Ruby Mountain

Posted on July 29, 2020 by evejakubowski

Andy coming along the final ridge

Cats making sure my pack is ready

Ruby Mountain was straight from my OG hikes list. Chosen for its neat location as an ex-island in the middle of the Cascades off highway 20 with 360-degree views, I had always wanted to hike it but never made time or wanted to put in the effort or had people willing to go. Well, enter Andy. Andy has come with me on a few burly hikes (see Arrowhead Mountain snowshoe, or Marmot Pass/Buckhorn). So I thought maybe… maybe he would be the right person for Ruby.

Distance: 19mi
Elevation: 6300ft gain
Weather: 70 and sunny
Commute from Seattle: 2:30
Did I Trip: Yes but only stubbed toes and some close calls with rolled ankles

Beautiful forest

I woke up at 5:30, proud and impressed that Andy had committed to a 6am departure. I fought the cats off my pack, We rolled up to the trailhead around 9am. Shockingly there was a TON of parking. I had been worried after driving past Colonial Creek Campground last weekend and seeing it be a total mobscene, so I was relieved we could park 12ft from the trail. We knew it would be a long day but we weren’t sure how long. Oh, we can usually average 2.5-3mph, it shouldn’t be too bad. “How much elevation does it gain?” Andy asked. I looked at the ground. “Uhh… about… a little over 6000ft.” “SERIOUSLY YOU INTENTIONALLY OMITTED THAT DIDN’T YOU” uhh… yes, and also yes. 6300ft. So… we should start walking.

The first ~2 miles are flat along a wide, well maintained trail. That’s great, except that means you gain the 6300ft in fewer miles. We passed some happy backpackers on their way back from Thunder Campground, admired the blue gatorade color of the river, crossed the beautiful bridge over the creek, and started to gain elevation. Still in the woods, we crossed pretty creeks and chased peekaboo views across the valley. Andy picked up his first walking stick, Pole Walker. And then abandoned it later for Patstick Mahomes, announcing you should not name a walking stick until you are positive you are committed.

Meadows!

The first good views are at Fourth of July Camp, and beyond that you go back into the woods getting to the pass, which is fully tree covered, and feels downhill from the camp. Come on stop making me wait for the elevation. From the pass, you turn onto an unmaintained trail (signed as such) that is possibly the smoothest, most reasonably graded, most maintained unmaintained trail in the entire park.

Aside from that, get ready to do high knees over fallen logs and walk along trees to avoid the high knees. My legs were already shattered from the prior day, and my adductors were screaming with every high step I had to do. Andy started talking about hamburgers, some fast food burger that’s actually a stack of 5 burger patties and I finally stopped. I NEED FOOD AND I NEED FOOD NOW. I crushed a half block of cheddar cheese, a bunch of pretzels, and a cookie, and felt like a whole new person. Bring on the downed trees. “I need a distraction. Two actors, six degrees of separation.” “Okay, uh… Jessica Lange and Will Smith.” And then I get to listen to Andy figure out how to connect those two within 6 movies and overlapping actors/actresses that I may or may not have ever heard of. We also played the country game but with animals (you name an animal that starts with the last letter of the animal the prior person said). I got stuck on T (hint: tiger) but eventually won (undeservedly) by throwing out “ibex” and it turns out there are no casual animals whose names start with x. And the only reason I went with ibex was because I wasn’t confident an ibis was an animal and not a color or a pokemon or an Egyptian mythical creature.

More meadows!

The grade of the trail blew my mind. This had to be a real trail at some point. Climber trails don’t do this. It was so mellow until like the last 500ft. We started breaking out of the trees FINALLY around 5,800ft, and admired the increasing views as we gained more elevation. Patches of wildflowers started popping up! The Snowfield and Colonial groups glittered across the valley, and the ridge and glacier running from Buckner to Boston/Sahale to Forbidden stood at the end of the valley. And finally we broke out into switchbacks through a gorgeous meadow with aster, lupine, heather, yarrow, flow, and even the occasional indian paintbrush (which we are now calling prairie fire). Our pace slowed drastically as the camera came out. Oh, and we also started baking in the sun. And getting bitten by mosquitos. And getting dehydrated since there is no water after the pass. We stumbled upon a patch of snow just above the trees and immediately shoveled it into our water bottles to melt. We also stashed some water for later so it would be cold and crisp (a la Canadian Fridge).

Melting cornice along the ridge

The switchbacks through the meadow eventually traverse to the west side of the mountain, where the trail turns “unceremoniously straight up,” which is an accurate description. It’s the type of scree and heather where you kind of which you had crampons. But there are social trails you can find that aren’t bad, and it’s only a few hundred feet to the final ridge! And the views! Shove some more snow on your face to cool off and keep moving. “Is that where we came from??” Andy pointed at the valley below. Holy shit. Yeah, that’s where we came from, and where we need to get back to… sorry knees. You can do it. Hang in there. Good thing Andy found Patstick Mahomes.

The radio tower!

The ridge is a fantastic mellow walk over to the summit, which has a radio tower for park ops. “Oh you’re going all the way up there?” Yes. Yes I am I didn’t gain 6250ft only to bail on the last 50ft and neither did you. The views are astounding. Diablo and Ross Lakes are very different colors, and there are snow capped peaks in every direction. At one point there were plans to build a tram to the top, and while I am glad that didn’t happen, I completely understand why Ruby was the chosen peak. We sat next to the radio tower and Andy popped open some cider from Blue Mountain Cider and it was hands down the best cider I had ever had. Super crisp and tart and refreshing and everything my body wanted in that moment.

Best cider ever.

You know it’s a good peak when you don’t know which direction to take a panorama. I messed up a bunch before saying screw it it’s like 3pm and we need to head down. Luckily, walking down tends to be faster than walking up, and I snapped some photos of Andy singing softly as we descended the crappy kitty litter and scree and soon enough we were back at the snow patch to refill water bottles and chug our cold water stash. From there we slowed a bit negotiating blowdowns again and slapping mosquitoes, and soon we were back in the shady trees.

Andy singing on his way down, Snowfield & Colonial group in the back

We hit the pass pretty quickly thanks to mosquitoes and thirst, and cruised back to Fourth of July camp. At the first stream, we debated the pros(?) and cons of giardia, and whether we should drink from the stream or suck it up until we were at the car. I was rambling about work grievances or something else largely insignificant compared to the size of the mountains and valleys we were tromping through and the beauty surrounding us, and I caved and dropped my pack to grab a drink when I hear “Ohmygod. Eve.” I look up at Andy. “There’s a bear right there.”

THE BEAR

I’VE NEVER SEEN A BEAR. Years of doing this shit like EVERY WEEKEND and they must smell me coming or hear me coming or maybe I’m wildly oblivious but doesn’t matter, I’ve never seen one. This was a vanilla bear, maybe 100ft away, good for bear beginners like me. I tried to get a picture but he moved behind trees too quickly, so I present you with this incredibly realistic microsoft paint rendition of the situation and my reaction.

Game cam?

When it was mostly obscured I figured time to start moving before it got closer, because I don’t like wildlife or the forest and definitely not massive wildlife with claws and teeth and muscles and the ability to run 30mph. We debated the best way to evade a bear should it start chasing us. Zigzag? Follow trail/switchbacks? Cut all the switchbacks? How well can they pivot? Would their momentum carry them past the switchback? Fortunately, we did not have to find the answers to these questions, because the bear didn’t give a shit about us. We did find this camera strapped to a tree that we didn’t notice on the way up, so I took a picture of it taking a video of us because that’s only far. I have not found any write-ups of what it’s actually for, but I imagine it’s for some wildlife study.

We popped out at the trailhead around 7pm, 10hrs round trip. Not too shabby. And the gpx track? 19.4 miles. 17miles my ass, WTA. Hilarious that we thought we’d be back in time for beer at Birdsview Brewing but I told Andy I swear we can do another trip that’s not like 20 miles and 6000+ ft of elevation gain. We chugged more water and whined about our sore feet and basked in the comfort of our flip flops.

One more of the meadows!

Glacier Peak via Gerdine & Cool Glaciers

Posted on August 28, 2017 by evejakubowski

Glacier Peak over a White Chuck tarn (Eve Tarn)

It might have been nice as a three day trip, but who has that kind of time? Two days it was. And it ended up being possibly the most casual two assault on Glacier Peak ever known to man. So chill, awesome relaxed group, exactly the type of trip I was hoping for. And as usual, I have too many pictures for the words here. Hiked/Climbed 8/25-8/27.

Distance: 36ish miles
Elevation: 8200ft net gain (10,541ft highest point)
Weather: 60’s-80’s and sunny
Commute from Seattle: 2:30 unless you get trapped in the black hole that is Everett
Did I Trip: 7 times for an average of one trip every 5.14 miles

Mackinaw Shelter

John had to drive up from basically Portland, so even though our goal was to meet in Darrington at 6pm we finally all arrived at 7pm, finished packing (and changing in my case) and finally hit the trail a little after 8:30pm. It was already dark, so I put fresh batteries in my headlamp and we took off at what I considered a blistering pace. I kept my mouth shut for like an hour before finally asking to slow down. I didn’t want to a) burn myself out immediately b) set unrealistic expectations for the next two days and c) walk fast because I’m lazy. Also, all of my water spilled in the car so I had no water until the first gross little trickle of a stream where I might as well have been licking a mud puddle. Shit. But slowing that first section down resulted in the chillest 42 hour trip ever.

Indian Head peeking over White Pass campsites

Long story short, we made it to the Mackinaw shelter in a little under 2 hours, missing out on some enormous old growth trees, leaves the side of my body, and dozens of feet of hanging moss. I had been excited for the shelter, until we saw it in the dark. “Well that’s fucking creepy.” “….we should check it out.” “Okay, you go first.” Everyone else fell asleep while I began a several hour long faceoff with a mouse (or a ghost, but pretty sure it was a mouse). I had like 15 bags of cheez-its that crackled every time the mouse got to them. Hang up your food, guys. Bears don’t give a shit but mice are fucking ruthless. They will eat all your food, shit in the food bags, and tear up your belongings. Okay, it only got into my crispy M&Ms, but that’s because I did a great job of defending my 10 square feet. I hate the forest. And wildlife.

North lobe of White Chuck Glacier used to end here (Eve Lake), Sloan back right

We got moving a little after 7 Saturday morning. Yay sleeping in! I was very happy to be going up the 2.7 miles of switchbacks in the shade before the sun hit, because they were dry (the only water source is a few feet off the end of one switchback) and mostly open. And steep. They went by surprisingly quickly though, and soon enough we were on a lovely eastward traverse with plenty of small streams and blueberries everywhere. The peak I climbed last weekend, Sloan, dominates the horizon behind you, Indian Head Peak starts to peek above the rolling green meadows of the White Pass campsites. As you round the corner above the campgrounds, Foam Creek comes into view, cascading into White River which has got to be one of the prettiest valley views I’ve had out here. And somehow no one got a picture of it. Occasionally I’m tempted to do sections of the PCT, but I’d have to take 3x as long so I could bag all the peaks off to the side. You can see the White River Glacier hanging to the northeast, which has created three new lakes as of late on the south side of Kololo peaks. We crossed a low point between White Peak and Kololo peaks. Earlier in the season you can cross immediately east of White Mountain, in summer the trail traverses over second skyline ridge before one final climb to a saddle where you finally drop down into an alien basin. I mean, you could hit the saddle immediately east, but why not stay on the trail? Amazingly, there is a genuine trail (not bootpath – an actual well kept trail) all the way to this point. And the saddle we went over had a campsite for those who are interested. Oh, and it’s like your first glimpse of Glacier Peak. Cue the “oh shit, that’s so far away” panic.

North and south lobes of the White Chuck on the left over the basin they used to cover (taken from the north)

Car sized boulders with ~~Dane Lake~~ Eve Lake in the background

The basin is wild. It used to be completely covered by the White Chuck Glacier (I know, you’d think that glacier would be on White Chuck Peak, but I’ve already complained about how people suck at naming glaciers). Brad did point out that the White Chuck Cinder Cone, a simple small volcano, is just west of the glacier, so maybe that has something to do with it (though they do not touch), or the White Chuck River that begins at the White Chuck Glacier and flows west (so they just ran out of names and slapped White Chuck on the coolest peak along the river). The White Chuck Glacier has been retreating from 1850 to 1930, retreating quickly from 1930 to 1960, and retreating wicked fast from 1960 to now (wicked fast is the fastest glacier speed obviously). Prior to 1955, the glacier was one awesome ice sheet. By 1955 it had three sections, and now it has 1.2 (I don’t want to call the northern ice patch a true glacier, and neither does wikipedia). In August of 2017, not a single part of our traverse touched the White Chuck Glacier, despite it still being marked as such on most maps, and the directions for this route say “cross the White Chuck Glacier.” Now it’s just a basin of tarns and lakes of varying colors draining the lifeblood of the glacier. This makes crossing a pain in the ass (walking on snow/glacier is easy going, walking through volcanic talus and sand is tedious), but it also feels like you’re on Mars, especially if there’s wildfire smoke everywhere.

From Death of a Glacier: this is a pic of White Chuck taken from the west. Left shows the White Chuck in 1988 and right shows it in 2005. Already in 1988 the northern lobe was receding quickly (wicked fast, if you will). In 2005 you had a small patch of ice above the lake and by that upper left ridge, today you only have the piece by the upper left ridge. Glacier Gap is just above the north lobe in the left picture.

~~John Pond~~ Eve Pond (wild color!)

We filled up on water several times here since we were baking in the sun and streams from the glacier were abundant. Hey maybe we’ll even camp down here and swim if we’re fast. There were ample bivvy sites in the basin, and campsites if you’re willing to move some rocks around. We swapped nerdy glacier ideas. I mentioned I wanted to explore the basin if we had time, and would take a hundred pics and laughed knowing I was the only one who gave a shit about dying glaciers. Except then Brad turned around. “…I printed a map of the whole basin.” Fuck yes, glacier nerds. Bring on the pics.

Glacier Gap came up quickly (1pm), and we dropped our overnight stuff in a campsite with a huge windbreak already built. There were probably five or six established campsites there, two of which were occupied. Glacier Gap used to be nicely poised between the northern section of the White Chuck Glacier and the Suiattle Glacier on Kololo Peaks, but since the northern White Chuck Glacier is gone, it’s now just a rocky campsite next to a mellow glacier with sweet views east to Kololo and Tenpeaks and Clark and west to well… everything. Sloan especially, damn. And Whitechuck looks awesome from this angle. I can’t believe people who climb Glacier don’t immediately climb Sloan the next weekend. We deliberated whether to leave the summit to Sunday morning or just do it Saturday, and after a long break we decided we should just go for it so we could take it easy Sunday. The alternative was sitting at camp for 8 hours, so why not? We’d just be slow and steady on the way up, worst case we come down with headlamps. But we had a solid 8 hours of daylight left, so I figured we’d be fine. After a few shots of straight Mio for electrolytes, we packed up our gear, I finally took the rope off Dane’s back (he carried it all the way to freaking Glacier Gap before we stopped being assholes) and we started up for a sunset summit.

Glacier Peak from the ridge above Glacier Gap

Mellow Gerdine glacier, Kololo peaks in the back. You can also see Jolly Mountain Fire haze

From Glacier Gap you head up to another saddle just north of camp, drop down across a small snowfield, and then follow the ridge of Glacier Peak up to the Gerdine glacier. There’s basically a trail again. It’s a 15 foot scramble to drop onto the Gerdine glacier, and then you gain around 1500ft on the glaciers. As of now, you climb up to the base of Disappointment Peak, where we crossed zero crevasse. Here you can rope up if you’d like, head east crossing some gnarly rock fall territory (one group saw a car sized boulder fall… yikes) until you can gain elevation again. You’ll walk over some exposed glacial ice (also wildly cool) that looks tough from below, but as you get closed it’s like the ice equivalent of rolling slabs or a talus field. This is where you gain the Cool glacier, which I think is rope worthy. Swing back left around Disappointment Peak, over one legit snowbridge and a few crevasse hops, and you hit the final ridge of Glacier Peak. Honestly, we did not rope up for this stretch because it looked mellow from below and we had heard as much, and the rockfall danger is very obvious. So I figured speed would mean more than rope.

Guys, it’s still a glacier!

And arguably it did, since just as we finished the Gerdine glacier rock fall crossing a car size boulder came tumbling down and came to a rest 5 feet from where we had been standing 15 minutes prior. And the group ahead of us said they had seen an even bigger one tumble across the path. If we had roped up, we might have been standing right there. But I gotta say when you hit the Cool Glacier (after the exposed ice) there were a few crevasses that made me wonder why the hell no one had roped up. At that point, there was no good place to pull over and do so, so I carried on until the ridge, telling the voice in the back of my head reminding me I was dumb I know I know, it seemed like a good idea at the time! Famous last words. But please don’t get complacent or fall victim to the “oh everyone else is doing it.” It’s a real glacier, and one of those snowbridges might not be around for much longer. The exposed glacial ice section doesn’t make a significant difference, it’s only 20ish feet long, and if you slip you’ll just fall into a pothole and get wet and be grumpy. But the crevasses above it do matter, and when someone punches through that bridge I think is right on route I hope they’re on a rope. I’m sure the other groups all fell victim to the same “oh everyone else says it’s fine and it looks fine” only to realize duh, you’re on a glacier you idiot, when it was just a little too late.

Exposed glacial ice

Our shadows along the ridge

Stash your rope and glacier gear at the ridge. Maybe save the helmets. We did, no one else did, but I like my skull the way it is, and a good friend recently got stitches after being hit in the head on a stretch I probably wouldn’t have worn a helmet on either (separate climb). This ridge is like hiking a sand dune. Save your bitching for the last few steps because many of them will be one step up, half a step back, rinse and repeat. Towards the top of the sandy shit you get loose rock, there’s a light trail but just about anything will go. There’s a short snow field to cross but the bootpath is so beat it’s like a staircase, and far better than the scree shit. Just when you hit your “fuck this shit” point looking at the last 50ft of scree, you reach the summit saddle, and the true summit is to your left, on the west side. We met a two person party who carried a tiny dog to the top(!), and swapped photos with them. There are a few bivvy sites on the summit if you are so inclined. Brad and Dane lounged around, I snapped more pics, and quickly shooed them back down because I was cold and wanted to be back before dark. Yeah I could have put on a jacket. Shut up.

Coming up the final ridge

Sunset along the ridge

What took us over an hour to go up took us literally 20 minutes to go down (summit to glacier). It had taken us just under 4 hours total from camp to summit (including a long break since Dane ran into a friend soloing the peak), and we were back at camp in about two hours. Plunge stepping down scree was phenomenal, we cruised down the glaciers (decided not to rope up, figured we knew the conditions and wanted to save time – still on the fence about that choice), saved an abandoned camp light that we later returned to the girl who lost it, and regained the ridge back to camp where we were treated to one of the best sunsets I’ve ever had in the Cascades. Since so much of the final climb is a mellow ridge walk, it was easy to meander and get distracted and enjoy the views, savoring the feeling of being done with the climb and walking on top of the world surrounded by peaks in every direction.

Goodnight Glacier

Sunset! Sloan on the left

Wildfire smoke had been moving in for a while, so the entire sky was bright red. Kololo peaks and Tenpeak and Clark were all reflecting the sun, and Sloan and the Monte Cristos looked ridiculous. We floated over sparse grasses and dusty trail back to a stream where we filled up water for the last time since Glacier Gap has no easy water source (you can melt snow, but you have to walk to it and that’s hard). At first I complained because I didn’t want to lose elevation or go out of our way, but I knew the team was right and I’d be happier not melting snow for water. And it was like 50ft out of the way, not an issue. And it ended up being awesome, because the snowfield we crossed to get to the stream was covered in mother fucking ice worms!!! Here’s a snazzy Seattle Times article on them too. They’re pretty neat.

Ice worms! (Thanks for the pic Brad)

Yeah, did you even know those existed? I thought they might have been a myth. We couldn’t figure out what they were, and I was like holy shit they might be ice worms, I think I’ve read that those are real. Someone reached down and poked one, and it moved! So we all started poking them, and they all moved, and here we were stomping across all of them, destroyers of worlds, thrashers of delicate ecosystems. They only come out at dusk and dawn, and they literally melt if they’re over 41 degrees Fahrenheit (aka in the palm of your hand). And scientists aren’t sure how they move through the ice – do they release some sort of antifreeze, or move through tiny gaps we can’t see? If they liquify in heat but stay in one place, can they revive once they’ve been cooled again? Could their physiology help us with organ transplants (keeping organs frozen but alive), or drugs preventing frostbite, or even freaking weight loss?* They’re specific to Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, and it’s pretty neat we had a chance to see them. They don’t look like much and it’s a bit weird to think you’re walking on hundreds of worms (they’re like tiny threads, each 1.5″ long and super thin) but I’ll just add it to the list of otherworldly, alien like things we passed on this trip.

Last light on Tenpeak and one of the Kololo peaks(?)

So we filled our water (stream was so low we could only fill bladders and would pour into nalgenes) and trekked back to camp just as it got dark. A group we had passed on the way up had been keeping an eye out for us, which I always appreciate. We were met at our campsite by more mice (bring back the glaciers dammit) and a deflated sleeping pad (mine). Ah, shit. Of course this happened. I had been talking about how going to sleep at an alpine campsite after an awesome day is my favorite part of camping, and now I’m going to be sleeping on a pack and a rope. Luckily Dane (MVP) had repair tape (I NEVER carry repair tape) and I managed to turn the fast leak into a slow leak. Dane looked so cozy in his sleeping bag, and announced his watch said we had done 48,000 steps that day and something like 510 flights of stairs. Let’s just continue to bask in our satisfaction.

Smoke moving in Sunday morning

We devoured dinners. Brad had his own homemade dehydrated meal, Dane and John ate two dehydrated meals apiece. We admired the Milky Way and saw several shooting stars and I said how with infinite space aka infinite possibilities there’s something on another planet on a mountain looking up thinking the same things we are. Dane pointed out that even though there’s life out there it’s so far away that it’s a moot point to all of us. Brad snapped some effortless night pics, which blew my mind because I thought night pics meant like hours of planning. That’s the last thing I remember so I must have fallen asleep shortly after, only to wake up to the resident mouse terrorizing my pack. I took out my contacts, shook the mouse out of my pack, and went back to sleep. 15 minutes later that fucker was on my head. I shot upright and flung it away. Did I though? Or did it just fall into my bivvy? I froze, listening for the sound of a rodent running around my sleeping bag. No, it’s quiet, I’m safe. Well hopefully I flung it far enough it never comes back because I am done with this shit.

Mars! Back across the basin

John ready to pole-vault the river, Glacier disappearing in smoke

I woke up around 3am to re-inflate my poor sleeping pad, and then officially woke up at 6:30 and sat up half an hour later. The mouse had given Dane a hard time too so at least it wasn’t just me. Wildfire smoke was officially closing in, and there were tendrils of it wrapping over Kololo and Tenpeak. We started moving around 8am, and the sun felt weak. It smelled like grilling. On the bright side, this made White Chuck Basin look even more like Mars, and meant we were only 70% baked by the sun not 100%. We knew it was supposed to be a hot day and I was happy to have the cold breeze coming off the ice with a sickly sun. We had a looong day ahead of us though it turned out to be far shorter than I expected.

Dying glacier

We took two hours back to White Pass, where the haze had settled into a blatant layer. Dane whipped out cheese and sausage he had been carrying the whole time, and passed it around while we all sat there drooling because sausage and cheese is the best thing in the backcountry ever. The traverse back to the switchbacks smelled like blueberry pie because of all the berries, and bugs that sounded like cicadas buzzed in the August heat. When I picture summer this is what I think of. We sporadically filled up water and then hit the only part of the climb that I would call true suffering: going down those god damn 2.7 miles of switchbacks. In the sun. With no water. Oh my god. I felt bad for everyone going uphill. And it felt SO much longer than it had on the way up. I ended up going into survival mode and hustling and not talking until I got to the shelter in the shade. Whew. Luckily they were minutes behind me. Brad was so in the zone he didn’t even realize we were at the shelter. I lay down on the trail and put my feet up on a log and savored the feeling. 5.5 miles left of easy rolling trail.

Brad’s awesome pic of the Milky Way

Dane being bad ass

Except every mild uphill killed me. My feet hurt and I had hives all over my legs (or heat rash, could be either, I’m obviously allergic to fun). And I was out of water. I filled up at the large stream with the bridge across it even though it meant losing and regaining a whole 10 feet of elevation. I asked Dane what the temperature was. I guessed 85 degrees, mostly whining and exaggerating because I was suffocating through every sunny brushy section of trail. His response? “It’s…85 degrees.” Barf, nailed it. We passed a sign for Sloan Creek Road and the PCT, and Dane said that sign was 2 miles in. I could have sworn we had passed the sign only 10 minutes ago and I cursed. That meant we were still so far away. I resigned myself to another 45 minutes of walking (because if you set the bar low, you’ll never be disappointed). Except five minutes later John said he smelled the pit toilet. I laughed and said ha, I wish. And then suddenly we came around a corner and I saw the trail register!! Yes!!! And it wasn’t even 3pm! We were back so early! That means burgers!! I’m never back early enough for Burger Barn!

~~Brad Lake~~ Eve Lake below White Peak and Red Peak

We dropped packs at the car, savored the pit toilet (especially Brad, who ran the last mile as the pit toilet called his name), changed into sandals, and sat. I love sitting. Dane has fantastic taste in music and we drove back down the road with the windows down listening to tunes and I gotta say I had a 10/10 moment. Satisfied, exhausted, thinking back to that sunset, it was amazing. What these guys didn’t know is that this was my first trip with completely new people this summer, and I didn’t know how it would go mentally after everything that happened in the spring. Grief can be physical, and you never know when it’s going to smack you in the face. But the answer is it went great. It was possibly the first trip I had where I felt back in the groove. There were emotions but they weren’t overwhelming and they didn’t manifest physically and it was easy to admire our surroundings and just relax. I’m sure it’ll still be up and down but it was great to have another trip that reminds me why I like climbing and why I do what I do.

Old growth forest

We covered like four different ecosystems on this trip. Old growth forest with enormous trees, rolling alpine meadows and ridges, extraterrestrial exposed glacier basins, and finally a massive peak with cascading glaciers (though who knows how long they’ll last). Glacier Peak has a neat summit, sure, but the cool thing about it is everything you cross on the way there. Once I started looking at it as a backpacking trip instead of a climb, it became a worthy objective, and far surpassed my expectations. So huge thanks to Dane for tossing out the idea, and John for braving the drive from Portland (barf) and Brad for geeking out about glaciers with me. And then extra to Dane for saving my sleeping pad. Awesome team, awesome weekend, so glad it happened.

Summit shot!

*one of these makes more money than the others

Spring Training

Posted on March 17, 2017 by evejakubowski

Winter slogs reward you with great sunrises (sometimes)

No, not baseball. This is way more exciting than baseball. Everyone wants to know what to do to stay in shape through the winter, or to ramp up training in the spring so they can be ready for whatever ambitious climbs they’ve been dreaming about for 6 months. I have never hiked Mailbox or Si or Cable Line for conditioning because like many others, ~~I hate people~~ I go to the mountains to escape, and those trails have a lot of traffic. While slogging up Granite a while ago, I had a moment of clarity where I realized what works best for me (which probably means delirium had set in from exhaustion). Here are my general guidelines.

1) Don’t get out of shape. But who are we kidding. I like egg nog and you like hot chocolate and we both like rumchata and ever since I discovered you can mix them all together my ~~holiday~~ ~~winter~~ standard diet has gotten out of hand. So this is a fake #1.

Here’s the real #1.

Ass deep in shattered dreams (Granite)

1) Ditch the snowshoes. They’re impeding your progress to Greek body glory and double Rainier summits and one day multi peak slams. Pushing through thigh deep powder on a 30 degree slope will burn like 200 calories per step (non-scientific estimation). Offer to always break trail for your friends, unless they’re in way better shape than you and need something to slow them down (cough, JT). Just remember to step carefully when you turn off of a well packed trail or you’ll faceplant immediately, which may provide comic relief to your equally exhausted trailbreaking friends, but will not help you.

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Why would I skin all of this? (Hidden Lake Lookout, recommended winter summit)

“Logs of Sorrow” aka a great core, butt, balance, and don’t-cry workout (Eldorado)

2) Pick up skiing, but don’t actually learn how to ski. Or splitboarding, but again, don’t really ace it. Obviously, this is why I’m still bad at skiing. Make sure your ski/snowboard boots are uncomfortable enough that you always carry approach shoes, mountaineering boots, and the ski/splitboarding boots. And throw in some down booties because your ski boot liners will start to smell like death so you shouldn’t wear those in the tent or in the lookout. And overpack every time. Between carrying the skis, extra food, extra puffies, down booties, the ten essentials, I don’t know, some beer, it’ll add up.

Look how happy I am!! It’s because I thought we had 10 essentials and would be down in an hour! (Cutthroat)

3) Forget at least 2 of the 10 essentials. Now I know this may cut down your training weight, but it increases the chances that you will be stranded and moving through the night, or unreasonably cold and therefore burning more calories via shivering, or expending calories melting snow with your body heat, or not eating enough fuel in general. Okay forget the second one, bring enough layers. No one likes being cold. Maybe make your friends forget the essentials and you can be the hero with effectively the same results.*

Huddling for warmth hours later because WE DIDN’T HAVE HEADLAMPS (Also Cutthroat)

4) Mentally resign yourself to turning around all the time. Part of getting in shape for mountaineering is mental, and this is your mental training. You aren’t going to summit on those winter snow plow trips. If you do, it’s an added bonus. But this isn’t about the summit. This is about slogging and suffering and getting dehydrated and cranky and impatient and testing your friendships and climbing compatibility because no one likes climbing with assholes unless they’re snarky and hilarious. 70% of mountaineering is being generally uncomfortable for extended periods of time, and that’s part of training. The boring, tedious, yet somehow exhausting slog. And if you get used to turning around now, it’s easier to turn around in the summer too.

Wow, look how not even close we are after six hours of agony!!! (Baring)

Woohoo! Views! (Breccia)

5) Round up your good friends to join you. I have several who have seen me at rock bottom. Tony, while I was facedown on the Colchuck trail clothesline-carrying my skis after taking a tree to the face. Tony when I snapped that no, he may not make coffee after a night stuck out on Cutthroat because it’s 8am on a Monday and I need to get to work. Tony when I made it to Winchester Lookout at 5am after a 11pm start and asked that he take pics of sunrise for me before deciding I was being wimpy.

Psych! You’re gonna get lost and lose your hat bushwacking for the next 9 hours because all of your nav stuff died and why would you bring a compass?! (Snowfield)

Okay, so mostly Tony. But Sam’s had his moments (me, staring blankly at an impassable downed log when we got lost on the way down from Snowfield) and JT (also bushwacking down from Snowfield, or crawling back from Formidable), and Kacie who realized that any time I’m being extra nice it means I’m 9/10 pissed and Cheryl who combined with Simon and whiskey makes anything funny and Calvin who will never forget the one goddamn time I didn’t bring a headlamp and taught me many new versions of the f bomb. Who’d I leave out?! You’re probably in the lucky bunch. Point is, you need to make sure you have a good crew, otherwise you’ll be ass deep in posthole with your foot stuck under a branch falling downhill because your skis make your overnight pack too heavy and you can’t sit up while you wonder why anyone does this shit for fun and why the world has betrayed you.

Bonus: turn the heat off in your apartment. You’ll save money, and prep your body for cold weather. It’s called “cold training.”

Why go around… when you could go through? (Colonial)

Another bonus: Have your roommate/SO/kids/dog eat all the junk food. That way you aren’t being wasteful, but you also aren’t eating it yourself, and you seem like a nice person.

You can also be normal and go for runs, or load up a pack and hop on the stairmaster if it’s gross outside (or if you live in the flat half of America), or lift weights. Squats and lunges, buns and thighs! Cardio helps, but a lot of mountaineering is power muscles. Cooking? Warrior II while that sauce simmers, sunrise salutation while the pot boils. Doing laundry? Carry both loads up and down the stairs at once, don’t take two trips. Wash your sheets more often. Oh, you have in-unit laundry? Great, escape the lap of luxury and help me carry mine you spoiled bum. Binge watching Westworld or Stranger Things or whatever the cool folks are marathoning? 8 minute abs! Put the beer down, you know if you have three of those then you’ll end up eating the cheetos in the cabinet that you didn’t offer your roommate in the bonus step.**

The fog cleared for a miraculous 15 seconds, long enough for the real summit to say “ha, suckers!” as we sat on the wrong summit (Cashmere)

Basically, do anything. Anything is better than sitting at your desk for 10 hours straight and then going home to sit on the couch ~~which is exactly what I’m doing tonight~~ no, I’m going for a walk, and now I have ~~hundreds~~ okay, dozens of readers to hold me accountable. Doing laps on Si or Mailbox or Cable Line is fantastic if you have enough breath and patience to stop every few minutes to talk to hikers on their way down. Stuck in the city? Go hit up Denny or Queen Anne Hill or jog up and that hill downtown between Alaskan Way and 2nd and laugh at everyone who can’t do hill starts in their cars.

And fine, just because there has to be something useful in this post, here are my personal top 10 get-in-shape hikes for spring and early summer. That means elevation gain, baby! None are tougher than a class 2-3 scramble, snow level varies but hey you’re going to be mountaineering so you better get comfortable with those boots and that ice axe. And just for the record, self arresting with a 50lb pack on is a hell of a lot harder than when you’re wearing nothing. Practice it, you’ll get a nice ab workout and feel like you got hit by a bus the next morning.

I’m going to put these in roughly seasonal order depending on when you can start them. Some are dependent on snow melting. Hibox and Pugh will likely not be fair game until July, but most guided summits are June, July, and August, so I was lenient and gave them a spot. I wanted to break the mold from the usual recommendations and get a bit more adventurous.

Mt. Hood – Awesome winter peak. Better if you don’t know how to ski.
Hidden Lake Lookout (winter route) – Wallowing off trail carrying skis,with a cozy destination.
Camp Muir – WTA link
Snoqualmie Mountain – Rare glance at an old blog post

Mt. Baring – How to turn around and not whine
Vesper Peak – this can be done with a fair amount of snow but I didn’t write about it. Pics below.
Dickerman – Also doable with snow
Gothic Basin (bonus: Del Campo) – Also doable but spicy with snow
Mt. Daniel – Do it in a day. Also a great ski trip. But make sure you carry them a lot.
Hibox (or Alta Mountain) – Hibox is steeper with a class 3 scramble, Alta is further away but less steep. Pick your poison.
Mt. Pugh – This one’s only for you August warriors
Bonus: Round Lake & Breccia Peak – another one for my August summit folks

*disclaimer: all of these have avvy danger. You’re in the alpine in the winter on fresh snow. Be smart.

~~Five~~ ~~Four (shut up, I proofread)~~ FIVE!! trails get Honorable Mention, because I haven’t done them personally but I know they’re awesome:

Mailbox – The old trail obviously, the new trail is all downhill
Mt. Adams – Road currently snowed in. More slog!! Except it’s like 20 miles of slog which is too much even for us. So maybe wait for May on that one. Good for carrying skis (skinning is too easy).
St. Helens – road closed at the moment, several miles of more slog!!
Ruby Mountain – the slog of all slogs with great views of highway 20
Teneriffe – Close to seattle! Less sloggy, still steep.

She’s better at climbing than I am (Vesper)

And these three are trips I didn’t blog about, but are good to practice off trail navigation and wallowing in forested powder in the dead of winter (like December and January). These are all below tree level, which helps a bit with avvy risk. Oh, and no snowshoes allowed. If your friend brings snowshoes and the other 3 of you are booting it, steal his snowshoes and whack him with them and cast them away from thyself. Haven’t we been over this?

Low Mountain – WTA
Round Mountain – sneaky WTA
Excelsior Peak – WTA
Stettattle Ridge – Basically Sourdough but go left and up the ridge instead of following the trail right when you hit the national park sign (well this one I turned around on before the ridge because I was alone and wallowing alone is no fun – see rules 4 & 5)

Granite (winter summit)

Finally, here’s a link to one of the best winter resources, the Mountaineers’ list of winter summits. Don’t look for what days they’re doing which climbs on their website, because then their massive 12 person groups will have broken all of the trail and that violates rule #1. You. Always. Break. Trail. Stop. Whining.

McCausland (another winter summit)

One of my friends made a facebook post earlier today about losing weight, and my friend AJ had my favorite advice on there. “Just keep pushing, every day. The scale is useless, what did a scale ever do for anyone? Just do do do and go go go and wake up one day five months from now and ask yourself how you feel.” Because that’s what getting in shape is. It’s waking up after 5 months of slogging, grinding, feeling shitty, and thinking hey, I feel pretty strong today. You don’t notice it on day 3, or on day 8, or even on day 30 if all you’re doing is comparing day to day. And that’s how my spring training is. Get in a routine, space out, every weekend is physically punishing, but then June comes around and I think whoa, I can do some pretty cool things pretty easily.

Now start dreaming and savor the 10pm motivation that you’ll probably have forgotten about by 8am tomorrow!

*Guys don’t actually do this

**Owen there are not actually cheetos in the cabinet but go do some work on those damn girl scout cookies

One of many stunningly beautiful turnaround points (Black Peak)

Mt. McCausland Ski

Posted on January 20, 2017 by evejakubowski

Bish coming up from the saddle with Lichtenberg in the background

Guys I swear I’m still here. I have just been boring the past few ~~weekends~~ months, with SAR training (going well) and a WFR class (went well) and some lazy Sundays (did not go well, I was bored by 8:30am) and some ski lessons (okay, only two). But finally, a weekend where I was free, weather was good, avvy conditions were good, and shit, I hadn’t been backcountry skiing AT ALL yet. I had two days at Stevens Pass, where I falsely inflated my own ego because groomed runs are wicked easy. So I needed to be humbled. And humbled I was, thanks to an old favorite, Mt. McCausland! “Skiied” 1/14/2017.

Distance: 9ish miles?
Elevation Gain: 3,300ft (5,700ft highest point)
Weather: Single digits and sunny! Dreamy!
Commute from Seattle: 1:45, unless roads are frosty/snowy/covered in spun-out cars
Did I Trip: I wiped out on skis many times and one time hugged a tree to save myself
Rough map (from an old meetup post) for McCausland (north peak) and Lichtenberg (south)

We were planning more ambitious peaks (I had them listed here but decided I’m not going to tell you because I’m selfish and sneaky) but unfortunately, some of us overslept. Which was okay, because Bish only had boots (no skis or snowshoes) and we had decided to #BootforBish (come on that’s adorable) and our original plan would have been a true trailbreaking sufferfest.

Finally off the road!

We were going to meet at 6. I woke up at 5, rolled over, said “meh” and hit snooze. I texted JT asking when and where he was meeting Bish, who I thought was in Seattle. Woke up again at 5:30. No response from JT. Hit snooze. Woke up at 5:40. Shit, I didn’t actually text JT, I just dreamed that I did. Okay, I actually texted JT. “ETA… 6:30.” Okay, well now I’m up, so I’ll… have…. tea…? “ETA…. 7.” Well if they take that long I could go to the cafe that opens at 7… “ETA…. slow.” Hell yes, cafe time. So I left my apartment, ice axe in hand, and went to the cafe, where I sipped my earl grey looking ~~not unlike Seattle’s homeless population~~ fabulous.

JT and Bish pulled up around 7:40, and we brainstormed alternatives. I pitched Lichtenberg and McCausland off of highway 2, knowing it was a much shorter drive than the original plans with less elevation gain and less navigation and a large chunk of the travel would be on a road. Bish and JT agreed, and we went to seek out a pair of snowshoes for Bish while JT and I piled ski gear into the car. Woo! We took off, found some snowshoes thanks to Haley (who lives in Florida as of yesterday and will not be using those snowshoes), and soon enough were at Stevens Pass.

Snow tree curls

2 degrees is what the thermometer said. We piled on all of our layers, no skin visible, eyelashes and snot freezing, and started skinning. I lasted about 15 minutes before taking off the first layer. Another 15 minutes before I took off my second layer (three puffy jackets was excessive) and JT ditched his puffy layer. By an hour in, we were all down to one or two layers.Toasty warm, except for my camelback, which was frozen. The Day of Dehydration had begun.

We followed the usual winter route, which follows a valley heading southwest from the second switchback in the road (the furthest switchback to the west). From there, we were on snowmobile tracks for a hot minute, and finally were on our own breaking trail. I laughed as we left the snowmobile tracks behind. “First day of the rest of the season!” Time to learn how to suffer again.

Bish in the trees below Lichtenberg

But when I saw we broke trail, I mostly mean JT. I think I broke trail for like 200ft. Dammit. And it wasn’t exactly challenging terrain. But that’s okay, gotta start the season somewhere and I was feeling good. We followed a snow covered creek up to the saddle between Lichtenberg and McCausland overlooking Lake Valhalla, and set our turnaround time at 2pm. We don’t often do turnaround times, but we wanted a true day trip, so we figured we’d see what happened. I was sick of being in the trees, needed a snack, and was very thirsty. Grumpy Cat was back.

Doesn’t look so far from here right?

Hitting the saddle, I voted to push it a bit further to the top of a knoll for some good views before taking a break. As usual, we got to the top of the knoll and kept going as views opened up below us and sunny blue skies egged us on. “The trees would be easier but the face.. I mean the face looks more fun.” I looked up at JT. I had already said it earlier that day when JT chose the toughest path up a gully for whatever reason. “Why would we ever take the path of least resistance? Let’s do the face!” And JT took off making zig zags up the face while I snapped pictures of Bish coming up from the saddle with my recently-thawed camera. Well, almost thawed. There were still some blurry frost patches.

Oh how I missed the Z’s

I quickly followed JT where I got the first true kick turns of the season under my belt. The wind scoured snow was scalloped and everything was almost blue in the light. I remember looking up at JT and just laughing. “I love this shit.” It had been way too long.

Mt. McCausland was one of my first hikes in Washington. Which basically means it was one of my first hikes ever. I didn’t know what a “scramble” was, and I hadn’t heard of Glacier Peak. Mt. McCausland introduced me to both of those, though of course now the legitimacy of the “scramble” label is in question. I also was worse at photography, which you might not think is possible, but believe me it was. Go see my old post for proof. No, I didn’t ever learn how to edit the sky in photos. Someday.

Don’t say anything WHC

There was a very neat somewhat corniced ridge as we topped out, and of course we wanted to see Glacier Peak, so we ditched the skis and went to boot across it. That’s the mountaineering I’m used to. The summit register I had found two years ago(!) was likely under 8+ft of snow, so we didn’t even try. It was windy and frigidly cold up there. JT wanted pics of Bish and I across the cornice, but his hands kept freezing when he tried to take pictures, and I was miserably cold and bitching openly about it until I realized I was wearing my entire fucking pack which contained all of my layers. Duh and/or hello?! So like a wise man, I shut up, stopped whining, layered up and booted back to my skis.

Finally at home

I’ll have you know I did not put skins back on my skis from the summit all the way back to the car. Yeah you heard that. I strapped the skis on, jumped off the top, took a sweet turn, and immediately wiped out. Overconfidence at its finest. Confidence newly destroyed, my next turns were true backseat skiing. I couldn’t handle the wind scoured snow, but as soon as we were on more mellow powder I remembered how to use my legs. Unfortunately, in the backcountry, you don’t get a warm up, and on peaks like McCausland, you don’t get much vert before you’re back in trees. And me skiing through trees is like this dog, except I don’t have the excuse of having a box on my head. I just slowly go in confused circles and hit everything.

JT taking pics with frozen hands

Bish had booked it down from the top, assuming we’d catch up (I think he forgot that I don’t know how to ski). I finally stopped to have a mother fucking snack because I hadn’t eaten anything since those damn cheezits for breakfast in the car and I was getting hangry. Yes, that’s hungry + angry, if you aren’t familiar with the term. *Side note, honey stinger waffles taste way better frozen. And then I couldn’t figure out where Bish and JT had gone. I figured I’d follow the tracks we had put on the way up (there were a bunch of new snowmobile tracks now) and just holler every once in a while. Soon enough JT responded. Woo! We roughly followed Bish’s fresh snowshoe tracks. I finally had to boot it for 15 minutes through a steep section I remembered from the way up. Sam, we need you back. Booting is way less fun when you’re postholing hip deep alone.

Patiently waiting on top of the world

I finally got to a place where I could strap the skis back on. The worst part about leaving the skins off is the uphill parts. There was one where I thought I could pick up enough speed to make it up the slope at the bottom, but didn’t quite get enough so naturally I tried to dive for it. Which didn’t go as planned, considering I was wearing skis. One got stuck on a tree, the other was on the opposite side of the small mound, and I was floundering unable to get traction in any direction. Luckily no on was there. They gave the newbie some privacy.

Easy section on the way down where I could pull my wits together

I caught up to JT putting his skins back on. I refused, and kept moving. He caught up to me immediately, because we hit a 10ft steep hill that was very difficult with no skins and my level of coordination (very low). The trees were too close to sidestep. While I grappled with the slope, JT skinned up it and took off. Sucker, I got to fly down the road without skins and finally caught back up to him and Bish, who has established himself as the fastest snowshoer I know. We told him by the end of the day he’d want an AT setup but I don’t know. Also, “fly” is subjective. I was like juuuuuust fast enough to just and and not need to walk.

Turns out you shouldn’t jump off boulders if it’s a flat landing

We were approaching the car and JT made a good point. “I think this is the first trip we’ve done where we’ve been back before dark.” I thought about it for a minute and… he was right. Our trips have all been sufferfests, and this was a mild 6-7 hour outing that wasn’t rushed or stressful or anything. And you know what? It was amazing!! After so long not being in the mountains (ski resort doesn’t count) it was refreshing to get out even if just for a day. And to think that our casual trip was something I wouldn’t have thought of doing myself two years ago when I didn’t know anything about snow/avvy conditions or winter navigation. Damn I’m lucky.

Bish coming up McCausland once more with Lichtenberg in the back

Oh, and we topped it all off with a free dinner at Haley’s house because she had cooked ham and potatoes and pretzel buns and had too much left over. I announced that the day had almost gone too well. Smooth trip, successful summit, back by dark without stressing or hustling, and a free yummy dinner. Everyone freaked and told me not to jinx it, we still had to drive back to Seattle and Tacoma. Spoiler alert: we made it!

Moab Trail Marathon: How to Fake Run a Marathon

Posted on November 23, 2016 by evejakubowski

Top of mile 15 baby!

Okay, we still ran most of it, miraculously. Leading up to it I had done a single 19 miler (but much of that was walking), and I don’t think my father had run more than like 8 miles in two years. So there was a lot of walking involved, and some scrambling, and some “arm rappels” or whatever you want to call those. And some cramps and muscle spasms, and some whining, and some “shut up so I can count my steps” (which is code for “I’m dying”) and luckily a real life voice doppleganger of Charlie Day from Always Sunny who carried us through mile 23. Oh, and a rogue cactus that nearly did me in at mile 24.

And we’re off! Who needs to run when you can take photos every 25 feet?

It’s easy to forget that I originally moved to Washington for trail running, especially with all of the climbing/mountaineering/pretending like I know how to ski. But once upon a time I was a runner. Now I’m a lazy person with a boring desk job who happens to climb mountains and occasionally goes for slow jogs, primarily motivated by upcoming marathons and Pokemon Go. And one morning back in September, I woke up and realized I had a marathon coming up in five weeks. Shit!

The Wave of Plebs

My dad was anxious. His question wasn’t “how much of these 26 miles will I walk vs run” or “will I finish” it was “do I bail at mile 9 and walk 4 miles to the start, or bail at mile 17 and walk 6 miles to the start and hopefully get there before she finishes the last 3?” But there we were at the starting line, laughing at how unprepared we were, surrounded by insanely good runners, wondering just how much pain we’d be in after a few hours. I forgot my camelback, so I stuffed plastic water bottles in my pack. My father carried a plastic bottle in his hands. I left the salt tabs at home. I had strongly caffeinated Gu in preparation for the unavoidable bonk. First tip: start slow. So slow. We were in the fourth wave, the Wave of the Plebeians (okay, the second to last wave). And off we were!

Sweet cliffy single track

Awesome single track

Oh, did I mention that the one day I fly to the desert is the one day it’s cloudy/drizzly in the entire second half of 2016? Yeah, it was rainy. In Moab. The desert. But that packed down some of the dust, and made the sandy parts easier to run. I had popped aspirin which is my only hope of easing my calf issues, and it kept them at bay, like a 5/10 on the swollen scale instead of 9/10 like a few of the past runs. And of course, mentality has a huge impact on any race. Everyone was jogging, we were darting to the sides of the trail to take photos and marvel at views and for once I did not bitch when there were bottlenecks in front of us, which is an unfortunate reality with any single track trail race, especially one that has a few scramble sections. Second tip: Take all of the photos. It’s a break without admitting you’re taking a break.

Natural Arch (I’m convinced it’s at mile 4 but I don’t think it is)

We came around the first bend in the trail and I laughed. We had been complaining that red rock canyons look way better in sun, and this year might be boring with the clouds. False. They’re still pretty damn awesome. The first few miles climb, and then you come out near the top of the canyon and follow a single track trail which is glorious. There are rest stops every 5 ish miles, stocked with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, potato chips, oreos (rip off oreos this year, come on!!) more salt tabs, gatorade, soda, and lots of peppy volunteers. Some of the stations were accessible by mountain bike, some by car, and some by huge ridiculous ATV. It’s amazing seeing how far this race has come in the past few years. Third tip: EAT EVERYTHING IN SIGHT. There’s a joke that ultramarathons are more eating competitions than running. Treat long trail races like that too.

Gonna be a bumpy evacuation!

Approaching the bottleneck

At mile 8 was the infamous bottleneck, which wasn’t awful this year, probably due to all of the shorter bottlenecks leading up to it. It’s basically two third class scramble moves, and you can pick your poison. Small chimney with great jugs, or slabby exposed shit, perfect for the “butt scoot” technique. I went with the slabby exposed shit, because no one else was, and I’m impatient. They have volunteers standing at the base of each to spot people, but not everyone is comfortable on a spicy 3rd class downclimb after running 8 miles. And if you slip, you’ll just take the volunteer with you. One woman got stuck in the chimney, so my father helped spot her while I waited, my slabby shortcut now a moot victory. Past that, it’s down to the canyon floor, where the half marathon splits off at mile 9 and you are left likely by yourself to continue the marathon.

Neat mini tunnel on the out and back

There’s an out-and-back right after the half marathon splits off, and once you’ve finished that (~2 miles) you’re back on track for the rest of the marathon. It’s amazing how many people just do the half. You go from being in a line of people along a single track to maybe having 3 people in your field of vision at any moment. Suddenly the scale of the canyons is real, and you can tell how enormous everything is.

This is where you can get pumped for mile 15. You think you can see the entire climb from the base, but you can’t. You wrap around the top corner, only to continue climbing. It gains something like 1300ft in one mile, which is just peachy after you’ve run 15 miles.You’re tiny, the guy hundreds of feet in front of you is dwarfed by the distant pillar, the people behind you are a trail of ants, the trailer at the base of the climb gets smaller and smaller as you ascend to the canyon rim. Tip four: Enjoy the views. Look around. Just don’t trip.

The climb that is mile 15

The first year, we tried to run the whole thing. I died. The second year, we hiked it. My dad had cramps and bailed at the top. This year, we hiked it again. And groaned about it. And complained at every corner even though we already knew there were false corners and top outs. And chatted with those around us (my dad picked out a guy’s South African accent after three words, amazing) as they trudged up the same death climb. Between his weight lifting and my mountaineering, we were actually pretty damn prepared for this section. As usual we snapped our picture at the top, for once both looking happy instead of me dead (first time) or dad dead (second time). And from there, your’e on top of the world, cruising across desert with towers and huge drops in the background and an expanse of slick rock mountain biking trails ahead of you. Hope your shoes have good tread!

Looking back about halfway up the mile 15 climb

And this is where you end up. Cruising on another planet

This is the best part of the race. The beginning is cool, the climb at mile 15 is amazing because you watch the close landmarks shrink as mountains and canyons grow in the distance, but miles 16-23 are just phenomenal. So keep your mental game strong, because this is where you want to be alert. Rolling slick rock, awesome rock formations, a windy trail that occasionally disappears (it gets more and more well marked every year, we definitely lost it the first year), and the runners are so spread out you really only have to deal with one or two other people at a time. It’s just you, cruising through unbelievable terrain, and that’s why I trail run.

Even I barely fit through the end of this. Turn sideways and scoot.

It got tough around mile 18. We saw the sign for mile 18 and my dad said “oh thank god that’s a mental boost.” I made some joke about feeling pretty good, and he responded “yeah well I’d like to lie down and vomit.” A mile or so after, I started to feel it. The rolling slick rock goes from super easy to run (slabby, mellow downhill) to difficult (slabby sidehilling or uphill or quick pivoting turns) to nearly un-runnable (some low class scramble moves). Eventually, I am interrupted while blabbing away about something, and I head “I am going to count my steps. Don’t talk to me for a few minutes.” So I shut up, and let my dad count his steps while I trailed along behind him. Bring on the caffeinated gu! (Tip Six: Caffeine) Luckily, around mile 21 or 22, you pop onto a smooth trail that runs downhill along the river, and that’s where we found Charlie Kelly. (Tip Seven: Find Charlie Kelly)

Such neat terrain

Anyone who watches Always Sunny immediately knows who I’m talking about. Through our mile 22 tunnel vision comes Charlie’s voice, floating up from behind us, talking about how miserable it is that you have to run past the finish line and do a 5k loop to actually finish the marathon. How he tried so hard through mile 23 last year and then crashed when he realized there were still three miles left past the finish line. Setting everyone’s expectations as low as possible. And I remember those last three miles, because it sucks running past the finish line and listening to the top runners finish while you’re slogging up a sand dune. And a waist deep river to cross, which my father had been praying for. IT’s like a short ice bath for sore legs. Except this year, it was a dry puddle of mud. Damn you, global warming. Okay, tip Eight: Coca Cola. Just chug some coke at this rest stop and you’ll basically be in heaven.

Just so cool to run

Ladders! We stuck with the same group of ~4 for the last three miles. The guy in front is basically Charlie Kelly.

The last three miles are a mini obstacle course, with ladders and hand lines and pipes to run through and neat caves that I always forget to photograph. Oh, and a nice prickly pear cactus that I did not notice until it was sticking through my foot. I couldn’t even tell what had happened besides feeling like flames were shooting up my foot until my dad yelled “You stepped on a cactus!” and my brain worked it out. The spines had gone straight through the bottom of my shoe and into my foot. Painful and quite surprising. I hobbled to the side of the trail in a cactus free zone to start plucking the spines out.

“Look like you’re running!”

Shortly after, my adducter seized, which is an interesting feeling. I don’t usually get muscle spasms, but they’re a pretty well noted side effect of Accutane, not to mention I was probably dehydrated or low on salt despite my best efforts. Whatever, it was the cactus leg, and who needs an adductor or a foot? We only had like a mile left, and it was the mile through the parking lot, which means shut up and count your steps (tip Nine: Learn to enjoy rote tedious activities while in mild amounts of pain) and then make sure you look good crossing the finish line (rule #1 is always look good, right? #2 is don’t die, and #3 is if you do die, look good doing it). We didn’t quite nail the looking good part, but who cares! We had finished, and despite zero training, we had done almost the exact same time as the previous two marathons. We may not have been as in shape, or as well trained, but we ran a smart race.

The worst stretch. Going through a parking lot.

So I guess the answer to “How to run a fake marathon” is lots of caffeine, lots of salt pills, walk all the uphills, take tons of pictures, and have Charlie Day help you along for a few hours. Bonus points if you sunburn your terribly Accutane-ravaged nose in your 6 hours in desert drizzle. Crap.

Woo!

Climbing on Accutane

Posted on September 28, 2016 by evejakubowski

It’s ~85 degrees in this pic. I’m wearing Smartwool’s heaviest base layer. Because I am an idiot, who 1) fried stripes along her arms and 2) didn’t bring a lightweight long sleeved layer.

No one ever wants to talk about it. I get it, there’s a stigma around having acne. I have no idea why, because if you have the tiniest number of pimples they can all potentially be solved with one drug that for some reason everyone seems ashamed to mention until someone else admits they’ve been on it. At least that’s my experience. I wish someone had come up to me in college and shouted JUST TAKE ACCUTANE WE ALL TRIED IT because then I wouldn’t be juggling its fun side effects with climbing. But I had an attitude. My face wasn’t actually bad, it was just that I picked at bumps and blemishes no one would have ever noticed. Acne medication wouldn’t help that, that was just me being fidgety and bored in class, on planes, in the car, at a desk job. I wasn’t the stereotypically pimply kid, I don’t know what it’s like to be constantly told to wash your face or change pillowcases or coconut oil or honey and all the complaints my pimple ridden brethren have about others trying to give advice and miracle cures. Sounds annoying as shit. Anyway, I finally went to see a dermatologist about healing scars, and she just looked at me and said “well why not also stop the bumps? Then you have nothing to pick!” as I stared back at her, because could it be that simple? The answer (for me) was yes. With smooth cheeks and a smooth ~~fivehead~~ forehead, there was nothing to pick.

You can’t tell, but moving my face was painful. I already knew I was fucked here. Thanks for loving me despite my blistered nose, guys.* (PC Rick)

Anyway, I did some googling, and everyone who talked about accutane online seemed to have had extreme experiences with it, one way or another. It’s not life or death (usually, no promises – I’ve heard some rough stories). I honestly think I’ve had a pretty average experience with it, possibly slightly more highlighted by my lifestyle – half of the side effects I never would have noticed without climbing. Extensive information on accutane and climbing was even more scarce, so here’s exactly what I’ve had the pleasure of dealing with over the past few months, and my 10 favorite tips if you’re considering it while climbing.

Once you burn your nose, it will peel for the next 4 months

Here’s what you (and your climbing partners) can expect. Your tent mate will wake up to a peeling, even weeping sunburned nose (Sorry Kayla and Connor). They’ll have to stop every 30 minutes while you reapply sunscreen (sorry, everyone who has roped up with me, especially Angie and Haley) and they’ll have to lend you theirs when yours fails, or runs out, or spills all over the rocks. So they’ll lend you their stick sunscreen and laugh at how you missed a spot and burned vertical stripes down your arms (Kacie). They’ll be assholes and won’t tell you when you have whiteface because none of your zinc stick sunscreen was rubbed in and you were talking to a good looking climber (dammit Angie and Haley). If you’re lucky they’ll share in your misery draining their own sunburn blisters sitting in the parking lot at Paradise in front of horrified tourists after a brutally sunny weekend on Rainier (thank you, Rick and Kayla). Your coworkers will crack up when you walk in on Monday morning and ask if you know what SPF is. Showers will be painful, your dermatologist will want to fire you as a patient, makeup looks terrible because it highlights the flaking and peeling and your lips are falling off your face and you’re basically going bald at the rate you’re losing hair and eventually you just give up on doing your hair and wearing any makeup and looking decent and accept that you’ll make new friends in 6 months when it’s over, and you’ll just take a hiatus from making any first impressions for a while.

Everyone looks good in a noseguard (PC Connor)

The good hand, a week after healing (it actually looks pretty good, it was gnarly when they were big and fresh)

And that doesn’t even start to cover rock climbing or dry tooling. Your palms will disintegrate, your knuckles will be shredded and bloody every time they touch rock (dry tooling was brutal), you’ll get blisters faster and deeper because of how thin your skin is and just to spite you they’ll rip off immediately leaving you stranded on the third pitch of a 5.9 climb wondering if you’re ballsy enough to stuff your freshly exposed weeping underblisters into a dirty, dusty crack (I mean you didn’t really have a choice, plus they’ll get numb eventually, plus it’s a little funny) Or hobbling along a glacier wondering if the situation could be improved by just not having feet to begin with as the soles of your feet burn through your boots. And then you’ll lose your breath trying to shift into second gear in your car with fingers you can’t bend while pressing the clutch with a foot that is basically one big blister. And then the entire bottom of your foot will come off a few days later. Oh, and everything takes months to heal, even if you leave it alone. So start carrying band aids and neosporin everywhere.

Mentally preparing to stuff my shredded hands back in a crack (still possibly the most fun pitch of my life)

And there are the muscle aches, and the persistent dehydration. Imagine having the flu, except for random 60-120 minute spurts whenever your body feels like screwing you over, probably at the most inconvenient times possible. And you better start carrying an extra liter of water, or a filter, and a bladder instead of a water bottle or else you’ll have to alternate your every-30-minutes-sunscreen-breaks with every-15-minute-water-breaks, because you woke up incredibly dehydrated meaning you started your climb incredibly dehydrated meaning you basically aren’t going to be hydrated until Monday which means you aren’t going to feel very good for the next 48 hours.

Things my dermatologist has said:

“Oh, honey.” (like every time I’ve walked into the room)

“We need to keep you out of the elements.” (multiple occasions)

“You’re the second person I’ve seen today with high alpine burns!!” “But it’s 7:30am!” “Yeah, you’re the second person I’ve seen today.” (12 hours after I returned from my Rainier double whammy)

“Honey, your lips are practically falling off your face.”

“No sunburns?!” “July weather was lousy. Not much climbing.” “Great!”

Or my beloved mother, when I visited the fam back home after I gave up blow drying & straightening my hair because everything is too harsh for it for the time being:

“You look like you have dreadlocks.”

Well, shit. But hey, at least I have shiny nice skin, and dreadlocks mean I’m not actually balding.

Good climbing weather for Accutane patients. Later we broke above the clouds…

I’ve been lucky with side effects. These are all a pain in the ass, but they’re all temporary and none are lifechanging. For me, it’s already worth it 100x over, and I wish I had done it sooner. All I needed was for one person to say oh I’m trying this, or oh I had huge success with this. I honestly think that 50% of the people I’ve told that I’m taking Accutane have been on it, some with great experiences, some with terrible experiences. Your mileage will vary. All I know is if I had known how many people had done it when I was 16-18 and all of this started, maybe my teenage attitude would have given in and I’d have done this years ago instead of waiting until my mid 20’s. What was I doing at age 16? I can only assume I was busy being indoors, because I can’t remember anything that interesting.

…where I spilled all of my sunscreen on the summit block.

Here’s my advice.

1) Do it.

2) Do it like October through April. Rainy days are great.

3) Get Elta MD sport sunscreen. Do not share it. Shit’s expensive. No it’s not perfect, but come on, you gotta lower your standards for a bit here.

4) Buy like 20 chapsticks immediately. One for every pocket of every jacket yo own, one for your car, one for your office desk, one for every pack you ever take hiking/climbing, one for your bedside table, one for your bathroom, and then double up on a few of those. And give some to your friends for when you forget them. And most of those if not all should have SPF. Banana Boat has some awesome green ones at REI that also smell great. Aquaphor has some great stuff too.

5) Chapsticks with SPF attached to carabiners are great for climbing. This is so important that it gets its own bullet, separate from #4. Make your own with duct tape. There are also travel size bottles of sunscreen that will go on carabiners.

6) Sweep the floor constantly but don’t look at what you swept because you’ll worry you’re going bald.

7) Drink water all the time. ALL THE TIME. Don’t walk past that water fountain without taking a sip. Hydration station, baby.

8) Hats are great, especially this OR one. Shut up, you’ll look amazing. Pair it with your noseguard.

9) Tape your hands before rock climbing. Always. It won’t help much with palms, but it’ll save your knuckles, and people won’t ask if you got attacked by a cat, and you won’t bleed all over your ice tools.

10) Don’t shake hands with anyone if you continue climbing. Especially not the high end Nordstrom buyers. They WILL feel the torn blisters and you’ll know they feel them and you’ll simultaneously laugh and cry on the inside because it’s hilariously disgusting. They’re probably just crying on the inside.

Days like this keep you going!

Just remind everyone you’ll only get better and better looking the longer they know you. Everyone wants to be like fine wine and cheese.

*I called Feathered Friends a few days later to make sure they had nose guards. I told them I’d be in that night. I walked in the door, with my creme-bruleed face. “You must be the one who called in asking about the nose guard!”

Enchantments Ski Traverse

Posted on May 6, 2016 by evejakubowski

Tony at the saddle next to Dragontail

Starting up on Friday night!

Yeah, I know, I don’t know how to ski. But I figured skinning couldn’t be that hard, right? This trip was back on April 9th-10th, when I had been on my skis like maybe three times, but you gotta learn somehow. Anyway, I think I’m the only hiker in Washington who doesn’t particularly care about the Enchantments. They’re pretty, I just like other areas more. I’m a hiker hipster, maybe. Guess how many applications the Enchantments had this year? 19,000 (source). As in, nineteen thousand. Can you imagine if they didn’t have a permit system? 19,000 backpackers, probably all between July and September given the snowpack this year. That’s 6,000 people per month, 1500 people per week, 200 people per day. Two hundred. Four hundred per day if everyone stays for two days. How do you preserve wilderness with that many feet padding through? That many campers, that many tents and hammocks, that many swimmers, that many creatures with bodily functions and eyes that can only spot so much trash. It’s actually amazing that it’s still in such good shape. And at $6/application, that’s $114,000 that I can’t find an official source on where it goes, but that’s a lot of money for (hopefully) the forest service/rangers.

So Tony and I decided to go in April. Ski traverse, before the trash hit, before people pee everywhere while the goats stand and watch and wait (if you’re lucky), before you find Gu tabs along the trail and bits of toilet paper topping small mounds of poo muddled with a stick but not buried because hikers couldn’t be bothered to go to the pit toilets. You get like a C- for effort. You thought about it, clearly. but that’s where you gave up? You can do better. Not to mention they built pit toilets for you anti-baggers. Blue bags should just be mandatory everywhere.

Distance: 21 miles (the road was closed, it’s only 18 if you don’t have to walk the road)
Elevation: I have no idea. 6000ft gain?
Weather: 50’s and sunny
Commute from Seattle: 2:30
Did I Trip: Yes. And I slid, and faceplanted, and smacked a tree, you name it I probably did it
Author’s Note: Almost all of the pictures between here and Dragontail are Tony’s. My camera suffered a bout of amnesia and corrupted a bunch while I sat on top of Dragontail as if to say “you dare try to capture nature’s beauty, you elitist asshole?” Yes. Yes I do.

We set off up the Snow Lakes trail Friday night 4/8 (this is a month overdue because I had to fight for photos) and hiked until we hit snow, which put us setting up camp just past the Snow Creek Wall around 1am. Good, cause I was tired, and it was windy and I’m starting to realize I might be scared of wind. I pitched my tent, guyed it out on trees (weird), left my pack and food outside my tent (apparently a no no while backpacking because of wildlife? put me back on a glacier) and fell asleep immediately only to panic over every cracking twig and branch swaying in the wind. Because wildlife.

Trying our hardest to keep skis on (Credit: Tony)

We got up around 6am, clicked into our skis, and started skinning up. There were bare patches where we’d have to take the skis off for a few minutes, and some steep sections where I realized I did not know how to do kick turns, and some icy sections where I wished I had trimmed my skins. We dodged trees, stepped over rocks and across streams, and finally came across a small, dark, gross looking lake. Nada Lake? Is that why they named it that? Because “nada” means “nothing?” Ha! Someone’s witty.

The real Nada Lake (Credit: Tony)

Five minutes later we came to the real Nada Lake, which is far more than nothing. In fact, it is quite large. We couldn’t skin across it (we tried, and immediately got sketched out by sinking into slush, water, and the creaking noises beneath us). The slope between Nada and Snow Lake was steep and annoying and directly in the sun, so it went from being 30 degrees outside to 90 degrees. At least, that’s how it felt. Breaking trail on skis is a thing, and we took turns with it. My kick turns were still weak and/or nonexistent. We had no cell service. I tried and failed to get Bruins updates (if they lost, they would not make the playoffs, if they won, they had a chance).

Looking at McClellan across Snow Lake (Credit: Tony)

Snow Lake, as it turns out, is also huge. Who knew? We took a long break (I think Tony legit boiled water) before continuing on. It was already 11am – that was slow moving. I’m an antsy impatient person, so after around an hour I started nagging Tony to get ready. And we were off!

By far the most solid snow bridge (Credit: Tony)

We skirted Snow Lake, conquered some complicated snow bridge creek crossings, and started climbing up to Lake Viviane. This part. Was brutal. Bushwacking, pushing past trees, we were following the summer trail and someone else’s tracks and both of those were terrible choices. There is DEFINITELY a good winter ski route up there, it’s just not what we took. There was one tree that was just… ugh. One of those stiff branchy ones that we had to push past on a steep slope and there was no good way to do it. I mentioned it to Tony once we had set up camp, no details, just “fuck that tree in particular” and he knew exactly the tree I was speaking about. I was covered in scratches. Whatever, I ain’t got time to waste ya damn trees.

We had some near-scramble sections, some steep snow where if I tripped over a kick turn (I was getting better) I would probably fall 20ft and tumble off a small rocky outcropping. We finally broke out of the trees and started switchbacking up the final 400 vertical feet. Tony hit a wall, and I started bombing ahead, announcing every good kick turn that I made. I took pictures of Tony. Tony leaning on his whippets. Tony staring into the distance. Tony looking miserable, framed by a tree. A selfie of me, smiling, because I’m a dick.

Prussik and Temple over Lake Viviane on the left (Credit: Tony)

I burst out onto a rocky shoulder overlooking Lake Viviane. Good news – we made it! Bad news – I looked back at Tony in the distance. We’d have to scramble down to the lake. And, in my ideal world, keep skinning a little deeper into the Core zone, because I didn’t want to have to travel as far the next day. I wasn’t sure what Tony had left.

I took a break on the rocks and waited for Tony. He arrived, clearly did not want to go on, but I whined and plead and force fed him a Gu. Don’t get me wrong, I was wiped too, I was just determined to not camp at Viviane. We had to at least get another half mile in or so.

I demanded a photo from Tony (awesome decision in hindsight) Skinning across Lake Viviane!

Plus, the skinning was easy! We dropped down to the lake and the snow was all consolidated and firm, not the sloppy backsliding slush we had dealt with all day where you put one foot forward, ask yourself if that foot will hold or if the ski will slide backwards, out from underneath you. So you place both poles firmly in the snow, slowly lean forward, balancing on that one foot, yes, yes I’m going to make it THE STEP WORKED only to have the snow collapse under you as you fall on your face and wonder why anyone thinks this shit is fun.

Tony perked up within maybe 20 minutes, and we carried on! I made him take a few pictures of me, which I appreciate 10000x more now that my camera files were corrupted. The last of the sunlight on Prussik and Tower was stunning, probably the most beautiful part of the trip. We did not quite follow the summer trail since skinning across lakes was easier, we followed the most mellow terrain. Somewhere around Inspiration Lake (which Tony had mapped, thinking it was Isolation Lake, which was our original campsite goal beneath Dragontail) we agreed to set up camp. I postholed hip deep around my freaking campsite, making sure everyone (Tony) knew how deep every posthole was with a string of foul language, shoveled the worst tent platform in the history of the Enchantments, and we made dinner. And Tony whipped out the wine, which I swear I felt after one drink. I barely drink. One glass of wine is a night. Eventually I decided I had to go to sleep and yes I got up like 90 minutes later to pee.

Prussik looking good Sunday morning (Credit: Tony)

I had some sweet pictures of my tent with Prussik and Tower in the background, never to be recovered 😦 “It’s all about the memories” everyone says, but some of us don’t remember shit without documentation, and I like to relive it through pictures and writing. I was upset for days. I spent all night running recovery programs. Set it up, go to bed, get up at midnight to check, get up at 2am to check, get up at 3am to check and ugh it didn’t work okay let’s find another one and get that running and then we’ll nap from 5-6am and then go to work. With laptop open in tow, still running its programs. Brutal event, but in googling tips and tricks, all the photo recovery requests are sob stories. It’s my wedding, it’s the first year of my son’s life, it’s my late grandmother, and I’m sitting here like well… it was scenery and some cool pics of my tent and one of Tony’s ass?

Easy skinning across mellow hills in the Upper Enchantments/Core area (Credit: Tony)

We woke up late again the next morning, maybe around 6ish. Sunrise and sunset were just okay, since we didn’t have much in terms of views being in a basin. We packed up and skinned over to Aasgard. I tried to convince Tony to do Little Annapurna but he wasn’t having it. Then we got to Dragontail, and I saw the wheels turning in his head. “It’s right there, I mean we could do it…” I didn’t want to push it, but you all know me. I wanted to bag it. I lugged my bag, my bag for peaks, all through the damn Enchantments, I needed to fill it with something.

Tony coming up the back of Dragontail, Teanaways looking short

I suggested maybe dropping our bags and just booting up real quick. To my surprise and elation, Tony agreed. So we dropped our stuff, I threw a water bottle on a sling over my shoulder, and started up. It was a simple walk up. We headed to the obvious saddle, and wrapped around the backside instead of following the ridge. There were a few boulder wells near the top, but nothing terrible. And honestly, the views were even better than I expected. Stuart and Colchuck look fantastic. It’s very cool looking down on how short the Teanaways look, especially after spending so much time there last March and April as I was still getting comfortable with snow. The west half of the Cascades was blanketed in clouds, making me almost wish I had chased elevation over there. But no, the Enchantments had been pretty cool so far.

Rainier, Stuart, and Colchuck

Tony just below the summit rock, Witches’ Tower on the left (I think)

Going down Aasgard was… yuck. Something called “boilerplate” for skiing. I had no chance, so I strapped the skis to my back and started to walk. I kept crampons on since it was icy at the top. Tony slowly passed me on skis, proceeded to get himself stuck near some rocks on the other side of the pass, backtracked, continued to ski, all while I plodded downhill watching Colchuck Lake get closer and closer. Finally we hit good snow and he whizzed past me whooping as I broke trail. I met him down below at the lake, and we skinned across to continue our descent.

Heading down from Dragontail, Upper Basin & McClellan in the background

Tony negotiating the boilerplate conditions

Most of you who have hiked with me haven’t seen me hit a wall. It doesn’t happen often, I can think of a few times, like walking the road after coming down the other side of Shuksan. Well, Tony had the luxury of witnessing a rare mental battle. We tried to ski down, until I remembered I don’t know how to ski and can’t dodge trees. So I swapped the skis for my mountaineering boots, and gave myself to the postholes. At one point I slid a short ways down a steep slope stopped only by my face meeting a tree, knowing it’d happen but with no way to avoid it. You know how much it sucks falling over with 55lbs (that’s over 40% of my body weight) on your back and skis sticking off your pack? A lot.The skis get stuck awkwardly, it’s tough to roll over or sit up, ugh. So that was total defeat. I finally looked up and announced that this was discouraging and demoralizing and WHERE WAS THE DAMN TRAIL WE HAD HEARD SO MUCH ABOUT.

Mandatory picture of Dragontail over Colchuck Lake

“WHY DON’T I KNOW HOW TO SKI” (Credit: Tony)

Well, luckily it was like 15 minutes away. I pulled my shit together and kept moving, and we found the trail shortly after my tree to face incident. I looked at the trail, thrilled and relieved, and took my first joyous step onto the well trampled snow only to posthole to my thigh and fall face first downhill.

Well traveled trail!

From there on out it was a piece of cake. We zipped along compact snow, the wooden bridge across the river was melted out, it was easy moving across easy terrain and I was back on track. We popped out at the trailhead, put the skis back on, and started skinning the road. We made it maybe 1.5 miles from the trailhead when we ran out of snow. Ugh. My feet were hurting, it had been a long day, why couldn’t the snow just keep going? I tossed the skis over my shoulder and started to walk. Tony and I chatted aimlessly, passing the time, occasionally mentioning the pinky toes we couldn’t feel in our ski boots or the toenails we were sure we’d lose or the blisters we’d have to deal with later.

Tony on easy ground above Colchuck Lake

We were back at the cars by dark, where I saw a note on my windshield. A note? No, a chai tea bag!! Surafel! I knew he had been planning on camping at Lake Colchuck because I told him to meet us at the top of Aasgard if he wanted, but we never saw him. Which was good, because we got to the top of Aasgard later than we had planned. But seeing that chai tea brought back all of the energy I had. We did it! We had just traversed the Enchantments, and even if it wasn’t technically winter, it was covered in snow. Honestly, the Snow Lakes approach would have been better with more snow.

Strongman Tony

We went to get brats in an abandoned-at-9pm-Sunday-night Leavenworth restaurant. Yes, they were delicious. We parked our bright yellow cars next to each other because it looks awesome. And eventually we made the long drive back to Seattle, where I got to fight for the corrupted photos I had lost.

Would I do it again? I’d go up and down Aasgard and bag more peaks and by the next time I ski that I’ll be better at skiing, so yeah, I’d do it again. But you know what the best part was? Even if there wasn’t much downhill, that trip took me from “what is a ski” to “I can get through most of this shit.” I’m still not great at going down, but over the past few trips I’ve been pretty happy on the obstacles I can skin through that I couldn’t handle before, and it’s all because I spent 12 hours each day on skis bushwacking, making kick turns, navigating snow bridges and slushy back-slidey snow and sidehilling. So a huge, huge thank you to Tony for pushing me through my first ski trip, and being a great tutor for all of the techniques he probably takes for granted at his level of ability. Next up, working on the downhills!

An Abridged Collection of Winter Hikes

Posted on March 9, 2016 by evejakubowski

So I gotta give a quick thanks to Simon for dragging my sad ass up to Lake Serene a few weeks ago. In a world of exhaustion and shattered muscles and low red blood cell count and probably dehydration, someone recognized me from this blog. From the Mt. Hinman run, which was literally the opposite of my trek up to Serene, which I tackled with Simon and the Choose Mountains crew after a week of no sleep, running twice a day, and donating blood 24 hours prior. That’s how I deal with stress, what can I say? He was probably shocked that this panting, sweaty hiker had pulled off a 24 mile trail run. Yeah well in July 2015 I had all of my red blood cells and the legs of a fucking gazelle. In February 2016 I was more of a pre-hibernation bear.

So guys, I’m still here. I swear. Just lurking in the thick clouds and rain and snow that the Seattle winter has thrown at us. I mean shit, we broke a record for wettest winter on record. Meaning it was rainy by Seattle standards. So here’s a full dump of what I’ve been doing to try and survive the winter. This is where to go when avvy conditions are high, when you don’t want to lug 50+ lbs of gear, when you have no friends to tow your stuck car out of a snowbank because it’s 6am on a Saturday.

Where To Go When In Doubt

One of the waterfalls (doesn’t look as big here)

1) Boulder River. Here’s a better report from last year. I seem to always be the only one suggesting this one. What’s not to like?! It’s unbelievably green, and reminds me that the Seattle winter is good for some things. Many things thrive in these conditions. I am not among those things. It’s a 9 mile hike if you do the full trail, but honestly feel free to turn around after the third waterfall. It’d be a killer trail run too if you want a moderate distance without the technicality or elevation.

Mossy heaven

Boulder River gives you lush green moss, a rushing river, and a few surprisingly huge waterfalls, especially this time of year. The road is easy, it’s just over an hour from Seattle, and you get to enjoy the silence of the woods. Best of all, spring flowers should be popping up any day now! There is a great campsite about 4.5 miles into the trail right next to the river, and a few ~1 mile in if you want an easy one. In fact, if you duck off the trail at a certain point just before the first campsites, you’ll move from second growth forest to a much denser, older growth, suddenly surrounded by emerald colors and hanging moss on a small cliff above the river. But let’s keep that section vague enough to stay secret.

Fresh cedar blowdown

Warning: Pretty big blowout about 2 miles in. Other than that… super muddy. Basically its own mini river at some points. Bring your goretex everything.

Tip: Less of a tip and more of a fun fact. This used to be the approach for Three Fingers! Now the trail just fizzles to an end, but it used to be that you crossed the river and continued on. It was abandoned in the late 60’s when they built FR-41 to the current Three Fingers trailhead.

2) Heather Lake. February 2015, again February 2016 (no pics this time).I spend a lot of time at Heather Lake. It was one of my first hikes out here (my first was really the DC route up Rainier, but that’s more of a climb, and is a hilarious answer when anyone asks). The WTA description says something along the lines of “good for a kid’s first ‘real hike!'” and my roommate and I thought “great, that means it’s good for moms!” We took our mothers here back in August 2014. Besides that, it has been a winter trip for me.

The road can be snowy, but usually not too bad. Clocking in at 4.2 mellow miles round trip, “Lake TwentyTwo Lite” is what I like to call it. Less exposure, not as steep, less avalanche terrain, and the same steep cliffs in the backdrop but slightly shorter. In winter you will want to bring microspikes, maybe snowshoes if the snow level has been low lately. But avvy danger is low, the trail is straightforward, and the lake is beautiful, especially if you can see the snow-dusted crags above it. In spring, you might be lucky enough to see frost flowers below the cliffs, which Jonathan and I encountered last year.

Warning: Look before you sit, because I dropped my trusty pocket knife up there. It will bloom with the tulips.

Tip: You’ll appreciate poles or a walking stick. Most blowdowns have been cleared, but if there’s snow up there, it get slippy and there can be a lot of postholing and falling, which means general hilarity when lots of people try to get to the lake.

The Enchantments from Hex Mountain

3) Hex Mountain. Sometimes you’ll be lucky and the east side will clear up. So if you’re bold enough to drive through blizzard conditions at Snoqualmie, this is when you go hit up Hex Mountain. 6 mile snowshoe, the occasional steep section, but mostly quite manageable. If you have an affinity for slogging through powder (or more fun, running back down through powder), you could give it a shot without snowshoes. Great views of the Enchantments and even a peak at Hinman and Daniel if you’re lucky.

Warning: very tight parking, and the road (though paved) is quite icy. We got towed out of a snowbank after trying to dig the truck out with our ice axes. My buddy had forgotten to bring chains, but remembered his tow straps!

Tip: stop at Owen’s Meats in Cle Elum on the way home and get a steak. Or some jerky. Crap, I’m drooling. Get the ribeye. Or the NY strip. Filets are for the weak.

Rain or shine, Skyline lake is always a win

4) Skyline Lake. This is a sweet snowshoe or ski up by Stevens Pass. It’s 3 miles round trip, so if you’re camping, you can set up camp, ski or snowshoe back to the lodge for burgers and beers and real bathrooms, and then return to your snowy paradise to sleep. I have yet to spend the night there, but I have several friends who (miraculously) found their way back to camp after enough whiskey to inebriate a buffalo while I happily drove home in my warm dry car to sleep in my warm dry bed.

Warning: Get there early, or the parking lots will be full. If you have 4WD, tell them you’re dropping something off and you’ll definitely find a spot that the plebs in their sedans and summer tires couldn’t ready. Don’t drink and ski. Okay, drink a little and ski. I’ll watch and laugh.

Tip: If you’re stalking me and the winter weather looks bad, there’s like a 60% chance I’ll be at Skyline lake. I have a bad ass set of friends who basically just camp there every weekend since it’s relatively safe in bad avvy conditions. So if you’re bored, come on up.

5) Kendall Peak Lakes. Or Gold Creek Pond, which is where we thought we were going, until we had been snowshoeing/skiing for two hours and I knew we couldn’t possible take that long to go a single mile. Gold Creek Pond is 2 miles round trip and very flat. Kendall Peak Lakes is 9 miles round trip, and not as flat. I. Freaking. Counted. 1600 Steps. And turned around to Surafel and yelled WE DEFINITELY MISSED THE POND but we had gone too far to give up. But it was a lovely snowshoe along a wide road and trail until the very end, and I hear the views are lovely when you aren’t socked in by trails.

And I ran into Michael at the lake, who came up Rainier with us in the summer. He introduced me as “mountaineer extraordinaire, who has climbed Rainier twice!” to his snowshoeing class, and then they all got to watch me work on my pizza slice and faceplant on skiis instead of be a bad ass.

Warning: Don’t test out new ski boots on this one. I had a blister the size of a silver dollar on my heel. I had to wear flip flops for the next three days. In January. I looked great at work.

Tip: Make sure you’re on the right trail. Don’t be lazy and stop caring about life and love and beauty just because the Seahawks are down 31-0. Also don’t take off your skiis before packing down a nice spot to sit. I hopped off my skiis and landed in chest deep powder. Which is nice and fluffy and fun, until you realize you’re stuck.

Okay full disclosure this is totally from the parking lot. ADA accessible!

6) If you get lucky enough, and it’s clear, head up to Artist Point. Here’s your packing list:

The ten essentials (lazy start here) x3 for your noobie party
Hot chocolate or tea (the 11th essential in winter)
Common sense and bravery
Wrists that did not just get rebuilt with steel plates and screws after being shattered
Two fully functioning ACL tendons per person, one in each leg
A general knowledge of snowshoeing and acceptance that snowshoeing is not always just around a golf course a la Eastern Massachusetts
Optional: A zen mantra to repeat when your helpless party members flail in snow and realize they do not know how to snowshoe

Mom and Ned on the flat section (“ohthankgod”)

My mother and brother visited in mid February, and I mean let’s be real I’ve been waiting 18 months to show them what freaking Shuksan looks like in person. You all know how I feel about Shuksan. Ned had just gone snowshoeing and loved it, my mother said she’d be fine despite her fresh wrist, okay great I’ll go reserve some rental snowshoes for the weekend and we’ll go to Artist Point woo!! I was pumped. The forecast was grim but we thought what the hell, let’s go for it. Ned had 24 hours of music he wanted to share that he had collected over the past few months and my mother had a year of pent up gossip and questions, so a 3 hour car ride would be okay.

Clouds finally clearing up

The beginning was great. Ned had no idea how to put on snowshoes and kept tripping himself. My mother was already behind. I was decked out in my usual mountaineering gear, realizing I’d probably have fit in better if I had showed up wearing jeans. “We’re going up THAT?”! They were both shocked. I forgot my mother was afraid of heights. And my brother was already complaining he was tired. And my mother couldn’t risk falling because she had a broken wrist. And two barely functioning ACL’s. And there I was, telling both of them that they had told me they’d be fine, simultaneously realizing they probably would have been fine if it was a New England snowshoe around a lake, and eventually coming to the conclusion that I had taken them to a snowshoe that miiiight have been pushing it a bit.

I dragged them up the slope because I’m a selfish unforgiving person, took them across the flat part to where they could have seen Shuksan if it was clear, and sat down to have snacks. We did not tackle the final section to actual Artist point, which was a bummer because I like showing people how deep the snow is using the parking lot bathroom as a scale (it’s usually buried).

Not even steep enough to glissade. Sorry mom

On the way down, Ned was fine. My mother hid her eyes on the slope. She joked that she needed those horse blinders that only allow you to look forward. The powder was too fluffy to glissade, but the slope was too steep for her to walk. I should have shown her the pic of my friend diving headfirst down a similar slope into powder. The pinnacle of hilarity was her sitting on her ass in the middle of a learn-to-backcountry-ski group working on their kick turns around her while she tried to scoot down a six foot slope and I debated whether to laugh or cry.

There we go Mom!

The two of them are troopers and made it back to the parking lot alive, and by then it had started to clear up! We dropped the snowshoes and poles in the car and I made them walk over to Picture Lake so they could get a glimpse of Shuksan towering over everything. Had to make the 3 hour drive worth it. So you could say we drove 6 hours round trip for a 2 hour snowshoe and a five minute view of Shuksan from a parking lot. They’ll never get the “in the middle of the mountains” feeling at this rate.

Warning: Don’t be afraid of heights or deep powdery snow.

Tip: No, the skiiers in bounds will not randomly ski out of bounds. No, the backcountry skiiers will not crash into you. They assume you as a snowshoer have no idea what you are doing and will dodge accordingly. You are a traffic cone. Especially with those red REI rental snowshoes.

(Disclaimer: my family is great and Calvin and my father whined just as much going to Blanca Lake as my mother and Ned did going up Artist Point. It’s a Jakubowski thing. If we aren’t whining we’re probably bored.)

Where Not to Go

My face says “hahaha!” but my soul says “WHY DID WE DO THIS” (photo credit: Simon)

Answer: halfway up Eldorado. “I’m sick of bailing because of weather!!” proclaimed John, a few days before my birthday. It looked like there might be a clear window Saturday morning, so we grabbed Simon who had just learned crevasse rescue and headed out Friday evening to start climbing at 8:30pm. I strapped skiis and snowshoes and avvy gear onto my pack, laughing at the hilarious idea of me carrying that much weight on the Eldorado approach. The very approach that made me swear last time to not ever carry more than 40lbs up that shit again. Psych.

We crossed the first log over the river without dying. We got slightly sidetracked in the dark and eventually found the trail after fighting through downed trees and branches and mosses. I was in a world of misery. It was raining, it was 11 pm, this is so steep, why did I wear these shoes, why am I carrying skiis, why did I also bring snowshoes, why didn’t I work out all winter, when are we going to be at the boulder field, WHAT WAS I THINKING. I almost gave up like 6 times. You guys know me, I’m usually a head-down-plow-through-it-eff-everything type. Not on this. I was a “waaahhhhhhh, helpppp, my liiiiiiife” type. I also drank all of Simon’s water because I knew if I took my pack off, I would not be putting it back on. The skiis stick up two feet above your head and hit every branch, and stick down a foot below the pack so there’s no good way to put the pack down. Brutal. And there’s nothing like army-crawling under logs because you can’t figure out how to get the skiis to fit.

This encompasses 60% of the trip

We made it to the boulder field, excited for snow, hoping for perfect crampon conditions, or at least good snowshoe conditions. No. It was 45 degrees and raining, not 25 and snowing like the forecasts all said. It was a mess of slush and slipping and getting stuck in snowshoes and after like 100 vertical feet we pulled over to the side, gave up, and set up camp. I love digging, and was beyond thrilled to be shoveling out a platform. It was 1am, that’s past my bedtime, and if the snowpack were a person, I’d have punched them in the face. I take a lot of pride in being decent at breaking trail, but this… no sir.

The next morning (happy birthday me!) we took off to try and gain elevation. John and Simon were optimistic. Or maybe they were pretending. Needless to say, snow conditions deteriorated as we started climbing, and eventually with a few mini avalanches and plenty of postholing (in snowshoes) and slipping and fighting up the slope, we decided to just go back to the tent and hang out. John snowboarded down while I got myself stuck several times and Simon… I don’t know, he seemed to have a fine time walking. I needed a personal helicopter, or a zip line to the bottom, or the power of teleportation.

And this encompasses 30% of the trip (I’m leaving 10% for “maybe part was fun”)

Back at the tent Simon and John surprised me with a birthday cupcake and Sweet & Sour Pork which I’m pretty sure is the best and hardest to find dehydrated meal out there. We napped for a few hours (4-5 hours of sleep Friday night was not much) and woke up around 5, debating whether to go down then or not. Nah, let’s just stay. Nothing to do back in Seattle, plus if we wait until Sunday we can go out for steaks on the way back.

And that’s exactly what we did. The trip back down was not as miserable as the way up, and went much faster. I have never been so happy to see my car.

At least we had Simon’s sweet tent (okay, 100% fun)

Tip: Stop at Rhodes River Ranch in Oso and get the ribeye, or the Oso burger, or the bison burger, or the prime rib. It is amazing. Also, the bathroom at the Eldorado trailhead is five stars right now. Fresh two ply toilet paper, no stink. Love it. And the brewery in Darrington has free dinner on Friday nights!

Warning: Mentally prepare for a butt kicking. If the boulder field snow is hard packed, you’re going to have a great time with crampons and you’ll be up it in an hour. If it’s slushy melting rain-on-snow threatening avalanches, it’s not worth trying. But hey, you got a workout carrying all your crap all the way up here right?!

And that’s what I’ve been up to the past two months, with intermittent doses of indoor climbing. There have been a few other trips as well that I will perhaps get around to. Like Round mountain, which was an awesome trail-less snowshoe climb just outside of Darrington. Or Lake Serene, which I didn’t really discuss. And once the weather clears up, climbing season is just around the corner and this will be full of weekly reports of what’s awesome, when you should go, and how you get to all of it.

Mirror Lake

Posted on April 23, 2015 by evejakubowski

A very short entry for a very short hike. I had work at 2, but it looked like the streak of good weather was ending and I wanted to get out for the sake of enjoying the sun before the Seattle clouds came back. Mirror Lake, hiked 4/20/2015.

Distance: 3.3 miles (I went a bit down the PCT)
Elevation: 850ft gain
Weather: 60’s and sunny
Commute from Seattle: 1:30
Did I Trip: No!

Looking over the valley at Silver Peak

This hike had actually stumped me back in October. I couldn’t find the trailhead. Too many logging roads, no signs, unreliable GPS (“pull to the side of i90 and navigate off road,” it told me. “off road” up a mountain densely packed with trees. High five, TomTom), and probably some nerves led me to give up last time since I had a lingering anxiety driving alone down forest roads. The anxiety has since dissipated, and I returned to see if I could eke out this hike before work.

Mirror Lake

The GPS still led me astray. The WTA directions were also hugely unhelpful. There were several four-way-intersections, where a main road branches into three directions. At the final intersection, freaking take the middle road! GPS sent me down the rightmost road (wrong) so I backtracked and went down the leftmost road (also wrong). Realized I was on the wrong side of Lost Lake, which is a great landmark – it should be on the left. It was to my right. Okay, backtrack again. I almost bailed at that point (the car that was following me did, I’m sure I looked like an idiot) but finally thought what the hell, let’s check out the middle road. I can at least have fun in the car if I don’t find the hike.

And the middle road was correct. I passed Lost Lake, passed the turnoff where I thought the hike was last time (nope) and finally came to a sign for the Mirror Lake trailhead. Which was .2 miles away, down a clear 4×4 road. Rutted (real ruts – 12″ deep ruts), rocky, overgrown brambles on the side. I chickened out and parked at the end and hiked it, thinking “you pansy, the xterra could have done this” with every step.

The trailhead is marked by a small wooden post. The road continues up, maybe something I’ll explore when I have the balls to take the rough road. I snuck off into the forest, and immediately realized that this was the quietest hike I’ve ever done off i90. You can’t hear the highway. It was amazing. I reminisced on my first solo hike/trail run, where the silence made me uneasy. And now, it’s a relaxing, liberating feeling, being alone on a trail in the woods.

Cottonwood Lake

There were a few big blowdowns to navigate, but the trail is very obvious and easy to follow. A few small streams, some flowers starting to bloom, and with the 60 degree sunny weather, hell it felt like summer. Why didn’t I wear shorts? Cottonwood lake is the first body of water you come to (more like a pond), and Mirror Lake is another half mile or so beyond that.

Waterfall past the lake

The trail certainly didn’t feel like it gained 850ft in a mile. It must have been very gradual, because I didn’t think it was steep. Though maybe that’s because my last hike was straight up (Eight Mile/Squire Creek Pass). I will say it’s definitely worth continuing around Mirror Lake to the PCT, where you get nice views overlooking a valley with Silver Peak in the distance, and a nice waterfall to the left of the trail. You can cross the waterfall and sit on some rocks to soak in the views with the sound of rushing water in the background, which is exactly what I did. Spent an hour catnapping in the sun before heading back to the car.

Short sweet hike if you’re crunched on time, and I bet it’s even prettier when the lakes are melted out in the summer. If I go back, I might double it with another hike, just to justify the drive to get there.

Moab Trail Marathon (and Arches National Park)

Posted on November 12, 2014 by evejakubowski

Aaand here we go! It’s going to be a long post guys, get ready. I’ll start us off with a pic of my beautiful-mile-16-just-climbed-1500-ft face at the highest point of the course. Race day was 11/8/2014.

Distance: 26.2 miles
Elevation: ~3500 gain (topo map)
Weather: 60’s and sunny
Commute from Seattle: ha!
Did I Trip: No, but I kicked a rock into my ankle which sucked

I don’t even know where to begin with this. It was my first marathon last year, and of course I had to come back this year for round two. I was dying the beginning, with swollen calves and a foot that decided to fall asleep for a few miles. I’m blaming the sand. But the scenery is just amazing the whole way through. A few of the trees were bright yellow, which I don’t remember from last year. But I don’t remember much from last year besides pain and misery. Being my first marathon, I was way too focused on time, whether I could finish, etc to just enjoy the scenery. This year was the opposite. Expecting to be severely undertrained, I was only there to have fun.

This was the best arch along the way. There were a few windows that might be arches someday, but this one I remembered from last year, and regretted not getting a picture. I refused to take pictures last year, and ended up regretting it, so this year I made sure I took plenty.

Along with arches and windows and cliffs were enormous canyons. The one to the left is actually one that we ended up running through after descending down the wall at a (slightly) less steep grade than what you see.

Unfortunately, it was still steep enough that it turned into a bottleneck, and runners were backed up for over 30 minutes waiting for people to hop down the rocks. One of the few drawbacks of single track running. If anyone is hesitant, it affects the entire line behind them. It was cold, I was bored, muscles tightened up. Oh and this was just after I hit myself with a rock, so my ankle was bleeding and quite painful and getting stiffer every minute. Also I’m very impatient. What was there to do to kill time? I ate and took pictures. Pictures of the people standing in line, and also this cool little cave formation below.

After we finally got through the scramble (I should have taken a picture, it’s really not that bad) we loosened up a bit, and the half marathon split off from the full marathon. They headed back towards the finish, and we headed farther out into the desert.

Soon there was an out-and-back, about two miles total, maybe not even. I remember hating it last year. It felt like it never ended, and you had to duck under trees, rocks, brambles, running through sand, bleh.

This year I was much more excited, and since I wished I had taken a pic of this rock last year, I knew I had to snag one this year. So below is my father and another runner about to duck under a massive rock. Last year some people went around it, but it’s a trail marathon, come on. Might as well go through.

After the out-and-back and some running down a gravel road (a relief from sand and footwork) comes the hard part. My own personal hell. At least until I climbed Rainier. Now Dissapointment Cleaver is my personal hell. Aptly named, right? But until then, it was miles 14-16 of this marathon. Straight up, gaining around 1500ft of altitude in just over a mile. When I ran it last year, I had been training in Chicago. The flatlands. I drove for an hour and a half to find a hill, and the hill probably only gained 30 feet in elevation. This was the neverending mid-marathon climb. I was ready to curl up and be helicoptered home last year. Maybe it’s the hiking, maybe it was the change in attitude, but this year, it was a million times better. More like a stroll in the park. Okay, not a park, but still. It went by much more quickly, and before I knew it, we were at the top. It’s the pic at the top of this post – me by that rock overlooking a huge ass canyon.

Anyway, after climbing what was basically a cliff wall, we were headed back into the desert. The marathon gets very spread out since there are so few runners. Only 400 participants last year, I think 700 this year since it was the national trail marathon championship race. So here’s me, all alone, with no one in front of me. But at least the trail was easy to follow here.

Here’s another fun part, squeezing between two walls. I took this from above, but you’re about ten feet down in that crevice. I had to turn sideways to fit through, so you can’t exactly run through it. It’s the real-desert-canyon feel. 127 hours, no thanks.

Don’t worry, the fun stuff just keeps coming. I’m not sure how people ran this – the flat part you can see is just a few inches wide, so you have to either have really good footwork or jog/walk along it making sure you’re putting one foot in front of the other. The slope keeps going down, so if you trip with a little too much momentum, you won’t be too happy when/if you stop tumbling. But again, it wouldn’t be a trail marathon without stuff like this.

Okay, there were some normal (ish) parts too. Like to the left, a picture of a runner coming up some slickrock, which was what miles 19-22ish were. With Colorado snow-capped peaks in the background. The mountain bikers were having a great time, but most of the runners around me were dying. Whatever. I was too happy. Poor guys, I kept passing them, stopping to take pictures, passing them again, etc. I’m obnoxious. In the beginning of the race, everyone was taking pictures! Either the touristy runners were all half marathoners, or the distance folks like myself were too exhausted to stop and take photos.

Also, what the hell is the tree doing? It used to be alive. How long ago did it die? There were branches everywhere on the ground that made me wonder where the hell they came from. Looked like driftwood. Maybe they’re from old trees that died and got rearranged in floods.

And another break along a gravel road! Jeez, finally. Slickrock is tough to run along since it’s up and down every few feet. And hey, this road still had great views. “Gravel” is a little generous, I think the road was intended only for those extreme 4×4 jeeps. But I knew this meant we were headed towards the finish.

Unfortunately, this race makes you run past the finish line at mile 23, and head back out into the desert. Ugh. You get so close, hear all the cheering and bells and announcements and celebrations, only to keep running back into the distance, away from the sounds.

Oh did I mention it’s an obstacle course? Yeah, the last three miles are an obstacle course. I unfortunately didn’t take pictures of the obstacles that were the craziest. Like using a rope to kind of rappel up a wall. See, if you stop to take a pic of that, then everyone behind you gets backed up and has to wait (one at a time on the rope, guys) so I couldn’t risk it.

I did get a picture of the mouth of a cave we ran through. It was pitch black inside, which was tricky because you couldn’t see any of the rocks on the ground. Luckily there weren’t many. We also had to climb a ladder, run through a drainage pipe, cross a river, crawl under a road through a smaller drainage pipe (my glutes weren’t too happy about that), rappel down the other side of the cliff/rock/plateau we climbed, and.. did I miss anything? Well it might not technically be an obstacle, but mile 24.5-25 is basically up a sand dune. God. Damn. Dunes. I hate them.

Coming out of the smaller drainage pipe onto a flat field, I knew we were headed back to the finish line. Between the sun, the brilliantly yellow trees, and the flat ground, I was ecstatic. The guy in this pic was less than pleased, as were almost everyone I passed between miles 18 and 26. Except me. Must have been the coca cola I had at mile 23. Or the cheez-its I grabbed at every rest stop. I ran with hands full of cheez-its for a solid few minutes after every aid station. Anyway, you get the point. I felt great.

Unfortunately, a few feet from the finish line, I got lost. I know, I know, so close. But you overlap with the runners who are heading back out for the last 3 miles, and I could see the FINISH banner. I thought I had missed the final turn to go to the finish line, so I turned around and ran back until I realized we were coming across the finish line from the opposite direction, which meant I had to run a little further than I thought. Also, we were in a ditch-like path about 15 feet below the finish line, so I had to scramble up a quite steep (but mini) sand dune. Fortunately someone told me to turn left, because I just didn’t have the energy to lift my head and look at where the trail went. I stumbled onto the flat ground, and ran across the finish line to a very determined announcer trying to figure out how to pronounce my last name. He tried three or four times, was quiet for a minute, and then questioned himself one last time. “Eve…. Jabokowski! Jackooookobowski! Jakoobooski!” [silence] “Jabuski?” He got close, but never quite there. Didn’t matter, finished a marathon.

I grabbed my finisher mug, chugged powerade, took off my shoes, and we headed back to our hotel. Which we chose specifically for the hot tub. Hot tubs after marathons are the best hot tubs. Except I was totally dehydrated, the vending machine was broken, the sinks had non-potable water (too heavy), and all I wanted was an instantaneous glass of water. But that was the only issue. And the steak dinner was mediocre. But I got lots of andes mints for dessert, so I can’t complain. Also, my Saucony Peregrines survived! They’re my favorite trail running shoes. Last year this race destroyed them. Shredded the upper, ripped part of the outsole from the midsole, stiffened up both shoes when I crossed the river, ugh. But the new model held up pretty well, and I’ll get to use them for another few months.

And what did we do the next morning? Hike, duh. No worries about the marathon. Well it wasn’t even really a hike, more like a walk since it was barely 2 miles and pretty flat and full of tourists. But you know what? Sometimes it’s nice to just walk slowly and take pictures. And that’s exactly what we did.

Arches National Park is pretty small, and I bet if we had time, we could have seen most of it in just a day or two. But we stopped by the ranger station to ask for recommendations, and they gave us this one, which was supposed to be the biggest “bang for your buck.” They were right. Something like five arches and three windows? Six if you count the double arch? The photo to the right isn’t a double arch, it just happens to be two arches viewed through a third arch because I’m awesome.

We spent a little over an hour exploring and climbing all of the arches we could. There’s one out there that you can actually run across. As in run up the top of an arch. I didn’t know that until yesterday, though, so we missed out on that. You know what’s not awesome? Waiting for someone who’s texting from beneath an arch. He spent a solid ten minutes texting. Look where we are! Text later!

Last but not least, the double arch! If you look really closely, I’m standing in the middle of it on top of a rock. That’s how unbelievably massive it is. It was humbling to stand right below it. We almost didn’t go to that one, but I saw the trailhead right near ours and we had a few extra minutes (it was something like .5 miles round trip) so we figured we could check it out.

All in all, it was an incredible weekend. 10/10, will repeat next year. Even as we were leaving, it was already established that we’d be coming back in 2015. Except we’ll be better prepared for the marathon. Oh, I’ll still take pictures. I’ll be the lone tourist marathoner, no problem. I already can’t wait. Oh, and also? I met the guy who finished 7th overall when I was waiting for my flight. I asked the question that had been burning since last year: does he run the 1500ft climb over that mile in the middle? The answer? Yes. Holy. Shit.

Have Tent, Will Travel

Trail running, mountaineering, and the occasional wipeout

Category Archives: Uncategorized

Ruby Mountain

Glacier Peak via Gerdine & Cool Glaciers

Spring Training

Mt. McCausland Ski

Moab Trail Marathon: How to Fake Run a Marathon

Climbing on Accutane

Enchantments Ski Traverse

An Abridged Collection of Winter Hikes

Mirror Lake

Moab Trail Marathon (and Arches National Park)