Summer’s Sunset

September 6, 2015September 6, 2015 Tom AmaralCanadian Rockies, Mountain running, run camp, scree dust, sunwapta fkt, tom amaral, trail, trail running3 Comments

August flew right by with a flurry of disparate summits, though I feel like I underutilized this prime part of the season, for sure. The positive perspective to my summer is that I have remained healthy, increasingly fast in the domain of running up and down mountains, and have learned a lot about my overall system and how to sustain and/or tweak it. I have become lighter, more minimal — practically naked at times — which translates directly into speed and a deeper relationship with mountains I already know. I’ve also spent more time above 3000m than ever before, which is important to me, to visit that zone where the rest of the world is muted and life consists solely of the elements, all amplified to a violent pitch.

Yet I can’t shake the feeling that complacency kept me from pulling off any “big projects” this summer, or really any big days, barely running anything over 30kms since the Mont Blanc 80K in June. Distance isn’t really what matters to me, it’s the feeling of adventure, mainly gained from long distance in the backcountry, and I didn’t do any long backcountry trips (like last summer) either.

The weather in September has changed abruptly to autumn, snow has fallen and I doubt the stuff at higher elevations is going away. My mindset has shifted to two upcoming events this month, then making the most of fickle fall conditions until my parents come to visit in October. September 11-13, 2015 is our second Mountain Stride Fitness retreat in Kananaskis, designed to transport your trail running to an alpine landscape of peaks, ridges and valleys. We still have a few spots available! See mountainstridefitness.com for more info.

September 18-20 are three days of Golden Ultra in Golden, BC. I won’t be racing but other members of the Mountain Stride crew will be. I’m excited to see what the race organizers have devised for their Blood (VK), Sweat (55km) and Tears (20km) races. I ran the vertical kilometre in Golden last year and feel the area has great potential as a trail running destination. I’ll be heading to Golden to take pictures and see my crew.

Wedged into the middle of the Golden Ultra weekend is the 5Peaks Glacier Grind in nearby Revelstoke, BC that will be my second and final trail race of 2015. I originally signed up when this race was supposed to take place in Rogers Pass and had some 4000+ metres of climbing to its name. Swarms of hungry grizzlies caused the race to be moved to Revy, where it will begin in town, race to the top of Mount Revelstoke and descend to Jade Lakes, turn around and head back up over the summit and plummet down to town. The new race is slated to be 44km with 2600m of climbing, a real SkyRace format that should be a fast and exciting alpine race for sure.

Other randomness:
Check out this sweet profile of the Banff Three Peak Challenge, written by my friend Tera Swanson and published by local Banff mediahouse Crowfoot Media. The piece details the history of attempts on the 70km/5000m route which ascends three peaks around Banff townsite. The article also includes bits of interview with my Mountain Stride buddy Sean Bradley, who now holds the FKT, and a few pictures taken by me during his attempt last July.

Without further ado, let’s get to some of the trips I took in August:

01/08/15 – Edith North (2554m) – 15km/2h57m/1314m
A blistering run up the north peak of Edith that was basically nude, save for a pair of split shorts, running shoes and 500mL of water. Apparently I didn’t take my phone because I have no pictures and almost forgot about this trip until I looked at my Movescount page. Another example of going faster, lighter and naked-er on mountains I know well this summer. The temperature was bound to rise over 30 degrees celsius that day so I had to ration my water, taking small sips and sloshing them around in my mouth to alleviate the symptoms of dehydration to trick my brain. All of the gullies en route to Cory Pass ordinarily offering water in the springtime were bone dry. I hit Cory Pass the first time in 1h27m, tagged the summit of Edith in 1h57m and descended back to the parking area in 2h57m, blasting past a lady who’d chastised me for carrying nothing — she’d had a good point. GPS data.

08/08/15 – Sparrowhawk (3121m) – 10km/1469m/3h24m
Ran up and down Mt. Sparrowhawk. The intention was solely to summit but like most of my single summits this summer, I tackled it with a decent amount of intensity. Made time through the incessant loose cobbles which were good training for Sunwapta later in the month. Tagged the summit in about 1h50m. The top revealed a 360-degree panorama of sweet mountains including Assiniboine, peaks of Lake Louise, and Kananaskis front-range fare. GPS data.

09/08/15 – Rundle (2949m) – 18km/1560m/2h32m
Ran up Rundle, fast. Set out to establish a fast time, aiming to break 3h05m, really the only documented fast time I’ve come across. My watch died partway up so people will have to take me for my word, otherwise I recognize the poor documentation involved in this attempt. Not much to say; the weather was decent and the route not very busy. Jogged from home, reached the summit in 1h36m from the trailhead and returned back to the trailhead by 2h32m. Passed one regular scrambling party and a huge group of Japanese hikers who I saw at the hot springs the following day. I remember thinking at one point that I couldn’t possibly descend fast enough to break 3h05m but the descent went much quicker than expected. Will have to go back with my watch fully charged one day. Incomplete GPS data.

14/08/15 – Opal Ridge South (2560m) – 7km/1018m/~3hrs?
Opal Ridge with Glenn. Drove to Kananaskis in the morning and deliberated about what to do. At last we settled on Opal South. The hike up was pleasant, climbing the edge of a wide drainage and circumventing large pinnacles. Got chased off the summit by a big thunderstorm heading east. We swiftly descended through loose shale to safety but felt bad for non-running parties still up on the mountain. “If they weren’t mountain runners before, they are now!” we joked as huge cracks of thunder erupted around us. Escaping thunderstorms is turning into a side hobby for Glenn and I.

20/08/15 – Sunwapta FKT (3315m) – 12km/1745m/1h59m to summit/3h32m RT
Sunwapta, fast. This is one of the things I definitely wanted to get around to this summer, albeit hardly a “big project” by any means. This is the last of three FKTs set by Steve Tober some time ago — the others being Bourgeau and Fairview — which I’d been gradually scooping up. None of these are difficult mountains, however they are justifiably popular, untechnical peaks with great views. Sunwapta has the distinction of being a nearly eleven thousand foot scree slog poised literally across the street from glaciated giants of the Columbia Icefield. Steve’s speedy ascent is also mentioned offhandedly in Alan Kane’s Scrambles in the Canadian Rockies, a mountaineering bible near and dear to the hearts of many peak-baggers including myself. I knew I had to go after this objective.

“Routefinding” on this mountain is virtually nonexistent, though it took me a few tries to locate the very start of the trail — reading the instructions properly helps. After figuring it out, I trotted back to the parking lot and started my watch for the speed attempt. I scampered up the loose rubble on all fours and jogged along the summit ridge, sucking back huge lungfuls of air. Tagged the summit at 1h59m, twenty minutes faster than Steve Tober’s 2h20m ascent in 1998. I hung around on top for five or ten minutes to absorb some the epicness that surrounds Sunwapta: on one side are endless ranges of parallel dipslope peaks; on the other are huge eleveners plastered and smeared with ice and snow. The Canadian Rockies’ second highest peak, 3747m Mount Columbia hovers above the whole panorama. GPS data.

22/08/15 – Cory-Edith Loop – 14km/1200m/2h56m
The Cory-Edith Pass loop, combined with a scramble up Mount Edith, has become one of my fallback, go-to mountain runs this summer, and for good reason: it’s close to home; I can ride there on my bike, skateboard, or run if I have to. It possesses a great amount of killer singletrack largely above treeline, big craggy cliffs, and allows you to complete an aesthetic loop around Edith. Even without bagging a summit, the trail around Edith delivers both fast, flowy running and techy rubble wrangling on the backside of the mountain. Combined with the scramble and you get a narrow, claustrophobia-inducing chimney/ramp, some third-class slab scrambling with exposed run-out below, before gaining a generally exposed-feeling summit.

This day I didn’t do the Edith scramble due to the first snowfall of autumn having just transpired. I’ve turned around looking at those snowy slabs on Edith before. Today I started slogging up the snowy col towards them but wasn’t in the mood to wade through icing sugar to simply inspect the terrain. So it was simply a loop, which I still wasn’t confident about completing, given the snow on the backside. Luckily a pack of bighorn sheep had broken trail for me in the night so I followed their hoof-prints to the base of Mount Louis and around the rest of Edith to finish the loop. GPS data.

27/08/15 – Eagle Mountain AKA Goat’s Eye (2823m) – 14.5km/1187m/3h01m
Smoke from wildfires in Washington completely filled the skies of the Canadian Rockies for a few days, making all of our mountains disappear. Visibility improved a notch from absolutely zero so I headed out for a run. I jogged up the ski-out at Sunshine Village and nearly turned back twice before reaching the Goat’s Eye lift; the smoke was so bad, it felt like I was only employing 10% of my lung capacity. However, views and air quality improved ever-so-slightly the higher I ascended (or so I told myself), plus I am very stubborn so I forged on. Made the top of Goat’s Eye in about 1h40m, took a few pics (including the Kilian-esque image at the top of this post) then descended back to the parking area in 3h01m. Pushed the velocity downhill on the ski-out, reaching a 2:20 pace and a max speed of 26.6 km/h. Hee hee. GPS data.

29/08/15 – Bell Attempt (2734m) – 8.5km/1226m/2h18m
Attempted to bag a unicorn but a thunderstorm masked by lingering smoke chased me off the summit ridge. I approached from the Boom Lake side in overall fast time. Once I reached the ridge (too far to the right/east, as many others have done), the wind became gale-force. I messed around on the ridge, probing the route up Bell and bagging a different highpoint but knew I wasn’t going to get up Bell today. The weatherman, combined with my inner mountaineer, called for intense storms and the dense smoke meant I couldn’t see one coming, even if it was one range over. After descending back to Boom Lake, the first raindrops started to fall but spared me until I reached my car in the parking lot. GPS data.

03/09/15 – AM – St.Piran-Fairview Double – 22km/1921m/3h34m
A little double-bag testpiece I’ve done a few times now. Not profoundly epic but two easy mountains — about a vertical kilometre each — in very pretty surroundings in a famous location. As usual I had ideas to do something else but fresh snowfall and weird weather dictated I do something relatively safe. Lake Louise is a place one does not venture in the peak of summer for fear of way too many cars and selfie-stick waving tourists packed into one location. Since the turn of the month, they have all evaporated, leaving this majestic mountain playground for locals to play with.

I disposed of St. Piran swiftly. Though I packed Microspikes, the snow wasn’t an issue and I never put them on. The peaks of Skoki et al (where I’d wanted to go today) looked amazing, painted with a band of white from 2000m up. Though St. Piran is probably one of the easiest mountains in the Rockies — I’m inclined to call it a hill — the views from its summit are perhaps some of my favourite.

I raced back to the Lake and stopped briefly at my car to change from winter into summer attire; I was soaked with sweat. After a ~3min transition, I started jogging up the Fairview trail. I tagged the summit amid an immense snowstorm rolling over the Divide and blotting out the skies around me. This isn’t the first time this has happened to me on Fairview. I threw on a Gore-tex shell and my Microspikes and quickly descended, reaching the Lake at 3h34m, most likely my PR for this route. GPS data.

Splits:
1h05m St. Piran summit
1h43m Lake Louise
2h58m Fairview summit
3h34m Lake Louise

03/09/15 – PM – Ha Ling (2408m) – 6km/700m/~2hrs
I got home from Lake Louise and felt like it wasn’t enough. My body wasn’t completely dead, I needed more. I got on the text with Glenn and tried to convince him to go up Tunnel with me; he convinced me to go to Canmore and slog up Ha Ling instead. We moved up the mountain at a decent pace and hung around on top just long enough to shoot some #newbalance #solefies and #alpinebromance pics. A huge storm was churning a couple of ranges over and it totally looked like we were going to get nailed. Our descent was a personal best for Glenn but the weather never actually hit us. Like I said, dodging incoming storms is becoming our forte. GPS data.

04/09/15 – Sulphur (2337m) – 21km/1106m/2h23m
Sharpening myself against the grindstone/measuring stick that is Sulphur Mountain. Spent ages trying to figure out what to do today, and if the weather was stellar it wouldn’t have been tough to decide. But the weather was shit and I needed to get out regardless. This run (under the added resistance of a heavy previous day) was swift and snappy and was ultimately beneficial, I think, two weeks out from the Mount Revelstoke Glacier Grind.

Ran up the backside from my apartment, continually pushing against the tendency to simply powerhike or jog, tagging Sanson’s Peak in 1h15m. I streaked across the gondola catwalk half-naked in a snowstorm among a crowd of boggled tourists and sprinted off into the woods to scramble up summit #3 in 1h30m. I stuck around for a few minutes and took some pictures before getting cold and racing down the mountain and back to my house in 2h23m. Definitely a fast time for me on this route and feels extra rewarding to know I pushed the intensity despite 2600m of vert in my body from the previous day. GPS data.

Total distance for this block: 148km
Total vert for this block: 14,446m

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: May 10-23

May 23, 2015May 23, 2015 Tom AmaralCanadian Rockies, Mountain running, scree dust, skyrunning, tom amaral, trail running, ultrarunningLeave a comment

Eroding resistance between me and the mountains; occupying my mind with the passage of the wind; leaving my humanity hanging on the trailhead sign and becoming nothing other than the movement of my limbs, the sound of my breath and the patter of my feet. What the previous weeks have lacked in gnarly sufferfests, they have made up for with lots of hard breathing, sunburns, slogging, scrambling and loving life. While I feel the need for a “big day” soon (i.e. <3000m of vert), I can’t be upset with where my current level of tan — I mean, fitness — is at. Running up to 40km and climbing 2500m has become almost mundane and I feel myself transforming into some sort of mountain ungulate, channeling the spirit of my inner chamois. Hopefully the coming weeks see a couple massive days before I fly to Ontario and then taper for my petite jog around Chamonix the week after that.

05/11/15 – Tunnel x 2 – 38m58s/7km/320m | 1h07m/7.5km/320m
Up and down Tunnel from my house and back, twice. First lap fast, second lap casual. Ate a ton of yummy Singapore egg noodles right before running and it felt like I was going to poop my pants the entire time. Also, I wore my bald New Balance 1400s, which is a pretty novel concept for me, but they were really comfy and enjoyable. The first lap was a PB to the summit and back (21m to summit, 38m home), which was the objective, to push hard anaerobically and beat my previous time. I got home in such egg noodle-induced misery that I said one lap was enough, but after literally a minute or two I decided I was game for a second outing. So I switched my shirt, trotted across town, got my ass back up the mountain, took a bunch of pics (the sunset now even more sunsetty and alpenglowy than the first time), then descended yet again in diminishing light. It seemed the egg noodle demon burrowed its way even deeper into my gut and the run from the lower parking area/trailhead to home was downright painful. Fast and very pretty but uncomfortable.

13/05/15 – Tunnel – 50m33s/5.5km/368m
From home, ran up the SW shoulder to the summit, then down some goatpath on the north of the mountain which I intended to take me more directly down its north ridge to Tunnel Mountain Drive but took me pretty much staight down from the saddle to the first switchback of the main trail. Okay, I’ll take it. Great running on the approach along the exposed (literally — you trip, you die) singletrack paralleling Buffalo Street going up to the Banff Centre, with 100m of sheer drop to the whitewater of the Bow River below on your right. This is trail I used to run often when I worked at the Banff Centre which definitely forces you to concentrate on your footing. I caught the SW goatpath up Tunnel and jogged much of it, then slogged sweatily to the top. Tagged the top then pleasantly got lost on the descent and pretty much skiied scree down to the start of the main trail, where I burst out of the bushes half-clothed amid a gang of elderly, picture-taking tourists. Bombed the trail back to town and retrieved passport pics in preparation for going to EUROPEEEEEEEEE.

14/05/15 – Sulphur Double-Crossing – 4h47m/~35km/1900m
Big Sulphur “tick-tock”: From home, ran up the back, tagged Sanson’s, descended the front to the confluence of the Bow and Spray Rivers (i.e. Bow Falls) then ran back up the front to Sanson’s and down the back of the mountain to my apartment. It was pretty poor weather outside so it was easy to stick close to home today. This is the sorta thing (LSD) I said I wouldn’t do again any time soon but today’s run served the specific purpose of instilling streamlinedness to my longer efforts; to focus single-mindedly on forward/upward travel until I hit the summit, then taking a few seconds to recover mentally and dropping like a stone back down, whilst trying to utilize the descent to continue to experience some degree of recovery. Hit the bottom; recover quick; then back up again. It’s easy on big hill repeats (CCC for example) to waste minutes amounting to hours during breaks at the top or bottom relishing the comforts of not moving. I’m specifically trying to break the desire to lollygag, procrastinate, linger, take pictures, eat more than I have to, screw around in my backpack, sit on a rock with my head in my hands questioning life, or the desire to simply curl up on the ground and go to sleep indefinitely, and just get on with it.

Where the Bow and Spray Rivers meet. Also the lowest closest place from the top of Sulphur, seen on left.

Today’s run featured a few near-mystical moments on both the uphill and downhill, literally losing consciousness of “myself” and becoming only my experience of the wind passing my body, the sound of my feet hitting the ground or my hands occasionally gliding into my visual space. Thoughts like, “Tom’s tired” or “Tom’s thirsty” would bring me back to the reality of burning muscles, hard breathing, sweat and fatigue.

15/05/15 – Tunnel – 37m/7km/320m
Up and down Tunnel from home in bald 1400s. Aiming to break my previous PR, which I matched on the ascent to the specific second (21m30s). Meant to turn right around and freefall back to town (even though I was dying) but got caught chatting and taking pictures for some girl on the summit visiting Banff. The backside of Tunnel Mountain is closed right now due to a grizzly munching on an elk carcass, prohibiting me from doing a loop around the back of the mountain, if I wanted to do that sort of thing. Today’s objective was simply up and down, as fast as possible. I flew back down to town and sprinted to my apartment in a definite round-trip PR in 37m30s.

Weekly total: 7h59m/62km/3228m

18/05/15 – Tunnel – ~1hr/7km/320m
Up and down the main trail with my buddy Matt Wade, who used to live and work at the climbing gym in Banff but now lives in Saskatoon — boggles the mind, I know, but soon (10+ years) he’ll be a brain surgeon. At any rate, I jogged up to the Banff Centre to meet him, then we powerhiked to the top and descended quickly back down. I did a bunch of cool runs with him in the summer of 2013, namely the Cory-Edith Loop with a scramble up the north peak of Edith. I think he’s trying to make it out to Golden Ultra in September, hence trying to get more vert in his running diet.

19/05/15 – Tunnel x3 – 1h56m/14.5km/857m
I’m not sure why I thought this would be a good idea, but proved to be a banal but pleasant evening accumulating vert on a tiny mountain. I reasoned that I needed to work on repeats, specifically getting used to the feeling of climbing after descending. I can slog 2000 vertical metres in one go, no problem. But break that into 500m ascent/descent repeats and guaranteed my legs are gonna feel extra pooched on the final laps — the difficulty seems improportinate. Three 300m repeats on Tunnel doesn’t really make a dent, sad to say. I set out feeling stiff and my knee felt wonky and I was doubtful about the practicality of the outing. By the end, having slogged and descended 900m, I said to myself that I simply felt “normal”, i.e. no longer stiff, but warmed up and a little fatigued. You know, “normal”. This run didn’t push my limits in any way but served up 900m of vert without detriment on a pretty night. Plus it provided heaps of comic relief/bewilderment for other people hiking up the mountain as they watched me whiz back and forth. Probably won’t be doing this again :S

20/05/15 – Birthday Hike: Stanley Glacier – 3h25m/12km/401m
A heartwarming birthday hike (for me!) with peeps from work. I can’t remember the last time this many of us got together outside of work, besides maybe once or twice in the bar… We hiked up to Stanley Glacier viewpoint. Highlights include rockfall hitting and exploding chunks ice and snow off the headwall (!!!); big, wet cliffs and wispy waterfalls; sunburns; amazing views of sunbaked spring snow coating big alpine pinnacles; lots of jokes and laughter and lotsa mud on the way out. A stellar summery day doing easy hiking with friends in a beautiful mountain location.

21/05/15 – Sulphur Traverse – 6h13m/30km/1946m
I’ve been waiting for this for awhile, for the ridge linking Sulphur’s boring “tourist” summits with its more scrambly, rarely-explored western ones to thaw free of snow. There was never enough snow to ski beyond the gondi station this winter, and post-holing isn’t my style, so I’ve waited till now for my go-to, backyard mountain to become a little more interesting.

Today was a day I desperately needed: to be out getting sunburnt, with my hands gripping talus and the wind in my hair. Personally I’d grown irritable seeing all the snow melting off the surrounding peaks and not foreseeing a chance to get out and bag something, until the opportunity arose and I seized it.

I headed out and jogged up Mountain Ave. towards the trailhead to get to the mountain and into the alpine as fast as possible today. Jogged and slogged to the top, refilled my water, then immediately sprinted out towards Sulphur’s next summit to the south (S3). I got there in quick time (1h30m), then tagged the next summit, and the next one (highest point, 2476m), the only variations being the scrambling on each and routefinding through the trees on the saddles between each peak. I hit S4 in 2h30m then proceeded to the next by 3h10m. Took a bunch of pics then headed back in lollygagging, stopping-to-take-pictures-of-everything-again fashion until my phone died. Hit Sulphur’s upper gondola summit at 5h22m, a little put-off by the noise of chattering tourists while having just spent a few hours listening to the wind and sound of my shoes crunching scree. And Thee Oh Sees, at times. Tagged Sanson’s, then bombed down the fireroad without stopping, arriving at the Sundance Canyon junction in just over twenty minutes. I clicked off the final flat run to my place at a decent pace despite feeling pretty beat up — deliciously so. An awesome route on a mountain literally in my backyard, with lots of quality third-class scrambling and talus-scampering. Booyah.

22/05/15 – Heart – 1h24m/6km/760m
Up and down Heart Mountain fast to christen new running toys with blood, sweat and scree dust. I had to drive to Calgary to do passport stuff and stopped at The Tech Shop on 4th Ave on my way out of town. Running-specific shops are hard enough to come by, but ones carrying the kind of stuff that caters to finicky ultra/trail runners is an even less common find. I picked me up a pair of New Balance MT110s (the original version!) — a coveted trail sneaker I wore frequently in 2013 but have had difficulty finding since then — and a Salomon Sense 1L vest. These items will hopefully support me through summer 2015 and get me through the race in Chamonix next month.

I tried to pick a peak close to the highway that I could summit in the quickest time possible and Heart is like a forty-degree ramp of scree-covered slab rising into the sky. The ascent was a sweltering march hands-on-thighs, sweat pouring off my face, while the descent was loose, slidy and hardly in control. Scree-on-slab = the most treacherous type of terrain. My footing in the new 110s was spot-on although my legs were trashed from bombing down the Sulphur fireroad the day previous.

IMAG7677 — Me in a Salomon vest: unprecedented.

Weekly total: 13h34m/69km/4284m