Corn Nuts and Coconut Water: Pacing the Badwater Ultra-marathon

When we stepped out of the Suburban on Saturday night it was 108 degrees and the reality of what we were here to do hit home.  This was Furnace Springs,Death ValleyNational Park, and we were here to help Juan run Badwater, arguable the hardest foot race in the world.  Juan Sanchez, theSt. Helena“shirtless” runner, had asked for our help and because we saw an opportunity to help a fellow athlete, or perhaps challenge ourselves just the same, we accepted and plunged ourselves into the world of extreme ultra-running. 

The festivity that surrounds Badwater is a strange and often times ironic thing.  These athletes know that within 24 hours they will have self-inflicted some of the worst pain and mental anguish they have ever experienced, yet, the camaraderie is overflowing with race participants.  They may come from different parts of the globe, they may be wearing lederhosen, they may not speak English, and they may be wearing pink tutus, but they are all runners through and through.  They have all put the mileage in. They have all felt the pain of running great distances and together they form one of the most passionate, endearing, driven groups of people I have ever seen.  If your runner or team was in need not one of these athletes would hesitate to lend a hand, a spray of water or some blister control advice.  Oswaldo Lopez, Juan’s friend and the winner of Badwater 2011 passed us just after dark around mile 70.  Although his pace was much faster than ours he slowed and ran with us for 15 minutes or more, talking to Juan, offering him words of encouragement before pushing on into the night and his victory in less than 24 hours.  

Those who are selected to run Badwater have something that most of us do not.  There are, of course, the logistics of completing a minimum of three continuous 100 mile races before you can even submit an application.  There is a fierce desire to push your body to the breaking point, to ignore the physical pain and push on through it all, but there is also a softer, quieter element of self-determination and self-awareness that only shows itself during these periods of intense physical stress.  Pacing Juan during this 135 mile Challenge of Champions gave me a glimpse into this super-athlete persona of dedication, drive and, in Juan’s case, complete selflessness.  He literally gave himself to this race, in body, mind and spirit and gave us the opportunity to experience it with him every step of the way. 

The simplicity of running from the lowest and hottest place in the United States to symbolically the highest in the lower 48 is what makes this race so appealing to ultra-runners.  It is also what makes it a logistical nightmare.  We had spent the week prior pouring over the route, rereading the rules, and planning for the inevitable and the unthinkable.  If we were going to make it through this, we weren’t going to be disqualified for an infraction, or have to stop due to something we didn’t pack.  We needed two pace cars: the Suburban, our main support vehicle in which we had to contain anything Juan and his pacer might need for the next two days and enough ice to keep those items cold and fresh. We also had a secondary vehicle that would be within a 5 mile radius at all times to deliver any overflow items we may need and to warehouse extra ice, a rare and precious commodity in the desert.  To say we were well stocked was an understatement but none of us knew what the next few days would bring and no one wanted to leave that to chance. 

As a pacer it was our duty to aid Juan in anything he might need during his 40+ hours of running.  This meant running or walking alongside him as well as constantly analyzing his physical and mental state and tailoring our aid stops to address his current condition.  Salt tablets where a must.  Every hour, or less during the heat of the day, we would stop Juan and administer this all too important little, white pill.  Also, there was blister care, bathroom schedules, weight analysis and of course, a steady supply of Corn Nuts, Juan’s secret weapon.  A constant intake of fluids and nutrition is absolutely necessary for the success of running Badwater.  Dehydration is not the only thing you have to be concerned about in the desert.  Your body over heats and it stops excepting nutrition and liquids.  You get low on salt or other electrolytes, your muscles cramp and fatigue sets in allowing for more serious conditions to take precedence, including, confusion, high-blood pressure and nausea.  All of these are very serious in the desert where the road temperature can exceed 200 degrees, and all can be race ending or worse.  This year 12 participants would not see the finish line and several would see a hospital.

The pace crew soon took on the mantra of “whatever it takes” and we did just that.  We didn’t sleep for over 50 hours.  We ran and walked with Juan and ran and walked some more. We fed him fruit cups, coconut water and popsicles and ate them right alongside him.  We sponged him in the 122 degree heat and changed his shoes as his blisters got worse.  The repetition of aiding him became a blur of his footsteps, of blinking red lights and water bottles as we whirl winded closer to the finish line.  In all we stopped and aided Juan an estimated 175 times in his 33 hour and 9 minute run to 18^th place.  We told stories, jokes and watched the sunset and the sunrise again.  We had in-depth philosophical discussions on the nature of happiness all in the name and effort of seeing him cross that finish line and to see ourselves cross it with him. 

Once as I walked with Juan well after midnight on Tuesday morning, I found myself enthralled with his story of dedication and servitude to running.  He had lived through a portion of his life in absence of running and came out knowing that he and it could not be apart.  Juan is running and running is Juan.  You may have glimpsed a bit of this inseparable bond as you see him streak down HWY 29 early in the morning on his way to Yountville or further.  This is the Juan I knew before Badwater and after coexisting in this surreal desert reality with him, I find it difficult to picture him any other way.  The crazy runner that did not leave an aid stop without thanking us for the help we were giving him.  Not once.  The runner that did not once fail to squeak out a smile at Katie, the “team mom” as she forcefully made him take his “last” salt tablet or jokingly get on his knees and crawl up the road at mile 130.  The runner that gracefully asked Father Mac to pray with him, at the finish line, before the awards and before the pictures were taken.  However, I do know that if our eyes catch as he sprints past me on the road that we will have a knowing moment of what we have experienced together, if even for a second, and a bond that can only be strengthened further by the pounding of four soles on a desolate two lane road as the horizon steeps in the golden glow of a desert sunset.  Hey, there’s always next year!

Photo’s by Ahren Trumble and David Sanchez, on location.

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Air Mattress Grass

When we were young,  my father use to enthrall my brother and I with stories of his fabled backcountry adventures of yesterday.  There was the time he had to wait out a lightening storm in a small rock cave while entertaining a very lost, but very attractive female hiker.  The time his mustache froze and he had to thaw it with single malt whiskey, but no other story was as awesome and retold as that of Clyde Lake and the air mattress grass.

Clyde Lake 2008

High in the Sierra Nevada Mountains there is a pristine lake with crystal clear waters and nobody around for miles.  As the story goes there was a special kind of grass that lined the bank that was just like sleeping on the softest of feather beds…no air mattress needed.  The fish were plentiful and with enough patience and a fast hand you could catch as many golden trout as you could grasshoppers.  And, of course, the only way you in or out was over the steepest and most treacherous of passes: Mosquito Pass. 

As my brother and I started venturing into the backcountry for ourselves, it came time to unlock the mystery of this Clyde Lake and hopefully get in on some of those limitless golden trout! So packs on our back, we headed off through Desolation Wilderness, past Lake Aloha and over Mosquito Pass (not treacherous at all and very few mosquitoes!) to the pristine high alpine lake nestled at the foot of Pyramid Peak. 

Scree Fields above Clyde Lake

Looking back, I’m not sure there was anyway our trip could have lived up our father’s account as a lot of things have changed in the Sierra Nevada backcountry in 30 years. Fishing pressure and stocking regulations have all but cleaned out the golden trout populations and have you ever tried to catch a grasshopper! We didn’t have to wait out any lightening storms, or use whiskey for anything but a night cap, and with the PCT going straight through the heart of Desolation Wilderness, solitude is becoming scarce.  But, we did come back with some amazing stories of our own. There’s the backcountry ranger that mysteriously appeared out of the rocks at night fall, the secret campsite that is perched high up in the scree field where no one would think to look and as for that genetic phenomenon, “the air mattress grass” well lets just say in another 30 years maybe the intrigue of that will push our children in to the backcountry to find out for themselves.

The trail to Mosquito Pass, Desolation Wilderness

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Cache Creek…discovering our own backyard

 

The Cache Creek wilderness area is just under 2 hours east of St. Helena off HWY 20.  A mixture of Bureau of Land Management and designated wilderness area, it is truly a multi-use region.  This April we set out to discover it for ourselves!

The route we chose was a 5.5 mile out and back leaving from the Judge Davis Trail head alongside HWY 20 with a one night stay over in WilsonValley on the banks of Cache Creek.  (During lower water levels it is possible to cross Cache Creek and exit out the Redbud Trail allowing for a one way, two car option)  Being an underfunded and remote wilderness area we encountered some misdirection in signage from the beginning, but with some trailside conference and a little map and compass skills, we were back on the right trail headed down, down, down to Cache Creek.  The actual BLM area is riddled with cattle trails making good map and compass skills essential should you get misdirected like us!  (Thanks to the trail side turkey hunters who pointed us in the right direction!) The detour only cost us two extra miles and allowed us to see some of the Blue Oak forests that line the eastern hillsides of this area…not to mention the wildflowers that were just starting to emerge.

The trip out to the ‘creek’ which is more of a fast flowing river in early spring, is a long, arduous journey,  through scrub brush and Manzanita, but well worth the 5 mile descent.   I would imagine this trail to be pretty inhospitable in summer but April 9^th brought about ideal 70 degree sunshine with cool breezes in the evening.  Don’t get me wrong, the route is exposed, rocky and dusty, but with the right hat and some sun block, totally doable.

The camping on the river, being a wilderness area, is anywhere you can find a spot, and, once again, in early April we had our pick.  The exposed trail gave way to trees and wildflowers again at the rivers edge, allowing us some much need shade and a beautiful evening under the stars.

You can obtain a map from the Bureau of Land Management by visiting http://www.blm.gov/ca/forms/ukiah/maps/index.php and submitting your mailing

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“The greatest meeting of land and water in the world”

Once and a while I need a reawakening of the senses.  A reboot from the day to day…hopefully everyone does at some time or another.  Point Lobos State Natural Reserve is an eye opener!  With humbling waves and stress erasing coastal vistas, a trip to this little central California gem should definitely be on your life list!

(Scale alert: see the little specks on top of the center rock?  Those are Sea Lions!)

Deriving its name from the offshore rocks at Punta de los Lobos Marinos, Point of the Sea Wolves, where the sound of the sea lions carries inland, this reserve is not to be missed on your next trip to California’s Central Coast.  Take a few hours to explore the sun filtered cypress groves, the explosive waves of Devil’s Cauldron and the soothing sounds of the native Sea Lions and if you can swing it all…stay for the sunset.  You won’t be disappointed!  

In the words of landscape artist Francis McComa, Point Lobos is truly “the greatest meeting of land and water in the world.”  At least the greatest I have come across so far…but that’s half the fun, right?  For more information visit: www.pointlobos.org.

You can see more pictures of Point Lobos and other Sportago adventures on our Facebook Page!

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A seldom seen perspective

Photo credit: Jamie Hewett, from the red banks, Mt. Shasta, CA.

Sometimes we are invited to participate in an event that pushes against the boundaries of our own perspective.  While climbing Mt. Shasta this spring, Sportago Ambassador Jamie Hewett, was invited to witness one of these seldom seen occurrences: The mountain shadow.  For a short period of time, if you’re high enough, the early morning sunrise from the east will display a much larger, more rudimentary copy of the very mountain that you now stand shivering upon. What once was the imposing figure of Mount Shasta is transformed into calmer, more polished copy of itself, inlaid with the more familiar world below.  A sight that brings to mind the quote from Rene Daumal:

“You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.”

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A Path To Heaven

Please welcome to the Great Outdoor Clothing blog guest writer, Test Team Member, botanist and amateur Film Maker: Jeb Bjerke

Mt. Dana is 13,061 feet above sea level.  Beyond the timber-line and significant vestiges of life.  It is a land of broad strokes.  Boulders, scree, snow, and sky.  As I struggled with altitude and exertion the visible horizon became wider.  And I could see the east and the west.  And then another false summit crushed my enthusiasm.   Yet another hill.  And I continued up. 

But then there is perfume.  Charmed breeze.  And a beautiful deep blue-purple globe of flowers beneath the moonscape rocks.  Hope.  And I was in love.

Above and below: Polemonium eximium along the trail to Forester Pass, Kings Canyon NP, CA. Photo: A. Trumble

I was among co-workers on a weekend adventure.  This was our free time.  We were botanists and biologists collecting native plant seeds in the western Great Basin for the Millennium Seed Bank Project.  The goal was to collect 10 percent of the world’s wild plant species by the year 2010.  It was successful.  We were well equipped and qualified to determine the species as soon as we returned to the truck and our invaluable Jepson Manuals.  And we quickly did.  It was Polemonium eximium. 

The genus Polemonium probably comes from the Greek word polemos which means strife or war.  The specific epithet eximium is Latin for remarkable or extraordinary.  Extraordinary strife.  Fitting words for my new favorite flower, a plant that survives in the most rugged parts of California: the lofty peaks of the Sierra Nevada.  It grows from piles of rock.  To my knowledge, it lives at the highest elevation of any plant in California.  There is an old tradition among mountaineers to pick a sprig of this flower when one first climbs a peak.  I might have picked some had I known. 

The air can be very dry at high elevations.  Polemonium eximium’s musky resinous leaves are indeed an adaptation that inhibits water from transpiring.  For some plants, producing odors effective at attracting pollinators in this very dry air is problematic.  Many alpine species produce showy flowers to attract pollinators instead of producing odor.  Polemonium eximium is remarkable in that it does both.  Looking and smelling in the most desolate and jagged terrain of California. 

Five years later I saw it again.  Climbing the 3^rd tallest peak in California: White Mountain Peak.  Then again over treacherous Forrester Pass.  And finally on the 6^th day of a trek to Mt. Whitney: the highest point in the contiguous United States.  Whitney’s eastern slope is a vertical garden of it. 

Jeb Bjerke among the Sky Pilots.  Eastern Slope of Mt. Whitney, CA. Photo: A. Trumble

This flower does not give its gift lightly.  No roads will take you to receive it.  You must earn the privilege.  July through August it is not covered in snow.  Lace up your boots.  For you must climb.  You must breathe the thin dry air and ascend the talus slopes.  And take time off work.  And sweat.  And not sleep well.  And hurt.  But I promise you it is worth it.  And the gift is more that just a pleasant smell and a splash of color.  So much more.  After you find it,  just take a look around. 

The common name for this species is sky pilot.  It is a nickname for a clergyman.  A path to heaven.  That sounds about right to me.

You can see more of Jeb’s adventures and handy work HERE

interested in being  a guest blogger for Sportago?  Send your submissions to info@sportago.com.  We would love to share your adventures, too!

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The greatest place on earth…but I’ll never tell.

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The first map bequeathed to me was scribbled on a napkin, was not to scale and certainly left a lot open to the imagination.  We went for it anyways.  The trip starts with some easy hiking but it soon gives way to boulder hopping and eventually a pool in which the trail seems to fade away into the canyon walls.  This is truly where the adventure begins.  Dry bags in hand we jump in, camping gear and all, and start swimming.  Few are adventurous (or perhaps foolhardy) enough to lug in enough equipment, food, tackle and beer for 4 days, but trips of this caliber are only made better by excess.  You fall into a steady routine as the canyon narrows around you: swim, hike, swim, rock jump, repeat.  Then, you see it in the distance and if the water is really flowing, you hear and feel it too.  The “narrows” as we’ve fondly named them are the point of no return.  150 yards of 3 feet wide, water-polished walls, 15 foot deep pools and twice as tall canyon walls towering above.  Once you’re in, you’re committed to making it through for finding a hand hold to rest on is almost impossible.  And just when the burning in your arms and legs is reaches a pinnacle, you round the final bend and are greeted by a 30 foot cascading waterfall that churns the emerald colored water into a frothy mist.  A short rope climb up and over the falls (don’t step on the green slime) and you’re almost to camp where relaxation begins in haste.

Idle time is never as great as it is on this stretch of river.  A day spent skipping stones, catching crayfish or creating intricate “Andy Goldsworthy” like sculptures are the memories I hold most dear and the ones that eventually draw me back, year after year.   I look forward to the fresh, earthy scent of this central California river each and every August.  I will never outgrow it, never tire of soaking in its waters and never reveal its location.  So, if you are lucky enough to stumble across the location of this gem, let me know, and we can share a few stories.  Chances are you’ll get lost on the way in, loose a piece of vital gear to the water, and come back with a wicked sunburn but that’s the price you pay for adventure…making the rewards even greater and the relaxation…irreplaceable.

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