Training Log Archive: biggins

The day started out encouragingly clear, so we dayhiked up to Precipice Lakes. The trail had about a foot of snow on it, and was pretty easy to follow for about the first half, and had some interesting sections to it. After about 9000' it disappeared under the older snowfields, which would have made it easy to just climb straight up to the pass, except for the total whiteout thing. We got up to the pass using a combination of masterful navigation and [mostly] luck, and had about 10 minutes of patchy clouds before the whiteout set back in, just enough to confirm that we had actually gotten there. It was getting late and there was still 2500' to climb for either of the peaks on the sides of the pass, so we bailed and went home.

We got a couple more inches overnight, and by this point we had decided there was no way we were going to make the original schedule (which was 9 more miles and climbed up to 10,000 ft). So we moved camp up to Hamilton Lakes at 8k, hoping that if it cleared up in the next couple days we would at least be close enough for some dayhikes up high. Had a few times when the clouds would clear up for a bit, so we got some views down the valley (thats the trail halfway up the right cliff). But it always blew back in after half an hour.

In Sequoia on the High Sierra Trail. The plan was to go in for 5 days: two days of approach hike, then two days of summit climbs, and one day out (it'd be downhill). The forecast for the weekend was a 20% chance of snow flurries on Thursday, then cloudy for the next couple days. So we got about 2 hours down the trail and it started crapping snow. It started with some nice flurries, but after a little bit it turned into a full blown snowstorm. By the time we hit camp that night we had gotten about one bottle worth. Oh yea and since it had been warm for the last week, the streams were wicked high and made the crossings kinda fun (yea he's barefoot). A couple places were 30ft wide and up over my knees, which was somewhat chilly in a yelling screaming sortof way.

legs felt pretty tired this morning. this was going to be a rest day, but I got the new bike shoes (sidi genius 5 megas) yesterday after 3 months on back order, so I had to go try them out. pretty sweet. and they almost fit.

dp: 6:00, 5:47, 5:55, 5:59

Went for a morning bike ride, even though I'm going to head over to the laoc o meet today. I guess its in anticipation of not actually running. For some reason I just can't get excited about crawling through brush at the bottom of a canyon full of poison oak when its 100 degrees outside. Not sure why. The bike ride was nice though.

Went to the o-meet at Firestone (had to pick up the equipment for next month). Got there about noon, so I did a run up the hill and around some fire roads. Definitely a good idea to skip running the course - crazy hot, some dodgy control locations, and the brush was in the full height of its glory.

Control pickup. Unfortunately this mean I actually had to go off trail, even if the furthest I got from the road was 100m, and it was not a fun experience. The grass was about knee high, but dead and completely dry, so the very pointy seeds broke off very easily and coated everything that touched them. You'd basically come out looking like a porcupine. And when you have 10000 of them stuck in your socks, it hurts. To move. Oh yea and its still crazy hot.