Sunshine, Crud & Skimo Lust

November 30, 2015November 30, 2015 Tom AmaralBanff, Mountain running, Randonee, Ski mountaineering, Ski touring, Skimo, skyrunningLeave a comment

On the first of November we were hammered by snowfall in Banff. I looked out the window and exhaled a sigh of relief. The previous seven or eight months felt like the longest season ever in terms of running around in the mountains and now I was ready for a break. I hung up my sneakers in the basement, swapped them for ski boots, and continued the whole practice of climbing and descending steep-ass hills, except with skinny planks clipped to my toes instead.

The first and most important thing that happened in November is that I stopped running. During the first couple days of the month, I fought the urge to go climb Ha Ling in whiteout conditions for no reason other than my habituation to doing it. I got a gym membership at the Canmore Nordic Centre, started lifting weights and killing myself with circuits, started walking more and stopped running entirely. My goal was to take my body completely out of running shape, into a more traditionally mountaineering, “slow and heavy” type of fitness, and move back into increasingly faster and lighter activity starting in the new year.

All this is tempered by the fact that I essentially traded trail running for fast and light ski touring AKA “Skimo” as soon as I was able this season. Last year I purchased a lightweight Dynafit setup with the intention of staying fit and exploring the mountains during the wintertime when options for running in the alpine become limited. I didn’t expect to do much true backcountry travel, more avalanche-safe objectives where I can rack up some vert and get sweet views solo without the risk of getting buried.

nakiskaskimo1 The month started with a few forays to get myself reacquainted with being on skis. I skinned up to Sunshine Village the day before opening; broke trail halfway up the backside of Sulphur; climbed and skied unopened Mystic runs at Norquay and messed around at Nakiska too.

That was when a tingling lust for the Ski as a tool for mountain travel began stirring in my heart, and I felt obligated to reciprocate with some type-2 fun adventures…

The next three days, I hit the skis hard. The goal of climbing a thousand meters on skis stood out in my mind arbitrarily. On my previous trips this year, I just hadn’t been able to accumulate it so far.

On November 26, I skinned up the old Norquay ski-out that begins at the Juniper Hotel. This is my (and Sean’s) now standard route from town to reach the trailhead for Cascade Mountain. I fortunately found someone’s skintrack up the old black-diamond run but it was so steep I had to bootpack for long sections in deep powder. At last I reached the top of the yet unopened North American lift which services the longest and steepest of Norquay’s ski runs. The view overlooks Mount Rundle, the town of Banff and the Bow Valley corridor stretching towards Canmore. I shredded the wide powder slopes of North American then whizzed back down the narrow ski-out to the Juniper. (6.6km/838m/Movescount/Strava)

On November 27, I still hadn’t climbed a thousand metres on skis. I decided to stay close to home and see how far I could make it up Sulphur, my usual springtime stomping grounds. I started at the Cave and Basin, 0.5km from my apartment and walked for another half kilometre with the skis on my back before reaching good snow where I was able to start skinning. I made good time along the river and up my old tracks from the previous week, seemingly walked-in by someone (or something) and topped up with a few inches of fresh snow.

All of the various animal, boot and ski tracks petered out around my high point from the previous week and so it was trail-breaking time. I slogged for another four or five hundred vertical metres, step by painstaking step. The thought that I could turn around and ski down at any moment was as stifling and omnipresent as the sun but I continued to march — I wanted to touch that stupid observatory on top of Sanson’s Peak, just like in the summertime, but with skis on my back. I haven’t experienced that level of deathmarch in a long time.

Cue the boardwalk, the upper gondola terminal splayed open among tarps and cranes, and that little brick observatory sitting on top of the mountain. I threw the skis on my back and walked up the wooden steps, wading through the snowdrifts, to touch the stupid little brick house that means so much to me. I took some pics, walked back down, click-click, then skied one of the most fun downhill runs of my life. (18km/981m/Movecount/Strava)

Whilst deathmarching up Sulphur, I had plans to go ski touring with ultrarunners Majo Srnik (@majocalgary) and Andy Reed (@canmoremd) the following day. Fuck, I said to myself, I hope I don’t die… Next morning we met in a surprisingly busy parking lot at Sunshine Village at 8am, an hour before opening. Andy and Majo both had brand-new Dynafit PDG setups with race bindings which, combined with my last year’s PDG skis, definitively made us the Dynafit rando crew.

We reached the upper village in about an hour and proceeded towards Lookout Mountain AKA Brewster Rock via a wide arc just outside the ski area boundary. We approached the sustained climb up Lookout and Andy charged towards the sky, setting a steep track across hardened snow where little more than our steel edges gripped the slope. Did I mention Andy is “tapering” for TNF 50 in San Francisco next weekend?

The higher we climbed, the crustier the snow became and bare rocks started to punctuate the skimpy snowpack until we topped out at the Great Divide lift at 2700m, eleven hundred vertical metres above our start-point.

sunskimo1

After a brief snack overlooking the crest of the continent, we skied down the run, ducked the rope and descended through steep crud to reach an area of thirty degree champagne powder that we milked for two laps of exquisite riding. Then we were off in another wide arc through the meadows — over rolling terrain that had us stripping skins for short downhills, then replacing them moments later — to reach Mount Standish at 2398m.

After taking in the views of Rock Isle Lake and a snowy continental divide, we stripped off our climbing skins for good, stashed them in our jackets and tore down through the ski area and back to our vehicles in the parking lot in less than twenty minutes. (23.5km/1446m/Movescount/Strava)

My newfound respect for the skis are akin to how I came to recognize the bike as a tool for mountain travel this past summer. Each tool has its place in the kit of a well-rounded mountaineer and I suppose the goal is to become competent in each domain, whether it’s running, hiking, climbing technical rock, skiing, biking, swimming, etc. Besides, if you live in the mountains in Canada and don’t ski, snowboard or do something to keep yourself busy, then winter just sucks, and as a summer-loving mountain runner it’s more like some kind of sadistic hell.

And now it’s a buttery heaven of lung-hucking bootpacks and surfin’ through pow. Hallelujah.

The Longest Season

November 4, 2015November 4, 2015 Tom AmaralBanff, Canadian Rockies, Canmore, ha ling north bowl, Mountain running, skyrunning, trail runningLeave a comment

I was slogging up some mountain the other day when I started counting on my fingertips: how many months had it been between February and now? I’d started training consistently last February, bagged Rundle in March, got injured in April, ran the Mont Blanc 80K way back in June… Now here it was, practically November, the days increasingly short but the weather fine, scramblers still making summits throughout Banff.

In other words it was the longest peak bagging season ever.

In northern-ish Canada, we tend to complain about the shortness of our summers, especially in the mountains, where we love to do stuff during our four months of occasionally decent weather. Well, last winter was rather springlike and this fall has been gloriously summery, making for the peak bagging season scramblers could only dream of.

After fourteen hundred kilometres on my spindly little legs this year — a total of 238 hours moving fast and light in the mountains and over a hundred thousand metres of ascent — you can bet I’m stoked for our recent powder days.

Unfortunately, I’m already thinking about next year. A few days ago, I gained entry into The North Face Lavaredo 119K in the Italian Dolomites for 2016. Though I’m not quite sure how next year is going to pan out, I’m excited to have what is commonly described as “the most beautiful race in the world” tentatively on my calendar for next summer.

Onwards to the events of October!

October 11 was Grizzly Ultra in Canmore, a fun late-season 50K that draws together runners from all over Alberta. Paddy and Jordan from Mountain Stride Fitness raced whilst Sean and I stood around cheering everybody on. Jordan finished in 9th place in 4h52m and looked solid all the while. Way to go, buddy!

^ Jordan Sauer en route to a top-ten spot at Grizzly Ultra.

The weeks before and after Grizzly comprised a bunch of random jaunts, shifting back and forth between bigger and smaller objectives as the weather would dicate. During the middle of October, I did a sunny loop on Yamnuska; climbed to the false summit of Observation Peak on hard snow with an ice tool; mucked around for 30km in the Castle Mountain massive and tagged EEOR and Goat’s Eye as well. As conditions continued to be snowfree, it was hard to say no to a run in the alpine though difficult to commit to anything too crazy as the mornings grew frigid and hours of daylight scarce. I wrote about this internal conflict a little bit last year in Fall Moods over on the MSF blog.

^ Observation Peak

From October 17-24, my folks came to visit so I took the opportunity to step back from incessant peak bagging and tried to be a good host. Via my suburban parents, I looked at the Rockies through a child’s eyes — or at least with tourists’ eyes — as we ferried around to the many jaw-dropping locations that have been photographed and gawked at time and again.

As the end of the month approached, it was obvious that I wasn’t a hundred percent satisfied with my summer, though I certainly had lots to be grateful for. On October 20th, I wrote:

I guess the feeling is that at the end of the season I haven’t really faced my fears and have largely stayed inside my comfort zone, and after all the side-stepping around the real challenges I ultimately feel disappointed and unfulfilled.

Disappointment is a theme I’ve touched on in my last few blog entries, but suddenly I knew why I felt disappointed, that I was justified to feel disappointed but also knew how to fix it. My disappointment stemmed from my own unwillingness to push myself out of my comfort zone, to face my fears of exposed, technical terrain, and I wouldn’t be truly satisfied until I did something scary. On October 23rd, I wrote:

The eternal conflict between comfort and fear. I’ve always been afraid to explore and push my boundaries, but if it gets too comfortable, I start to get bored. I can do Fairview and Ha Ling over and over but I will never attain the feeling of satisfaction that comes from having met and overcome fear. I’ve said this before: this whole activity, for you, is all about pursuing fear.

As the weekend approached, Sean mentioned he was coming to the mountains and had an objective in mind. Sean wanted to explore an esoteric scramble route up the steep, rocky north bowl of Ha Ling Peak, a route considerably more exposed and hands-on than the standard trail to the top of the mountain. We were aware the bowl had been ascended previously by non-climbers so it wasn’t necessarily a death sentence, but I was inherently uncomfortable. A part of me deeply desired to send this route but my mind immediately started thinking up alternatives: Sean said he was open to other options, maybe I’ll take him up Observation Peak… Maybe we can bike into Moraine Lake and do something there… I.e. something that doesn’t scare me.

Having reached the previous conclusions, it became obvious what I was doing and that a big, fat dose of facing my fears was precisely what I needed. So around 10am on October 25, I met Sean in Canmore and we drove up to the climber’s parking lot at the base of Ha Ling and started slogging.

Other runners who have done this route might snicker — and in retrospect it’s not that bad — but on our approach I was gripped. We treaded loose cobbles on our way to the bowl, frost covering everything on the shadowy north aspect. We rounded a corner into the bowl and left shitty terrain for really shitty terrain, scrambling up short slabs littered with scree and interspersed by green patches. We reached a sizeable class 4 pitch that we spent a good half hour probing, convinced we had to climb it in order to continue. After basically giving up, we traversed along the base of it until we found a weakness in the rock band weak enough to suit our scrambling prowess and clambered up.

One weakness led to another and we zigzagged back and forth on exposed and chossy ledges, climbing up broken slabs in between. By this point we were closer to the col than the base where we started and it seemed that the most difficult challenges were behind us. Adrenaline tinged with paranoia transformed into euphoria mixed with enthusiasm and suddenly I was stoked. We gained a “green ramp” which deposited us onto the Ha Ling-Miner’s Peak col amid a conga line of hikers headed for Ha Ling’s summit.

The first words out my mouth were, “That was awesome! I would totally do that again!” or something to that effect. We trotted over to Miner’s to inspect a possible Grassi traverse, then trotted back over to obligatorily tag Ha Ling as well.

Mountain running has taught me many philosophical lessons and has become more purely metaphysical throughout the past year. When I was training on Sulphur in the springtime, I learned to reduce my resistance and embrace the elements. In Chamonix, I learned to trust my training and let myself be guided towards success. On the northern aspect of Ha Ling last week, I learned that when I push myself outside of my comfort zone and do scary things, it somehow opens the doors for new opportunities to happen. This is my newfound perspective on fear.

Aylmer Duathlon & Assorted Reflections

October 10, 2015September 2, 2016 Tom AmaralAylmer, aylmer scramble, Banff, banff national park, mount aylmer, Mountain running, skyrunning, trail, ultrarunning1 Comment

Last month I expressed mild disappointment over not achieving any long technical days in the mountains this summer. That is, little in the way of exposed ridgeline traverses, multipeak link ups or self-supported ultras in the backcountry. I mainly stuck to single summits, many I know well, going faster and lighter than ever before. In general though, one can either choose to be mediocre at new things (the definition of “novice”) or become really good at a given activity by doing it over and over again. It’s obvious now that the fruit of this summer wasn’t an extension of my activities into new domains, more a sharpening or deepening of what was already there.

This summer still had its unicorns and Mount Aylmer was one of them. Sean and I ascended this 3162 metre peak in June before I left for France and before Parks Canada seasonally implements restrictions on the trail to minimize encounters with grizzlies. Once the hiking restrictions ended in September I gazed out my window at Aylmer, then down at a window of good weather forecasted on my smartphone and knew my summer had built towards this objective: tagging Aylmer from town.

There is something to be said for “town” in the context of mountain running — mostly I’ve said it here — but in essence, it provides contrast. “Town”, the seat of comfort and habitation, is Alpha to the summit’s frigid, blustery and uninhabitable Omega. At the same time, the barren summit represents challenge, growth and the exaltation of our greatest selves while the couch, cafe or office chair implies to mountaineers a stagnance that reeks stronger than death.

This year I came to appreciate diverse forms of locomotion in the mountains, particularly how a bike can be integrated with bagging peaks. Seeing only few weeks of non-winter left in the alpine, I felt like I had a choice: I could hop in the car and drive somewhere and do a gnarly ridge traverse or maybe link a couple peaks, or I could travel under my own power to a mountain I reverently stared at from my window every day, and do it faster, stronger and in a 100% human powered fashion.
There’s nothing novel about bagging peaks on a bike, as Anton spent the summer rehabbing his shin by biking all over Colorado and Justin Simoni climbed the state’s 54 fourteeners in a row, pedaling in-between them. If mountain running is supposed to be about distilling mountaineering to its most minimal form, there ultimately seems something superfluous about driving a vehicle to the trailhead to do it.

My day doing an Aylmer duathlon started at seven AM with a calzone and espresso. I left the house at 7:43AM, saddling up on my aluminum framed Argon 18 roadie and riding out of town.

The ride out to Lake Minnewanka took half an hour and passed by easily and quick. I locked up my bike near the Minnewanka boat docks and started trotting. After departing the lakeshore trail and heading towards Aylmer Pass, I bellowed with greater volume and frequency than usual to warn off any grazing bears.

The traverse on talus below the ridge was fun as I hopped from rock to rock whilst admiring the flawless weather and listening to Sweet Valley at full blast. When Sean and I bagged this peak in June, the summit was enveloped in a dark cloud as we topped out above the avalanche gully. Today it was a hard, blue sky from one horizon to the next.

The homestretch to the summit is steep but untechnical and I slogged at a pace that was actually too hard for the altitude I was at. I repeatedly had to stop and catch my breath, reminding myself to hike slower or frustratingly redline myself every couple minutes.

I tagged the top in 3h57m, adjusted the poor wooden stick stuffed in the summit cairn and took in the scenery. “The view is pleasing but not breathtaking,” says Kane in the guidebook, but it’s pretty decent. Prairies to the east appeared like the placid surface of a lake while views westward grew into a swelling sea marked by 11,000 foot whitecaps — Assiniboine, Temple, then the Goodsirs, looking like Dracula’s castle in mountain form.

I hung around on top for nineteen minutes then headed down, plummeting 1600 metres in a fraction of the time it took to get up there. The only complication I encountered was descending too far down the avi gulch, past the faint Aylmer Pass trail which intersects it. When the eerie feeling of, “Something doesn’t feel right,” struck, I turned myself around and marched back up the drainage for a couple minutes until I located the path.

The jog back to my bike was mundane but the lake was pretty and provided a cool breeze which made things quite comfortable. I remember our run in June being sweltering on the way out and on that occasion added injury to insult by bashing the soft underside of my foot on a rock. I reached my bike in 6h20m and flew mostly downhill back to Banff Avenue and Caribou Street in 6h49m, only nine minutes longer than our trailhead-to-trailhead time when we drove there in the spring.

Now when I look out my window, Aylmer is like a friend; a neighbour that I nod to, and it nods back. My experience with this mountain was more than a fling, more than just ticking the peak in the back of the scramble book and that’s it. I had a crush on Mount Aylmer and this is how I expressed it, and I’d like to think Aylmer recognizes and respects my effort in some metaphysical way.

Next summer, I just gotta swim across that lake and make it a triathalon.

Splits:
0h30m Lake Minnewanka boat docks
1h31m Aylmer Pass/Lakeshore jct
3h57m Mount Aylmer Summit
5h31m Aylmer Pass/Lakeshore jct
6h20m Lake Minnewanka boat docks
6h49m Banff (Banff Ave./Caribou St.)

50km total (20km bike/30km run) | 2127m vertical [GPS data]

Summer’s Summit

August 3, 2015August 3, 2015 Tom AmaralAthabasca scramble, Banff, Banff Triple FKT, Mountain running, Mountain Stride Fitness, skyrunning, trail running, ultrarunningLeave a comment

July was a stokeworthy month: I returned from France and immediately set my concentration towards hosting our first Mountain Stride Trail Running Retreat in Kananaskis. We spent the weekend of July 12-14 running along ridges and beneath big mountain walls, sampling tasty vegan meals and chatting about all things trail running. Hardrock and Sinister 7 kept us busy spectating when we weren’t actually running or eating also.

The “wildflower” edition of our trail running retreat was hugely successful and I’m looking forward to hosting the “golden larch” edition September 11-13, 2015. Come join us!

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The weeks post running retreat were spent ascending disparate summits around Banff, all free from snow since I left to visit Ontario in early June. I bagged Edith North and ran the Cory-Edith Pass loop; Sean and I climbed Cirque Peak in a tiny window of nice weather bookended by torrential rain and blizzards; I ran up one of my favourite and most frequented summits, Bourgeau, carrying almost nothing. Mainly just my usual haunts.

The end of the month was punctuated by my buddy Sean Bradley setting a new FKT on the Banff Triple (Cascade-Rundle-Sulphur), with us planning the logistics and running the first mountain of the day together. That morning’s slog up Cascade marked me curiously questioning my performance and realizing — gee golly — that my body was really tired from the previous month and that I hadn’t truly recovered. I’d returned to Banff and ran objectives near PR pace, feeling pretty fresh, but now the race in Chamonix, fifty-plus kilometres over the weekend of our retreat, and a habit of serial peak-bagging had caught up with me until I couldn’t deny that I felt drained.

Sean on Cascade during his record-setting run of the Banff Triple:

I took a break, slept in for a few days, bummed around, and did stuff completely not mountain running-related. I learnt that true recovery, for me, means not only physically resting but relaxing the psychological demand for performance as well.

I spent the last two days of July skateboarding back and forth to bag a local peak, then slogging up a glaciated elevener far from home. On Thursday (30th), I finally summited Mount Cory after three previous attempts, continually shut down due to rain or time or something. On Friday (31st) Glenn and I climbed most of 3400m Mount Athabasca via the AA Col “scramble route” which we’d done previously in 2013. Athabasca is amazing — views from the top reveal a metropolis of geometric mountain forms smeared with flowing white glaciers — though the route is one of the least enjoyable I’ve encountered. Imagine sidehilling through an endless ball pit of scree and grovelling up gullies of hard ledges littered with choss on top of choss. Sounds like standard fare when it comes to scrambling in the Canadian Rockies but this was particularly bad. We gained the 3400m Silverhorn and dropped down to inspect the final snowy ridgewalk to the summit, which realistically called for ice axes and some sort of traction device, at least Microspikes, rather than the bald and shredded MT110s I happened to be wearing. Not a bad accomplishment for running shoes, however.

Mount Cory:

Mount Athabasca:

Scree Sessions: May 31-June 12

June 13, 2015June 13, 2015 Tom AmaralAylmer, Banff, Mountain running, skyrunning, Sulphur Mountain, tom amaral, trail running, ultrarunningLeave a comment

Polishing the cutting edge of flintstone against alpine rock; riding a serrated arete between peak fitness on one hand and shattering the medium I’m working with. This is me at the climax of months of training in the Rockies, absorbing and integrating its lessons before applying it all elsewhere. My training season began way back in March but an abrupt jumpstart in vert and mileage contributed to a niggling injury in my left knee which reappears occasionally until this day. My most recent weeks have been spent mostly doing laps on Sulphur Mountain in Banff, a tamer mountain than my preference but my workouts have been more structured, consistent and measurable than ever in the past. A trip up Mount Aylmer on Wednesday provided the final dose of adventure I needed before flying off to Ontario for a week, then to Chamonix for the 80K du Mont Blanc. I’m excited to let this machine I’ve built do what it’s intended to do, then coast for the rest of the summer with the fitness I’ve developed, my concentration turned to ticking off personal projects with friends here in the Canadian Rockies.

Week-and-a-half total: 12h51m/92km/5376m

01/06/15 – Tunnel – 35m22s/7km/300m
Up and down Tunnel from home, as fast as possible. Started with a warm-up to Cave and Basin and back, then started my watch and started racing towards Tunnel. By the time I reached the upper trailhead, I knew my pace wasn’t sustainable; I was too out of breath and felt like passing out so I sullenly slowed to a jog to find some iota of recovery. My jog must have continued to be fast but I lost all intentions to push hard and break a PR, content with just tagging the top without losing consciousness along the way. Somewhere just shy of the summit, I dared to look at my watch, which was only thirty seconds or so off my PR time so I full-out sprinted up the last hill, down the rooty dip before reaching the red chairs, then clambered up the slabs to the summit, finding it busy, and immediately dropped off and down for a fast round-trip time. 35min makes that a new round-trip personal best.

03/06/15 – Sulphur Double Crossing – 3h37m/35km/1900m
A pretty demanding run that started out cruisy and resulted in me knocking an hour off a routine 35km/1900m objective. Ran up the front, down the back; up the back, down the front. I am truly getting a little bored of spending all my time on Sulphur when there are so many other peaks coming into shape, but the weather was somewhat threatening this morning and this is probably where I needed to be today, sharpening up splits and racing habits, not frolicking on some random peak that is “more alpine” in character. The initial jog up the frontside of Sulphur was an absolute breeze — I tried to cruise along rather than push, and my relatively quick speed is evidence of speed workouts increasing my overall pace and decreasing my exertion. I tried to concentrate on not stopping, fuelling consistently and eating while running. I felt pretty punished by the end of the final 900m freefall from the top of Sulphur to Bow Falls but will take that as part of the pace required to knock over an hour off this objective. It was only in the last couple years that it would take me almost the same amount of time to go up and down Sulphur once that it now takes me to do it twice.

Splits:
1h14m   Sanson’s Peak
1h40m   Sundance Canyon junction
2h43m   Sanson’s Peak
3h14m   Bow Falls
3h37m   Home

05/06/15 – Sulphur (summits 2, 3, 4, 5) – 1h59m/19km/1200m
Messing around along Sulphur’s ridge today. Headed out on my bike to check out Cory Pass but rode for only a couple minutes before I realized my rear tire was flat. Took the bus up to the Hot Springs, dropped off work stuff, then jogged up the front of Sulphur to the gondi station (S2) and started working back towards some of the other summits. Although my legs were super tired from the previous day, once on the ridge I sprinted and scampered my way up slabs, reveling in the batteredness of my body. Reached S4, my goal for the day, looked out towards S5 and couldn’t turn it down. Tagged S5, took some pics, then headed back, tiptoeing along fractured ridgeline, bombing down the saddles and slogging exhaustedly back up the summits. My quads were pooched on the descent, but I was somehow able to relish that feeling of overall fatigue and recognize the benefits I’ll reap from continuing to push when so tired. Descended back to the Upper Hot Springs and hastily constructed a delicious sandwich.

10/06/15 – Aylmer – 6h40m/31km/1976m
A mighty unicorn slain. The way some people in Banff look upon peaks like Cascade and Rundle, that’s how I look at Aylmer. Just out of town, it rises high above everything around it and possesses a long approach trail frequented by berry-hungry Grizzlies. It has long been on my list of peaks to bag and I have gazed upon its prominent summit from my window for over a year now.

The initial gameplan for today was to do something far more training-specific: I intended to do a variation on the Canmore Triple Crown as a final preparation for my race in Chamonix, slogging lots of steep vertical and continuing to sharpen my ascent/descent splits. However, at the back of my mind, I needed something more alpine, more epic before leaving for Ontario, though I hadn’t overtly articulated these thoughts to myself yet. Yesterday I took a cab to work and the driver said that if he hadn’t been working, he’d be over there, climbing that thing, Mount Aylmer. Aylmer looked so sexy draped in clouds that morning, and the conversation with the cab driver seemed so meaningful, that I immediately texted Sean (who was joining me from Edmonton): “Change of plans. I need to do something more epic. Like this “. Sean had zero problems with the revised scheme and I knew he wouldn’t. After switching the plan, I felt an immediate sense of relief and enthusiasm.

Sean and I woke just after six though the sun had rose a half hour earlier. We made coffee, hit up Wildflour for snacks then drove to the trailhead, starting at 8:19 AM. The jog along the lakeshore trail was cruisy as we hooted and hollered our heads off to ward off grizzlies. The rest of the climb was uneventful save for some of the worst scree I’ve ever encountered, which took us an enormous amount of effort to ascend and later bombed down at terminal velocity in a fraction of the time. The views from the summit were impressive though I’d read somewhere they wouldn’t be, with many snow-clad 11,000ers visible along the horizon to the west. The valleys of the Ghost Wilderness area were lush and green. And the prairies were brooding with dark storm clouds.

We didn’t spend long on the top, skiing down fine scree with grace at times, and narrowly dodging broken ankles or necks at others. The run out was disproportionately tough — maybe because it was so hot or maybe because of the effort we spent climbing 50-degree scree earlier — but was made worse by a tactical rock strike to the underside of my foot, which was pretty tender and sore and still is. At any rate, I’m glad I did something like this that really engaged me mentally and made me exercise some mountaineering sense, and expanded my heart with stoke with a fresh ascent on a big peak, rather than doing a really long and boring workout. Arguable which would have been more advantageous but I definitely don’t feel like I lost — and definitively feel like I gained — something from our trip today.

Splits:
0h50m   Aylmer Pass junction
1h40m   Ascent gully junction
4h02m   Summit
5h13m   Ascent gully junction
5h46m   Aylmer Pass junction
6h40m   Lake Minnewanka parking lot

Scree Sessions: May 24-30

May 31, 2015May 31, 2015 Tom AmaralBanff, Mountain running, running, scree dust, skyrunning, tom amaral, trail running, ultrarunningLeave a comment

Abusing my body, exalting my spirit, and trying to wring performance from weeks of playtime with pain. This week saw me tackle a “big day” intended to familiarize me with the distances of the Mont Blanc 80K, now four weeks away. Normally I would have done a Triple Crown by this point in the season — this year a Quad — but complacency’s kept me in Banff doing laps on “boring old Sulphur” like Leslie Gerein told me to do. While I’d started feeling pretty proficient running up to 30km and climbing ~2000m — only one-third of the Mont Blanc race — I was unsure of where my endurance lay beyond that. A 70km/3800m run on Wednesday shed light to uncertainty and revealed an extension of the relative ease experienced on other “routine” long runs (Sulphur double crossing, for example). A major confidence-booster leading up to the race, with a couple weeks left in the Rockies to sharpen things up a bit before flying to Ontario, then to Chamonix.

Weekly total: 12h26m/85.5km/5229m

24/05/15 – The Banff Burner (1st place) – 35min/4.5km/666m
Ran The Banff Burner, the first edition of some kind of not-too-competitive race up Sulphur Mountain. My friends told me about it and I figured I would give it a shot. The race began at the trailhead sign near the parking lot and finished at the platform beside the gondola station. This is by far the fastest time I’ve ever done this section of Sulphur and, as far as I know, is an FKT for what it’s worth. (I don’t go around trying to set “FKTs” on any old mountain, but important mountains or ones with a precedent, sure.)

27/05/15 – Sulphur x 4 – 10h13m/69km/3863m
A long-needed “big day” before tackling the Mont Blanc 80K. From home, I ran up the front to Sanson’s Peak, then down the back to Sundance Canyon junction; then up the back to Sanson’s and down the front to Bow Falls where I met Glenn; then up the front, down the front with Glenn; then up the front to summit #3, then Sanson’s Peak, then down the back to home.

The initial “double crossing” was a breeze as I’ve become quite comfortable with exactly that horizontal and vertical distance of running; my nutrition was regular and my movement streamlined. At the top of Sulphur the second time, I chatted with Glenn on the phone and invited him to meet me for my next lap up the mountain. Glenn hadn’t climbed Sulphur in six years, since the day after his wedding when he puked brunch all over the trail… While Glenn’s fitness has surely improved since 2009, his pace is a bit slower than mine, but I saw the mellower pace on my third lap as an advantage — forced restraint where I’d otherwise be powerhiking madly and compromising my ability to last a longer distance.

After my third lap up and down the mountain accompanied by Glenn, we parted ways at Bow Falls and I still felt fresh enough to go back up and over the mountain one last time. While relatively fatigued, the idea of jogging over and tagging S3 in the sunset made my tiredness fade and soon I was scrambling up the various gullies and ledges to plop me on top. I lingered for awhile — the ambiance was incredible and the fact that I’d travelled over 50km and climbed more than 3500m at that point was like a half-forgotten memory. This is one of ultrarunning’s miracles, that one can feel alternately like complete shit or glowingly incredible at any given point during a big run. I eventually pried myself from the summit and jogged back towards the gondi station and tagged Sanson’s for fun.

The run down the backside was slightly more conservative than normal though my footing was still pretty precise in my new 110s. And because my phone was dead and I was also out of food, I completed the whole run from Sanson’s back to my house without stopping. This kind of day on Sulphur was something I’d conceived of to train for CCC last year but other, cooler mountain projects filled the need. I’m content with the relative comfort I experienced on a run which equals more than than two-thirds of the vertical and horizontal distance of the Mont Blanc 80K, now four weeks away.

30/05/15 – Tunnel x 2 – 1h38m/12km/700m
A little fartleking around on Tunnel. I never really understood the idea of “speed play” as speed in the context of running for me equals pain and stress, the opposite of “play”. Today I set out expressly to “play”, not “train”, and willfully took on many speedy bits of running up, down and on the flats. My route was up the main trail from home to the summit, then down goatpath on the north side of the mountain to Tunnel Mountain Drive, then around the base of Tunnel to catch the SW goatpath up to the top again, then home via the main trail. Got lost (yet again) on my descent through the narrow, forested singletrack on the north of the mountain and downclimbed a few third-class moves, which was fun. My descents, from Tunnel Mountain Dr. to the river for example, were wild and uninhibited and the flat bit along the river to the start of the SW goatpath up Tunnel was noticeably swift and cruisy. The ten minutes or so of tilling scree in my sneakers up a 50-degree pitch went by without notice, my ears filled with the raucous clamor of John Dwyer’s “positive destruction”, a concept I can relate to. Tagged the top, sweaty and half nude, amid a swarm of weekend hillwalkers, then raced home.

Scree Sessions: April 26-May 2

May 2, 2015May 2, 2015 Tom AmaralBanff, Canmore, Mountain running, scrambling, skyrunning, trail runningLeave a comment

A return to running regularly after spending the month of April initially injuring myself, then recovering from that injury. Conditions in the valley have been mixed — days of blazing sun, others of blizzards and rain. Just spring in the mountains, I suppose. With six weeks until I leave for Ontario (for a wedding) and eight until the Mont Blanc 80K, I feel poised to tackle some pretty dense training over the following month while remaining cautious not to overdo it, either. I’d like to think the base fitness is there for me to slog endlessly through the hills; the best results will now come from sharpening a few particular skills. Six weeks of premature summer is the perfect amount of time to do that.

Weekly total: 9h53m/78km/4339m

04/27/15 – Tunnel – 35min/6km/300m
Up and down Tunnel from home, then downtown for sushi. Aiming to push hard and get a fast time, at least on the ascent: 23m48s to summit, 14min to Sushi Bistro.

04/28/15 – Tunnel – 43min/7km/340m
Up and down Tunnel from home. Wasn’t aiming to go fast but rather to feel effortless and comfortable. That being said, I’m not sure if I felt any more comfortable than yesterday although I was exerting myself less. I think my legs still felt the impact from yesterday’s sprint. Not much slower than yesterday, though: 25min to summit, 19min to home.

04/30/15 – Ha Ling – 2h53m/19km/1311m
Took me a while to figure out what to do this morning. Took the bus to Canmore and ran up Ha Ling from town. Not a particularly notable trip except that I felt pretty good and never felt like I was pushing too hard — compare with my previous ascent of Ha Ling, last Thursday. I tentatively planned on doing a Ha Ling/East-Rundle double-bag but it looked like a sheet of bad weather was heading toward me and I wasn’t keen on getting hammered by rain whilst in the alpine (some days I’m down for that sort of thing). Ran back to town via the Grassi Lakes and powerline cut-line trails.

05/01/15 – Sulphur Loop – 2h38m/20km/1077m
Up the back, down the front, from home. I don’t remember the last time I ran every step up the back of this mountain (if I ever have) but today I did. Tagged the Ray Station on Sanson’s Peak then descended down the front, which is drying out nicely. One could probably get away without Microspikes nowadays. Descended through forest to the Fairmont castle then took some sort of horse trail (I hate horse trails) which spat me out at Middle Springs. Continued to link up trail rather than run on the road, descending quickly down the forested back of Middle Springs to Cave Ave. and thence to my apartment.

Sidenote: One thing I’ve learned about myself from running is that I don’t interpret my fueling needs accurately and often associate the need for fuel with uncertainty of challenge or exertion or stressful conditions, as opposed to actual nutritional demand. That is, if I’m not sure how far I’m going to have to go, how hard I’m going to have to push, the challenges I’ll face, I’ll often feel the need to fuel which I genuinely interpret as hungriness. The moment I return to a place of psychological comfort or certainty, the feeling that I need to fuel, am hungry or am even about to bonk all fade and I am left feeling either actually hungry irrespective of my mental state (“Who cares? I’m home”) or not actually hungry or depleted at all.

02/05/15 – Tunnel + Sulphur Loop – 3h04m/26km/1311m
A decent-sized run, longer than originally planned, that illustrates well the deranged manner in which my psyche operates when it comes to motivation in the mountains. I left the house intending to do the exact same trip as yesterday but upon arriving at the Cave and Basin (~1km from my apartment), I stopped and marvelled at a wall of snow squall rushing over the top of Sulphur and up the Bow Valley toward me. As I was carrying almost nothing, I wasn’t in the mood to get hammered by flurries for an hour in shorts and a t-shirt on the exposed western side of Sulphur. I turned around and decided to stick closer to home and do something creative on Tunnel instead.

I headed up Tunnel and (of course) as I neared the top I saw the snowstorm beginning to clear over Sulphur. I felt so tricked and deceived by the weather that I decided that I would go bag Sulphur anyway, just out of spite. So I chomped half a Builder Bar on the top of Tunnel and swiftly descended back down to town, across the river, up behind the Fairmont castle and up the Sulphur Mountain trail. The run was pretty cruisy and in fact almost entirely running — err, jogging anyway — as opposed to the slogging I expected to resort to after a series of vertical-heavy days.

I scarfed the second half of my Builder Bar in the upper gondola terminal while warming my hands on my glutes, then sprinted out, tagged the Ray Station on Sanson’s Peak, descended the back of the mountain to the Cave and Basin, then to my apartment. When I returned to the Cave and Basin, I stopped and looked back up the valley just like three hours prior — this time with sunny skies — and asked, “What the hell just happened?” A Sulphur loop of logic.

Scree Sessions: April 19-25

April 25, 2015April 25, 2015 Tom AmaralBanff, Canada, Canmore, Mountain running, skyrunning, trail running, ultrarunningLeave a comment

This week saw a return to running comfortably again as well as slogging some big vert after avoiding that specific activity for the past couple weeks. This week was fun and the warm, summer-like temperatures made the notion of getting outside pretty seductive. The latter part of my last long run reintroduced me to the delectably miserable side of ultrarunning. Me and it should get together more often; it’s been too long. Weekly total: 53km/3440m.

04/20/15 – Tunnel – 51min/7km/340m
Up and down Tunnel from home after work. Summer weather. Felt strong on my uphills though a perceptible tightness in my left knee. Leaning into the first hills after crossing the bridge felt delicious and brought a smile to my face. Spent a few minutes taking pics at the top then descended with usual reckless abandon. Good to feel “back”. Considered doing a loop around Tunnel but as I’d brought no water and was already sweaty and parched, decided to run home. 27 mins to summit; 24 mins home.

04/21/15 – Tunnel x2 – 9km/500m? (watch wasn’t charged)
Another glorious summer day in April. Powerhiked Tunnel with Glenn, descended fast to lower trailhead, then parted ways and ran back up fairly quickly. Spent zero time at the summit, simply tagged the top and descended again in freefall mode knowing the descent would be interesting because I was out of breath and tired. Ran back down most of the trail until I caught up with my buddy Bre-dog and her friend and I strolled with them back to the lower trailhead. Fast splits on my second run. A bit of tightness across my left knee but more of a superficial sensation and unlike what I was dealing with a couple weeks ago.

04/23/15 – Lady Mac + Ha Ling – 6h13m/37km/2613m
A long day out, very tiring. Did a “rim to rim” of Canmore, parking my car at Elevation Place then running up Lady Mac on one side of the valley, then Ha Ling on the other. The ascent of Lady Mac was pretty strong and streamlined given I haven’t climbed anything other than Tunnel for a couple weeks. The whole experience on Lady Mac was incredibly smooth, including the awkward scramble up the final stretch to the summit ridge (one of my least favourite bits of mountain, anywhere). I just stuck to solid rock ribs and was on the ridge in less time than I remember. No true summit for me today; the knife-edge ridge was way too gusty for my liking. The descent back down Lady Mac was as quick and streamlined as the climb, save for losing my phone for five minutes and spending another five talking to a local mountain-running dude.

Taking on Ha Ling was a labored effort. The jaunt across town wasn’t so bad; and while jogging up to Grassi Lakes and slogging through the climbing area, I was tired, but still game to take on the mountain. Once I started heading up Ha Ling, however, I felt the effort: my breathing and pulse were much higher than normal, my muscles burned, and I honestly thought I wouldn’t make it to the top. I kept telling myself I wouldn’t make it to the top as I continued to slog, passing people, and soon broke out of treeline and gained the col. No turning back now. I tagged the top, took some pictures, then rigidly stumbled back down the mountain. Running back to my car from the Ha Ling trailhead was a death march. I was probably slightly bonked but too stubborn to take my pack off and eat another boring bar. Glad I pulled off the true “Rim to Rim”. Also probably my single biggest vert day this year on the heels of a few weeks of little vert.

^Peep GPS data for this trip here.

Scree Sessions: April 5-18

April 18, 2015April 18, 2015 Tom AmaralBanff, Mountain running, mountains, running, skyrunning, trail running, ultramarathon, ultrarunningLeave a comment

A relatively unfruitful set of weeks spent nursing a slowly recovering left knee. The “water on my knee” I first noticed evolved into a definite tenderness and lack of strength after continuing to slog on it with Sean; then a couple days blasting up and down Tunnel last week didn’t do it any favors, either. In my short career, I’ve been fairly injury-free, save for the occasional tweaked muscle which tends to recover on the order of days. When stairs in my apartment and standing on one leg became a challenge, I assumed the worst: probably a torn meniscus. A visit to Banff Physical Therapy determined that wasn’t the case and by the end of this two week block I began running up hills again confidently. I’m looking forward to easing back into the routine toward the end of April, allowing me start training concertedly again beginning in May.

04/07/15 – Tunnel – 46m13s/7km/339m
Ran up and down Tunnel from home. This run was a test of my knee, which didn’t render an obvious result. At first I felt nothing, then a definite tightness in my kneecap during the uphill jog from the lower trailhead/parking lot. I tagged the top, then bombed back down with a very apparent clumsiness to my usually spot-on eye-foot coordination. My brain felt unable or unwilling to keep up with processing the terrain at the speed I wanted to run or am used to running on my downhills (breakneck, that is). Lots of “cuties” on the trail (as @Ridgegoat would say) probably ensured my downhill split was snappier than it otherwise might’ve been. Ran the flats back home at a decent pace, pain-free. A confusing result of my knee test.

04/08/15 – AM – Allan attempt – 1h54m/13km/757m
Had plans to climb Allan from the Canmore side but was profoundly aggravated by the presence of fresh powder snow — about three or four inches of it. I know, I’ve been bagging peaks in “winter conditions” for months, but in reality it’s been closer to spring and now that it’s actually April, it seems I lack the patience to put up with slogging through icing sugar, postholing, wet shoes, and any of the other tediousness that goes with winter peak-bagging. It was obvious I wasn’t going to bag a summit long before I reached the base of the climb proper and ditched the frustrating winter slogging conditions to go find fast summer running somewhere else, lower in the valley.

04/08/15 – PM – Tunnel – 1h53m/8km/400m
Up and down Tunnel from home; up main trail, down south shoulder. Needed to get out and run in the sun on some dry trails, dressed for summer, carrying little and moving quickly. Deliberated for ages about the condition of my knee (really hard to gauge it) but decided I needed to get out and enjoy the beautiful weather for its own sake. Felt pretty good throughout most of the run; both aerobic performance and my mental sharpness were better than the previous day. Came down the south shoulder “goatpath” — lollygagged for a while taking pictures and scoping out 4th class scrambling terrain. Booted back home in the warm sun and cool breeze, my favourite combo. A beautiful day; felt great physically.

*Then a week of nothing, after it became obvious the previous couple days didn’t help my knee at all.

04/15/15 – Physio @ Banff Physical Therapy
After a week off my left knee, I finally bit the bullet and saw a physiotherapist for the first time in my life. The knee had improved steadily throughout the week but strength and stability still seemed fundamentally compromised and I was tired of its back-and-forth condition, the sluggishness of my recovery and general uncertainty as to what the injury is. My guess was a torn meniscus; luckily the diagnosis was a “blister” under my kneecap — rawness and irritation rather than the carnage I’d envisaged. She gave me ultrasound and stuck some needles in my knee to break it up and showed me a couple resistance-band exercises to strengthen my hip on that side. She also remarked that the rest of my body (i.e. hips and legs) were remarkably balanced and flexible given my chosen hobby… One of the reasons I feared ever going to physio was the expectation of shock and scolding over the state of my body. The doc gave me a bill of good running health, save for my knee. I’ve just gotta take care of that.

04/16/15 – Tunnel – 7km/340m
My first run of any consequence since last Wednesday the 8th. Ran up and down Tunnel from home. Took a switchbacking route through town and up through the Banff Centre to maximize the amount of gently-graded running terrain before hitting the trailhead proper. Stashed my shirt in some shrubs then jogged to the top; took some pics along the broad, open saddle and then ran back down. “No apparent detriment”. I can tell there is something in my knee (hopefully just scar tissue) but it doesn’t feel raw or inflamed. A beautifully warm day running around town partially clothed.

04/17/15 – Stoney Squaw – 1h57m/~15km?/500m
I considered driving to Canmore to bag a more alpine-style summit but decided to enjoy the sunny morning out and back from my apartment instead. Jogged across town, got cat called by Glenn testdriving a car, then started slogging up the old Norquay ski-out which starts at the Juniper. This is a more direct way of reaching the Norquay ski area trailheads than running up the endlessly switchbacking road. I continued to the “summit” of Stoney Squaw (lacking views worthy of being called a “summit”) and then down the backside to the ski area. Here I spotted fresh cougar tracks heading in the opposite direction. I jogged out through the ski area and chatted with a Parks Canada dude who’d just seen a cougar heading up the mountain shortly after I did. I know cougars frequent this little promonitory but didn’t think my jaunt would bring me within such close proximity (or at least, knowledge of proximity — I’ve surely been spied on by a cougar or two before). The slippery slide back down the muddy no-track of the ski-out was epic fun, fell-running style.

Oh yeah, this happened last night. — Oh yeah, this happened last night 🙂

Scree Sessions: March 21-27

March 29, 2015March 29, 2015 Tom AmaralBanff, Mountain running, Rockies, running, skyrunning, Sulphur Mountain, trail running, Tunnel Mountain, ultrarunningLeave a comment

Continuing with drastic increases in mileage and vert this week to no apparent detriment. I obviously don’t understand the concept of gradually increasing one’s volume; my strategy is rather to panic about a race and start slogging my face off like there’s no tomorrow. So much for the 20km/1000m “rut” I found myself in a couple weeks back; the last few outings have proven that I haven’t lost much of the skill or strength I had going into CCC last summer, and in retrospect I was extremely well prepared for that event, despite my laissez-faire approach. A co-worker and I were discussing the value of things like VO2max and lactate threshold and concluded that it’s easy to make running too complicated for oneself. Running can be as simple or complicated as one wishes — as minimalist as striking out in a pair of sneakers — however, I’ve spent several seasons doing just that and am now looking to get the best performance possible out of this scrawny slogging machine.

Weekly total: 13h53m/94km/5284m

03/22/15 – Tunnel/Hoodoos loop – 2h41m/16km/484m
My easy day. Met Glenn at the Tunnel TH and slogged it to the top. Took a few pics, descended and looped around back then booted out to the Hoodoos viewpoint. Ran back, dropped down towards the river and completed a loop around Tunnel with our headlamps on. Ran to The Banff Centre, fist bumped, then went our respective ways.

03/25/15 – Sulphur x2 + Tunnel/Hoodoos/Tunnel -7h13m/49km/2400m
Had plans to hit up the false peak of Cascade Mountain this morning but the weather remained in a gray, misty state which didn’t make me feel like spending much time above 2500m. I opted to slog up the backside of Sulphur to the top then descended the frontside down to the trailhead where I filled up water at the Hot Springs and headed back the way I came. Ran back up the frontside of Sulphur to the top where I was greeted by a rescue helicopter evacuating even more people who had strayed from the icy trail and gotten lost and cold (this is becoming a weekly occurance on this mountain). I pounded a Builder Bar and sprinted back down the soft yet sufficiently packed snow on the back of the mountain, then home to my apartment.
I switched my sneakers then headed out towards Tunnel, ascending the main trail to the top and descending the precariously steep and forested north shoulder past Tunnel Mountain Rd. to Otter St., then booted out to the Hoodoos viewpoint. Although feeling surprisingly fresh, I was aware of a lack of food in my stomach (or in my bag, for that matter), so I turned around and descended into the Bow River valley, caught the start of the loose goatpath up the SW shoulder of Tunnel, slogged to the top once again, and now definitively famished, stumbled down the main trail with a headlamp on and raced home to make a grilled cheese.

03/27/15 – Sulphur “Tick Tock” – 3h59m/29km/1850m
Ran up to the Sulphur TH, dropped off work clothes at the Hot Springs then jogged up the frontside and tagged Sanson’s Peak. Dropped down the back of the mountain, careening through soft, deep snow with overgrown shrubs snapping at me, to the Sundance Canyon junction, then turned around and reascended slightly softer snow to the top and descended the frontside to work. A beautiful day — the warmest yet this year 🙂