Tiffany Mountain

Posted on December 9, 2022 by evejakubowski

After Courtney (haven’t written about it yet), Eric and I deliberated where to go. I had my eye on Slate Peak and Tatie/Grasshopper pass, but Eric was hoping to go out to the Tiffany Peak area. Tiffany actually was on my radar for some reason, we were already more than halfway there, and I had a willing and enthusiastic passenger, so… might as well make the drive now! Plus Eric had waited for me while I did Courtney, it was only fair to go get after his objective the next day. Eric is an incredibly quick conversationalist too. If there was someone to have in the car for a 5-6hr drive, it’s him. It is fascinating to converse with him, we could zoom though a thousand subjects without any gaps, catching up on the years that had gone past, the peaks flashing by the window, the wildfire smoke going up in the distance, the Mariners craziest moments over the past 30 years, Eric’s brain vs GoogleMaps (Eric won).

We made it to the Tiffany trailhead around 6pm or so, and hung out chatting about obscure Cascades objectives and swapping stories until it was too cold to sit comfortably outside. I called dibs on the book we had been passing back and forth, set up my tent, and Eric set up in the car. Something hoofed trotted by my tent. I had pangs of anxiety that it was a cow and I was about to be surrounded in my tent by grunting grazing cattle, but fortunately, whatever it was, it was solo. Once my heart rate dropped back to normal and I didn’t hear any clopping hooves I managed to fade into sleep. I like cows on my plate, not sniffing my tent.

I was up around 6:30 and got my running stuff together. The skies were much less smoky than the prior day, thank god. My legs were tight and sore, but I hadn’t come out here to hang out, so I figured I could at least hike Tiffany. I told Eric as much. “You might beat me back to the car in that case,” he warned. I figured I had a book, food to cook, it was a beautiful day, I’d be fine. Eric had started the book the prior day while waiting for me. “Whoever gets back first gets to read the book!!” I wished Eric luck on his adventure across the road (the peak northeast of Spur Peak, Peak 6970) and started hiking up the Freezeout Ridge trail. Eric is an OG peakbagger and was aiming to climb 1,000 unique peaks, and had already done Tiffany and Clark. He was also dealing with deteriorating health due to a degenerative lung disease called pulmonary hypertension among other things, and was choosing simpler objectives, like this numbered peak that only gained ~500ft elevation off the road.

You’re starting at almost 7,000ft already, and pretty much above treeline. The area had burned decades ago, but the trail was clear, and I was crossing grassy fields within no time. The sun lit up the few larches that I could see, past prime but still yellow! The turn off to Tiffany Peak came up in about 1.5 miles and I quickly started up it, my legs complaining the whole time. It was reminiscent of the top of Maude actually, or Amphitheater. Broad grassy slopes, that ancient empty Pasayten feel. Finally I was at the top, looking down a sheer rock face drop down to Tiffany Lakes and munching on my pb&j.

The lakes were surrounded by larches! I tagged both ends of the summit to snap photos. What a pleasant surprise! The larch groves had been burned in the fire decades ago, larch carnage everywhere. But those that remained were perfectly lit up in the sun. Across Whistler Pass from me was a beautifully dense slope of larches, so rather than backtrack, I jogged down the southeast side of the peak, stumbling across a trail that faintly, very faintly switchbacked from the pass up to Tiffany’s summit like some untouched high country adventure. What a treat. For a top peak by prominence this seems to get surprisingly few boots.

At Whistler Pass, I savored feeling like I had this whole plane of existence to myself, found the trail that would run past Clark, and jumped on that. Faint at first, it grew more and more defined as I went south. I couldn’t resist running. I headed off trail to get a good look at the larches, and noticed something sparkling at my feet. I was entirely surrounded by quartz crystals. This was a childhood dream. Magical. Who ends up standing on a pile of crystals? In front of larches? They were everywhere! I scuffed around for 30 seconds but didn’t find any perfect/clear pieces, and decided I should be on my way so Eric isn’t waiting for too long.

Clark Peak has a very clear saddle just to its northwest, I left the trail right below that and started hiking uphill. I aimed for the saddle and then followed the ridge to the summit. Or what I thought was the summit. I don’t know, there are like 2-3 bumps that all look similar so I just tagged all of them with some fun 10-15ft scrambles. Besides that, it was underwhelming. No larches over here though, they were all back on Tiffany. I ate my second peanut butter & jelly sandwich and figured I’d go check out Tiffany Lakes.

I dropped back to the trail, nearly overshooting it because it was so faint where I crossed it. Back to Whistler Pass, where I could see a barely worn trail heading down the ridge east of Tiffany. This became more defined as soon as it started to traverse the slope, and about halfway down I left the trail to hike up to the ridge. The larches here were insane, huge and still bring yellow. But the lakes looked soooo far away, and it was already 11ish, and I had planned on being back by noon, though I hadn’t communicated that to Eric. I knew he’d be fine waiting for me but I just really don’t like making people wait. Feels like I’m inconveniencing them even if they swear I’m not. Between that and feeling too lazy to go to the lakes, I turned around.

I cruised back to the trailhead, running most of the way. The air was clear and sweet, the grass lit up in the sun, scattered larches around the fields, and views of the northern Cascades beasts across the way. Tiffany has over 2,000ft of prominence, which (with no trees in the way) means astounding views. I could see the wall of wildfire smoke in the distance, obscuring half of the Cascades but far enough away my lungs didn’t notice it. I finally ran into another person maybe a mile from the trailhead. Amazing to have a trail like that all to yourself for 99% of the trip.

Back at the car, Eric was nowhere to be found. The book hadn’t been moved. I cooked some ramen to have for lunch and sat back reading in the sun. No sign of Eric for an hour, an hour and a half, two hours. Around 1:30 I started to get worried. I can see half the peak he’s climbing from here and it’s empty and silent, I should be able to hear or see him coming down. I decided at 2pm I’d start looking, first by driving down the road to see if he was coming down another side of the peak. If no luck doing that, I’d return to the trailhead, drop the car, and try to follow his tracks as best I could.

Around 1:50, a car pulled up with Eric in the passenger seat. I jumped up from my seat. “Holy shit!! Eric! What happened?” Eric was all smiles and gratitude getting out of the car, thanking the driver who picked him up. He turned to me. “I way overdid it. Pushed myself way too far. Stupid, so stupid.” “Hey, you made it back to the car! What do you need, water? food?” Eric sat while I helped pack his stuff. Like I would discover a week later with my broken wrist, stuffing sleeping bags into stuff sacks is a surprisingly strenuous, involved activity. “I dropped straight down to the road because backtracking the way I came would have been impossible given all the blowdowns. I was too exhausted. And even then, when I got to the road I couldn’t walk 40 steps without taking a break. If he hadn’t driven by it would have taken me probably an hour to walk the half mile to the car.” Jesus. “And it was uphill!” “Yeah, I’m really lucky he came by, and was willing to give me a chance. I probably looked like a crazy person asking for a ride out here.”

“How long would you have given me before calling SAR?” he asked. “Most people… most people I give to sundown or even the next morning depending on who it is. You? At this stage? Maybe 3 hours. You’re on a short leash.” We had a good laugh and got back in the car, planning to stop every hour or so so Eric could shake out his legs. “Well did you get the peak?” I asked. “You must have if you dropped down to the road way over there.” “I’m not sure, let me take a look. I was on top of something up there at least.”

As we were driving away, Eric looked out the window, pulled out his map, and chuckled. “Heh, that’s definitely where I was. Yeah I guess I did make it, huh.” He sounded pleasantly surprised, and pleased. 33 peaks to go to 1,000.

Eric would never make it to the 1,000th unique peak, or even the 968th peak. He passed away four days later at a UW hospital. Primary cause of death: pulmonary hypertension. I didn’t ask if anyone was with him because I was and am scared to hear the answer. His hydroflask is sitting on my countertop because I have analysis paralysis over what to do with it. I had a terrible feeling the day after I dropped him off, wondering how much time he had left, worrying about who would tell us if something happened to him, thinking maybe I should tell him to list me as an emergency contact since I live three blocks away. I figured it was part of processing how I felt knowing that a friend had a terminal illness and seeing the effects in person. I was just jumping to worst case scenarios and I’d leave it up to him, he had years left right I mean heck he just went on a bushwhack even if it was a short one. And life expectancy for his condition had jumped from 1-3yrs to 7-10yrs recently. Had I researched further, I’d have read that what I saw Sunday was textbook Stage 4, and Eric had probably been doing his best to remain upbeat and not let me notice how much he was struggling.

I emailed him 15 minutes after he died thanking him for the company, the recommendation for Tiffany and Clark, the quality conversation, offered to drop off the book for him to finish now that I was done with it. For me, it was one of those extremely rejuvenating trips where everything comes naturally and seems to just click into place. Simple and liberating. But he never saw my thank you. He got the last word, he had sent me a big thank you on Sunday night (“and can i swing by to get my milk jug and water bottle back?”) and I took four days to respond because I was scatter-brained back in civilization. And it wasn’t for nearly three weeks that we noticed it wasn’t just me. Ed messaged. “Have you heard from Eric recently, Eve?” No… and he left mid conversation. That’s not like him. No social media activity. No one had heard from Eric in three weeks. I tried to sleep that night but my gut knew something was wrong. The next day I walked to his apartment a few blocks away and met his neighbor and landlord who immediately recognized my description of him, shared the news, and got me in touch with his family. I’m left with a water bottle, memories, and some amount of solace knowing he topped it all off with a peak on a surprisingly summery October day way out in the Pasayten nowhere.

It’s the people that matter (PC: Khuyen)

When I first moved to Seattle, I met a woman at a run club the day after I arrived. I ran into her a week later on a solo jog around Discovery Park, and we ended up running an hour together as she showed me around the trails. She was moving out of state the next day. “What really IS a friend?” I remember her asking. “I mean, we’re running together, but we’ve only met once and we’ll probably never meet again, does this count?” I think about that a lot, I use “friend” where many people would use “acquaintance” or even just “someone I met once.” I built a community out here from scratch. My friends span from 25yos living with their parents to people celebrating their senior discounts at Denny’s to people who are now dead. So I don’t know how to define “friend,” and my community may be non traditional. But it’s a heck of a community. These connections between people are what matters. And it sucks when one of those connections is snuffed out.

Eric’s memorial was a few days ago, bare bones but it came together last minute and was very cathartic. Friends from different decades and phases of his life, different jobs, different climbing goals. Crazy seeing how many people he mentored, even when he couldn’t keep up physically anymore. I can only speak for myself but the hours afterwards were the most at peace I had felt in a long time. Sometimes you don’t realize how much you’re treading water until you have the space to reflect.

Sunflower Trail Marathon

Posted on April 20, 2022 by evejakubowski

I have awesome friends. Brooke decided a trail marathon was the thing to do for part of her bachelorette party, and so we found ourselves driving 5 hours from sunny Seattle to rainy Mazama (yes, that’s backwards, it’s supposed to be rainy in Seattle and sunny in Mazama dammit) on a Friday evening prepping for a Saturday morning race. The number of people who have told us “you have crazy friends” when we said this is a bachelorette is hilariously high. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Distance: 26.8 miles
Elevation gain: 2200ish
Weather: 40’s and rainy
Commute from Seattle: 4.5hrs
Did I Trip: NO I DID NOT

We stopped at two gas stations along the way, one where I got the best unsolicited compliment of my life. After I had walked out of the shop one of the attendants pulled my friend aside and just said “is that your friend?” and she said yes and he said “wow, tell her she is beautiful, she has the face of a movie star! I was too shy to tell her myself.” I laughed when she told me that. I had been to shy to try speaking to him in Spanish (he was talking to the other employees in Spanish) because I hadn’t spoken it in months, but you’re never going to get better if you never speak it! Ugh!

Capris, Legs, and Rorschach who I followed for a while

We got a mediocre dinner (sorry) in Twisp and then stayed at the Idle a While Hotel, which has rooms that are definitely bigger on the inside than on the outside, not unlike that house in House of Leaves but without the paranormal activity as far as we could tell. Check in was entirely remote, but they have a red phone you pick up that auto dials old school if catastrophe strikes, like Amber’s phone dying so no one knows what the code to get in the room is. We were finally in, packed our trail running packs for the morning, groaned about the weather, gossipped, ate chocolate, and went to bed around 9. A trio of grandmas.

We woke up at 6 to pouring rain. Amber broke the ice. “I don’t even want to go. What if I bailed. I just want to bail.” We all looked at each other. No. We drove this far. It’s a bachelorette. The wildflowers might be dead. The rain might be here while Seattle is sunny. We might have 13.1 or 26.2 miles to run. In the rain. But we’re committed. Regarding the wildflowers, this is usually the start of peak wildflower season, but this year a late season snow storm froze most of the balsam root and a lot of the blooms died off. The rest of the wildflowers were extremely delayed, so we didn’t really know what do expect flowerwise besides a sub-par show. If you need a throwback to a “normal” flower year, here’s Amber being a disney princess.

Brooke and Amber dropped me at the Marathon shuttle before driving themselves to the half marathon start. The shuttle took me from the finish line in Twisp up to the starting line in Mazama. The driver was kind enough to give me a hefty garbage bag to stay dry at the starting line (or you know, bivvy in if I totally died mid race) and I huddled under an outdoor pergola(?) with dozens of other runners until it was 5 minutes before the start. We hobbled over to the starting line in the drizzle, did a countdown, and took off. I let everyone pass me. Just you wait I’ll take you back down at like mile 23 when you’re dying and I’m cruising. At least that’s what I tell myself. Most of them just left me behind it’s okay.

We ran through the woods on a wide, flat trail, then alongside highway 20 for a hot minute, and then crossed back into forest on some Methow Community trails. Some literal kids ran past me in tutus with so much life and energy and seemingly no idea they had hours left in front of them. 2 miles later, I realized they were in the relay marathon, and actually only had to run… well, like 2 miles. The relay runners would soon become the bane of my existence since they were always so fresh and peppy and fast and clearly hadn’t tried to fight a tree or a rock or a raindrop or whatever had pissed them off minutes ago. Because they were too happy to be pissed.

I soon saw a sign that said Mile 26. Hmm. Mile 26. Well we’ve run at least 2 miles. No I don’t dare check Strava, I don’t want to know. I guess we’re just going to run like 28 or 29 miles. Whatever, it’ll be fine. Good to know how much is left so I can set expectations accordingly. I love when marathons are signed like that.

The trail stayed wide open and flat, very well cared for. We ended up on a long gravel/dirt road (mostly mud that day) and back on singletrack trails through a burn zone from the prior year. It was totally bizarre, you could see huge holes where (i think) there used to tree stumps and root systems, the uphill burn was more apparent than the downhill, it looked like two different forests. No morels though, I looked. No morels in miles of burn zone. Not that I’d have known what to do if I did find a cluster. Carry them in my hands for 20 miles?

My brain snapped back to reality. A sign said Mile 15. No freaking way. I haven’t run 11 miles I’ve run like I don’t know maybe 7? Mile 14. Holy shit. Mile 13. We’re halfway there?? No way, there’s supposed to be a rest station around mile 13. But damn if we’re halfway there I feel GREAT. I crushed a pack of ritz crackers with cheese hiking an uphill. I followed a lady in a rainbow tutu that I deemed my sunflower because she was the closest thing to a flower out there for the first like 16 miles. I laughed with a guy in a white shirt as we slip n slided (slipped and slid? what’s the past tense of slip n slide) down a very muddy barely traveled forest road, complete with comical arm waving but no true wipeouts.

45 minutes and no mileage signs pass and I finally cruise into a rest station and I’m stuffing my face with oreos and potato chips when I see the huge sign that says “13.1 miles left!” My heart sank. Not that much because I had a feeling I was being misled, but oh MAN it would have been great to have been way more than halfway done already. Of course it was too good to be true. Those signs must have been for the Methow Community Trails, not custom placed for the race. I grabbed a few oreos for the road (trail?) and jogged on.

I figured they must have saved the best wildflowers for the second half, right? After all, that is where the half marathon course is, so the best must be yet to come. Single track trail, and finally – a patch of balsam root! And another! And a switchback! I started snapping photos. I chatted with some new trail friends, several who were on their first marathon ever, several who had done the sunflower marathon before and swore I had to come back next year because the flowers this year were so sad. I kept stopping to snap pics and let people run around me while I took pics of them. On multiple occasions I resisted the urge to smash my phone on the ground when it wouldn’t take pics because the touch screen can’t differentiate between my finger and a raindrop. I finally decided I needed to give up on pics and just jog for a bit while my phone and I got some space from each other.

The best uphill section of the whole race

The trail went back into forest and wrapped around a lake where I briefly wondered if I was lost (no, there was literally nowhere the trail ever split, there’s nowhere else you could have possibly gone) before putting us out on a stretch of muddy road with frequent cars passing. This was somewhere around mile 20 according to my feelings, but rather than getting sad and sluggish I was belligerent (and also sluggish). Every car that passed I went OFF in my head. WHY ARE YOU HERE THERE’S A RACE WHY DID THEY CHOOSE A BUSY ROAD THIS ISN’T SINGLE TRACK TAKE YOUR MUD AND GTFO OF HERE I WAS TOLD THERE WOULD BE FLOWERS NO, MAZDA, YOU HAVE 12 FT ON THAT SIDE OF THE ROAD THESE 3 FEET ARE MY FEET THERE ARE MANY OTHERS LIKE IT BUT THIS STRETCH IS MINE and how the fuck did i not buy margarita shot blocks? that aid station better have some god damn potato chips or I swear. A relay runner passed me breathing heavily and loudly and sprinting. It generated similar fury to hearing someone snore loudly at 2am and being helpless. The old running mantra from high school cross country popped into my head. Dig deep in the woods. 15yrs later and I’ll still think of that when I’m dying on a run. Even if I’m on a stupid muddy road with stupid cars driving to probably stupid places in the stupid rain and I’m all out of crackers and I never want to hear this person’s breath ever again.

The aid station did have potato chips, and I grabbed more of those and oreos and threw some gatorade or gatorade equivalent in my face. I’m like the least dialed runner ever. Okay, final stretch, perk up. Wait no, we have to go uphill, use the rage first. I was hiking faster than the other runners around me were running, well besides the super fresh relay runner who at least breathed normally. Get outta here leave me alone hurry up I don’t want to hear it. The other runners noticed my efficient walking and joined me. We crested the hill and the rain finally let up and holy shit, the sage brush and flowers started appearing again. The heavy breather was gone. The air smelled like fresh sage. THERE are the endorphins I needed. Thanks body. My legs felt fresh again. I laughed passing the cameraman. Is this where I pretend to look good?! A guy cruising uphill passed me playing Dancing in the Moonlight out loud on a speaker, I lit up. I love this song! Keep up I wanna listen! I started passing people. Let’s go baby. I don’t know how many miles are left and I don’t want to know. Can’t be much further at this point.

We cruised on top of the plateau for a while, enjoying the flowers and views. I figured we’d get a gradual downhill to the finish line. Except then suddenly the elevation was falling away below me and I was pounding downhill shattering my knees and quads and hips. Through the best flowers we had seen through the whole race. And suddenly I heard cheering. I originally just wanted to be below 6 hours, I hadn’t super trained for this, hadn’t run in like four weeks, just wanted to finish and finish feeling good and that would be enough. I checked my watch. 4 hrs and 50minutes, something like that. But cheering. They’ve gotta be within a mile. Within 10 minutes. Ok. Pick it up.

I flew to the bottom of the valley, and realized the finish line was just up a short hill (of course). My adductor told me to go fuck myself 150ft before the finish line but I put it in its place and sprinted across that mat still feeling awesome unlike the past few years in Moab where maybe I was standing but I should probably have been dragged across the finish line by a support crew. Amber was at the finish line waiting and Brooke had gone to grab the car already. Brooke had already been waiting for like two hours after finishing her half, fortunately she found her other set of friends who clothed her and got her dry and warm (everyone was SOAKED from the rain). Amber and I had bananas and beer and sat on the grass where one of my hips started spasming. Even though it wasn’t being used. Cmon. Get over yourself we’re done here. It’s over. Brooke pulled up and found us sprawled on the grass in the middle of the cars, and we hopped in and drove straight to Seattle. Sunny. Stupid. Seattle. From the rainy desert.

We dropped Brooke off first, and all stumbled quite literally out of the car, grasping at luggage and doors for support. I ate pasta and lentils and chick peas and woke up at 2am to repeat the whole process again, and again at 9am. And then at brunch I finished my entire omelette and then all of Amber’s pancakes except 2 bites before realizing holy shit, was she even finished? I don’t even really like pancakes unless they are the banana or blueberry variety. I love the post race feeling, and I had completely forgotten how much I enjoy trail marathons. Moab is phenomenal and will never be topped but I have not been in good shape the past few years, and it turns out marathons are much more enjoyable when you feel good for the whole race. Let’s see how much I remember that when this fall comes around.

Kudos to Brooke for picking a dope bachelorette idea, motivating me to join, and to both Brooke and Amber for staying positive despite the rain. Never would have found or signed up for this if not for them, I’m so used to burning out with each of my sports that I don’t dare commit to anything in advance and this race sells out every year, you can’t do it last minute! Stoked it came together, pretty damn cool to say I ran from Mazama to Twisp for a bachelorette party!

Balsam explosion! Final stretch was the best stretch!! Besides our crying quads

Upper & Lower CCC Trail

Posted on March 28, 2022 by evejakubowski

What I thought was 8 miles round trip for some reason ended up being somewhere between 16 and 22 miles depending on what map/tracking device you listen to. Strava said 19, 22 if I had gone all the way to the Teneriffe parking lot and back. But regardless, this is a great trail to miraculously disappear from crowds and surround yourself with greenery only an hour away from the big city, and it’s extremely runnable. Well, besides the middle of the trail. But we’ll get to that.

Distance: 16-19mi
Elevation gain: 700ish ft at least from the lower trailhead to the upper trailhead
Weather: 50’s and sunny
Commute from Seattle: 64 minutes, unless you miss the exit and have to drive an additional 7mi east before you can turn around
Did I Trip: No

The CCC trail is broken into two sections, upper and lower. It should be broken into three sections, but you can’t really access that third point as a trailhead, so I guess I get it. But I’m going to call it upper, middle, and lower. Middle is technically part of lower.

Upper CCC: The section east of the paved road pullout and west of the middle fork parking lot/campground. “1” on the map. I parked at the middle fork parking lot, unmarked in the upper right corner of the map. There is also parking where the CCC meets the road between sections “1” & “2.”
Middle (part of lower) CCC: The section west of the paved road pullout but east of Bessemer forest road. “2” on the map. Bessemer road is the obvious road between “2” & “3.” Also known as the Blowout Creek trailhead, though you will be parking on Middle Fork road as Bessemer road is gated.
Lower (also part of lower) CCC: The section west of Bessemer forest road and east of the Teneriffe parking lot. “3” on the map. Sitka Spruce trail is “4” and Teneriffe/Lower CCC parking is “5.”

The upper CCC honestly is the highlight. Wow. I parked at the middle fork parking lot and walked across the street to start the trail, passing the middle fork campground. It is insanely green, and was freshly brushed out by a work party! Credit where credit is due, sounds like it was the Backcountry Horsemen who are incredible trail stewards of many trail in the area and tend to fly under the radar compared to organizations like WTA and the Washington Climbers’ Coalition. EDIT: This was spearheaded by Backcountry Horsemen, but included volunteers from WTA, DNR, King County Parks, and the Forest Service! Work took over two days and an estimated 150 logs were cleared. Holy cow.

You could smell the fresh cut logs and see sawdust everywhere, and looking at the sides of the trail you could see the debris they had worked to clear. Seriously impressive efforts. The only things I cleared were spiderwebs, with my face. Past the campground you turn onto an old forest road, which is less green and more rocky, and I thought “oh shit, what if everyone’s photos are just from the first half mile, and the rest is like this?” Don’t worry, the rocky road quickly turns back into green carpets and hanging moss. It’s SO GREEN. I felt healthier just being there.

The trail weaves through the second growth forest, crossing the occasional stream. There are multiple bridges (one had a tree fall through it!) though the two largest creeks nearly got my feet wet on the return trip. The open creek (views, wide, talus/rocks in the water) had walking sticks stashed on either side for unstable hikers without poles or runners with tired legs to borrow. But the second creek (in forest, narrow, trees/downed logs everywhere) was a no go, I hiked a few feet upstream to an easier crossing and then found my way back to the trail to carry on. If you have waterproof boots or aren’t being a princess you’ll be fine.

A few minutes beyond that creek, you pop out onto the paved road you drove to get to the trailhead. Okay there’s a gravel section right there, technically. Take a right and follow the road for maybe 300ft before the CCC trail picks up north of the road again.

This is the middle CCC section, technically part of the lower, but it was characterized by blowdowns and stream crossings and VIEWS! I was so surprised! I expected only forest and mossy ground, but this section of the CCC actually gets up above the valley floor and gives you peakaboo views (get it) of the Pulpit, Preacher, Russian Butte, and the Pratt River valley. It’s also much more obviously an old forest road than the upper section, for better or for worse. The road seems to have been cut straight through small cliffs at some point, there must have been blasting involved. Glad the efforts were preserved for me to enjoy 90 years later. “Enjoy” being loose here, because I swear every 200ft there was a tree or seven across the old road for me to maneuver under/over/around/through.

Just before connecting with the Bessemer road, there’s what you might call a washout. A creek has eroded its way through the trail, with a huge canyon above and below. But the trail finds this miraculous flat ish spot to cross, followed by a series of blowdowns entirely obscuring the trail besides an old sign you can see poking up. But keep going forward/perpendicular to the stream, and you’ll pop our onto the well maintained but presumably gated forest road.

Left on the forest road this time, and in 1000 (horizontal, please) ft you will see the CCC trail continue for its last stretch. This time it’s marked by a sign saying “Putting America to Work: Project funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act,” a tribute to the 1930’s Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) from which the trail derives its name. They originally built a road spanning 9 miles from the foothills to where North Bend Timber Company had put in rail infrastructure for their lumber operations. This area was extensively mined and even more extensively logged for decades, there’s some crazy (and spooky) history in this valley.

I passed some mountain bikers on the road, maybe trying to bike as far as they could before booting the rest of the way up Moolock or Bootalicious peaks. When I reached the switchback where the CCC continues, I looked at the river and thought ah crap, another unprotected crossing. But wait! There’s a cut log to the right, set up as a foot bridge. Crossed that, and I was on my way through the last section of trail. This was a terrible time to realize my Discover Pass was obscuring my America the Beautiful pass on my windshield, which was the pass I needed to show. Luckily I had like 12 miles to mentally prep for the ticket I’d probably receive.

Massive logs moving through North Bend in the 1940’s from here

More surprise views! Less moss, more brush. I don’t think this would be very enjoyable once the brush has budded/leafed/grown in a few months. But for now it’s still pleasant, minus the occasional trail runner hurdle (low downed trees), small stream crossing, and mud pit. I finally saw some people for the first time in what felt like ages. At this point I was determined to make it to the end. I refilled my water at a random stream with no treatment. Nonzero chance I have giardia now but my dumb ass only brought half a liter thinking I’d only be running 8 miles.

I hit the last forest road, and deemed that my turnaround point. Turns out that’s not truly the end. It’s gated, so you have to park another 1.5ish miles away at the Teneriffe trailhead, or ignore the residential signs and park at the gate. I should have asked the hikers that started there. Better yet, you park at the Granite Creek trailhead on the middle fork road, and short cut up to the CCC via the Sitka Spruce trail. It’s barely marked on caltopo, but very visible from the CCC trail. The Sitka Spruce trail starts on the other side of Middle Fork Snoqualmie River from the Granite Creek trail (like keep walking the road across the river after parking at Granite Creek, trail will be on the left). Probably much more enjoyable and green than walking an abandoned forest road to the “start” of the Lower CCC.

Here, I started Strava, because I had no clue what mileage was like. I started jogging back towards the car. The first stretch went so quickly. Turned out I had been running uphill for a lot of that, maybe that’s why I had felt so crappy. I remembered a few landmarks, this creek, that creek, this view. And then I reached Bessemer road, and realized I had no more landmarks besides a washout and multiple memorable downed logs. From Bessemer road to the middle CCC, it’s actually not that straightforward even though there’s only 10ft of downed logs. There is no obvious entrance point from the road to the trail/washout, just a wall of brush. But I found the old sign again and there’s very visible flagging across the creek, and from there it was easy to connect the two points and be back on my way.

Far side of the washout w/ sign before Bessemer road, hard to see from the other side of the washout

Until I hit the next blowdown 150ft later. It’s impossible to get into a rhythm. But if you need to work on your mid run hip mobility or agility, boy do I have the trail for you. After a mind numbing few miles, I ran into a guy who bailed at the first downed tree, and reaffirmed his decision as soon as he asked if it ever got better. No, no it did not, for several miles. You made the right choice. I wish I had recommended he take a short stroll up the upper CCC since he had parked on the middle fork road separating upper & middle, by my definitions.

I was happy to be back at the upper CCC trail, knowing I just had two spunky creek crossings followed by who knows how many miles of ridiculous mostly flat greenery between me and the car. And oh boy was I excited to be almost back at the car. I passed two mountain bikers (yes, it’s a shared trail!) and was jealous of their mode of transportation. But mostly I was drunk on endorphins and exhaustion and afternoon sun spilling through the trees. Many friends have heard me talk about how much I love dappled sunlight in our forests here. This was that, on steroids.

Back at the car, I forced myself to stretch for like 7min before joining the congo line of cars. Life pro tip: don’t stop for gas at exit 34. There will be lines, there will be dildos who leave their cars at the gas islands while they get snacks or pee or who knows what EVEN WHEN THE PUMP ISN’T EVEN IN THE CAR and little did they know some nerd who just ran for literally hours and hasn’t eaten was ready to march into the store and rip them a new one. Instead I drove across the street, where prices were the same and car owners were being responsible.

All in all, spectacular run, especially when it’s confirmed free of downed trees. Judging by the debris, Backcountry Horsement put a LOT of work into this yesterday! I don’t even think it’d have been a viable run if not for them. We are seriously spoiled by all of the volunteer organizations that contribute to our trails. And good news: miraculously, no parking ticket, despite the pass not being visible from the front!

One more of the good part of the lower CCC

Grand Park via Lake Eleanor

Posted on March 19, 2022 by evejakubowski

I hadn’t been on a trail run in ages and I had seen so many beautiful pics of Grand Park, it was time to give it a go. I had been warned about the dirt road and I was mentally prepared for potholes galore. Bring it on.

Distance: ~9mi round trip
Elevation: 1,100ft gain, 5,600ft highest point
Weather: 80’s and sunny with BUGS
Commute from Seattle: 2hrs but add 15-20min buffer for the forest road
Did I Trip: NO SIR

Then get a break in beautiful old growth

I got a late start, showing up at the trailhead around 10:45am. I immediately walked RIGHT past the start to the trail and kept heading up the road until I noticed fewer and fewer cars and realized… huh, it must be back that way.

The trail was an absolute mud fest in the beginning. Pits of lose-your-shoes mud with some branches tossed across but not enough to keep your shoes clean. Lake Eleanor came up quickly (maybe a mile?) where I immediately made another wrong turn. The trail dumps you out into campsites next to the lake, and you can follow the campsites along the lake, or you can walk through the first campsite to the left where you’ll pick up the rest of the trail. Fortunately this was on strava, so my trail navigation skills are publicly on display.

After the lake, you drop a bit of elevation and pass through some meadows/swamps/bogs before regaining it again. Did I mention the bugs yet? The bugs were BAD. And I was sweaty. So any bug that hit my face stuck to my face. Just get to the fields, just get to the fields, soon it’ll be all flowers and no bugs just get to the fields. Oh here’s a field. With mud pits and cesspools of mosquito larvae. Where the King was born. I assume. Or Queen. Or whoever. Doesn’t matter who.

Past the lower meadows, you get onto this ridge like ramble, and the trees get thinner, and the trail gets drier, and the flowers get denser and the colors get brighter. Avalanche lilies were EVERYWHERE, a promising glimpse of what was to come. I always think back to my friend years ago who was SO excited to show his sister the avalanche lilies at Rainier before realizing it was April, and everything was still under many feet of snow.

Trees got more and more sparse, meadows got larger and larger, and suddenly the top of Rainier was in view. And in the next meadow, ALL of Rainier was in view, and you’re meandering along a narrow trail surrounded by wildflowers and grasses. Lupine, these hot pink paintbrush (I’m used to red and white, not hot pink!), purple aster, yellow biscuitroot, more avalanche lilies. And the meadow is nearly two. Miles. Long. You can ramble through this for hours. You can eve see Fremont Lookout up the ridge directly south!

The only awkward part is passing others. Wildflowers are extremely delicate, and the trail is extremely narrow in some points. If there’s a party to pass, there is no good way to do it.. I ran into a crew going for a peak I don’t remember and passed them by walking next to the trail doing my best to not step on wildflowers and totally got called out for it. I felt so guilty but I honestly don’t know what the alternative would be. They seemed to understand as soon as I was like “I didn’t know what else to do” and I think that’s all you CAN do. Do your best and hope everyone understands you have good intentions. Just sucks because that’s basically admitting that some wildflowers are going to be trampled because of the traffic on this trail, that traffic includes me, and there’s not much we can do about it.

Purple Aster, purple something else, and white something

I took a break at the intersection of the Lake Eleanor trail and the Northern Loop trail before turning around to head back. The trip back through the meadows was no less spectacular, but re-entering the trees… yikes. I passed some lucky hikers wearing bug nets while hiking, they were the smartest folks out there that day. I swear the bugs made me run faster. I corrected all my trail mishaps on the way out missing zero turns, and popped out at the car around 1pm despite my late start.

This is an AWESOME trail for a run or a short day hike. Easy navigation, no parking passes to deal with, tons of scenery, just really high bang for your buck. I can’t believe it took me this long to do it. The only downside is the forest road that lasts forever but it wasn’t as brutal as I had expected. In fact, my car matched the foliage, and the views are pretty good too. Buuut I was still pretty happy to be back on pavement by the end.

Moab Trail Marathon

Posted on November 29, 2021 by evejakubowski

Coming up to an aid station in the middle of nowhere. Those guys camped overnight!!

We’ve run Moab many years now, with varying degrees of success. This year I had massive anxiety leading up to the race because I was pretty shit shape by every measure. My employer sucker punched me in the gut by more or less asking me to voluntarily resign after I showed interest in an offer on another team that ended up falling through. Yeah, it’s as ridiculous as it sounds. It zapped any and all motivation and confidence that I had, but reading my old blog posts about Moab in years prior (I didn’t even write about 2019 but it was pretty on-brand) it seemed like the only difference from years prior and this year was my mental game. Several times I had run something like 7-12 miles once and called it good in terms of training. I was just totally elitist and invincible back then and this year I have been feeling very.. vincible.

Now enter my family. For the first time, my brother Ned would be joining us. You know how there were two types of people at the beginning of the pandemic? Those who thrived with all their newfound free time and flexible schedules and those who withered away due to lack of human contact and socialization? My brother and father were solidly in the former. Ned started running consistently for the first time in his life. My father woke up, surfed, then checked email, maybe surfed again, took the dog for a walk, went for a jog, checked email, paddleboarded at sunset, rinse and repeat. I was in the latter, slowly turning into a past-its-prime mushroom in Seattle with the rain and no ski pass and no boards and starting a now fully remote job that required both 7am and 10pm meetings. Not a healthy structure. But I had a good baseline from the climbs I managed to get on, and got some long runs in during August in Chicago and NYC, so.. that’ll be good for a November marathon, right? And I went on a slow 19miler in October but had to be rescued by my roommate 6mi from home. It would have been 25mi because I guess in layman’s terms “I got lost” and also brought no food or water. Either way, not encouraging.

But. I was STOKED Ned was joining. Stoked and terrified, because this race is one of my favorite things ever and I was both excited for him and worried he’d hate it/something would go wrong/the magic would have faded. But he and his girlfriend Jess were taking pictures from the minute we got to Moab and I couldn’t stop thinking “just wait until we’re on the marathon course, it’ll be even more mind blowing.” I didn’t want to say it out loud because I didn’t want to set expectations too high or sound like a one-upper. We crashed at the Red Cliffs Lodge as is tradition, and were up at 6am ready for action. Jess grabbed the free pack-it-out toilet that the race organizers gave each of us and tried to get Ned to take it. “I mean there is literally zero chance that I need to shit during this marathon.” We laughed. Probably fair. Probably. I packed some pastries in napkins for mid race snacks and we headed out.

Mom and Jess came to see us start and then took off on their own adventure while we went to wander the desert for who knows how many hours. Within five minutes, Ned was admiring the scenery, my Dad was peeing, and I was bitching about my recurring calf injury flaring up. Despite this happening on 80% of my runs and 100% of runs that start in sand, I neglected to take aspirin. I set the pace as the slow one, and we tried to explain to Ned just don’t run any of the uphills. We’ll get enough elevation gain at mile 15. After that, run whatever you want. Or whatever you can. And we had all of our usual calculated bail points. Around mile 5 my dad’s hip flexor or adductor was acting up, not a great sign so early on. He was worried. I was worried. Ned on the other hand was already pumped full of endorphins. “I feel great does anyone else feel great it’s like we haven’t even run anything yet!” Omg, is this how dad felt with me the first few years?

We finally got a nice long flat/downhill (one of the few sections where you can hit a rhythm) and cruised into the next rest stop. We are a family of salty people, so we all started popping electrolyte pills. I told Ned and my father to only take one or two at each rest stop. My father said no way I’ve done this before I need at least 4 and popped 4 or 5 pills in his mouth. Ned followed his lead. I glanced at the ingredients. Well, it’s not like they’ll overdose on anything in here, potassium’s low, so I guess they can do what they want as long as they drink enough. Better than cramping up when you’re 12mi away from any sort of road. Ned asked when there would be a bathroom. Oh, there’s one at mile 10 and 12 around the out-and-back, if you can wait until then. Seriously there’s only one bathroom? Well… yeah… it’s a trail race.

We danced around the canyon rim, amazed to see there was no bottleneck at the first scramble section. Soon enough we were at the base of the canyon, where we all agreed we were going for the full and not bailing for the half marathon. My dad’s leg was feeling better, my calves had blood running through them again, Ned was still galloping gracefully like a gazelle. We tried to explain what an “out and back” was to Ned and quickly realized our brains already didn’t have enough glucose to put our net three brain cells together to explain the concept or what it meant for us. You’ll just have to see. Oh, and this is the only bathroom on course if you want it. We all skipped it. The out and back went faster than ever, I used to hate it and I still kind of do but now it’s a great opportunity to cheer on everyone running in the opposite direction, and I love that. And we passed our number neighbor!! She was number 245, and we were 246/247/248 if I remember correctly. I shouted number buddies!!! and told Ned/Dad that I had found our fourth honorary family member. She was just as stoked as we were.

“You’re the blogger!!” A woman stopped dead in her tracks looking at me. “you’ve written about this for years!” I was too in shock to say anything. Uh, yeah, I guess I have, holy shit really you read them?? “Yes I said I HAD to remember your face in case I saw you here!” My heart exploded. We can stop running now, I’ve peaked. This silly little blog I wrote to remember my own trips and keep my family back on the east coast informed on my adventures made it to someone in the Moab marathon. How crazy is that?? Shit, I need to start writing again!

We parted ways. “You’re internet famous!!” Ned and Dad were stoked for me too. That’ll carry me up mile 15 for sure. We ran past the bathroom, skipping it a second time. The road section to mile 14 was longer than I remembered, the token tree greener than I remembered, the aid station better equipped than I remembered. Fewer people around us than I remembered. Shit, that means we’re slow. We popped some salt pills. “This is the best rice krispie of my life” said Ned. I was still aglow from being recognized.

“I wore this mustache ironically but… everyone here has a mustach, and I think seriously?”

We hiked the entirety of the >1200ft of gain from mile 14.5 to mile 16. It wrecked me the first year because I tried to run it, but now it’s a nice break from the redundancy of running. I remember hearing someone’s soul leave their body in disappointment on a false summit some year prior, but we knew what was coming and pulled some reverse psychology on Ned to ensure his hopes never got up. We snapped the traditional photo at the top of the climb, and Ned got a text from Jess saying she and my mom were having a blast. He had been worried about ditching her on her birthday for this race (she is a saint) so that was a relief. We realized Ned was worried about Jess and my father, I was worried about my father and Ned, our brother Calvin back home was worried about my dad, and my dad was worried about and Ned. Bunch of narcissists running a marathon through the desert worried about everyone but themselves.

The section after that 1200ft climb is my favorite of the whole race. You’re on top of the world, finally another section of easy cruiser terrain where you can get back into a vibe. Unless your shins twinge and threaten to start spasming. I skipped a bit and kept myself from falling over. Fuuuuck it’s only mile 16. We have 10 miles left. That’s WAY too early for spasms. And this is my favorite part to run!! Shit. I took a salt pill one of them had stashed, and I think a single advil. I’ll take another later if the one isn’t enough.

But I was totally in my head now. I slow jogged everything terrified I’d set off another spasm, and unfortunately the next few miles were through slickrock, which is NOT gentle on your shins. We did a LOT of walking. Usually we push it going through the slick rock, but not this year. I had a few more twinges threaten, but nothing full blown. I’m also convinced the slickrock changes every year. Or I’m delirious by this point every year.. that’s probably it.

After 13 miles of asking for a bathroom and skipping the only one available, Ned was about to cave to his bathroom urges. Wait wait I have napkins!! Omg Ned I have napkins!! I forgot I had wrapped some pastries in napkins at the hotel for race snacks. I hucked the pastries into the void (turned out they weren’t appealing anymore), tossed him the napkins, and he darted off trail behind a lone tree. We sat on a rock enjoying the silence and scenery while waiting. No cars, no people, no nothing. Just you and miles and miles of desert. And somewhere, a 26yo who narrowly avoided shitting himself.

We carried on pushing through slickrock and finally coming to what we thought was a nice 2 miles of gradual downhill from miles 21-23. But we were wrong, it’s more like one mile, and it’s rather rocky single track with plenty of ups too. And now my dad had to use the bathroom. Wtf is wrong with you guys? This has never been a problem before. He considered bailing at mile 23 for the portapotties but held strong and we ran past the finish line as usual to head out on the Adventure 5k, figuring he could wait another 30min. The past THREE years I’ve had something go wrong in the last 3 miles. Once an adductor spasm, once I stepped on an entirely buried prickly pear cactus which went RIGHT through my shoe sole like a knife through butter, and once a shin spasm that dropped me on my ass in surprise (dodged the cacti that time). My expectations were not high.

We got a little dizzy walking into the drainage pipe. I almost ate shit in the dark cave for the first time (there’s like.. one rock in there the whole time, and I tripped on it). My dad kept falling behind pausing randomly, probably thinking too hard about bathrooms. The scramble section was cool as usual. The worst part was these stupid mounds they added at like mile 25.5. This whole time we had been looking forward to the parking lot section, which while boring is at least flat and smooth and you’re basically finished. But not this year. We had these mounds, maybe 3-4ft tall to go up and down. Forever. It was. Terrible. Sheer anger carried us through.

We finally got to the flat section. “I might literally die if we don’t get to the finish ASAP.” Ned took off. “I might literally shit right here if we don’t get to the finish ASAP.” My dad followed. I had no choice. But it turned out I actually felt pretty okay all things considered. The pace felt refreshing and I was in full control of my peaceful, well-adjusted, content GI tract. Ned sprinted up the sand dune to the finish, I almost puked going up the sand dune to the finish, and I can only assume my dad nearly evacuated his bowels going up the sand dune because he kept running from the finish line straight to the portapotties.

Jess and my mom were waiting to meet us at the finish. Ned grabbed a medal (“I never take one, they just clutter up my house” “Well I haven’t gotten a medal since like the 8th grade and I EARNED this one”) and we all grabbed mugs (best race swag ever) while my mom laughed as we explained Ned and my dad fighting their GI tracts for the second half of the course. How many salt pills did you take? Oh like at least a dozen. Each. Except for Eve. She said only take one at each aid station. My mother looked at us. You know those have magnesium right? I think I almost cried laughing. The two of them had been popping quadruple doses of light laxatives at every rest stop. Yes, turns out there is a such thing as too many salt pills. Will you die? Probably not. Will you be extremely uncomfortable? Yes, yes you will.

But overall, the legs still felt fresh for all of us. My dad could actually jump like 18″ compared to past years where he was shattered. I didn’t have any spasms in the last 3 miles and actually had a good kick. Ned proclaimed it was the coolest thing he’s ever done and the best day of his life. We had a hilarious story from it, and we were definitely the happiest, most energetic people to finish.

I can’t say enough good things about this race. I’ve done many other trail races since and none compare. I’ve done it 7 times now, going back to 2013. Skipped 2015 for some volcano climbs in Mexico and skipped 2020 because I assumed it wasn’t happening (I was wrong). And even though we’ll never be anywhere near the front of the pack, it’s been such a blast every single time. There was one year where one of the top three finishers was in line with my mother getting coffee while we were still bumbling around the slickrock. Or maybe even still slogging up the mile 15 climb. Hilariously far behind. But it doesn’t matter. This race is something special.

p.s. “Hey do I have permission to make fun of both of you for magnesium shits in my blog post?” “all you, go for it.” “yeah of course.” I have a great family.

Ned coming up one of the scramble sections. Something special.

Spider Meadows, Lyman Lakes, & Cloudy Pass

Posted on August 19, 2019 by evejakubowski

Let the beauty begin

I’m sorry for skipping the forest

Spider Gap and Lyman Lakes are another two trips that were on my OG hikes list from 2014, composed through hours of clicking every hike listed on the old WTA hike finder map with endearing notes like “This might be a scramble, not sure what that means” and “people mention ice axes, maybe wait until you know more about mountaineering.” I quickly got so wrapped up in chasing summits and technical skills that I never made time for a backpacking trip and never got in good enough running shape to do the full Spider Gap/Buck Creek Pass running loop (someday!) but two weeks ago when Amber and Kacie had some shit come up I figured it was time for a casual overnight. Everyone needed a break away from cell service and a trip that wouldn’t destroy the human body or test resilience. I was already leaning towards Spider Gap, and when Ken and Surafel posted pictures of Lyman Lakes and Cloudy Pass I basically lost my mind. That was it, that’s where we’re going. Damn the 3.5hr drive and the trailheads rats and the bugs.

Distance: ~22mi round trip (15 round trip to Spider Gap)
Elevation: 3600ft (like all in the last 2mi to Spider Gap)
Weather: 60’s and sunny
Commute from Seattle: 3:30 without traffic
Did I Trip: No full on wipe outs, but some nice stubbed toes and shredded shoe soles

Just before reaching Spider snowfield

We didn’t leave until like 6:30 or 7am on Saturday, knowing we probably wouldn’t get a parking spot at the trailhead and would not have first dibs on campsites. We parked a half mile from the trailhead when a car pulled up next to us. “Hi, there’s actually a spot at the trailhead if you want it…” we leapt back in the car and took the trailhead spot. YES! We packed our gear (I even brought camp shoes! Flip flops for camp! Luxuries!) and started walking. On the most incredibly flat, well maintained trail I have ever been on. Double wide, as Amber called it. It was mostly forest, a few small streams, some mini meadows. Campsites every 1.5 miles, if not closer. I think I have selective blindness, because we passed a hunter and I legitimately did not see the enormous rifle he was holding until Kacie mentioned hunting and suddenly it materialized in front of me. Omg. But if the hunter can’t find any bears, then I probably also won’t find any bears, so… sleep tight!

The remains of a glacier 😦

You break out into the meadows suddenly, from dappled sunlight in the forest to open meadows with wildflowers as far as you can see. And massive peaks in the background! I stood there in disbelief. This might be one of the prettiest places I’ve been in Washington, technical peaks included. We scouted out a camp right next to the river and dropped out overnight gear so we could head up to Spider Gap.

The hike from the meadows is maybe another mile of flat travel, and then you gain something like 2,500ft in two miles. When you look up it looks like there’s no route through the cliff bands above you, but the trail keeps going and the views get better and better. The “glacier” is no longer really a glacier, it died sometime in years past and is now just a snowfield. No poles or spikes necessary, though they did help. I left Amber and Kacie here because I wanted to have time to run to Cloudy Gap and back, and I think they were getting fed up with my pushing. And I didn’t think I’d even make it past Upper Lyman Lake at this point, it was already almost 3pm. Kacie finally laughed and told me to shut up and go, and I did. I told them I’d meet them back at camp by 9pm.

Upper Lyman Lake ohhh myyy goood

Game on, baby. I was at the gap in about 20 minutes. I met the happiest dog in the world, a golden retriever or a yellow dog reminiscent of that dog who has to ignore all the toys and go straight to his owner in a dog show and instead picks up every single one. Cresting the gap was incredible, my favorite part of any trip is gaining a ridge above treeline and suddenly having views in every direction and that’s exactly what it was. Phelps Creek valley behind me, Lyman Lakes ahead of me, red rock everywhere. Oh my god. I was wrong earlier. This is the most beautiful place I have ever been.

Upper Lyman Lake again eeeeee

I bootskiied (some real skiers passed me) down to the talus awkwardly staring at a group of three hikers thinking I saw my friend Ann. I finally shouted out to her, since they seemed to recognize me too. Nope, not Ann. Guess they were staring because I was staring. I cruised down red rocks to the shore of Upper Lyman Lake, which was every bit as turquoise as it looked. Uhh… okay, this part was the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. The contrast of the colors is just ridiculous. People always say photos don’t do justice. I think they do, actually, and sometimes it’s better than real life. This wasn’t that. Lyman Lakes wasn’t real life. A pika shouted at me. Sorry, I know you were here first but look where you live!! Ahhh!!

Cruiser ahhhhh

The trail wraps evenly around the shores before leaving red rocky barren wasteland and entering bright green meadows with peak wildflowers all around. Crap, is this the most beautiful place I’ve ever been? I kept running. It was maybe 3:30, I swear time dilated itself to give me a window to do this run. The trail is amazingly well maintained and easy to follow. I got totally spooked by a guy who was not happy to see me and made me very aware of being a late 20’s chick running solo miles from anyone. Luckily, shortly after him I ran into the most amazing older couple on a 5 day backpacking trip who were so stoked to talk with me and tell me about the area. They had been to Cloudy Pass 8 times and said today was the best day they had ever seen up there. Great. I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.

siiiiiiigh

It was 1.5 miles from crossing the Lower Lyman Lake outlet to Cloudy Pass, and I ended up walking the uphill. At least, until I broke out above the trees again giggling like a kid because I was trotting through these absurd meadows with insane views and I’m sure endorphins were kicking in like crazy because I was talking to myself just thinking WOW I mean you see pictures but being here it’s in my BLOOD the SCENERY IS PUMPING THROUGH MY VEINS AHHH yeah, endorphins are great. I tagged the pass around 4:45 (my turnaround time was 5pm) and spent a while snapping pictures and staring back at Spider Gap from Cloudy Pass and the striking colors of rock on each side and those stupidly green lakes. And they won’t be green forever, the glacier will likely die and the lake will fade back to a more normal (still beautiful) blue. How the hell does this even exist? How did I get here, how am I so lucky? This topped Spider Meadows. We’re back to the theme. This was the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. I don’t think it was the endorphins. I think it was legit. Okay, it was also probably endorphins. The rest of the loop was crying at me, begging me to keep going, just peek at Glacier peak around the corner Eve there’s so much more out here and you can run all of it Eeeeeeve just keep coming! But I had to get back to camp, and good company, and the ~1,000ft of gain back to the pass weren’t going to be fun.

AAAAAAAAHHHHHH

ahhhhaaahaha

Running back down to the lake was a blast. I sidetracked to every single alpine toilet I could find (“If I was a toilet I’d be…. here!”), but most were nestled in private tree groves, not perched atop cliffs with views like the ones I like. More giggling through meadows. Wrapping around the lakes was a more mellow incline than I thought, so that was knocked out pretty quickly too, saying hi to larches and telling them to let me know when they turn yellow and maybe I’ll visit again.

The gain back to Spider Gap was… as expected. The last 100ft I cursed at the guy on top watching me suffer. Yeah you enjoy sitting there. With your warm puffy. Admiring the views eating your snack. Don’t give me that look, I know I’m taking a break. Just turn around, for like ten minutes. The boot ski down the other side was also unpleasant because slippery snow with jelly legs sucks and it was shaded and there was one big ass melt hole that had me mildly concerned (I knew I couldn’t see it from above) but I skipped over it and let’s just say I was very happy to hit the trail at the bottom, where I knew I was like 2 miles of runnable trail back home. Home being camp.

waaahhhh

Knocked out the switchbacks pretty quickly, finally realizing how steep they were. Got yelled at by some marmots. At the bottom as it flattened out I was back to giggling through meadows, and I popped back into camp two hours earlier than expected. I chugged electrolytes and put my feet in the river and brushed dried salt off my face, while Amber and Kacie did the camp work. I swear I’m useful sometimes. Just not this time. And having camp moms is amazing. And camp shoes are amazing. Did I mention I brought camp shoes? Never done that before and it was amazing.

Okay, get your shit together, back to the pass

We had nothing to really start a fire with, but we were determined. We wanted a fire. We had a lighter (except Kacie kept trying to light everything with her Chapstick instead of the lighter) and collected some small branches, but had no kindling. Except… wait. Kacie shredded a tampon, smeared the pieces with chapstick, and looked up at us grinning. This will totally work. And I’ve never started a fire in such a hilarious way.

An oasis on Mars

And it totally worked. Soon enough we had a cute little fire going, some licorice basil mint tea Kacie made, it was absolutely perfect. We got to watch Kacie drop her ramen everywhere trying to eat out of a ziplock bag with a fancy ramen spoon. We sat by the river swapping afternoon stories. A deer came to check out our campsite, some hummingbirds and maybe bats?? flew around, and I remember going to sleep wrapped in my favorite quilt hearing Kacie crack herself up after AGAIN trying to light a cigarette by flicking her chapstick instead of a lighter.

Looking down at Spider Meadows

We had a lazy morning with more tea, I think Kacie hopped in the river, I tried to study for my Python final (brought the whole textbook with me). We saw the world’s happiest dog again, just his tail wagging hilariously over the meadows until he started bounding to greet someone. We eventually got moving around 10:30am and after losing Kacie to the flowers and butterflies in every single meadow crossing we got back to a pleasant surprise at the trailhead. Mice, or rats, or some local riff raff had gotten into the car and eaten all of our snacks. Including my old earl grey teabag from my Saturday morning tea. Turns out we weren’t the only ones. Those bastards have car raids down to a science.

D’oh! A deer

We hit the inevitable highway 2 traffic almost immediately after Stevens Pass. I almost had them drop me at a SAR mission launching nearby, but decided against it given the distance from home and my weird selection of non climbing gear (the mission was soon postponed anyway). After maybe an hour of traffic, Kacie jumped out of the car. “What’s she doing?” “I dunno, smoke break maybe?” Kacie lit up a cigarette and went off to the side of the road. Maybe she’s just going for a walk? She has to pee? Wait. She started picking blackberries. Handfuls that she’d bring back to the car while we sat there waiting for the gridlock to move. The car behind us was cracking up. We started filling a nalgene with the most delicious blackberries ever. Several rounds of this before traffic finally sped up a bit and we made it to Sultan Bakery for dinner.

Kacie trying to cope with civilization

I got home in time to take my final early, which meant I didn’t have to do it Monday morning at work! And it went well, obviously because I learned via osmosis while carrying the textbook. Seriously though, I could not have asked for a better weekend. I got to have my cake and eat it too, camping with awesome people and knocking out a long trail run I’ve wanted to do for years in comfortable fashion. The entirety of the trip had that feeling where you just know you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be and there’s nothing else you’d rather be doing. The world might have a lot of sharp, harsh coldness to it, but there’s a hell of a lot of warmth and beauty out there too.

ahhhhhh

Moab Trail Marathon: It’s an Art

Posted on November 13, 2018 by evejakubowski

The infamous Mile 15

And they’re off!

So by now, most of you know we’ve been winging this marathon for a few years. And we didn’t think it could get worse than last year, where my father went on one seven mile run leading up to the race. I remember him announcing at mile 17 that his legs felt fine, but man they were just so tired. Duh and/or hello, you’ve run 10 miles farther than the farthest you’ve run since this day last year.

This year, there was no training. I went on a panic 12 mile in early October and felt fine and then did another panic run a few weeks ago by Rainier so obviously that’s enough to finish a marathon, right? My dad knocked out a few 3-5 milers, but nothing consistent, and nothing considered “marathon training.” And yet there we were at the starting line, in the second-to-last wave, ready to see what happened. Like I said, it’s an art. We didn’t have the brute force that most have when they’ve spent three months training. But we had knowledge. We had history. We had patience and the finesse of two dehydrated, delirious, stumbling elk. We brainstormed bail points.

Mile 9. Break off from marathon, finish with the half marathoners. 13 miles total. Dad’s plan.
Mile 12.5. Run with Eve through the out-and-back, then backtrack to the half split, finish with the half marathoners. ~17 miles total. Dad’s plan according to me, because I sure as shit wasn’t doing that out and back solo, that thing’s miserable.
Mile 17. Fake bail. Hike mile 15 with Eve, walk to mile 23.1 from there. Viable option for both of us.
Mile 23.1. You cross the finish line and head out for another 5k. Skip the 5k. 23 miles total. Viable option for both of us.
Mile 26.2. You run the whole mother fucking marathon because YOU CAN. 2% chance of success.

It’s so SUNNY

The morning was off to a smooth start. I panic-freaked on my mother who was blow drying her hair when we needed to get breakfast, because we can’t be late to the starting line MOM and we only have 17 minutes for breakfast now MOM we need to go MOOOOMMMMM (I’m still a child).

We enjoyed our 14 minute breakfast and hopped in the car. I had my father drive, because he ~~speeds~~ is a more efficient driver. 20 minutes out, I jokingly asked if he had his bib, because we had nearly forgotten in past years. He stared at me blankly. He did not have his bib. So we drove back to the hotel, grabbed the bib, back in the car, and luckily (thanks Mooom) we were able to get dropped off at the starting line instead of parking a half mile away and walking. We were waiting for the start within minutes, since the first waves had already gone. But we were at the back of the pack. Bring it on, baby.

Cowpie and the rock that broke my phone I assume

We walked probably 80% of the first 5 miles. Mostly because everyone in front of us was walking and it turned into bottlenecks. In years past, that has driven me utterly insane because I am not a patient person. But this year? With a single run under my belt in three months? “lol, we can walk this.” “lol, we can walk this too.” “lol I don’t know this bit is somewhat uphill if you look at it sideways.” “Dad you’re running too fast.” And my calf injury is back. And running in sand sucks. Especially for injured calves. And it’s hard to dodge the mildly surprising number of cowpies that littered the trail while running. Oh, and I immediately dropped my phone on the only rock surrounded by 5 miles of sand and shattered the screen. So that was good.

Mile 5! (ish)

Around mile 5, my calves finally relaxed and the runners started to spread out. Miles 5 through 9 are my second favorite part of this race, because you cruise along a plateau followed by a long stretch next to the canyon rim. It’s slightly downhill, it starts out as a wide sandy path and narrows to single track, the sun is out, endorphins are flowing, people are having fun. Most around us were doing the half marathon instead of slogging through the desert for 8 hours, which I was positive would happen given our peak conditioning.

Beginning of the bottleneck

There was a worse than usual bottleneck at the scramble section, so we spend maybe half an hour waiting in line. That gave my father time to take off his shoes, shake out some sand, have some snacks, get cold in the shade, take a leak (Jakubowski family record for most-pees-during-a-marathon), and wonder how Mom would do jogging next to the 1,000ft drop beyond the canyon rim. We scuttled down the scramble, hit the aid station, and it was time to follow the marathon runners while the half folks jogged back to finish.

I mean if I had to wait in line…

We knew the out and back was coming. Last year they had extended it, and it was probably the single most mentally difficult section of the race for me, because I didn’t expect it. After years I know this course like I know my commute to work. I can space out and suddenly be at point B. But no, they had to add mileage to the worst section of the race. This year, we were ready. It would be long. It would be soft sand. There would be bottlenecks. We agreed to just walk the whole thing. I waited in line for a pit toilet instead of saving time and peeing in the bushes because who cares, it’s the lames part of the race. Except then it wasn’t just sand. And there weren’t bottlenecks. And we were jogging. And the fall foliage was the best we’ve ever seen it. And everyone was so positive and smiling and cheering and saying “Great job!” as we passed. I laughed. This has got to be the most positive out-and-back we’ve ever had. And suddenly right around the first corner was the punch station. Oh my god. Dreams can come true.

Up, up, and away!

Neat plant

We punched and bailed and continued the positive support on our way out. We ran down the road where my usual lone yellow tree was still green. We grabbed snacks at the mile 14 aid station and jogged our way to the base of mile 15. The climb. We started hiking right away. We enjoyed the views. The fall foliage was late, and you could see the bright greens and yellows snaking through the valley below. My father forgot shorts and was running in sweatpants. It was like 70 and sunny and I could feel the salt sweat-crisped to my face. We started picking off runners one at a time. This was our jam. We had finally figured out Mile Fifteen. That’s not the top. Neither is the next corner, or the corner after that. Doesn’t matter. We’re in the zone.

River winding away in the distance

“Huuuuuaaaaagcchhhkk. Noooo!” We heard the joy and determination of the woman behind us leave her body as we rounded the second to last curve and it was not the top. We laughed (sorry, miss) and commiserated. We should have warned her. You’re so close though! We snapped our usual picture by the rock. “Is this one?” “No this one is too early we did that a few years ago.” “I think that was it.” “No it’s up here.” “We definitely passed it.” But there it was, sitting at the top like a potato chip. Happiest pic we’ve taken at that mile.*

So far so good!

“Is she still taking pictures”

“The aid station is always farther away than I remember.” Yeah, I know. Same here. Except even with that knowledge, it was STILL farther than I remembered. But that’s okay, because miles ~16-18 are my favorite miles of the race, and 18-22 are up there too. Because miles 16-18 are a long, mostly flat downhill on top of the world. Single track, dancing through underbrush and small plants, sucking in your waist and turning sideways to fit through canyons. And finally, the aid station.

Squeeze canyon

We popped salt pills, chugged electrolytes, puffed chip crumbs. I stuffed my face with oranges, which I hate in real life, but for whatever reason my body decided that those were the most wonderful things on the planet in that moment. And off we went, knowing we had a few miles of rolling slickrock before a loooong downhill back to the pseudo-finish-line and the adventure 5k. We shared the good news with Mr. Orange nearby. Just a bit of slickrock and then 3-4 miles of niiiiice gradual downhill!

Let the slickrock begin

Except we were wrong. Whatever mileage they took off of the out-and-back compared to last year, they re-added in the slickrock section. Which I’m totally okay with, because it’s beautiful and unlike anything I see in my normal life. It’s a walk/run hybrid, because even the downhill running is an unpleasant knee-pounding rocky uneven descent. But after miles of navigating mountain bike trails (one cairn to the next, first year I’ve seen cairns!) we hit a road that eventually took us to the classic canyon rim ramp that would drop us along the river back to the pseudofinish. And that is possibly the only section of the marathon where you get several cruiser miles of mild downhill, mostly single track. It’s spectacular.

Like a cornice except rock!

That is, until you get close enough to hear the finishers. And the cheering. And realize you still have a mile to the pseudo-finish, followed by the adventure 5k to close out your 26.2. At the 23.1 mile aid station I let myself have some coca cola, which I decided to use to swallow salt pills. Turns out trying to pop three huge salt pills with very carbonated soda is a bad choice and I sat there convincing my body to not vomit everywhere while the terrible mix was stuck in my throat. My brain won the battle and we kept jogging, ready to be done with this.

The adventure course was smooth. I forecasted a muscle spasm in my left adductor and the right side of my going. But no. My body had to go for the wild card. Shin cramps, bitch! Those exist?! I could feel the muscles on the front of my shins contracting. Oh boy. It’s going to be an interesting last few miles. I sucked it up and changed my stride from lazy heel strike hobble to forefoot strike. Sucks for my calves, but what do you know, the shin spasms went away.

Trail and the snow capped La Salle Mountains

Aid station!

Only to be followed by a short adductor spasm. I put pressure on it and kept jogging because who needs adductors. That one cleared up quickly too, which was a relief since it’s the same cramp I had finishing Seattle last year, which resulted in some of the more hilarious photos of my running career (if you can call it that). Moab did no such thing, all of my photos are awesome.

The parking lot jog wasn’t as awful as usual, but my dad did count to (I think) three thousand steps. Or maybe it was 1,500. He did it three times, because when he got to the end and we weren’t at the finish yet, he’d start over and do it again. Back in the woods I panicked briefly that we were backtracking on hte marathon course and had missed the finish. But we found the turnoff, we were right, and we ran across the finish line laughing at how pleasant the whole race had been.

Topping out on the scramble

Maybe it was the low expectations, or the assumption we’d suffer, or the multiple bail plans that we bailed on. Or the sun and the late fall foliage. Or everyone being so happy during the out-and-back. Or they put some crack in their electrolyte mixes, I don’t know. But it was a fantastic day. 10/10 race. If I’m ever injured to the point I can’t run, I’ll drag my ass out there to volunteer. It’s just a great event. Thanks Mom for putting up with my shit that morning and chaperoning us around, and congrats Dad on running a marathon without even training for a half marathon. Someday you’re going to be a mortal human but that day hasn’t come yet.

*Sometime around this, my mother was in a cafe in Moab, where she met the 2nd place marathon finisher. While we were still out meandering through the desert.

Woo!! Moab Marathon #5 is in the bag, baby!

Third Burroughs & Fremont Lookout

Posted on October 25, 2018 by evejakubowski

There is a tiny person in this picture. Rainier from the back of the second burrough.

What the title doesn’t mention is that this post is more like an anthology of pictures of random people that I don’t know who will never know they’re in my photos. But let’s get started.

I’ve never been to Sunrise. Over four years in Washington, multiple Rainier summits, and I had never set foot in the Sunrise parking lot. It was time for that streak to end. I’ve had the Burroughs on my trail run list for years and both those and Fremont Lookout on my OG hikes list from the list I compiled when I first moved here. I wanted some miles for my poor pampered legs (marathon next weekend… hahaa ahah ah…) and figured this would do the trick and have me back at a reasonable hour.

Distance: 11.5 miles

Elevation: 4500ft gain, 7,800ft highest point

Weather: 60’s and sunny

Commute from Seattle: 2:20 without traffic

Did I Trip: No! Suckers

Stay classy, Washington

I slept in until 7:30. Anyone who knows me knows how outrageous that is. And I was in bed at 9:30, it’s not like it was an alcohol fueled wild Friday night. I had tea, hopped in the car with my gear, shot Brooke a quick message so at least someone would know where I was, and drove myself out of the stagnant marine layer that has been plaguing Seattle mornings thanks to this high pressure system. I stopped at a gas station in Enumclaw and bought the rest of their paninos. Think pre packaged salami wrapped around cheese. They. Are. Delicious. And Rainier, unlike Seattle, had sunny blue skies and a sparkling mass of snow dusted glaciers. And was about ten degrees warmer than Seattle. Ah, yes. Allow me to roll down the windows of my car. Finally.

People frolicking along the first burrough

In the parking lot, I threw on a thick wool baselayer and stuffed my puffy jacket into my running pack and took off. I wasn’t sure where to go but I knew the trail started “northwest of the parking lot” so I went with my trusty strategy of “start walking and you’ll probably find it.” And I did. It doesn’t matter where you walk, all trails/roads will lead to a set of steps that takes you to the main trail which takes you to Sourdough Ridge/Frozen Lake, where it eventually branches out into the Burroughs, Fremont Lookout, and some longer backpacking loops (or trail runs for the less lazy) through the park. Frozen Lake looks a lot better in early spring, right now it’s a mostly dried up mini reservoir that supplies the buildings of Sunrise with water. But you cruise past that and head towards the monster that is Rainier, where the views will get better and better as you get up and over the burroughs and the crowds get more and more sparse. Oh, and I dropped my thick wool layer like immediately. Because it was 65 and sunny. None of that 40 and foggy Seattle crap.

Looking back at the first burrough

The first burrough has a cool plateau-like top and lots of people milling around. I snapped some photos of parties hiking along the trail, the first set of Eve’s Stalker Snaps. The views are good, but you should keep going. Dropping off the first burrough to the second burrough is only a short downhill before the elevation gain begins again, and cresting the second burrough is only an extra 0.7 miles beyond the first burrough, so not too far. Views from the second burrough top the views from the first burrough, but guys, there’s a third burrough. And the third burrough is where it’s at.

Did you catch that? THERE’S A THIRD BURROUGH. Don’t stop at two. Drop off the backside of the second one, where you’ll turn a switchback and be treated to one of the best views of Rainier in the park. I nearly tripped over my own feet. Some dude was trotting up the hill, making me look like a lazy runner hiking anything with a hint of incline. Meh. I guess I am lazy. I snapped some photos of a woman hiking with Rainier behind her, the scale is just crazy. Another creeper photo? Check. Rainier is enormous. And yet you can look at most of the Emmons route from here, the second most popular route on the peak.

Three tiny people admiring the glaciers

Glacier Peak over Grand Park

The terrain stays fairly mellow, until the final climb up the third burrough. The top of the third burrough is a long, mellow ridge. For the number of people there, it surprisingly did not feel crowded. I snapped a few photos. More creeper photos of others enjoying the views. See the theme when I’m alone? You’re all at risk.

As amazing as the views were, I wanted to get miles on my legs, so I started to jog back down. Running back down is a blast. You aren’t quite on top of the world, more like in open meadows on a wide, rolling ridge. Technically it is all alpine tundra, despite being at a relatively low elevation. The sparse plants that do grow there are very fragile. I was there in late fall, so everything was basically dead. The growing season here is wicked short, and we had a cold snowy snap in early October that I assume was the end of the season here. Not much fall foliage to be seen on this hike. I passed a woman who gasped “NO!” and then started laughing. “You passed us on the way up and you’re already passing us on the way down!” Her partner looked at their feet. “We’re wearing running shoes… we could do it too!”

To the lookout!

Back at the junction, I decided to check out Fremont Lookout. You can see the lookout perched at the end of the Fremont mountain ridge from the burroughs, and it was too tempting to pass. Can you tell I want a legit camera with a zoom lens? I had so many zoom shots here and my camera just doesn’t do the scenery justice. The trail to the lookout gradually gains elevation cutting across a hillside, where you weave in and out of small trees and shrubs with glimpses of mountain goats in the distance. I came across a happily family and shamelessly took a creepy ass picture. I mean this was the creepiest one. I didn’t even realize how good it was until I got home because I panicked while taking it (okay so maybe not shameless) and ran away (literally) as soon as I was done like the awkward creep that I am.

Family goals

Fremont Lookout

The lookout is a two level lookout, first I’ve ever seen. It was built in 1934 and is still occasionally used by park staff today, though it was boarded and locked up when I was there. The views are pretty ridiculous, and considering it’s only a ~5 mile round trip hike, it’s pretty accessible to everyone. I had a quick snack, took more creepy photos, and started on my way down, cursing my overeager eyes and stuffed stomach. Did I need six paninos? No. No I did not.

Obligatory lookout shot

At the junction for the last time, I had to tell myself it was only another 1.5 miles to the car. You can do it. Come on, legs. You got work to do. Give me an inventory of aches and pains so I know how screwed I am for Moab. I jogged past a group of girls who jumped out of the way (“move, bitches!” is what the last girl in line shouted, laughing) and as I went past I heard “oh my god she’s like a GAZELLE” which as many of you know is both hilarious and encouraging when you feel like a banana slug/foal hybrid trying to learn how legs work while moving at the pace of molasses.*

The wall I wish I had in front of my house

The last half mile to the parking lot was clogged with people, but my tired legs didn’t mind. I couldn’t resist getting a picture of the talus wall built along the trail, because I wish I could build it in front of my house. I got back to the car (which you can spot like a mile from the parking lot thanks to its amazing color) and chugged a La Croix. Yes, I now have those in my trunk, and they are PRIME after hikes/runs/anything. The only problem is that a) they kept falling out of my trunk when I parked in front of my house until I realized I was an idiot and turned the cartons around and b) my car occasionally stockpiles empty La Croix cans. Sorry guys.

*Actually, molasses is kind of fast. It was once recorded at a speed of 35mph during the Great Molasses Flood in Boston. That’s a lot fast than me, unless I’m in a car or on a plane or you’re measuring my speed relative to the sun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Molasses_Flood

Antelope Canyon 55k

Posted on March 1, 2018 by evejakubowski

Desert adventure!

Pre-race 1 mile “hike”

I’ve never really done anything exciting for my birthday. But I found this sweet race back in January, thinking it was just (“just”) a marathon. It was simultaneously a break from Seattle winter combined with a sport I love and scenery I’ve always wanted to go run through, and I could justify it as a birthday party and present for myself. I could eat a shit ton of cake, or get drunk, or cry on my couch because Pints and Pies closed, or I could take a shot at an awesome trail run. Turned out it was an ultramarathon. Eh. I ran 20 miles in January, I can walk the rest right? I miraculously connected with a woman who sold me her spot in the race 10 days before the event. But I couldn’t find anyone to go with me. Convincing people to fly to Vegas and drive to Arizona on short notice is hard. I am not a patient person and was sick of waiting on people so I made a last minute hail mary post on Seattle Mountain Running Group’s Facebook page asking if anyone was going to the Antelope Canyon races. I was hoping I’d know one single person there so it wouldn’t be as scary. And someone replied. Omg. This might actually happen.

And we’re off! At sunrise!

That someone was Sonja, who I quickly learned is a collector of people. A collector of the best kinds of people. She had no reservations about inviting me to split rental cars and lodging and made it so easy for me to tag along with their group. Suddenly it went from scary solo amateur trip to tagging along on an ultrarunning expert trip with 4 unbelievably accomplished ironman triathletes and ultrarunners. I was (still am) like the little kid trying to soak up all of the knowledge. “What’s your pace going to be?” “…somewhere between 8 and 15 minute miles?” “What do you want for your pre race meal?” “Anything’s fine.” “Do you need snacks?” “I’m all set, I got some peanut butter bites and almonds at the gas station.” Seriously, this trip was eye opening. Did you know there are triathlons that are longer than ironmans? Like 3x an ironman distance? Yeah, that’s right. There’s always more to do, and you can always be better! Luckily I’m useful for some things, like being the team sherpa and having Verizon Wireless.

Awesome rock texture on the way to Horseshoe Bend

We had a VRBO (like airbnb) literally 5 minutes from the starting line. The 100M and 50M both start at 6am, my 55k (so short in comparison) started at 7am. So we left the house at like 6:40am, which was amazing. The start was cold, but I trusted my layers and just waited for my numb stump feet to come back as we started running. The beginning of the 55k course* takes you across rolling desert hills as you run along sandy utility roads. We lucked out. It had snowed the previous day, which meant the sand was packed down and frozen. My calves were as loose as my language when I stubbed my toe on slickrock 90 minutes later.

Running along the canyon rim

We ran right past the Slickrock Aid Station on the first pass since it had only been like 2 miles. I briefly stopped at the Horseshoe Bend Aid Station to chug some electrolytes and down some bacon and peanut butter and carried on. The sandy roads eventually turn to solid slick rock as you approach Horseshoe Bend itself, which was underwhelming because of the lighting. The sun lights everything up bright red, and when we hit the canyon it was still in the shadows. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still pretty sweet, but it did not meet the unrealistic expectations I had from all of the massively photoshopped pictures I had seen. But after hitting Horseshoe Bend, we ran along the canyon rim for a while which was stellar. There were frozen puddles reminiscent of tarns in the Cascades, the views went for miles, and the slickrock meant interesting footwork as you danced along uneven layers of bright red rock.

Enjoying the views

Soon after the “technical” part, we transitioned to a mostly flat desert, which would probably have been miserable sand without the prior day’s snow. Luckily for us, it was firm. Less luckily for us, the trail blazes were few and far between and pretty difficult to see. Footsteps crisscrossed and wandered in every direction and we’d have to constantly stop at one blaze and shield the sun from our eyes as we stared in the distance looking for the next blaze, dividing and conquering. “Guys it’s over here! Go right!” “Oh I see it in the distance! Straight ahead!” “Hey can you get the guys in front of you? It’s actually this way!” I had decided I’d walk all the uphills and run the flats and the downhills, except most of this course was flat! So I had to relied on photos to slow me down.

Wandering the desert

THE FOOD (not all of it)

Wendy’s run buddy (I never caught his name, nor did I ever speak to Wendy, I just heard him shouting back to her occasionally) and I leapfrogged along with a guy in a neon yellow tee. I was thinking we were 8 or 9 miles in when we saw the Waterholes aid station in the distance. “Whoa, I thought we didn’t get an aid station until mile 13!” Wendy’s run buddy was stoked. Holy shit, we ARE at mile 13. Already?! This is awesome.

Slot canyon!!

So let me tell you about the aid stations. I’m not going to proclaim that the toilets were my best pooping experience ever like the course descriptions promised, but it wasn’t bad. The snacks, though… on point. Bacon. Peanut butter. Happy volunteers willing to put the peanut butter ON the bacon for me. Fresh avocado. Pickles. PB&J sandwiches, potato chips, peanut M&Ms, sodas, tortillas with nutella/honey/peanut butter/whatever your heart desires. And they were cup free. No disposable cups to be strewn everywhere. Instead they had mugs, which volunteers washed after disgusting slobbery sweaty runners used them. I’ll admit I did not always actually put in the effort to get a clean mug, I’d just grab the first available one sitting around, but I haven’t died yet. I’ll report back.

More slot canyon!

So in terms of food, I had bacon, peanut butter, avocado, pickles, skippy pb bites, and Blue Diamond coconut dusted almonds (mixed with the pb bites, I know, I’m a genius). And those Justin’s packets of almond butter. And I carried a bunch of Reese’s and Sour Patch Watermelon in case I wanted candy but I didn’t touch them at all. I had a friend who had a shirt that said “I only run so I can eat more chocolate cake.” Well, I only run so I can eat excessive amounts of peanut butter (or almond butter). Interestingly, I learned that fat is much easier on the stomach during long distances, so if you’re doing a serious ultra (50+ miles) it’s best to stay away from the straight sugar for as long as you can.

And MORE slot canyon!!!

We continued on past the Waterholes aid station, where you immediately scramble (almost class 3 ish, there were a few butt-scoot moves) down into a slot canyon. This section blew my mind. I laughed and told the people behind me (including Kimberly, who I would meet again later) that they should go first because I was stopping to take photos, but they all agreed with my touristy approach and we basically stumbled around corners ooh-ing and ahh-ing and wow-ing because the canyon looks completely different depending on how the sun hits the walls and how tall the walls are and it’s like exploring a fort as a kid. And it just keeps going!! It’ll mellow out and you think it’s over and then the walls heighten and narrow again and you’re right back in it! Ahhh! There were a few scrambley moves to get out of the canyon (MANTLE), and a ladder (YES! I thought this was only in the 50M but the 55k gets a pretty sweet canyon too!) to climb up at one point. I excitedly ran up and snapped a picture of Kimberly at the top right as she announced “I hate ladders.” Could have just stemmed it?

Savor the canyon, because the next like 5-6 miles are the most boring miles of the entire thing. You are on a gradual downhill on a sandy utility road. Okay, the sand was firm so that’s not too bad. But you run in this straight line for an eternity, surrounded by fascinating man made wonders like these power lines, this blank billboard, and this abandoned shipping container, all with the breathtaking power plant as a backdrop. Don’t worry, it’s still pretty damn beautiful.

Desert towers

We rolled into the Horseshoe Bend aid station for the second time, where we were finally mixing with the 50m and 100m runners. We’d cheer for them as they ran by us (opposite directions) and made our baby ultra feel like a stroll through the park compared to their distances. I met Kim and Randi during this stretch who sounded like they knew what they were doing and we cruised to the Slickrock aid station where Jason invited me to join their group and I said hell yes. He and Randi had won free entries to this race in a giveaway like 2 weeks prior, and were just winging it like I was (though my story isn’t as awesome). So I tagged along with them through the next few miles, happy to have chatty company and other impulsive people who woke up one day and thought a 55k sounded like a great idea. Kim changed his shoes at the Paige Rim aid station giving me enough time to eat half my weight in peanut M&Ms and soon enough we were milking the slow jog once again. Randi had set my expectations for the Paige Rim trail nice and low, so I was pleasantly surprised at the scenery. At least on the first half.

Cruising along the Paige Rim Trail

The first half of the Page Rim trail (going counterclockwise from the Paige Rim aid station) is a mostly flat single track dusty red trail with huge views since you’re on the edge of the plateau. Lake Powell is shockingly blue especially against the red rock, and holy crap it was so much more fun to run with people than to run alone. Turns out plenty of people run these races to chat and pull together a random group. I gotta do trail races more frequently, they’re just such a blast. No one wanted to chat during the Seattle marathon. Time flew by and the Lake Powell aid station came up quickly, at least if you ignore that it’s a .2mi out and back where you basically hike up a dune. But from that aid station, there were only 7 miles left! And who walked up to the aid station but Kimberly, the woman I had met in the slot canyon! She had made a new friend (Dave) as well, and I decided I’d tag along with them for the last section.

Lake Powell in the background

Kimberly was feeling great on her first ultra, and Dave was a far more experienced ultrarunner who just wasn’t having a hot day, so he became our fearless leader. Mama duck. He was alternating between jogging 1km and walking 200m, so we did the same. I had no idea what time it was or how long it had been, all I knew is I felt great and was having a blast and I was so lucky to find two groups for the second half of the race. So we walk-ran the last few miles, which skirted through the town of Paige. Backyards, crossing main roads, it’s still a cool trail it’s just not in the middle of nowhere. The first and second place runners in the 100M had caught up to us (they had a 1hr head start and a 16mile out-and-back and THEN started on our course) which was amazing. So basically their pace for the 100M was faster than mine for the 55k. Ridiculous.

Three happy finishers!!

We barely stopped when we hit the Paige Rim aid station again, since it’s only another like 0.7 miles to the finish line. I was like guys we’re all crossing the finish line together. I had made up my mind miles ago. Kimberly and I doing our first ultras and Dave leading the newbies, it was too exciting. So we all held hands and cheered and hugged as we crossed, and it was totally awesome. Easily one of the best race finishes I’ve ever had. I picked up my finisher’s mug (yes!!! MUGS!) and found a chair to go sit in, and a few minutes later Jason crossed the finish line followed by Randi and Kim! Jason came over to sit and we shouted at Randi and Kim to move their chairs over to us. Jason whipped a toothbrush out of his pack lamented the lack of toothpaste – apparently brushing your teeth is an incredible feeling during ultras, especially at the longer distances. I’ll make sure to pack a toothbrush when I do a 50m.

I texted Sean and Stacey to see if they could pick me up. I figured I’d until 3 and run home if they hadn’t responded (we had been joking about that for the past day, so it would have been fitting). But they responded just before my decision making time, and came to the finish line to celebrate! I have not done many races with people. Besides Moab with my father, I usually uber to the Seattle marathon starting line, uber home, I drove to Champaign IL for a road marathon once, I solo camped before a trail race in WI once… I’m usually solo, and make friends during the race. But I gotta say it’s pretty freaking awesome having people with you to hang out post race as well.

WHERE WERE YOU**

We spent the rest of the night being support crew for Sonja, who was chugging along in the 100 miler. Guys, I learned SO MUCH in 48 hours. About running, about ultras, about hydration and eating and pacing and training, everything. But one of the coolest parts was learning to be crew for someone else. It isn’t as easy as it sounds. You need to predict what they might need. Do they need salt? What foods might they like that they didn’t bring? Did they have any hotspots or something that might need to be taken care of next time we see them? What’s their pace, how long do we have to nap before getting to the aid station, how much buffer time do they have, do they need more layers because it’s cold? I don’t think we really got dialed until the wee hours of the morning. My favorite part was that we were trying to figure out who would pace the last few laps, and Karen offered to do all of it. “But then you’d be running 45 straight miles!” She nonchalantly responded. “Yeah, why not?” Some people’s baseline fitness is a 3mi run whenever they feel like it. Some people can do a half marathon with 24hrs notice. Some can do marathons. And some…. apparently, some can do casual ultras as long as they have enough time for a sandwich and some fritos.

Canyon rim running

Guys, this was an amazing weekend. 1) Give an ultra a chance if you’ve done marathons and want a little more. The 55k really isn’t that much different than a marathon, and trail is way easier on the legs than road. I’d still argue that my road marathons have ALL been harder and more painful than this was. 2) Go to Antelope Canyon. It’s freaking beautiful. 3) Stop waiting on others. Get out of your comfort zone. It doesn’t always work, but sometimes it pays off in the best way possible.

People I have to thank: Stacey (chauffeur extraordinaire) and Karen (nothing is impossible) and Sean (also saved me from airplane dehydration) for being an awesome support team and welcoming me into their little Sonja Support Squad. Dave, our fearless leader for the last 7 miles. Kimberly, the star of that awesome ladder photo who laughed at my dumb jokes while Dave taught us how to run an ultra for the last few miles. Jason, Kim, and Randi (and a few others whose names I didn’t catch) who let me join their group from mile 17ish until mile 27. Wendy’s friend/husband (never caught his name, but he often shouted back to Wendy) for wandering the desert with me seeking out blazes in the distance and letting me tell him where to stand for a good rim picture. The owners of that VRBO who had like 30 USB chargers in each outlet (amazing) and costco size spice jars for cooking and get this – matching(!!!) pots and pans with lids. And most of all, thank you to Sonja, for being so welcoming of an internet stranger and being the one key factor that made this trip such a success for me.

One more along the canyon rim

All in all, I couldn’t have asked for a better trip. We even got a pair of seats on the flight home, and though the flight felt longer than the flight to Vegas I was glad to have company. Oh, and at the airport on the way home, What’s New Pussycat was playing at the baggage check. I almost cried laughing. I’m still not sure why that song exists. But I’m glad that it does.

*The beginning of the 50M and 100M take you straight up the plateau next to the starting line. Who needs a warm up? Have fun climbing!

**At first I said “WHERE WERE YOU HELPFUL SIGNS WHEN I NEEDED YOU IN THE DESERT” but in reality I’d have needed a freaking fence line of these signs to help me navigate that section, yikes.

Wendy’s dude cooperating with some random chick’s demands to “stand over there, no, more left, I need you for scale”

Moab Trail Marathon: “I ran 6.8 miles, that’s enough training right?”

Posted on November 13, 2017 by evejakubowski

Top of mile 15 baby!

Every year, I fly out to Moab to run a trail marathon with my father. I know, we’re adorable. You can tell from the title (and our past races) that we’ve never managed to quite take it seriously and this year was no different. Well, Year One I took it very seriously, but I lived in Chicago and was destroyed by mile 15, the notorious 1400+ft climb. That’s taller than the highest point in Illinois, and I drove like 2hrs from Chicago just to find a hill that gained like 100ft to attempt to train. So naturally, I didn’t take it seriously the next few years, because I knew I’d always be walking that section. Year Two I was actually in pretty good shape because I was working part time at REI Seattle and hiking to fill the void in my life, but we got stuck at a terrible freezing cold bottleneck for 30+ minutes and my father ended up with some bad muscle spasms. Year Three was a hilarious “how to fake like you can run 26 miles when neither of you have run more than 10 miles in the past year” that was surprisingly pleasant, and this was Year Four. As usual, the entire weekend was forecasted to be cloudy. The only cloudy weekend in Moab is the weekend I’m there. I love you too mother nature.

Distance: 26.2 miles ~~but it was definitely longer~~
Elevation: 3,000ft ish net
Weather: 60’s and cloudy/sunny/dust stormy
Commute from Seattle: ha! 18hrs if you drive. Don’t drive. 1hr by plane, 6hrs if SeaTac forgot how to de-ice planes, and then runs out of de-icing fluid shortly after they remember how to work the trucks because “this never happens” (IT HAPPENS EVERY YEAR SEATAC GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER)
Did I Trip: I did not, but my father took a nice flying wipeout followed by a ninja-like recovery around mile 22

And we’re off!

We started pretty similarly to the past few years. I stocked up on peanut butter, electrolytes, salty snacks and caffeinated gu for my father’s inevitable bonk (spoiler alert: he didn’t need it) while my father ran into a gas station at 7am to buy a Gatorade bottle to carry right before the race. So there we found ourselves at the starting line laughing at the lack of preparation. My parents made fun of my running pack, which was not light considering I was carrying 3 liters of water and enough protein bars and peanut butter for a small village. And a jacket I probably wouldn’t need. And gloves. And a camera. And my phone. And my 2lb wallet. Oh, and in classic Jakubowski fashion, my father had gone for a single 6.8 mile run a few weeks ago, and decided that was enough to run a marathon.

No one else is taking pics

The start this year was weird. No one around us was snapping pictures, but I still made sure to get some good ones at the turns where you can see the trail of runners wrapping around the canyons. It was cloudy, but that was a good thing. Heat is brutal when you’re out there jogging for hours. We figured out that pounding salt tabs (Hammer endurolytes, like 2-4 pills every 5ish miles) was the secret to avoiding muscle cramps. My calves didn’t hurt for the first time in a race literally ever, which was awesome. The course was sandier than usual, which is a pain in the ass to run through. We repeatedly slowed down to take pictures, walked all the uphills and deep sand, trying to take it as slow as possible, but it still felt like we were going too fast. We didn’t hit as many bottlenecks as the previous years, which had always forced us to walk. And people were less chatty than prior years! It was weird. We’re supposed to be the fun wave with neon and cameras and laughs and stories, why are you all so serious?! Luckily, it turns out there was beer at every rest stop. But again, no one wanted it!! Guys! What is this?! Who are you?!? Yes I’ll have a Bud Light please. Good for hydration.

Whatever guys, I’ll document everything, you just keep running

The trail travels through the bottom of a canyon at first before climbing halfway up the canyon wall and winding the edge for a few miles, and then drops down a short scramble to the road below. At the scramble section, there was a volunteer directing runners to the left, which was easy, or the right, which was “a technical crack.” I laughed and under my breath (or so I thought) muttered “like 5.7 technical or like 3rd class technical” to which she replied (shit! she heard me!) “eh, like two fourth class moves.” I cracked up and told her I hadn’t expected an actual response. Of course being a Moab dweller she was more than familiar with rock climbing. Moab is like rock climbing mecca. So I took the 4th class route, and then realized it didn’t make a difference because I still had to wait 5min for my father to get down the nontechnical route anyway (he would have been fine on the 4th class).

The out and back had some color at least

At the bottom of that scramble is where the half marathon heads back up a road (uphill! suckers!) to the finish, and the marathon runners continue on to the dreaded “out and back” (okay, we’re the suckers). We ran past a bunch of climbers and I couldn’t even watch, the FOMO is like physically painful. My father took a bathroom break and I refused to let him take a 150ft shortcut back to the course. We didn’t come here to run 21.15 miles. Also everyone’s watching.

The out and back was never too bad in the past, but for some reason this year it was BRUTAL. All sand, and running in soft sand blows. And I swear, I SWEAR, they extended it by like a mile. We passed the place where we had turned around in prior years, and ran for what felt like another 20 minutes. In sand. Stopping like every 150ft to let other runners pass, because it’s single track. Which I usually love, but why would you have an out-and-back on single track?! That just means everyone has to stop in both directions to let everyone pass, and if you get stuck behind a polite runner, then you’ll be stopping for everyone else instead of running. So we spent a lot of time waiting and grumbling about it here. I am not a patient person. And did I mention we were slogging through sand? And somehow no one in front of us knows we want to pass??

Grumble grumble

Luckily right when I was about to throw a bitch fit a nice woman studying sociology and public health started chatting with us. We asked what she’d do with graduate degrees in those, and she said either social worker or something related to ecopsychology, which I had never heard of. It’s a totally cool concept that you’ve all probably thought about (basically, how the outdoors can be used for mental health) but I never knew it had a name. Apparently in several other countries doctors will literally prescribe outdoor activity. Like once a week you need to go to this state park for two hours, and sometimes that will even include a wilderness therapist. It’s even an acceptable reason to leave work. That’s amazing. And she was one of those people that was so passionate that then you start to get excited about it too, and she totally carried us through the twilight zone that was the (definitely extended) out and back.

Looking at the steep mile

We took a legitimate break back on the gravel road to dump sand out of our shoes. It just kept coming. My father took off his socks and dumped another cup of sand out of his socks. No wonder my shoes felt two sizes too small, sand took up more space in my shoes than my freaking feet did. Maybe I was being a princess (ok, a little) but soon enough we were back up and running. The next stretch is a pleasant, level mile through fall foliage that leads to the base of the behemoth climb at mile 15. And right then, the sun came out. To shine on us during the sweatiest part of the marathon. Mother nature, what are you doing. Can I get some shade and a tailwind?

~~Almost there!!~~ No, you’re halfway

The climb gains something like 1,300ft in a mile, and it shattered me the first year. Mostly because I tried to run it. Be patient, young grasshopper. The second year was slightly better since I was living in Seattle and hiking, and was not so prideful that I had to jog it. The third time was similar. And this year was spectacular! We actually cruised right up it, power hiking, no breaks, neither of us dying. Maybe it was a slower pace, but we felt strong, and were catching up to people left and right. It’s amazing because halfway up you remember to turn around and look behind you and suddenly the entire canyon is laid out below you with mountains in the distance and the river winding below and it’s just spectacular. We snapped our annual pic at the top of the climb (the sky looked rad) and started the long jog that we thought was all downhill to the finish ( AHAHA hahaha.. ah… “downhill”).

Time to fly!

This is my favorite part of the race every year. You just finished the steep section, endorphins are high, you worked your ass off for that view, you’re on top of the world, you’re in the middle of nowhere, you’re cruising along flat terrain with open sky and meadows and towers in the distance, it’s the coolest part of the race.

And it just gets better, because then you hit the slickrock. Which is like another planet. My father lamented his tired legs. I was talking about how badly my body wanted a post race steak. “My body wants a hot tub and whiskey.” followed by “I am gingerly stepping downhill like an old lady because my legs are so weak and tired.” I laughed. “To be fair, we are 10 miles past the longest run you’ve done since this day last year.” Of course those legs are tired. And that ridiculous climb. And running through miles of sand. Yuck. Oh, and it wasn’t all downhill after mile 15, who said that?! Every corner led to a new uphill. But there we were, flying (crawling? hobbling?) along bright red rolling Moab rock, admiring the views and laughing at how odd it is to be whining about things while surrounded by such beauty.

Slickrock! Less flying more tiptoeing

Suck it in!

Oh, and the best part? We were 1) barely surrounded by people and 2) the few people we did see, we were constantly passing. We were in the back of the pack for sure (“why is there no one around us?!” “Well… we’re not exactly going fast…”), but the bright side of that was consistently reeling the runners ahead of us in. I don’t think anyone in the slow running pack has been so happy and energetic. We hit the long 4×4 road that led us to the singletrack by the river, where we could see the finish line. This sections is genuinely mostly downhill. Finally.

Pushing through mile 19

Around mile 22, I heard a THUMP followed by a whumpft and a spray of sand and a gatorade bottle flying past my head. I turned around to see my father picking himself up and dusting himself off. “Still in one piece?” “It was a very elegant fall” he claimed. “Very nijna-like, really.” And we kept running. I didn’t witness it, but it must have been graceful if no weird muscles had been pulled or sent into cramps and spasms. After 4+ hours of running, grand wipeouts usually aren’t so pretty.

Ropes on one of the scrambles

Oh, and that finish line that you can see from mile 21? Yeah, you run past it and then go on a 5k “adventure course” to top off the run. So don’t get your hopes up. You hear everyone cheering, you run past other marathoners finishing, and you head back out into the desert to wander (“like Jesus”). I was still deep in runner’s high (“can you shut her up?” my father said as we passed another dying runner). But the 5k is a neat course, you go through caves and massive drainage pipes and another two scramble sections, this time with ropes (it’s more 4th class stuff) so you don’t have to downclimb unless you’re impatient like me, because downclimbing means you can pass whoever’s on the ropes. I did utilize the alpine-butt-scoot at one point though. Taking a large step down and landing on my legs at mile 25.7 or whatever just sounded too jarring for my poor legs. We skipped the last aid station in favor of “getting this shit over with as soon as possible,” ducked through the last drainage pipe, and emerged into a dust storm that relentlessly stuffed grains of sand in my eyes until I gave up and closed them. Holy shit, nothing better than headwinds and dust in the last quarter mile. But it blocks out the fact you’re running through a parking lot. “Give me a few more minutes and then I’ll be done counting my steps and I’ll talk to you again.” Ok, dad.

Preparing to enter the dust bowl (running though a storm drain)

We reached the finish line. “Ready to pretend like you feel great?!” I shouted. We sprinted across, or what felt like sprinting. The pics look more like slow jogging, but who cares. I grabbed my participation mug. Mugs >>> medals. We found my mother, who had been volunteering. “You’re late!” she exclaimed. “And you smell terrible, and now I have to sit in the car with both of you. Ask me how many bananas and oranges I have sliced today.” Sorry mom. You knew what you were getting into. Also can you carry dad to the car? He’s currently lying on a tarp groaning trying to kick sand out of his shoes.

We made it back to the hot tub at the lodge, where we joined a few other runners (varying levels of tiredness, based upon how successfully everyone entered and exited the hot tub) and some vacationers who were impressed with our feat. I had a killer steak for dinner and probably could have finished two more. And the next morning, we went to Arches National Park! But I’m going to save that for the next post, because this one is already wicked long. So here’s to a fourth marathon in Moab, and to finally bringing my mother out there so we could share the scenery! Everyone who knows me knows how noncommittal I am. Well, Moab is the single weekend in the past few years that I commit to months in advance. That’s how awesome it is.

Blue skies, desert, and towers. Toss me a rare steak and I’ll call it heaven.

Have Tent, Will Travel

Trail running, mountaineering, and the occasional wipeout

Category Archives: Trail Runs