I picked Sarah up from the Burbank airport at 7. We had an ambitious plan to start hiking at 4 a.m. Including a 2 hour to Palm Springs, the maximum we'd be able to sleep was 7 hours at that point.
But we also had to stop at REI on the way to pick up Sarah's refillable tubes (for peanut butter!) that I ordered delivered to the store and to fill out our first aid kit. Well... the tubes haven't gotten there yet, but we got first aid stuff and another light for Sarah, so now we each have two. Also we were really hungry, so we stopped by a delicious Chinese dumpling place. This probably should have been a Subway to go, in retrospect, but so it goes. Including packing our Camelbaks for the next day, by the time we went to bed at our Motel 6, it was past midnight.
Needless to say I was not excited when that alarm rang at 3:30 a.m. Slowly we rolled out of bed, dressed, and did last-minute things... and were on the trail by 4:20 a.m. It was dark and hot. Hot at 4 a.m. That's a bad sign.
Well, no turning back now. We started briskly walking up the trail behind the Palm Springs art museum. I started out fairly low energy, as starts tend to be for me and had a hard time keeping up with Sarah. I ate a caffeinated Gu in an attempt to wake up. The beginning section is also really steep and bouldery. It's as if somebody just threw a bunch of boulders on a steep mountain-side, and we are going up that pile. Which makes it go slow... but at the same time very encouraging. Just 1 hour after we started we were already WAY over the city in Palm Springs. It's really cool to be able to get high so fast.
And once we got out from the heat trap which is Palm Springs (nestled between San Jacinto and San Bernardino mountains), it got a little bit less hot and a faint breeze brought at leas an illusion of coolth which lifted our spirits.
Around 5:40ish, the bright merciless sun rose above the horizon and illuminated the beauty around us. Desert hillsides and ridges covered in rugged thin-leaved desert plants and boulders with lots of boulders and red soil. The sun was still very horizontal, so it didn't really add to the heat, and we were largely shielded from it by the ridges. So far so good, we pushed on.
Sometime around 6ish I started feeling dizzy and light-headed and my stomach started feeling funny. Despite the sun still being low, I also felt hot. Not drenched in sweat hot, but hot. So I sat on a rock in the shade to regroup. It felt really good to sit. Why not just sit here for a while and rest?
Sarah suggested I eat something as I haven't eaten much. I was hoping that my big dinner was going to power me through the first couple of hours. And food seemed disgusting. But I took out a mint chocolate Clif bar. Thanks to the warmth it was nice and moist. I hate having to eat dry/hard foods while running, so moist is good. It tasted better than I expected so I started eating.
After I sat around for maybe 5 or so minutes, Sarah tried to get me to move my butt. "For every 5 minutes we rest now, it'd take 20 minutes longer due to the heat." I tried to argue that I should rest more... and it's not really 20 minutes... but I knew and hated that she was right and we should keep moving. So I forced myself to get up.
Being the limiting factor at this point, I took the lead and slowed down the pace just a tad. One thing I learned about running in heat is that you don't get to decide how fast to go. The body kind of does that and if you try to force it... well, there is serious risk of overheating and collapsing. I've pushed it and came close before.
Slowing down the pace just a little bit did wonders. I felt my rhythm normalizing and walking up the hill became easier. The ridges came and went fairly quickly and soon, lo and behold, the side of Long Valley was in our view. It looked closer than it should be! Wow, we're already so close? Long Valley is the plateau at about 8,500 where the tram is based as well as the ranger station. And it was interesting to see the transition from desert to mountains. Here we are surrounded by yuccas, desert shrub and a trail winding through red dust... and up there are gray massive monoliths with rich green pine trees.
At roughly the 2.5-3 hour mark we passed the high desert section which was really hot last year. The one where I got so hot that I collapsed under the pathetic shade of a bush and laid there for a while consuming copious amounts of fruit and fluids. This time we were doing so much better and faster! It wasn't quite as hot thanks to our early start and our energy levels were good.
One thing that I forgot about what makes this hike so hard is the poorly maintained trail. Even the flat sections were hardly runnable due to being overgrown with plants and covered with rocks and boulders. And we spent sometime figuring out which was the real trail and which was a fluke or a steep shortcut, even having to backtrack a little bit a few times.
Well... at one point the trail just went straight up the mountain. At first we were sure it was a shortcut, but it just kept going and going. The footing was treacherous, with rocks, loose sticks and sandy soil sliding from under my shoes. And it was just really steep. I think this is where both of us started to fall apart.
My stomach felt funny - I think partially due to trying a vanilla-flavored Clif gel. Never eating vanilla during running again! Disgusting. I had a hard time getting down food... or water. I ran out of my 3.5L Camelback at maybe the 3 hour mark, and still had 2.5L platypus to go which I figured should last me to the top. It was also close to 8 a.m., so the sun was now way above the horizon and the heat was starting to do its work. Oh yeah, and I forgot the elevation. We must have been at 6000+ by then... and I was feeling it, breathing heavily and energy levels plummeting. Also, my achilles tendons on both legs were feeling tender and sore and I was a bit worried because it took the left one a week to recover and it was actually in some pain. The straight up uphill was not doing them good. Elevation + lack of sleep... also not good.
And Sarah had a massive headache which was somewhat helped by an Aleve, but not completely.
I started getting worried about the Wasatch. Doing mental calculations in my head. If this was day 1... well, we'd be better rested for one, though the altitude would be similar. But Day 2... at that point we would have been going for 24+ hours, would be at some of the highest elevations of the course (10,000+), and the legs would be more sore than I can begin to imagine. I guess the only good difference is it won't be this hot, a big difference though it is.
Nevertheless we kept moving forward. What else is there to do? Our place slowed down a lot but we continued to trudge up, with an occasional very short break. Finally were were able to see the tram station! After what seemed like an eternity, the trail leveled out (i.e. started going up the mountain sideways instead of straight up!). I think we even spotted the place where I proposed, with a nice view of the desert floor and the opposing mountain range, framed by trees. That was a nice boost.
I noted that my knees were feeling shitty even on the slightest downhill at this section. And THAT was disheartening. Despite 2 weeks rest, some exercises and lots of foam rolling, the knees already felt bad after just a tiny bit of downhill. And that was a downer. But nothing to do about it now, just keep moving.
We were now up in the mountains. The soil turned from red to grey. Yuccas gave way to pine trees and down tree trunks. Getting close!
Finally the trail turned straight up again, but we could already see the top! This is where it got particularly hard to navigate at some places... but thanks to our experience last time and careful looking, we navigated it just fine. It felt like it took forever, though I think it was much faster than last time.
We stepped onto the plateau drained in 5 hours 20 minutes, much faster than the 9 hours last year!!! 11 miles and 8000 feet up. About 2 miles/hour in heat. NICE!
The plateau was completely empty, a stark contrast to all the people we saw last time. We found the ranger station which looked closed. Well, that's OK. I started filling out the permit and Sarah went to the bathroom - what a concept, a bathroom!
Trying to fill out the permit, I realized how utterly exhausted and shitty I felt. Weak, and dizzyish, with unsteady hands making for some ugly letters. Sarah's headache was raging, so she took another Aleve. At that point we knew we were not going to walk back down as originally planned. Beside the general exhaustion, I was worried about my knees, the steep brutal 2,000 near the top on a treacherous poorly laid trail, and of course the rest of it too, down in the furnace. But now that we made it up at 9:40... of course were were going to the top!
Setting our ambitious aside, we decided to rest at the ranger station for a bit. Seeing my lemonade-colored pee, I confirmed that I was dehydrated (I had 1-1.5L left in my Platypus while I expected to go through it all), and set out to fix that as well as to get some food into me while Sarah took a nap on the ground. Suddenly a bunch of fresh, well-rested people showed up, some of them wearing flip flops. Turns out we beat the first tram up, which I think is badass.
The way to the top was mellow compared to the first part. We were actually able to do some running! Came across a hut shelter close to the top, and I left a Clif bar in the shelter for the unfortunate soul who would need to use it next. The last 50' was scrambling through snow and boulders to the summit, at 10,800 ft! We hung out there for a while and talked to some other folks, telling them about our crazy wedding idea.
I started getting antsy and cold, and I wanted to pee, so we went back down on our way. To my elation, my knees were holding up great on the downhill!!! I even started to second-guess that I wound up taking an Aleve, even though I remember deciding not to. Well, that was a pleasant surprise. While we still didn't do much running due to a rocky, technical trail and lack of energy, it was nice to know that my knees were not dead.
We got back down on the tram around 4:30 and took a cab back to the car at the museum.
I am disappointed we didn't get to run all the way back down... but we did great given the circumstances. The ultra mantra of "just keep moving" proved true here... even though it felt like we were going at a leisurely or at times slow pace... just by being able to move forward, we still made it up fast.
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