Moonlight Madness

That's one wild Huff.

Jake at about 1.5 miles.

Running in the dark is not anything new, however, running in the moonlight is something special. We often start our runs early in the morning with little light, if any. Tonight we finished in the dark instead as we ran to Grandeur Peak via the Churchfork Trail, which was well packed and easy to follow. Often as I run trails in new circumstances, such as a nice winter day, I am pleasantly surprised to find it worthwhile and easily accomplished. Never before have I had the opportunity to run with enough moonlight to see the trail. Lately, I have reflected on how awesome it is to keep running through the winter. If someone had told me 15 years ago, when I was running in high school, or even 5 years ago, that I'd be running down a mountain trail, in the dark and in the snow. I would have not believed it. But here I am, and it is awesome!

Salt Lake Valley with a dissipating inversion.

Grandeur Peak Map via Church Fork Trailhead Map and Statistics

Tips from an Orange Trail Monkey:

1. Yaktrax Pro are awesome (and inexpensive) for traction on snow and ice.

2. The cheap headlamp from Kohls with 3 tiny LED lights is ok, until someone else comes along with a brighter beam to which there is no comparison. Buy a nice headlamp!

3. Lengthen your following distance on snow descents, lest you enjoy skiing into your buddy. Of course, he may break your fall. Then again maybe not--better to face plant in the snow than in someone's backside.

All you can eat at Godfather's Pizza.

Beard Campout 2013



We're Happy.  No really.  This is fun.  If I say it enough I may believe it.

Tradition.

I am a recent inductee into the Brotherhood of the OTM.  And there are traditions the OTM have adopted that appear to have no rhyme or reason...other than the fact they are traditions.  This is probably true of most traditions in your life, really, just doing things a certain way because that's how things have always been done and that's what your family does during those times of the year.  Some of the glorious traditions you may have read about on this blog include ridiculously goofy hats, Barrel-monkeys hanging on shoe-laces or mountain tops, shorts on the snow trails, and popping magic drink caps in grocery parking lots (which is not nearly as dubious as it sounds).  But it appears that the most time-honored tradition of the OTM (other than regaling one another with our trail-side bathroom adventures) would be the Beard Campout.



Pretty Ice Crystals.  Don't let the beauty fool you.



It's a tradition to grow a beard before the winter campout, although this tradition may just be an excuse for the OTM to be lazy and to get out of shaving for a few weeks.  Allegedly the beard will keep you warm on the trail.  Allegedly, a warm beard-face is necessary when hiking at higher elevations, although it turns out it is actually much colder in the lower elvations of the inverted and  cold-locked valley.  There is a traditional bacon/egg/cheese/muffin breakfast, traditionally missing some vital component (not this year). Allegedly winter hiking/snowshoeing is awesome.

Bearded Huff, looking like a feminine hygeine product.

And so, tradition mandates that there must be beards, and there must be blisters, and there must be misery.  Snowshoeing with a backpack uphill is miserable.  But convincing yourself you had a great time afterward?  That's the real tradition.

 

 

 

Jesse, in full boy-band earnest lip-sync pose.

Someone much smarter than I described this phenomenon as follows:

 

 

"Half the fun of camping in those days was looking forward to getting back home. When you did get back home you prolonged the enjoyment of your trip by telling all your friends how miserable you had been. The more you talked about the miseries of life in the woods, the more you wanted to get back out there and start suffering again. Camping was a fine and pleasant misery."

From Patrick F. McManus' A Fine and Pleasant Misery

 

 

The quote from Mr. McManus' book is 30+ years old, and it still as true now as it was back then.  But now, instead of just telling your friends how miserable things were, you also get to blog about it and record your misery not just for now, but for maybe next year, when the traditional beard campout comes around, you can look at the blog and remind yourself just how miserable things were.

 

 

 

So.  Beard Campout.  You were miserable.  See you again next year.



Beard?  Goofy Hat?  Backpack?  Inversion?  Must be a tradition.

Bobcat tracks in our snowshoe tracks.



Inversion makes for challenged breathing
when you're in it, nice sunsets when
you're above it.

Jake's backside on a backside climb.












Chili Can top.  Sam says you don't need to pop the top of your can
when you put it in the fire to heat it, but we found this chili can lid
by our tents 20 yards from the fire after it exploded in the fire.
Yes we know what we're doing.

North Willow Lake Map and statistics



The Early Monkey Gets Extra Miles

A few days ago I saw a Facebook post in one of my groups. Craig Lloyd and Crew, some trail running friends, decided to do an early morning run on the Bonneville Shoreline Trail above the Avenues in Salt Lake City. I know what you're thinking. "What does he mean by early?" or maybe your idea of early is somewhere between 6:00 and 8:00 a.m. Well, in this case, early meant 4:00 a.m. That's right, I got up at 3:30 a.m. in order to go running in the mountains with three other crazy people.

I start teaching school at 7:00 a.m. so I usually don't have enough time to put a lot of mileage in before work. So, when I saw the opportunity I jumped on it. I'd never been on this part of the Shoreline Trail before so I was excited to run it. We met at the Capitol Bldg. and ran up the City Creek Road until we reached the trail head. From there we zig zagged along the well packed trail. It was dark, it was cold (some 6 degrees) and it was awesome.

Trail above the Salt Lake City Avenues

 I ran about four miles up the trail until I reached my time limit and had to turn around. It was nice to get above the inversion, which obscured most of the valley. Craig and Crew kept going another 3 miles or so before they turned around. If I didn't have to work early I would have kept going too, but such is life. Since I traveled back alone, in the dark, on a trail I've never seen in the daylight, I was grateful for the help of my buddies pointing out the trail turnoffs. With their help I only got lost once and was able to find my way back easily. I finished with a little more than eight miles.

State Capitol in the background.

This is the first year I have continued running seriously and outside during the winter. I wonder why I never did it before. Most people say I'm crazy and ask "Why would you do that?" I respond that I have long past the why. There is no why. It just is. Great Trails & Great Friends!

SubZero OTM

Jake... ...  wake up Jake... You coming?

Have you ever heard the phrase, when something is so hot it "melts like ice cream on the 4th of July?"  It a pretty good description, wouldn't you say?  So what would be the exact opposite of that?  Perhaps we can now coin the phrase that it is so cold that it is "as cold as iced nostrils on the 14th of January."



Last night I sent Sam a text saying that since it will be as low as -5 degrees, we both need to make sure we get out and run a minimum of 3 miles, and take a couple photos to share.  Sam, who tends to whisper in the same ear as Jake's shoulder devil, tried hard to get Jake to join him.

Well... Jake apparently has a little less crazy in him than Sam and I, so he stayed in bed.  But Sam and I faced the cold.   When I climbed out of my car, the thermostat read -4 degrees in Clinton.  Sam didn't get an exact thermostat reading, but the internet said it was -1 in Taylorsville.  After a mile or so of running, it was warm enough to not really feel cold anywhere, but at that temperature, the moisture from your breath freezes around your head.  And since we are growing our beards for our annual beard campout, we get a nice layer of beard frost.  Add to that the frosty eyelashes, eyebrows, and yes... nose hair, and you come out looking like this...

It's a Yeti!!!
Sam after 3.0 miles.

Just got out of the car.  So far so good.

Steve after 4.6 miles

New Year's Freeze

Psychomachia.


It's a classic cartoon device: there are two distinct voices inside a conflicted character's head, pitching the good and the bad about whatever decision that person is facing.  Rarely does the hero choose to follow the Angel.  Donald Duck is tempted by his Devil into smoking a pipe, then he coughs and wheezes and struggles for breath.  In the Emperor's New Groove, the Devil on Kronk's shoulder does all sorts of tricks to show how much cooler he is than his shoulder Angel. Homer Simpson even sells his soul to the Devil for a doughnut.

Medium, or Super Sized fries and drink?

And so I found myself in such a dilemma on New Year's Day, caught between my own little Angel and Devil, trying to decide if I should go running or not.  I've actually lost out on some good runs/climbs with the OTMs after being convinced by my shoulder devil that I didn't need to go running in December.  The devil starts to say things like "It's too cold to go running" or "You're too busy with the holiday season for a long run" or "you're phlegm spewing cough and hallucination-induced fever flu is too debilitating to even let you leave your bed, let alone run to the top of some 10,000 foot high Wasatch peak in December".

On New Year's Eve Sam kept asking me about running up Adam's Canyon the next morning as a way to ring in the new year.  I had every Devil excuse ready for him.

"It's the day after New Year's Eve."
"I don't want to wake up at 6:30 AM after staying up so late the night before."

"It's going to be too cold."  (8 degrees F at the base of the mountain)

"I don't have snowshoes."

"I don't have a beard like you do to keep the cold out." (maybe that one was a bit of a reach).

The Angel was persistent, or at least patient, and even after I woke up at 6:30 and texted the OTMs that it was too cold to leave my bed, (one last try by my shoulder devil), I ended up on the trail for the first run of the year.  I even brought my own goofy hat, as I believe this is an OTM requirement.

After trying my best to avoid getting out in the cold, in the early morning, on a holiday, I couldn't have been happier with the run.  After 5 minutes of climbing, the cold was not an issue.  I wasn't tired from waking up so early on a Holiday.  A nice, short ascent amid incredible scenery, getting a good sweat on, what a great way to start out the New Year.

So remember, when the devil on your shoulder tells you that it would be so much nicer to stay in your warm bed, when he tells you that you don't need to get out and go, when he throws any number of excuses in your way as to why you shouldn't run with the OTMs, remember that the Angel is always right.  You will always feel better after your run, you will always be happy you went and did something fun and challenging, and it's always better to be the person who was happy to have gone and done whatever it is you do than it is to be the person who is sorry they missed out.

Sam warming up with a 10-rep set of Fallen Tree Squats

Adams Canyon Waterfall, January 1, 2013

Quasi-Possessed Huff in the Wild.

No I'm not getting gray hairs...just frosty sweat.

"Take off, eh?  I'm taking you to the loony bin, then I am going to the brewery, you hoser."

  

And one final note on the mileage.  After the run up Adams Canyon I went sledding with the kiddos, and so I ran up a large sledding hill at least 20 times.  Which means for one moment in 2013 I had more mileage than Sam and Steve.  At least until January 2nd.  Then they ran right past me.  I guess you can only be the King of the Mountain for so long.