Montana Spartan Ultra and Super, May 1-2, 2021

If you've been around me lately then you may have heard me complain about Montana.   We spent about a week up there last summer, and not only did it rain almost the whole week, but all of the hiking trails were closed due...to COVID.  The ultimate irony that doing something healthy in the outdoors would be closed because Montana had maybe 10 cases in the entire state.    Anyway, I didn't really want to go back up there this year for a Spartan race, but I needed an Ultra to qualify for the 24 Hour Ultra this October in Telluride, Colorado.

Well, Montana redeemed itself.   Not only was the weather perfect for this race weekend (it DIDN'T rain!!)  but people were ditching masks all over and opening everything up.   

The Spartan course was on the NE corner of Flathead Lake, not far from the Canadian border.   It had, as the course director implied before the race, lots of bushwacking through the forest.   Thankfully, most of the dense undergrowth was not multiflora rose, but there were a few thorny, spiny things along with the rest of the bushes which just felt like switches on my shins.  It was the first time I regretted not wearing those knee high socks which might have saved me quite a few cuts and scrapes.  

The first section of the Ultra, which we only did once compared to the 2 loops of the rest of the course, was the most runnable.  I always like to get a few fast miles in at the start of a race.   There was a guy sticking at my pace who seemed to think he needed to continue running up all of the hills even as 99% of people around him were walking....all of that extra effort would get him about 10 feet in front of me, which I would make up in about 2 steps of the downhill.  It annoyed me.  So I passed him. 

About 7 miles in we came to the "water crossing".   Lol.  It was a chest deep wade through a pond in the middle of the forest.  With submerged logs that caused not a few people to fully dunk.  Did I mention it was dank, murky, black water....the type of thing that not in a million years would I stick a foot in if I wasn't forced to in a race.   The first time I waded through, it actually resembled water.  The second time around, hours later, so many thousands of people had been through it that the bottom 3 feet was mostly mud.   I came out fairly black the second time, like refried black beans run through a strainer.  Not to mention what other things were in the water that I couldn't see!  But it washed the blood off the cuts of my legs. 

It took until mile 14 of 32 before I got to do any overhead obstacles like the monkey bars or the twister. They were really stacked on the second half of each loop.  Of course there were plenty of other obstacles like heavy carries, steep hills, and more bushwacking, though.  

I have been working on my strength training this year, a little more than normal.   I could tell it was helping on the walls, and I didn't fail any obstacle on the first loop.  On the second loop, I skipped the Olympus wall because the word on the street was that the penalty loop was shorter than the obstacle itself.  It didn't take much to convince me of that, the Olympus takes maximum strength for me to complete.  

By the second loop, the virgin forest looked like 1000 people had created a trail through it.  There's something to be said for hiring Spartan to created an event in an area just to create new trails!   The undergrowth still beat on my shins, though...not my favorite course just because of that...and the never ending hills.  Almost 8,000 feet of climbing over 32 miles doesn't seem like much but it started to add up.  

By the end I had passed a few women and figured not many more were in front of me.   Turned out no one was!  I finished 1st overall in women's age group, which was really cool, in 8:54.   Best part of the day, as always, was a nice hot shower and the chance to scrub the mud off my feet.  

Getting out of bed the next morning was the hardest obstacle of the day!  Jim and I were doing the Super this morning, which was another 7 miles around the same steep hills, stacked with all the obstacles.  I had almost signed up for the trifecta, which in the moment, I was glad I didn't have to go around a 4th time in the Sprint.   The trails, on my 3rd time around, now looked like superhighways compared to how they had started.  But the bushes, when they hit my shins, now felt like Cat O Nine tails.  Ouch.  

I felt like I was running fairly well again after I warmed up, but actually not that fast.   Jim had a great race and felt great at the end, finishing 3rd.  I was well down the pack and just happy to be done this time.  I missed the spear right at the end and had to take a last penalty loop bushwack up and down a steep hill right by the finish line.  If I had had to do burpees I might have thrown the spear more carefully.   The course had the last laugh, though....I slipped in the a ditch of mud heading to the finish, and added a layer of black goo all the way up my right side.  Ooops.  

Photos of elites added for interest :)

Yup, Elk on course!  Photo courtesy of Race Director Steve Hammond

Photo courtesy of Race Director Steve Hammond

Mud.  Called a pond.

Definitely cleaner on this first round than the second!

Girls Camping Trip in Kanab, Utah, March 21-25, 2021

As I write this now, a month or more later, it's raining again.  Although, the golden rule of Utah is to never complain about rain.  We always need it.   Perhaps we were jumping the gun on spring, but by late March, it should be getting nicer, right?    

Karen, Vicky and I loaded up Karen's pop-up camper for a trip down to southern Utah/ Northern Arizona on a week that admittedly didn't have a great weather forceast.   Ok, it looked downright miserable for March.  Global cooling, anyone?  

We drove down I-15 with fresh snow on the ground as far as we could see.  Uh-oh.  It took hours of driving to see the dirt again.    But, the scenery of southern Utah was beautiful anyway, especially with fresh snow on the mountains.   Our mission for the trip was to score a permit for The Wave, a rock formation just east of Kanab in the Coyote Buttes area.  

To that effect, we pulled the camper out of town and near the Wave area, and managed to find an amazing campsite nestled in the hills above the gravel road leading to all sorts of amazing hiking areas.   Although in retrospect perhaps everyone else was too smart to go camping this early in the season?  Maybe I'm giving them too much credit.   But I'm happy to report that we towed, set up, tore down, and got home again with the camper without breaking anything.   Always a plus.  

Each morning, we drive back into Kanab to put in our application for the next day's Wave permits.  Along with 95 other groups trying to do the same thing.   They handed out 5 a day.  Needless to say, we got skunked.  We did actually get a permit for Coyote Buttes South, also worth visiting, but the roads were impassable when wet, and it was going to rain the next day, so that wasn't possible either.  

Vicky and I almost froze to death the first night.   Clearly 10 layers of clothes and all the blankets we could find in the camper hadn't been enough.   Why did I not bring my down sleeping bag?!?!    Karen rolled out of bed in shorts and a t-shirt under just her down blanket.   Haha very funny.   The next couple of nights I rolled up in my blankets a little better, piled my clothes bag on top of me, and slept like a mummy in a cocoon.  Much better.  

Did I mention it was cold?  Anyway, and too windy to build a fire for the first couple of nights, but that's the benefit of being able to go in the camper, turn on the squeaky heater, and cook dinner on the stove.  

Our first day out we spent hiking down Buckskin Gulch from the same parking lot as the lucky Wave permit holders headed out to see that.   Buckskin Gulch is known as one of the longest slot canyons in the world.   We went down about 5 miles of the slot, which varied from 5 feet wide to about 100, with gorgeous rock walls.    At our turnaround, we napped in a patch of sunshine in the warmest spot we could find, and only left when the sun moved away completely.  I swear it was the most level 10 miles I've ever done, with packed sand and easy walking.   

On a rainy second day, with another failed permit attempt, we took a drive into Arizona to visit Horseshoe Bend.   I figured no one would be there in the rain, but everyone else must have thought the same thing.  I have to say that Horseshoe Bend is amazing in the rain.   The rain itself, not so much.  We kept driving, back into Utah, and escaped the showers enough to take some meandering gravel roads to see where they went.  It was too cold and damp to think hiking sounded fun, but we did save a newborn baby calf which seemed to have fallen or slid down embankment by the road.  Just the touch of my hand on its flank was enough to scare the feet under it, and it bounded away.    We were sure that earned us some hiking karma.

The wind died down and we had a nice evening with a fire, and then some card games as the cool drove us back into the camper.   Our third and final day looked like decent weather, so we drove up Long Canyon, which was a nice gravel road drive, to the trailhead for Cobra Arch.   Thankfully we had a Jeep and we could basically go anywhere we wanted.  Unlike the trail head for Buckskin Gulch, we were the only ones there, and we wouldn't see another person all day.  It was cool as we started, then turned into a gorgeous warm day with the best weather of the trip.  We started on top of a plateau looking down into Buckskin Gulch, along an old settler's trail cross country route.  I can't imagine how much work that would have been, to drag covered wagons anywhere around here!  

There wasn't really a trail to Cobra Arch, so we navigated with the terrain and descended the first half of the lip of the Gulch, which widened out into another plateau.  Here we randomly found some amazing rock features, including some rock beehives.   The final bit of trail to the Arch was a bit of a sandy slog, but the Arch was worth it, and the rocks around it as well.  We stayed for a good while and enjoyed the solitude.  

Looking at the map, we figured there might be a shorter way back across the top corner of the rocks.  And indeed, we were back much more quicker to the rim than we expected.  A shorter way home is the best part of any hike, right?   Here's to good friends and warm fires :)