Gettin’ High May 21, 2008

Who knew Texas had such BIG mountains?!?!?!

This weekend was the annual trip to the Guadalupe Mountains in West Texas, held every year to celebrate Henry’s birthday … which is TODAY, by the way! So a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my sweetie! :-*

The weekend also serves as great training for those folks running mountain races this summer … like moi.

Day One: Austin to the Guads

We headed out early Thursday morning, with the caravan leaving Austin at 6 a.m. We drove and drove and drove (although the miles went by much more quickly than I would have imagined), reaching the park around three in the afternoon. As we approached the mountains, this was my first introduction to the Guads …

Wow! (I said that a lot this weekend!)

We set up camp, had a yummy dinner prepared by Chef Crash …

… did some unpacking and prep for the next day, and then hit the sack.

Day Two: Pinetop, McKittrick Ridge, and Dog Canyon

Our wake up call came at 5:15 a.m., and less than an hour later, still in the dark, we were headed up the mountain to the Pinetop trailhead. The weather was chilly (and stayed that way most of the weekend, which was great compared to the horrible heat they’ve had in past years). The initial climb was about 3.7 miles, going up almost 2,000 feet in elevation (from just under 6,000 to just under 8,000 … I think. I don’t have a copy of all of the elevations with me, so some of these are my best guesses based on my extremely faulty memory).

Here’s part of the trail we climbed (camp is that dark splotch in the middle just beyond the mountain) …

I was pretty slow getting to the top (took me about 80 minutes) because I needed to make sure I took my time warming up … I don’t let my asthma limit me much, but one thing I have discovered is that I perform much better over the long distances when I give myself plenty of time to warm up. Some of the speedier folks had already moved on by the time I reached Pinetop, but Henry arrived soon after me (he had gotten a late start waiting for someone who was having Camelbak issues) and we set off down Tejas Trail.

Running was awkward at first. The altitude was not really much of an issue, but carrying a 100 oz. Camelbak loaded down with water, food and other gear took some getting used to. Imagine trying to run when you feel like you suddenly gained about 15 pounds! After a while I got more used to it, but Henry was right when he said a lot of the time would be spent “speed hiking.” Tejas wound along some beautiful trail, with some great downhills and some relatively short climbs.

And then there was Dog Rock …

Of course, we would pay for all those great downhills later - when they turned into the evil uphills we had to stagger up at the end of the day. But more on that later …

After about four miles, we came to the end of Tejas, where we met with some other folks and took a short break …

We soon headed off to the right along McKittrick Canyon Trail. The first part of the trail was a rocky, narrow ledge high up on the ridge … and it was windy and freeeeezing! I had to run fast through this part just to get it over with because I couldn’t feel my face! But then we came to the less windy part of the trail … and the next few hours were the best part of the day. Running along McKittrick Ridge, this was what I could see for miles …

Just after this we ran into Joe leading the fast guys back up the trail, and after a little break to chat and take some pictures, Henry and I headed out to the Castle in the Sky. The trail down to the Castle was windy, rocky, narrow, and VERY high up.

And then there was the rocky catwalk you have to cross to get there.

This is the view looking down from the catwalk …

And here’s Henry climbing up to the castle …

After a short rest we headed back the way we’d come, running into Robert and Diana, who took this pic of us coming off the catwalk …

Can you even see us? We’re such little specks! Here we are hiking back up …

And much needed rest, yeah!

After a while we headed back along McKittrick Ridge. Here’s some beautiful Cactus Rose we saw along the trail …

We made it back to the intersection of Tejas and McKittrick, but this time we headed down the third trail that intersects there, into Dog Canyon. Henry and I were both pretty tired by now, but we had to go to Dog Canyon in order to get more water. The way down wasn’t so bad … three and a half miles, with a descent of about 1,500 feet.

The way back up however, was another story. This is the trail, which doesn’t even begin to tell you what the climb was like …

Thank goodness for the little marching stride I’d developed over the course of the day … it allowed me to power walk up the hills without losing stride or breath, as long as the hills weren’t too steep. I used it the entire way back out of Dog Canyon, and we made it up in just over an hour and a half … pretty good considering that at this point we’d gone nearly 28 miles over about 10 hours … which also tells you just how hard these climbs were!

This next section, back along Tejas to Pinetop, was a real test. The first part was nice easy running, with some great downhills that were welcome relief after Dog Canyon. But then we came to the hills. There are basically four climbs, and they just felt like torture. At one point I came to the curve of a switchback, looked up at the next part of the climb, and just turned to Henry and said “Oh HELL No.” We ended up bushwhacking and scrambling straight up to the next stretch of trail rather than face the daunting climb on the actual trail. I have no pictures from this part … it was all I could do to stay upright, let alone try to play photographer!

Finally, finally, sometime after six o’clock, we made it back to Pinetop, just as Joe and the fast guys were getting back as well (having done a few more miles than us).

My legs were so shot at this point, I couldn’t even run down from Pinetop, but had to take an hour and a half to just walk down the whole way.

We made it back to camp around 7:30, whereupon I wiped off the dirt, ate a plate of food that Crash warmed up for me (I was too tired to pay attention to what it was), and went straight to sleep.

35 miles over 13 hours … my highest mileage day ever … by far the longest time on my feet … on giant climbs … at altitude … with a Camelbak. I had no idea how I would find the strength to get up the next day. And did I mention just how much my feet hurt?

Day 3: Bush Mountain and Blue Ridge

Saturday morning came, and I nearly burrowed back into my sleeping bag and called the whole thing off. Thankfully, I possess two qualities that for better or worse make me well-suited to endurance running:

• I hate quitting more than I hate pain, and
• I have a great ability to project ahead and realize how much I will regret not doing something even if at the time it’s the last thing I want to do.

So of course I got up and we headed out, this time after it was already light out.

I started off thinking that I would just try to get back up Pinetop and then see how I felt. The maximum mileage we would cover would be 15 miles today, still a significant amount of trail to cover, but not quite as daunting as the day before. The initial climb took me an hour and forty minutes, but I did my little marching walk, and made it to the top feeling better than I’d expected. Henry was feeling better too (he had a vicious migraine all weekend - how he managed to keep going both days is beyond me!), so we decided to keep going up to Bush Mountain, which climbs up to over 8,600 feet. Henry was kicking butt on this section, whereas I was really fatigued from all the miles on Friday and struggling mightily not to be dead weight. It was worth it though, for more views like this …

and this …

;-)

I finally made it to the top!

The background of this one is New Mexico …

On the way down Bush Mountain to Blue Ridge, it started to rain, and Henry told me to get moving, so I picked up my tired-a** pace and started to run harder … and suddenly I felt great. I flew down the Blue Ridge trail, my legs feeling the strongest they had all weekend, and just giddy that I was running fast and letting my body guide me down the trail. After a while I got to the next intersection and sat down to wait for Henry … and to clean up the blood dripping down my leg from yet another encounter with a cactus. Unfortunately, just as I was hitting my stride (literally), Henry’s headache had come back with a vengeance, and now he was really struggling. So we hiked the rest of the way down Blue Ridge, and turned back onto Tejas for the dreaded climbs (AGAIN!) back to Pinetop.

This time was different however … and a great lesson in how the difficulty of a climb or even a downhill is often a matter of how tired you are. This time the climbs were hard, but didn’t seem nearly as insurmountable to me as they had the day before. I even marched right up the section I had avoided on the previous day’s climb. And when we got back to Pinetop, I let it go and ran ALL THE WAY down the mountain … 45 minutes of total bliss and WHEEEEEEEEEE!!!

15 miles that took nearly 8 hours! Whew!

It only got better after that.

Got back to camp to find that there was a hot shower waiting for me … a portable camping shower, sure, but it was a SHOWER. :-) And then dinner … grilled salmon, roasted potatoes, corn on the cob, and salad. Crash is a god.

This is the sunset from camp Saturday night …

So over the two days on the trail, I covered 50 miles and who knows how many feet of ascent and descent. It definitely was incredible training for my races later this summer … Headlands 50 Miler with some big climbs, but not technical and not at altitude … and Teton 50 Miler, for which the Guads could not have been more perfect training. If nothing else, I go into the next few months of my training confident that I can do the distance.

It was a beautiful, crazy, exhausting weekend … one that I can’t wait to do again next year! :-)