that doesn't want young people to survive. I also got engaged. To be married. I keep forgetting to acknowledge that because of how unimportant the institution is to me. But I found this guy after over a decade of trying to figure out what I actually want in a relationship, and he is all of it.

Running is the best.

Owning a home is the best.

In 2009 I was finding joy, pushing myself on the trail, loving my friends, and casually wondering what was next. This decade I became a camper, a dog owner, a drinker, a lover, a journalist, a landlord. I established myself in new places without the baggage of old, decided I am actually sociable, can be kind, love asking people questions, enjoy making new friends. I realized as I've lost people dear to me how important family is, and began to understand just how near to the tree this particular apple has fallen. But my own trajectory does not fit within my thesis. I haven't changed significantly.

This one is the best.

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

The Pronouncement

I was in the kitchen in New Hampshire, probably a fifth grader in a baggy tee and long shorts and lopsided glasses, when I made the pronouncement to my grandmother that I would not be having children. She considered the statement and then told me that she had found that people who didn't have children tended to be selfish.

That nugget lodged itself in my brain, because I think highly of her opinion and I certainly didn't want to be a selfish adult. I still couldn't imagine forfeiting my body to a parasitic entity and also had pretty strong views on overpopulation and the plight of unwanted children, so I resolved to adopt.

Ten years passed, and in another conversation with another woman, in which I attempted to assert my aversion to pregnancy, I was told in a patronizing tone that that would change in time.

As I aged I began to encounter friends who had tried to wade through the bureaucracy and expense of adoption, without a single success story among them. My doubt grew. This country is adept at obstructing women from abridging their pregnancies but does not appear interested in easing the postnatal experience. 

But for a long time I was in a relationship, what I thought was The Relationship, with a person who did love kids and was happy to imagine his future as a father. I laid waste to that relationship eventually but still carried with me this strange assumption that I would eventually be expected to procreate or at least shop for spawn.

Somehow it was only last year when the idea crystallized, perhaps because I work in an office of mothers, all a little harried and a little resentful, that I do not have to have children.

The echo of selfishness still rattled around in my brain so I decided to address it head on and realized that some of the most involved, philanthropic, selfless people I know have chosen to do without progeny. They are the mentors, the electeds, the heroes of nonprofits, the ones with their fingers in many pots, while the parents, granted, are probably finding their own kind of fulfillment, albeit a little more home-focused.

The couples I know without kids lead lives I want to emulate. They have enough money to be comfortable, they can go on adventures, and they can devote themselves to volunteerism.

The parents I know seem to always describe their lives with a dependent "but" clause. "I love my kids more than anything in the world, but..."

Fortunately my partner is in complete agreement with me. I just recently made my pronouncement to a friend and she asked, "Well, how does he feel?" even though she would never have asked that if I had said I wanted a boy and a girl, three years apart. And then she asked who would care for me when I'm old and lonely, but there's no guarantee that you'll get any return on your life's worth of investment with children. That's not how our culture works.

Now that I have truly made my decision, few days pass without a rushing sense of relief. Whether it's worrying about screen time, climate change, pink eye, strep throat, or autism, or wondering if the LDS kids would try to convert her or ostracize her, or if he would use slurs to impress his friends, or if she would be raped by a boy she trusted, or if she would dart in front of a car, or if work would dry up and the twenty plus years of endless expense would engulf and ruin me, or if parenthood would kill a partnership or suck me dry of motivation or excitement, the thought passes through my brain and is then swept out by a deep sigh of contentment: I'm not having children.

I Used to Do This

I wake up feeling antsy. And angsty. I've let too many sunshiney days go to waste. I have watched the evenings pass with beer in hand instead.

I don't want to go for a run, because for a couple reasons I don't like short runs here. I am particular. I don't like running trails that I'd prefer to bike, and the hard trails I want to run are populated with megafauna that I'm not tryna fuck with. It's too bad I don't have that perfect backyard loop like at Camp, or the miles and miles of steep ridiculous Pisgah trails to hurt myself on.

Oh well.

I decide to ride up to Targhee. The warm morning air feels heavy with moisture (like, fifty percent humidity, not real southern humidity) and black clouds are pushing north across the valley but here black clouds don't always mean a storm, especially not in the morning. I pack a jacket and go for it.

I feel fast. I love spinning. The road is quiet. It's opening day at the resort but no one is heading up because there's still six feet of snow at the top. Two trails are open to bikes.

The shoulder is so wide and the pavement is so smooth. I breathe hard but don't think hard. I feel like my thoughts are left trailing in a wake behind me. I can't hold onto any thoughts when I exercise. Bye, thoughts.

Daily rain showers have left everything so green, the greenest, the most emerald, jade, lime, verdant, in contrast with the peaks, still snow white. I look at flowers, look at the corpses of little birds and squirrels on the road, look at the rumps of what might be elk tucked down next to the creek, look at big boulders and think about the book Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. What if all those boulders were actually donkeys?

This ride feels like when I used to get out all the time in the mornings. Before I felt constrained by a nine to five schedule even though my job is flexible and there's no way my boss could fire me. Back when I was an athlete. Now I'm enthusiast. But this is why I was an athlete. Because I used to do this. I resolve to do this again. I haven't ridden to Targhee that many times, because I don't like out-and-backs, but it's a twelve-mile climb on a beautiful road that ends at 8,000 feet. How did I get so lucky as to live here? Why wouldn't I like this? A quick hour and a half in the morning and I'm a happier person. I will do this again.

I believe one is contractually obligated to take a photo at this vista if one pedals to Targhee.

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.

Escapism

I was going quite stir crazy in the valley to the point where I was unpleasant to be around. It was raining a lot and I was feeling a little overworked, wrung out by the groundhog-weekly nature of my job and resentful of the hordes of people who had escaped the valley for warmer climes. Worst of all, I was deeply frustrated that I had ordered a bike in October and it still hadn’t arrived.

I sent in an employee purchase form by mail to Santa Cruz for the in-hot-demand aluminum Bronson. I never received confirmation and was never charged for it, but heard from others that that was the norm for EP and the bike I wanted was out of stock anyway. I waited contendedly(ish) until midway through February, then started agitating with not one but three shop managers from two different shops to figure out WTF was happening. All of a sudden it was April and I didn’t want to pay retail for a bike but my window of freedom was nearing and I was desperate. And extremely pissed.

Finally two weeks ago I ordered a bike from Sam but I hadn’t acted quickly enough (y’know, besides the whole ordering in October thing) and was facing down a scheduled trip to the desert without the new bike I had been waiting for the entire winter.

Yeah, frustrating. I had to leave town though, so I said fuck it and loaded up the Half Chub in the minivan. I couldn’t even bear to wait until the end of the day Thursday, so with the blessing of my boss, who was clearly over my angst, we left town at noon. As we drove south the temperature gauge rose steadily until it came to rest at 70 degrees and I could feel all my churlishness slough off me.

We did a short ride at Red Fleet State Park right before the sun set and I tried to remember how to mountain bike. The Krampus is a champ though. After riding it almost exclusively last fall, I have a deep affection and respect for its maneuverability and indestructibility. I feel like I’ve spent a full season working on fundamentals because riding singletrack on the Krampus means taking absolutely nothing for granted, and I can’t wait to get back on a light bike with full suspension, a dropper, hubs with less than 25 degrees of engagement, good brakes, and a modern drivetrain.

Krampus riding: exaggerated form required

After a night spent on BLM watching the moon rise over the umber rock formations of Red Fleet, we rode a bit more in Vernal to wear the dog out, then headed south again, landing in Grand Junction. It was hot and the Lunch Loops trailheads were crowded with people and dogs. Jolene kind of hates other dogs, which adds a lot of stress and strain to a lot of situations. Feeling at a loss because there was no camping allowed anywhere on the BLM in Grand Junction, we decided to just start riding.

It was so hard, rock jumble clambering and walking uphill and downhill in the sun, my wrists aching from the jolts through my steel fork, frustration with the constant hike-a-bike weaseling into my brain. We finished and I was certain, again, that I didn’t like the desert. Fortunately I got in touch with Erica and she said a big crowd of Teton Valley’ers had scored a camping spot in a nearby area, because otherwise we would be SOL. Relieved, we headed their way.

Jolene was stoked on any riding she was allowed to do

Life got a lot better, although I was kind of annoyed by the hordes of extremely privileged people with $200,000 Sprinters or campers, the children on carbon bikes, the roving unleashed dogs that forced us to keep Jo locked in the van all day. But we drank beer and rode bikes with friends and it was great. The trails ranged from fine to awesome, weaving through the campsite and up onto needle ridges, with features and drops that were challenging but never caused me the consternation that I had experienced the prior day.

Mountain biking with friends is the best

The 18 Road trails were very fun

But I still don’t love the desert, and we were low on food and water and we’re both pretty restless people, and I wanted to let the dog off leash and run away from the crowds, so we bailed. I found an area on the map that seemed intriguing, and even though I knew the fact that it was at 10,000 feet was a clear warning, we decided to send it anyway. Of course on top of Grand Mesa the snow was piled higher than the van. We joked that we were terrible at going to the desert. We parked in an empty XC ski lot with restrooms and fell asleep to a light snowfall.

We suck at deserting

It rained as we dropped back into the canyons of northwestern Colorado the next morning. Scanning the gold mine that is Trailforks, we found a little trail network two hours north, in a town where it wasn’t raining at that exact minute. After a quick van unload and gear up, we went for another ride and were delighted to find a mellow, twisty ribbon of dirt swooping through trees, definitely more my scene than bare rock. We ended on a downhill trail with perfect berms and friendly wood features just as the rain started again. We putzed our way north again and hunted down a hot spring that was sort of on-route. Juniper Springs was down a long dirt road, slimy pools with eroded concrete walls painted in once-bright colors, the water not quite warm enough to warrant a substantial soak.

Meeker is magical

So we left, and decided to just go home because the rain wasn’t quitting. We weathered I-80 in a storm, crept through a herd of skittish elk in Hoback Canyon, and made it home as night fell.

It was rejuvenating to feel the sun on my bare arms and to put rubber to dirt again, although I’m still not convinced I want to go back to the desert any time soon. Fortunately my bike is arriving this week (supposedly) and riding areas closer to home are drying out (slowly).

Earned it

Dry Riding

My grandmother in New Hampshire is the only person in my family who understands what it's like to live in the grips of winter for six months, to wear snow boots for half a year without reprieve, to bask like a daffodil when the sun does occasionally emerge even though sunshine usually means bitter cold, and to gird yourself for spring because it's truly the worst season.

Truly. We've had above freezing temps during the day the last two weeks, for the first time since late October, and the mountains of dirty snow in town are melting at a glacial pace, exposing each day new fetid piles of poop from dogs, deer, and moose, degrading the already potholed roads, and leaving expanses of mud, grit, and barren brown ground. Ah, spring.

The switch always flips sometime in March or April, where I lose patience with winter. This year it happened early, because February was ridiculously deep, and because last weekend I skied the Middle Teton, and every time I spend twelve hours in ski boots without actually making a single good turn, ski season feels over.

We're all in the same boat, so Carolyn and Chrissy and I ditched work yesterday and hightailed it down to Idaho Falls for a road ride with Carolyn's friends. We started pedaling from a generic house in a generic suburb of IF and headed through farmlands for a few miles. I felt skittish on skinny tires, riding single file with five other ladies, cars buzzing past going fifty. I've only ridden a bike a handful of times this winter and only on snow. Road biking took some re-acclimation for all three of us even though we're all experienced, albeit lapsed, roadies.

Then we started climbing and it was all better. I went as hard as I could up the four-mile hill and felt like I was pressure-washing the cobwebs out of my legs and lungs. God I love road climbs. We regrouped at the top where the road turned to gravel. Deanna looked down into the canyon and noted with surprise that the road wasn't muddy. IF is dry but its foothills are still spotted with snow. We decided to drop in and circle through the canyon to make a loop back to her house.

Dry riding!

We were all so so so stoked to pedal down the empty rutted dirt road through vegetation on the cusp of blooming. I am so starved for speed and smooth cadence and rolled up sleeves and a sport that I'm still, even six years later, so much more comfortable in than skiing.

On the rolling, busy roads back to the subdivision, to my minor surprise the IF girls surged, sprinted, pulled hard through the wind. I love roadie fuckery and I appreciate it when I don't get in trouble from other women for that kind of behavior. We finished together and high fived then ate excellent Indian food because that's what one does when one is not in the valley. Now we're plotting a longer weekend ride and I'm dying for the snow to melt.