My bags are mostly packed for Nepal via New York, Hong Kong and Dhaka. The Annapurna Trail Race is coming up and other adventures await. I leave on Tuesday. I’m also packing drop bags for running Cascade Crest 100 tomorrow – a great run directed by my friend Rich White. I’m psyched to be paced by John Fiddler and Pablo Cabrera. I know it will be an adventure.
I wanted to do a quick post covering the last two weekends as I promised myself I would try to write more regularly here. My legs are just now recovering from running 50 milers at Squamish last Saturday. I’ve always heard Squamish is ‘tough’ and it’s true. I went into it determined to go slow – thinking about Cascade Crest, but honestly I’m not sure I could have gone any faster. Big thanks to Gary Robbins and all the volunteers for an awesome event. And congrats to Gary and his wife Linda and their new baby – I’m sure the kid will grow up to be a great runner. Great to see a bunch of Seattle runners out there and to explore more trails in the area. My sincere apologies to the nice young family stuck in traffic next to us on the Lions’ Gate Bridge entering Vancouver. I guess inhaling that veggie burger, ear of corn, 1 beer, and 2 sodas post-race wasn’t a good idea.
On August 14th and 15th, I headed to Cascade Pass with Edith Buitrago for the last camping trip in the PNW this summer. We got permits to camp at Johanasberg which is only 200 yards from the trail head. It rained most of the night and we were woken half way through it by a mouse that had chewed through my tent wall and then couldn’t figure out how to get out. Man that thing could run! The hope was to climb Magic Mountain, which is in near the end of the Ptarmigan Traverse, but it ended up being a slow day and we arrived at our base camp (Kool Aid Lake) cold, wet and with no visibility so we decided to call it good. The ascent up Cache Glacier was a little disconcerting as visibility was only about 150 ft and there were large crevasses near the start. Our return on Sunday had beautiful views as well as one very icy/sketchy descent on the Cache glacier as it was still in the shade. I wore micr0-spikes and was mad at myself for not taking things as serious as I should. There was some haze from nearby forest fires (one burning near Holden) but nothing terrible. The whole Ptarmigan Traverse is pretty high on my bucket list. It is hard to beat the north cascades!
Wow Seth! Making every day count! I know where cache glacier is–it looks steep from afar. Good. Luck at CCC and safe travels!
Scotty – sorry, just saw your comment here and approved it. Almost 4 months late. I need to figure out how to add a captcha to the comments because I get so many spam comments I can’t see the needles amidst the haystack. Yep, it wasn’t really that steep but I wouldn’t do it again before it gets a nice warming from the sun! Hard ice is no fun. See you soon!