Resurrection River

Jeebus, Alaska is trying to kill me.

We got to Denali, me via the Yanert, and then Revine Creek ATV trail after the Yanert narrowed up and turned into a wave train. It was fun but a little daunting by myself with no drysuit on a cold day, so I took the safe and boring and kinda sloggy way out. Daisy and John soon met me in Healy where we spent the night recooperating. We went into Denali the next day, and started talking to rangers about permits, but we noticed that the 10-day forecast for Kenai, Hope, Homer, and Anchorage all show solid sunshine, while Denali showed more of the same rain. So I watched the touristy sled dog show and we bailed on the Alaska Range traverse. We weren't going to complete the whole route anyway, so why suffer when we can see equally cool stuff nearby? Maybe I'll come back later in life and actually get to see Denali instead of being near it while it's covered in clouds.

Hitching to Anchorage was easy. John found a contact to get us out of Anchorage after some errands, and hitching to Seward was easy. Then we started hiking the easiest trail in Alaska, Resurrection Pass, from Seward to Hope. It was easy! There were bridges! It was kind of boring, to be honest. Then all the sudden the trail disappeared and the entire valley floor where the trail would have been (and you can still identify from cut logs) was instead knee to waste deep in slow, icy, murky, glacially cold water. We're back in Alaska. Slogged through it for a while until it got dark. Camped on a slope in dense prickers because there's nowhere else. If I type "at least it's not raining" I'm pretty sure it would rain tonight, so I won't. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adze Picket Co. (I Love the PCT)

Image
Me at the Border I spent the weekend at the ADZPCTKO with Nitro , Tatu Joe, Ducky (the Wise) , Tomato, BearCan't , Mattress, Love Barge, Nano, Sly, Disco , WeatherCarrot, Too Obtuse, Nacho, Tall Paul, Mags , and Wildflower (AKA Icognito Cheeto Bandito). I got a ride down with Firefly. I'm tempted to just end my post there, as it would seem like complete gibberish to many of you. But I won't. The ADZPCTKO is the Annual Day Zero Pacific Crest Trail Kickoff, held the last weekend in April (also known as NFL Draft weekend, where, miracle of miracles, the Redskins, despite Dan Snyder's best attempts to screw it up, actually managed to avoid throwing away multiple draft picks on Chad Johnson and instead traded for more picks. Hallelujah!) at Lake Morena campground, 20 miles north by trail from the Mexican border near Campo, CA. Conventional wisdom says that the weather window on the PCT is such that there's not much point to starting earlier thanks to snow in the S
Read more

The 50th Year of Trying to Hold the Western States Endurance Run

Image
I ran the 50th Western States Endurance Run June 24-25 in a disappointing 28:54.  I mean, 50 years ago a guy ran a horse race, and 47 times since then a footrace of similar distance has been held. (There was one fire cancellation and one COVID cancellation.) So it's kind of the 48th running in the 50th year, but whatever. By disappointing I mean it took me longer than 24 hours, and it took me longer than the 25:30 it took me when I did it 10 years ago. (And by 10 years ago I mean 10 years, not eight, though I believe I applied eight times in those 10 years, having not bothered to apply in 2014, and if I remember correctly, COVID meant they rolled over 2020 without a new lottery.) I trained hard and consistently from early March through May 20, going as far as hiring an online coach. That seemed to work well, until it didn't. I hurt my hamstring running the Silver State 50K (more on that in my previous post ) and babied my hamstring for the final five weeks prior to Western Stat
Read more

Hardrock 34:42

Image
It's Tuesday, I'm back in Berkeley, and I just ran my first Hardrock last Friday/Saturday in 34:42. I wanted to record thoughts immediately after the experience, because it was hard , and now that it's been a few days, I'm already forgetting the pain. [I don't want kids, so you'll have to insert your own reference to childbearing here if you so desire.] Start The race started at 6AM. I slept reasonably well the night before in my truck just behind the school gym where the race starts--Silverton is very low key, so it's easy to dirtbag inside the city limits. I did, however, have a bit of GI non-normality, but it didn't seem like a big deal. I started in shorts, T-shirt, and a windshirt. As expected, the windshirt soon became too warm, likely because of the clouds that were obviously going to bring rain sooner rather than later. First Climb I started maybe 30-40 deep in the field, going faster than I'd ever climbed in training, but not feel
Read more