Running Recap: Squamish 50 and Cap Crusher 13km
Ok so this post is well overdue, but better late than never! Here is a quick recap of some running fun I had 2 weekends ago. Leigh and I decided to charge in different directions the weekend of March 22/23. We both feel it is important to our personal and combined growth if we spend time apart in our chosen pursuits. What we learn separately we can share with each other on our next combined adventures. Saturday, March 22, I was signed up for the first of 4 Squamish 50 Orientation runs. I will be attempting to run the ultra distance of 50 miles(80km) on August 17th, which is definitely going to be the hardest thing I have ever done to date. Needless to say I do most of my training runs on the trails around Squamish, so I am quite familiar with the course route, but I still love attending the orientation runs. I get to run with friends, make some new friends on the trail and feed off of the general stoke of the day, which is usually very HIGH. It gets me excited to train! With a large group, of usually close to 60 people, there is ALOT of fun to be had on the trails. Plus these runs are almost like a mini race in themselves. Gary Robbins and Geoff Langford (directors of the Squamish 50 race) make sure to have the route marked pre-run with spray chalk and ribbons, making it almost impossible to get lost. They even have an aid station mid-run stocked with the usual goodies…cookies, salty chips, orange slices - it’s a veritable runners smorgasbord! The cutest Mascot ever! You will see Oreo at all the races. A veritable smorgasbord! So that Saturday, was no exception to the 5-star service all the runners have become accustomed to at these orientation runs. The morning started off chilly and we even had fresh SNOW! It was a large group of smiling, excited runners ready to hit the trails. I was excited to start that morning with 2 of my running buddies - Adam, who will be running his first 50km (so excited for him, he is going to crush it!) and Hailey(check out her page Run Like a Girl), who will be attempting to best her time from last year (I have no doubt that she will). Of course there was a lot of laughter, pre-run, run and post run that morning…runners are a crazy bunch of people…crazy good! Crazy good! Trail running is beautiful. Running through the lightly snow dusted trails was so beautiful. Winding through the forest, over the wooden bridges,...
Early Season Ice Climbing
Since our week long trip to Canmore last Winter, Ice Climbing has become a passion of ours. This past season has seen us put a lot more effort into Climbing in general. Climbing is not just a full body sport, it’s a full everything sport. It’s physical, mental and emotional. It’s the perfect activity in my opinion. I can understand why people give up everything to live in a van and climb full time as a dirtbag. Climbing gives you almost everything you need to feel a sense of living fully. Ice Climbing, however, tends to not have a huge following. Even within the climbing community only a small subset of climbers will learn to climb ice and stick with it. For most it appears to be a novelty activity to do once, take some photos of and then never do again. Not for myself. Something about the aesthetics of it appeals to me. Swinging sharpened Ice tools and kicking serrated barbs of steel into walls of frozen water. Seeing layers of ice shatter and explode or feeling the ice tool make a satisfying “thunk” as it bites solidly from a perfect flick of the wrist. All ice is not made equal either. Time, weather and location can have a dramatic effect on the properties of the ice you will be climbing. The type of ice you climb in the morning can be completely different to the type of ice you climb that same evening. To rock jocks that have never been on ice I try to use this analogy, “Imagine going to your favorite granite rock climbing area only to discover when you get there that the rock has now changed to limestone with bands of gneiss running through it, and instead of a 5.10b crack you now have a 5.11a face climb. It’s that kind of flux that you have to be prepared for with ice” Or put simply by a friend of mine as we geared up at the base of a climb: “Ice Climbing is just badass, that’s it, everyone knows it” What follows are some accounts of the Ice Climbing trips I’ve been on in the past few months and what I’ve learned from those experiences. Mount Baker Seracs: Spring wrote about our experience at Mount Baker here: “Mount Baker: Ice Climbing“, so I won’t labor the details. I was really psyched to get out on glacier ice. From all my glacier experience the number one rule has always been to avoid going anywhere near crevasses but on this trip our goal was not only to find the deepest, darkest cracks in the glacier...
Arc’teryx Nuclei Hoody Review
Bottom Line: A versatile, packable, CoreLoft jacket. Perfect for belaying or as a midlayer. Face fabric (Arc’teryx Airetica) is water resistant but not waterproof so a hardshell is needed in a downpour, however, the Arc’teryx CoreLoft, unlike down, will insulate when wet as it retains its loft. I’d highly recommend it to others, another quality Arc’teryx product. How I chose it: Full disclosure, we are active members in a number of online communities, from nature conservancy and interest to outdoor equipment for enjoying the wild comfortably and safely. Arc’teryx is one of them. They wanted to say thanks for our continued support of their online communities by giving myself and Spring at Pebbleshoo a jacket. We chose the Nuclei Hoody. We had already been considering it as we already have down jackets, but they aren’t practical to use if the weather is forecast to be wet as down loses its insulation when soaked. The Nuclei uses Arc’teryx’ own Coreloft which retains it’s insulating properties even when wet. Belaying near Squamish Belaying near Leavenworth Returning from climbing Seracs at Mount Baker Observations since receiving and using it: If you’ve watched our video review above you’ll already have heard most of my observations regarding this Hoody. I love the included stuff sack for packing the jacket which also has a loop attached to it so that it can be clipped to a harness with a carabiner when climbing. It insulates really well. It’s warm. It fits well. I wear it everywhere. I have a coat rack at my apartment door and I don’t like clutter so I usually just have one or two jackets there that I put on when heading out. The Nuclei Hoody has replaced my old fleece Hoody as my go-to jacket. Pros: Packable: Compresses down really well Light: I don’t even notice it when I’m wearing it or have it clipped to my harness Fitted: The trim design is awesome, it doesn’t bunch up or crease when I have it on under a hard shell and a heavy backpack Vibrant: Personal choice, but I love Arc’teryx’ use of bright colors. For my photography the color of this jacket really stands out. Simple: There really isn’t anything I’d take away from this jacket. Cons and Areas to improve: Stuff sack could be improved with a couple of compression straps on the side to pack the Hoody down even smaller. I don’t like carrying around air. Zip or Velcro on the Stuff sack pocket: The pocket for the stuff sack does not seal, but the stuff sack can be removed. It would be nice to have the option of using that pocket to...
Mount Baker: Ice Climbing
“Did you see the BCMC call out for a trip to the Mt Baker seracs to do some ice climbing? Do you want to sign up?” This was the question I received in a text from Leigh one morning in October. I texted back within seconds saying “Anniversary at Baker!” It just so happened that the Thursday before the trip we would see our 8th year wedding anniversary come and go. This seemed like the perfect way to see in another year of adventure together. We signed up for the trip and started dreaming about climbing ice again. The only type of ice that Leigh and I have climbed before has been waterfall ice, some in the Rockies and some in the Coastal Range, so climbing glacier ice was going to be a new experience for us and it was going to take some time to knock the rust off of our recently acquired ice climbing skills. We set up top-ropes at the first wall of ice we could walk up to on the glacier. These first climbs proved to be more difficult than anticipated, and everyone, albeit 1 or 2, had to shout “take” more than once on their way up. There were several bulges and overhangs to contend with and the density of this ice was proving to be very hard and made for some very ginger tool placements, as no crampon or ice pick was really sinking in. All part of the learning process and also part of the beauty of ice climbing, no two walls of ice are ever the same. Once we had our fill of these climbs we decided to make our way over to an area where 2 from our group set up a few more ropes. We had to weave around gaping crevasses, jump over cracks in the ice and down-climb some sections just to get to the climbing area. It was unnerving but so much fun at the same time. It was really starting to feel like we were on another planet with such an other-worldly almost eery feeling. The only sounds apart from the odd shout of “on belay” or “climb on” was the groaning and cracking of the glacier. I walked the final narrow ice bridge towards the crevasse where the top-ropes were set up to see that you had to rappel into the hole if you wanted to climb. I felt a reluctance at first, as my first instinct is to always avoid being inside a crevasse, but I had to find a way to push through it and I joined Leigh and our friend Scott down below. Did someone say...
