A Visit to the Craggies

The Craggies (Big Craggy Peak and West Craggy Peak) are two peaks north of Winthrop that are among Washington's Top 100 Peaks. Susan Ashlock invited me along to scramble these two peaks on Wednesday, and despite the reported 6 to 8 inches of snow that fell in the mountains on Monday/Tuesday, I quickly accepted her offer.

After a long drive up from Seattle on Tuesday night, we stayed at one of the campgrounds out Eightmile Road, north of Wintrhop. An inch or two of snow dusted the road, but the campsite was bare. The temperature was definitely below freezing, however, and it was going to get colder up top.

We arose at 6am and got on the trail at about 7:15am, just as it was starting to get light out. The trail began as a jeep trail and eventually turned into a hiking trail, which was still easy to follow despite a few inches of snow over everything. The jeep trail/hiking trail did not seem to match the trail on the topo map, but it got us to the right spot nevertheless.

At 5900' we turned off the trail and headed up an open meadow, following the SE ridge all the way up to the peak of Big Craggy. As we got higher, we encountered deeper snow and some drifts, and the last scramble section was a more sporting due to the snow-covered scree that unnerved me a bit as the slope steepened up (I think that going much further climber's left would have been easier). I wallowed up a snow-filled gully trying to follow Susan's light steps, but we eventually prevailed through the steepest sections and followed the final ridgeline to the rime-covered cairn at the summit. The temperature was 21 degrees, but the winds were calm and the sun was even threatening to peak out on this gorgeous late October day.

From Big Craggy summit, we traversed the ridge and followed an easy contouring descent down open slopes to the saddle between the Craggies that was only made easier due to snow covering the scree. We continued contouring along slightly more difficult slopes, occasionally bogging ourselves down in snowdrifts, until we reached a wide gully with access to the West Craggy ridgetop. We went up the gully to a notch, then up another gully to access the easier high slopes on the west side of West Craggy. The final climb up the gully was a bit tricky, requiring us to scrape the snow off of the rocks to find good footholds, and it was even trickier coming down (I let Susan show me her delicate balancing style coming down the snowy rock outcropping and I followed as best I could). An easy hike along the ridge got us to the top. The sun came out and we had beautiful views of the Pasayten Wilderness in all directions.

On our way down, we dropped down to Copper Glance Creek and followed the creek down to our original hiking trail. The snow drifted much higher down near the creek, and we alternately plowed through waist deep snow or dealt with tricky rockfields hidden under the snow that threatened to trip us up. Once back on the trail, however, we cruised the final couple miles back to the car, happy that we could enjoy a final trip to the mountains before the snows became too deep.

Total time: 9 hours, including 3.5 hours to Big Craggy, 2 more hours to West Craggy, 3 more hours back to car.

visualization works

When I go out to do an activity, I believe that I am more successful if I visualize it first, imagining myself doing the activity to a successful outcome. Yesterday, I demonstrated to myself the concrete advantages of this approach.

I decided to kayak around Bainbridge Island. I got my stuff together and started to drive over there. On the way I imagined myself kayaking around the island. I pictured myself in my drysuit with my paddle... paddle? I had to turn around three blocks from my house because I realized that I had forgotten to grab a paddle. Thankfully, I discovered this before I got too far. That is the power of visualization.

I paddled out from Golden Gardens, and looked south to West Point. There was lots of smoke coming out of the smokestack on the lighthouse on West Point, which looked really odd. I thought something was wrong, and when I looked again a minute later, I confirmed it. The lighthouse had moved around the point - it was actually the superstructure of a large tanker ship coming up the channel at me. I stayed in the lee of West Point while it crossed 200 yards in front of me, then continued my crossing to Bainbridge.

Lots of wildlife today. I saw a group of about 8 harlequin ducks in there fall plumage - very beautiful. I also saw something the size of a whale, but which I believed was a large sea lion offshore of me. As I paddled on, I kept looking back, expecting to see it following and harassing me, but it did not resurface. I don't like sea lions.

At the south end of Bainbridge, I looked at my watch and realized that I had taken 2 hours and 45 minutes instead of the 2 hours that I had expected. I wasn't sure why the discrepancy, but decided that it was best to put of the Bainbridge circumnavigation if I was going to be slower than expected. I did not want to recross back to the mainland in the dark, and there were no real bailout points once I started going around the backside of Bainbridge (Kathy was out of town, too). I will do Blake Island instead.

I started to head to Blake, but all of a sudden, a (the?) sea lion appeared 10 yards off my bow in a huff. I immediately turned around and headed for shallow water. Looking back, I saw three sea lions now cavorting where I had been. Were they all following me now? I decided to continue along the shoreline around Bainbridge. However, after another 10 minutes, I changed my mind again and headed towards Blake Island. Expected east winds also added to my concern about being stuck going from Bainbridge back to the mainland late in the day.

I circumnavigated Blake, stopping at the Cascadia Marine Trail site there to check it out. The Cascadia Marine Trail was set up to provide camping for human-powered beachable watercraft (e.g. kayaks) in the Puget Sound, and there area special campsites in a lot of locations to help out all you kayak campers out there. After Blake, I kayaked back to West Seattle, then around Alki point and back towards downtown Seattle.

I wanted to get across to Magnolia, but there was a lot of boat traffic to navigate, as well as a 2 foot chop from the 10-15 knot east winds that had finally arrived. Ferries regularly travel between Seattle/Bainbridge and Seattle/Bremerton. Additionally, not one, but two cargo ships decided to head into the Port of Seattle right when I wanted to cross, so I had to wait until all the boats cleared out. When I made my dash across, I was stopped short by a Coast Guard cutter that was also waiting for the other boats to clear out. I felt like I was playing frogger.

Once I made it to Magnolia, I had an easy cruise along the coast back to Golden Gardens, arriving 7 1/2 hours after I left. I got in a full day's work after all. When I got home, I re-measured the distance around Bainbridge and discovered that it was 11.5 miles down to the south side of Bainbridge rather than 8.5 as I had originally thought, but that the overal distance around Bainbridge (35 miles) was not any longer than I had originally thought, so I would have been on schedule after all if I had done the circumnavigation. Next time. As it was I had a good tour of Puget Sound and got in a long day's kayak on a nice fall day. No complaints here.

Sams Wonderland Video

Sam posted a nice compilation video of our Wonderland Trail trip. We looked kind
of tired at the end. See here.

Big Tahoma Rogaine

Andrew and I were going to participate in the 24 hour Big Tahoma Rogaine down near Mt Rainier, but Andrew hurt his hamstring last week and had to stay home. I'm a bit burned out on everything else I've been doing, so I looked forward to doing the 6 hour event solo (solo participants can do the 6 hour event, whereas teams may do the 6/12/24 hour events).

I got up too early on Saturday morning and drove down to Ashford and up the forest roads to the event start, which was in the same location as the Fall Beast race last year. Eric Bone showed up customarily late with the maps, but we started within 10 minutes of the posted start time with a little less time to plan our route. The skies were clouded over and the temp was about 40 degrees, but the rain was supposed to hold off until Saturday night, not affecting us 6 hour folk. I decided to treat this as I would a 50km trail run, and brought just a windshirt and tights, hat and gloves with me. In hindsight, this was a mistake.

I planned an ambitious route that would cover 45 km or so and hit two areas that had some controls with large point values, with a place or two to skip a checkpoint if I was getting behind. Right from the start, it included a long climb to High Hut to get me warmed up, and after the first 15 minutes or so, I was in my t-shirt, hiking/running up the hill feeling good.

At the very first CP, I took off a glove to punch the checkpoint and write my name in the log. I was the first one there. Other people were following me, and in my hurry, I dropped my glove somewhere, realizing only a few minutes later. I would have liked to have that glove later on.

Everything went reasonably smoothly for the first couple hours, and I did very well at navigating to the checkpoints. The climb to High Hut was straightforward, and kept me warm with all of the frost on the ground and trees around me. I was especially happy when I navigated straight to CP 65, which required following a couple overgrown rides then bushwhacking to a "subtle hilltop". I decided to skip a 50 point CP in order to give me a little more time for the second half, then I ran into problems.

Checkpoint 64 did me in. It wasn't that hard to find, but required bushwhacking 300 vertical feet down a ridge across slippery logs. I fell three times in a row and my body was a bit unhappy. Going back up, I had to go 600 vertical feet back up the ridge to get to another path. The faintest trail was marked on the map, but I could not find anything and ended up heading through bushes that were completely laden with water from dew or the previous night's rain. In any case, I was soaked within minutes, and I spent what felt like a half hour thrashing around in the bushes, cold and soaked to the bone. My fingers stopped working; I was miserable.

I headed back to do the second loop in bad shape. The day was still cloudy, so I was not warming up much. My shoe got untied and I couldn't retie it. The strap on my thumb compass came off, and I could not rethread that either. Then I dropped my compass while trying to get some food, and only noticed it a short time later. I spent the next five to ten minutes hiking back and forth like a drowned rat packing, looking for my compass, shivering with my shoe untied. I was deciding at this point whether to fake a debilitating injury and call it quits when I spotted my compass on the ground. Not too much time lost. Maybe I would keep going, but no more bushwhacking.

I tried to find CP 43 which was off the road down a reentrant, but after a short effort, I turned around, as there was too much brush. Then I headed up for a long climb up and over a ridge. At one point, I turned around, deciding to call it quits again, but after hiking back down only 30 feet or so, I psyched myself up again and decided to continue on. Being alone brings out the difficult psychological battles in me, apparently. It would have been nice to have a partner to work with to keep me going strong.

After getting another couple easy checkpoints along the road, I got to an intersection where I could head up to some of the higher scoring ones, but I decided I did not have the time or determination to do so, and I followed another trail that would loop back to the start. I completely went past CP 23, which I thought might be easily visible from the road, but it wasn't. No turning back, though. At another intersection, I had a chance to go for a couple more CPs that were on side roads, but my will was gone and it had started to flurry, so I kept following the course back to the start/finish. I picked up a couple more CPs along the way back, then grabbed a couple easy ones near the start/finish before checking out in 5 hours 30 minutes. As I had run to the last couple CPs along the road, I had actually started to warm up by the time I got back, but otherwise I had been miserable for the last two and a half hours. I wrung the water out of my hat and called it a day.

It turns out that my 725 points was enough to finish in 2nd place of all the 6 hour folks (including the people who were on bike half the time), and Matt Hart was only 30 points ahead of me. I could easily have picked up another 30 or 50 points in the half hour I had left, and won. I guess that goes to show that one should never give up. Next time, though, I'm bringing my gortex jacket.

Wonderland Trail in a weekend

Brock Gavery and Sam Thompson planned to head out and run the Wonderland Trail this past weekend. It was something that I've wanted to do, so I asked if I could go, and I joined in. I had run the Wonderland Trail from Mowich Lake to White River (the long way) last year, but I still had yet to do the whole thing in one push. Brock/Sam planned on stopping in Longmire for dinner and a short bivy, but otherwise they were going to run/hike straight through.

We each dropped off a small bag at Longmire before we started, containing a bivy sack, a little food, and a couple extra pieces of clothing. The Inn would not hold these bags for us, so we tied them to a tree in the woods, hoping they would be there when we arrived the next day. After dinner and a trip back to Mowich Lake, we took at three hour nap before our expected 12:45 am start.

Night travel was slow, and we started to wonder whether we would actually make it to Longmire by the time the restaurant closed at 7:45pm that night, 60 miles away. Once the sun came up, however, we started to speed up a lot on the downhills, and we pulled into White River at 8:15am. The longest, fastest downhill section, however, was a somewhat quad-busting section coming down from Indian Bar to Box Canyon. The climb up to Reflection Lakes took forever, as we were tired and knew that we did not need to hurry anymore, but once at Reflection Lakes, more long easy downhills led us into Longmire at 5:20pm (16 hours 35 minutes).

Dinner at the Inn was fabulous: pasta, soup, bread, beer, cobbler for dessert. Looking at the amount of food I had in my pack, I'm glad I could load up on the calories at the Inn for Sunday, as I had not brought my own dinner along. After dinner we wandered into the woods and found a nice soft spot in the forest on which to lie down. I put on all my warm clothes as it was fairly chilly out, but once in my bivy I was quite warm and comfortable. We went to bed around 7:30pm and woke up again at 12:30am, ready for a 1:15am departure. Noone really wanted to do the trip from Longmire back to Mowich as we were all a bit sore from yesterday, but Mowich was where the car was so we had to go.

The second night was much colder than the first, and we kept some of our warm clothes on as we hiked half-awake up and down the ridges, awaiting the light of the day to perk us back up again. We really didn't run until daylight, and we were averaging about 2.5 miles per hour for most of the first half of the second day's "run". We did find a very nice runnable section towards the end, from Golden Lakes down to South Mowich Camp, where we ran 6 miles in an hour, but otherwise we were mostly hiking the second day. We pulled into Mowich Lake campground at 2:15pm (13 hours). Total time car to car was 37.5 hours. The trip was a bit more grueling than I thought it was going to be; however, the weather stayed reasonable, we all made it back without too much injury and we did what we set out to do, so it was definitely a success. I'm glad it's over, though.

Sam has a slightly more detailed writeup on our trip.

Trioba 24 Hour Adventure Race

Now that I've recovered some, I can think back positively on the recent Triboa race out in Plain, WA. I raced with Andrew Feucht, Roger Michel and Beth Brewster. Beth was completely new to adventure racing, but she had just done an Ultraman (a double Ironman done over a 3 day period), so she was certainly in shape to run around with us for the weekend. Andrew was our logistics man, as Roger was flying up from the Bay Area, and I was coming back from Colorado (Imogene Pass / Hardrock hike) on Thursday night. Kathy picked up both Roger and me from the airport at the same time, in fact. I had Friday morning to do my laundry and re-pack for our adventure race.

Map handout was at 8pm on Friday evening, with the race starting at midnight. The course would take us kayaking across Lake Wenatchee and back, then hiking and biking along many of the trails on or near the Plain 100 mile trail run course.

At midnight, we headed off on our mountain bikes after a Le Mans start. Our first crucial decision came after we crossed the Wenatchee river - many people followed the main roads towards the checkpoint, but we headed south to take a shorter logging road, which did not exist (or so I claimed). Glenn (the RD) gave us a curious extra map that seemed useless, but it came into play as we headed south after missing our turn, finding another logging road that actually went through. After a long climb, we arrived at the location of the checkpoint and bushwhacked to the saddle. Beth thought we were kidding when we got off our bikes and told her we were hiking through the brush. She had never been off trail before. She was in for a new adventure this weekend for sure.

Next we headed back down the logging roads and to Lake Wenatchee to do our kayaking leg. We had borrowed Eric's triple (actually a converted double) and planned to tow a single kayak behind it. The major benefit of this setup was cost, as we did not need to rent any kayaks. However, the triple was far too small for three people to paddle together, and Beth, who was in the center of the triple, got so soaked that she almost went hypothermic before we stopped to let her change her clothes and put on a raincoat with a hood. I navigated while paddling the single, and I was also the designated gopher that hopped out to get the checkpoints. I wore my drysuit so that I could jump out in knee-deep water without having to worry about getting wet.

I enjoyed the kayaking leg. Several of the CPs on the far side of the lake were situated in marshes and sloughs that allowed for some navigation decisions as well as taking us to nice spots. My favorite spot was sliding through swamp grass to enter a lagoon on the southwest corner of the lake. Coming back out, we beached our kayaks in foul-smelling mud, which was not so fun.

After the kayak, we stripped off some wet clothes and headed out on our mountain bikes for a long climb up to the Mad River trailhead, then up more steep singletrack to a horse camp/transition area to the trek. By this time it was after 10am.

We trekked mostly along trails, with several forays bushwhacking up or along mountains in order to tag a checkpoint. At about noon, Beth sprained her ankle. Ouch! Andrew got her going again, saying it is best not to stop, and she kept going, albeit a little more slowly. At this point, we had three other teams ahead of us, and we realized that we probably would not be catching them, so we focused on finishing the race as well as we could.

The trek was long, and we finished at 7pm, just as the sun was going down. The day had been cool and cloudy, but a chill set in as night came on. The last section was on mountain bikes, with a long section of singletrack at the end described as "sweet" by the race director, although we used different adjectives such as "frustrating" and "insane".

We were staying up for the second night in a row, and we started to get silly. A smattering of light rain had moistened some of the dust, and I was absolutely sure that the ground was covered in a dusting of snow, even calling Andrew "such a liar" when he didn't see the snow. Beth was bonking at this point without realizing it, falling off her bike left and right as Roger stayed walking behind her trying to catch her. He eventually got her to eat some gels and she came around again.

Glenn had put a dozen CPs along the singletrack at the end to make sure that we rode it, and told us that the CPs would be easy to see from the trail. Apparently, the reflecting material did not reflect very well, because we had a very difficult time seeing the CPs, especially as we had been going for 24 hours already and were exhausted. Also, the singletrack twisted and turned all over, whereas the trail on the map went straight from one point to another, so we had a lot of trouble keeping track of where we were. As we did not want to have to backtrack, we went very slow in order to make sure that we didn't miss checkpoints. By the time we got near the end, I was already (figuratively) crying like a baby. I just wanted to go back to he lodge.

All the teams had trouble with the last several checkpoints, and only one team found them all. In retrospect, they didn't seem so hard. They were near well-recognized features by the trail as long as we were paying attention. The CP that we missed (CP28), however, was 20 meters off the trail where there was a "trail/snag". I assumed that this meant a dead fallen tree across the trail or something like that. Wikipedia defines a snag as a "standing dead tree" with perhaps a few large branches on it, so we were not even looking for the right indicator.

After we could not find CP 28, we decided not to look too hard for the next one. CP 29 was in a shallow reentrant off the trail. We passed one shallow reentrant and looked up it with flashlights (we had mostly dimmer flashlights because our batteries had run out on our HID lights), but could not see anything and moved on. We found another shallow reentrant later, but we also did not see anything up it. As we were already getting beyond where we had expected it based on the bike odometer, I decided to give it a small effort and hiked 5 meters up the reentrant to look. I still did not see anything, and turned around to tell the others. At that point, Andrew asked "what about that tape next to you?". I looked and saw I was standing next to Montrail tape. That's odd, why would they put tape and no CP? Then I found the CP slightly behind a tree trunk 3 feet away from me. I had been standing right next to it. That is how hard they were to find in our condition. Doing a double all-nighter is tough.

The last CP in hand, we enjoyed our bike back to the lodge and the finish line as we watched the sky lighten into dawn. We arrived at about 6:15am, a little over 30 hours after we started. Beth told us she was having fun. She'll definitely be back for more. Andrew did really well in spotting several of the difficult checkpoints for us, and Roger kept us together going forward well beyond when I wanted to quit. A week and a half later, I am starting to look back at the race with fond memories rather than profanities. Same time next year?

Hiking the Hard Rock

Running with James Varner the other month, I told him how the Wonderland Trail around Mount Rainier was one of my favorite trails. He indicated that it was one of his as well, but that the course for the Hardrock 100 mile trail run was his favorite trail. This made an impression on me, and so I decided to hike some of it during the week after the Imogene Pass Trail run, as I would be out in the area anyways. I asked my father to join me for an overnight trip from Tellurdie to Silverton, and he said OK.

The Hardrock 100 follows a 28 mile course from Telluride to Silverton at an average elevation of 11,000 feet. It crosses a 13,160 foot pass and it includes 10,000 feet of elevation gain. My father provided the camping gear, which was the heavy old school kind of gear. My pack was full after putting in the sleeping bag, pad and 3 person tent (for extra room). I barely had enough room to throw in a piece of warm clothing or two, then we were off.

Karen dropped us off in Telluride, planning to meet up with us the next evening in Silverton. The weather was looking grim, with expected rain and thunderstorms, but we were determined to give the hike our best effort. Karen left town with the car, and we were on our own.

The hike from Telluride up to the two passes (Oscars and an unnamed one) was the longest climb of the trip. We climbed almost 4500 feet in intermittent rain and sunshine. The views were as beautiful as James had said, though. As we neared the pass, we saw a thunderstorm way off to our right, and heard another way off to our left, but we crossed the 13,160 pass with sunshine above us and no fear of electrocution.

From Oscars Pass, we dropped down a steep, steep, rocky jeep road towards Ophir road. We missed the turn to Chapman aid station (or where it would be), but using our USGS quad and the course description, we quickly got back on track. I found it fun to try to follow the unmarked course; it gave an extra feeling of adventure and exploration to the trip.

We next climbed up Swamp Creek basin to Swamp/Grant pass. The last portion of this was across rocky scree-ish fields and then across a basin to finally climb up an almost impossibly steep slope to the pass. The slope looked impossible from a distance (due to foreshortening), but was a little more moderate when we got up close. We still slid back down the slope with every other step. The other side felt even steeper right near the top. I can't believe that people do this as a trail run.

Below us was Island Lake, and from there we dropped down to Lower Ice Lake and detoured off the Hardrock course to find a campsite. Darkness was threatening to set in by the time we set up our tent, and we quickly ate and crawled into our tent as the rain moved in. We were beat, having climbed a cumulative 7000 feet during the course of the day, even though we only went 15 miles.

I admit that I was a little afraid during the night when the thunderstorms set in. Lightning flashed brightly and thunder quickly followed, reverberating loudly off the peaks around us. I was so glad that we were 2000 feet below the pass, and that we had made it over all the passes without lightning setting in. Thunderstorms moved through every couple hours during the night, providing me a fitful sleep at best.

We woke in the morning to find a dusting of snow on our tent and on the mountains around us. Today was an easier day, so we took our time eating breakfast and packing up, and we hit the trail at 9:30am or so. Shortly after we started, we ran into Karen, who was hiking up to Ice Lakes from a nearby trailhead, having driven up from Silverton this morning. After a short chat, we continued on, while Karen headed up to Upper Ice Lakes for a day hike, planning on meeting us back in Silverton in the evening.

An animal trail took us down and across Ice creek to the Kamm Traverse. The course description marks certain spots as "Exposure. Acrophobia", but they weren't so bad. I might feel differently if I were trying to run along it though. After a fairly short exposed section, the Kamm Traverse joined an abandoned jeep trail which dropped down to the road, which we crossed. We forded a stream (ankle deep) and bushwhacked a short distance to pick up another trail that headed up and across towards Porcupine Basin. After the stream crossing in Porcupine basin, we lost the trail briefly, but just headed upwards until we picked it up again.

We gained the wide ridge and pass between Porcupine and Cataract basins. To our right we saw two wolves peering at us from over the ridgeline. They might have been red wolves - certainly larger than coyotes. Weather was moving in again as we moved along the ridge to climb up and over to Putnam basin. It started to snow, but at least there was no thunder/lightning as we scrambled to attain the highest ridge and dropped down to the pass and into Putnam Basin, our climbing finally done for the day.

The rest of our day was a relaxing descent down Putnam and Bear Creek basins to Silverton. The very end of the trail was very muddy and chopped up by horses that had come out of the horse camp by the road to Silverton. Not the best way to finish, but we were glad to be done. We looked forward to fording Mineral Creek to wash off our muddy shoes. The creek was about a foot deep where we crossed and refreshing. The other side of the creek was muddy and soggy, however, and our shoes got twice as muddy as before just trying to go 30 yards to the highway.

As Karen was waiting patiently for us to arrive in Silverton, we decided to call her and have her pick us up along the highway rather than hike the last mile or two into town. Then it was time for prime rib at the Pickle Barrel and a good night's sleep.