Mountain Biking White Mountain Peak CA

It’s been more than 6 months since I went for a mountain bike ride.  So I decided to break the hiatus with a proper ride.  Of the peaks higher than 14,000 (4,200 m) in California only one has a 4x4 track to the summit.  I have never thought to hike up White Mountain Peak.  Who wants to hike up a sketchy dirt road?  Yeah it’s a fourteener, but hiking a 4x4 road just doesn’t seem very much fun.  Now, mountain biking that same road does seem like a really good idea.  So on Friday I drove up to the Bristlecone Pine forest.  I love that place.  The vegetation is minimal, the colors subtle, it’s a very special place full of trees that predate the time of Abraham - by more than 1,000 years.  Think about that for a moment.    The trailhead is above timberline, at 11,600 ft.  I spent the night sleeping on the ground without a tent.  The moon set early, about 23:30.  Being at elevation and waking frequently I was treated to a sky alight with stars.  It’s easy to forget just how bright a cloudless night can be when you live in the city. 

Saturday morning I woke and heated up some lentil soup and made a mug of espresso.  There were a dozen or so hikers that began before I got on the trail.  The ride uphill was as much walking my bike as it was riding.  Pushing a bike is much slower than hiking.  But I didn’t mind.  I was looking forward to the descent.  The White Mountains are a beautiful place so it is a beautiful hike, despite the 4x4 track.  I finally locked up my bike when I had to leave the dirt road close to the summit.  There are still a few large snow drifts blocking the path.  When I reached the weather station at the top there was only one other person there and he departed before I did.  It is always a bit magical to be alone on the summit of a mountain.  That is probably one of my happiest places to be, alone on a mountain top. 

Making my way back to my bike I was looking at a 7 mile ride dropping 4,400 ft.  The path is rocky, some of it loose, some patches of sand, some serious exposure in spots.  As I mentioned it has been a while since I was on a bike.  What is more I have not ridden hard since I broke my clavicle two years ago on a ride.  So this was a chance to relearn a rusty skill set.  Riding down steep rocky terrain can be a bit unnerving.  If you only ride on roads of rolling terrain then you probably don’t think too much about how you use the brakes on a bike.  But when you are riding down a steep, fast section, of rocky, loose 4x4 trail how you use your brakes is suddenly at the forefront of your thoughts.  The front brake scrubs speed much faster but apply it in on a soft section and you can end up in the air in front of the bike.  Too much rear brake and the back end begins sliding about.  Flying through a rock garden or over drops and it’s best to let go of braking and concentrate on picking the best line.  This takes faith because it is not what your mind wants.  You look ahead and see a challenging section and your mind is telling you: slow down!  But when you come up on it quick all you can do is let go of the brakes and aim until you get past the bumps.  It’s fun but also nerve racking. 

Needless to say the return to the truck much faster than the ascent.  What a wonderful way to begin a Saturday.  On my way out of the Whites I stopped at the Patriarch Grove.  This is the home to the oldest known living Bristlecone Pine.  You can’t drive all the way to the normal parking lot due to snow drifts so I struck out on foot to snap a few pictures.  The slope was steep and rocky as I moved about snapping pics.  At one point I sat down to change lenses.  As I was removing the telephoto from my Nikon my wide angle zoom rolled out of my camera bag and I watched it roll slowly down the rocks until it stopped about 10 feet below me.  There was nothing I could to but watch.  Retrieving it, I found it wouldn’t auto focus any longer, but while it does manually focus it won’t talk to the camera.  Oh, then there is the little rattling sound that now comes from it.  Oops.  So it goes.

The Decay of Industry

I work in a dingy office building in SoCal.  It hasn’t been properly maintained in years, a victim on big-company-disease.  Every day we bleed people.  Most peel away to the new company HQ in TX.  Others jump ship to rivals and better local prospects.  After life in SoCal the mind numbing flatness of TX is more than some can handle, including me.  So I sit here picking up odd projects as the decay intensifies.  It’s a surreal existence.  I recall moving into this building back when we were the underdog of the industry.  Back then there was excitement and promise here.  Not so much now.  For me this week is particularly challenging.  I just spent three weeks in the Nepalese Himalayas.  Being back in the June gloom of SoCal, nursing a cough acquired above 17,000 ft., I feel a bit out of sorts.  My first day back I was unaccountably happy.  My heart was still firmly in Nepal along with most of my brain.  Then I came back to the decay.  My first day back I was locked out of the computer system.  So I spent an entire day cleaning my desk, organizing paper files, basically menial tasks while my workload continued to build up.

Now I find myself at the end of the week.  A friend is visiting from Hawaii and we are going hiking in the Sierras tomorrow.  I’ve been guzzling an herbal expectorant hoping to allay the Khumbu cough.  It will be wonderful getting back into the wild.  It calls to my heart.  I was thinking how much it would be nice to relax a bit, and try to shake the cough, but I feel like I belong back in the snow.  So it will be a weekend with crampons and ice ax. 

I find it curious, should I sit around my apartment relaxing, I feel like I have wasted my time.  But if I spend the same amount of time trudging about a desolate landscape I feel so at peace and accomplished.  I don’t wonder about it too deeply though.  I just enjoy it.  Life is wonderful.                  

Post Trekking Emotions

Yesterday was a long travel day.  I spent something like 17 hours at cruising altitude and perhaps 7 more in various airports.  That is the one part of travel I do not enjoy.  So today is laundry and house cleaning day.  I was not planning to post but can’t stop myself.  The last actual trekking day, on the return to Lukla, I felt subdued.  That was unusual for me.  I usually don’t anticipate endings when traveling.  It was the one day I joked and smiled a bit less during the trip.  Most of my companions were ready for clean clothes, s

howers, less uneven footing.  I was thinking that given the opportunity I’d be heading back in the opposite direction. 

Now I am back in LaLa Land, the land of the lost.  I took today off work so that I can get over jet lag, wash clothes (my socks are all ready to walk away on their own!). and get sorted for a “normal” week.  I thought I’d feel relaxed and not too motivated today.  Wrong-o.  For some reason I am unaccountably blissful and energized today.  I have pulled out the trinkets I got for friends and family.  I hung the first thing I ever have on my apartment wall – a thangka I bought 2 days ago.

Life is amazing and wonderful! I am so blessed!        

Thamel, Kathmandu

Out shopping for trinkets/gifts.  I realized I needed to eat.  It's noon and I haven' had a bite yet.  So here I am at Phat Kath, one of many small cafes in Thamal.  I ordered an affogato (ice cream with espresso poured over it, a banana lassie and a gallette (some sort of savory buckwheat pancake).  There is music playing, the ever present sound of construction and I sit in the shade of some sore of citrus tree. 

It would bo so easy to fall into a life of travel to such places.  Life outside the USA can be so much more affordable.  And there is so much of the planet to yet see.  Let's see what this year brings....

The Great Unraveling

Here I sit in the New Panda Hotel.  Most of the people I spent the past 3 weeks with are at the airport.  I was in the Hotel Shanker last night and will depart from there to the airport in the morning.  But for my last night I have opted to drop $15 for a room rather then $100.  I still have some last minute shopping to do but nothing more pressing, perhaps a massage. 

Last night was the final party or the Marathon participants.  A good number of them (the tent campers) were stuck in Lukla due to weather and missed it. It largely consisted of  big cocktail party in the garden and dinner in the hotel ballroom simultaneously.  People drank, some too much.  Some odd angers emerged and there were some emotional fireworks here and there, but nothing beyond salvage.

It feels so odd seeing the few people I did this morning wandering about in a fog.  Most have left.  Of those remaining almost all will be gone by today.  The tight knit family is now dissolved.  People are on their way back to their normal reality and the trek is a memory.  I was a bit subdued he final day of trekking as I really didn't want it to end.  But all things do. 

   
  

Attrition

Last day at EBC (Everest Base Camp)  Of course by the time I can publish this I'll Be drinking beer at Namche Bazar abd the race will be over.  Today though has been eventful.  It was a rest day for acclimatization.  The only scheduled event was a moc-start for photos and such.  I didn't sleep well last night so by 5:30 I was too restless to remain in my sleeping bag so I got up and watched the Scottsman begin his ultramarathon from EBC to Kathmandu.  He's doing most of it unsupported and for charity.  That was at 06:00.  On the way back to the tent I took loads to photos of the Kumbu and base camp.  Not long after that the helicopters begin runs high up on Everest to recover bodies.  I don't know how many they recovered but their flying was impressive.  You can hear the rotors struggling to grab enough air to remain aloft.  Up they would go following the ice Fall before disappearing.  I thought that was it for the excitement until I learned two of our team were to be air-lifted to lower elevations.  Both had significant altitude issues: one pulmonary edema and one cerebral edema.  They should both be fine but had they remained another night at this altitude things could have been disastrous.   

Tomorrow is the event and I am much more confident that I was going into this.  Serious hikers share many skills with trail runners. A significant number of participants here are road runners.  I am pairing up with a Dutch Woman who is a good trail runner but whose GPS died.  She is also planning to do this as a fast trek, and since I have a better than average sense of direction (Mt Baldy in '03 aside) it should be  good paring.

Tenzing Hillary Everest marathon.... Race day

Our last night at EBC was cold and punctuated by avalanches. It's a curious thing, too dark to see where they are, and knowing a number of hanging sceracs still threaten EBC.  Around 2 AM I walked the short distance to the squatty potty tent.  Finding​ my way back to our sleeping tent was an interesting experience. It is absolutely dark, the ground is uneven and frozen, I was doing my best not to shine my headlamp into other participants.    Race day morning the weather was beautiful. We had breakfast at 5 AM for a 7AM start.

Only ate about half my porrage and as it goes ate very little during the run.  The beginning was a bit of a clusterufck.  Joan and I waited toward the back on the pack since we were planning to trek the course.  That was a bit of a mistake.   The section out of EBC is the sketchiest of the entire run.  There re many icy spots to negotiate and apparently many road runners are kind of feaked out by that.  I figure we lost 15 to 20 minutes easy just escaping EBC.  Once o our way it was just a steady fast walk.  We only stopped at the checkpoints and grabbed water at the same time.  It's strange taking several days gaining altitude and distance only to cover the same ground in hours.  Partnering with Joan was fantastic.  I pushed her early on by setting a pretty fast pace.  Then, late in the day at the two final uphill stretches she challenged me.  There is no way I'd have been as fast alone.

So, yes this was a marathon.  But I always was open that I was fast trekking ad not running it.  I was hoping to finish in under 12 hours.  As it so happens we completed the course in under 10 hours!  During the run, a Finn couple in our group, Joan and I had passed and been passed by several times told us "You hike really
fast.  We've been staring at your backside from 300 meters for a very long time!" 

So the race was a success.  I still feel like I completely screwed up my packing and prep but we went fast and were complemented by many of the runners.  I suppose I under valued the skill sets hikers have that can give them an edge over road runners. 

I am so happy I did this!  I may well do it again in the future.  What a fantastic way to live!!