The Runners High
“What the hell was that?” Breathless, I sat beside Spring as we got into the car. Spring spoke but there was a dull ringing in my ears that muted her voice. Eventually I heard her say “something got into you eh? You just took off, how long were you waiting for me at the end?”. We drove home and pulled into our driveway. Spring got out, she noticed that I wasn’t following and asked “Are you coming?”. I responded “In a few minutes”. I needed to understand what had happened. Where my mind had gone. Before distractions dulled this experience and reduced it to something imagined at a later point in the day. Like a dream, precisely like a dream to be exact, I needed to not let this memory fade into the ether now that I had regained composure, regained consciousness. I looked at the running app on my phone. I had run the fastest split time for that distance in my life, at least 25% faster than when I had ran the same trail and distance a few days prior. I rejoined Spring in our apartment; “I think that was it” I said, “I think that was a runners high”. This experience happened some months ago. In the period between then and now I have battled with whether I should write about it or not. I’ve written drafts of this post and then scrapped them. I’m skeptical by nature. I spend my leisure time in the mountains and take calculated risks. The key point is that these activities require me to be calculated, to evaluate the hard evidence, to mitigate dangers and to move safely through the terrain. There’s no room there for flights of fancy or the unquantifiable. I like the raw honesty of the wild and the trust I can put in those experiences. Rock is hard, Ice is cold and the Mountains are eternally indifferent. I’ve heard of climbers refer to being in “the zone” but it always sounded foolish to me. Nobody plans a trip and says “ok, when we get to the base of this climb we’ll enter The Zone and then climb effortlessly to the summit”. It sounds farcical. The sporadic nature of accounts about this heightened state of awareness naturally leads one to be skeptical. Yet I couldn’t deny my own experience. That state I was in while running was not normal consciousness, it was not a normal level of awareness. It was different. I’d read about the purported “runners high” before. It always seemed like marketing fluff to sell more race tickets or running shoes. Or just another way...
Sierra Designs Convert 2 Tent Review
Bottom Line: A spacious yet lightweight 2 person, 4 season tent. Burly fabric, vents well. I’d recommend it. There are some design elements that I don’t personally like, but can live with. Modular in design. If drawing an analogy with a blade it would be more of a multi-tool than a simple full tang knife. How I chose it: What I was looking for was a single walled tent, burly enough to be used in a snowstorm on an exposed ridge crest but also capable of being used through the shoulder seasons and sometimes in the summer. Liveable, but not so large that creating a platform for it would take a long time. I also wanted it to be light, <5lbs at least. After doing some extensive research into 4 Season tents (This spreadsheet of tents proved invaluable although it isn’t exhaustive so I’d still do some additional research), I settled on a shortlist of 3 tents. Black Diamond: Eldorado Mountain Hardwear: Direkt 2 Sierra Designs Convert 2-Person Tent The Eldorado is a bomber tent, and was a serious contender. But, it’s expensive, it doesn’t come with a vestibule (you have to buy it separately) and, even though it has more total real estate inside compared to the Convert II it didn’t have the extra space where I wanted it. The Convert II has 2 inches of extra headroom over the Eldorado and it’s 3 inches wider, which reduces the possibility of touching the sides which will get wet from condensation in a single wall tent. The Direkt II is the Ueli Steck tent, so it had that going for it. I quickly decided against it though. It’s amazingly light, with a packed weight of 2 lb. 15 oz, but I wouldn’t consider it a true 4 season tent. It’s a pure high Alpine Mountaineering tent, or Winter tent. There is no mesh on the entrance so I don’t know how liveable it would be during the shoulder seasons or bug seasons. It’s also small. It was designed with Ueli in mind and he’s a small guy, but I just couldn’t imagine squeezing two average sized people into it. It is 4 inches shorter than the Convert II and a whopping 9 inches narrower, ouch! Dimension Comparison Length (in)Width (in)Height (in) Convert 2855445 Bibler Eldorado 875143 Direkt 2814545 Using the top vents to look out Showing the size of the entrance Fully set up with guy lines Interior with all vents open Room enough for two with some wiggle room Here are some reasons why I decided upon the Convert II. It had the right mix of light weight...
Tantalust, Part V: Epilogue
< Tantalust, Part IV: Risking Adventure The roar of the propeller blades and engine was deafening. As we lifted suddenly off the ground the Haberl Hut, where we’d lived for 3 nights, became a speck on top of a rocky ridge below us. “Want to check out the Rumbling Glacier?” We’d met this Helicopter pilot before. He had flown Ron and his friends up to the Cabin to do maintenance on it. While he waited for them to finish we talked to him about our plans. We had mentioned the heavily crevassed “Rumbling Glacier” on the East side of Mount Tantalus and how we had hoped to see it up close. Even from afar the huge, jagged seracs and crevasses that make up most of its mass can be made out. Now that we were flying out, he remembered our wish and offered over the intercom to take us on a close flyby of the glacier. This was a surprise to us as we had only booked a flight directly down to the Tantalus Hut, but we both instantly nodded “Yes” and gave him a thumbs up. To see this immense, fractured glacier up close, as we hovered above it, was amazing. I’ll likely never set foot there and this glacier will likely disappear in the next few decades so I felt privileged for the experience. After a few moments we were whisked back to Lake Lovely Water and after a brief detour around the lake we got dropped off on a rocky bluff near the Tantalus Hut. As the Chopper took off again and left us behind I understood the energy and stoke those climbers had exuded when they were dropped off up at the Haberl Hut. That short flight in the Helicopter had felt like a shot of adrenalin right in to my chest. We grabbed our heavy packs and began to make our way towards the Tantalus Hut. We’d packed our last day pretty full. After effectively resting at the Haberl Hut for the past 2 days we felt itchy to get moving again. The plan was to dump our unnecessary equipment in a storage container in the Hut, then hike up and scramble to the summits of 3 peaks nearby; Iota, Pelops and Niobe. After that we’d hike back down, retrieve our stashed gear, hike down to the Squamish River and then float our Canoe downstream for several kilometers and take out near the “Watershed Grill”, a restaurant that sits above the banks on a wide bend in the river, where we’d meet our friend who was going to pick us up. Back at the Hut...
Tantalust, Part II: Dreams and Reality
< Tantalust, Part I: my little Everest *pop* I screamed out in pain and shock as I looked down and watched my left ankle collapse and roll underneath me. I heard an odd popping sound come from my ankle and felt a weird crunching sensation. I dropped to my knees… Thoughts from the events of a year ago were circling through my mind. Pain, it seems, is the bodies way of reminding the head of that which it hopes to forget. My ankle was twinging from the weight of my heavy backpack that was burdened with food and equipment for 8 days of Mountaineering. I propped my hiking pole in my side, below my rib cage, and put my weight on it to give my ankle a rest. The aching began to subside and I exhaled. As I did a lone wasp landed above my sore ankle on my shin and stung me. Through gritted teeth I swatted it away, but it had done it’s damage. The ache from my ankle had now been replaced with a piercing throb from this sting. “Why don’t you want me here? “ I heard myself irrationally ask inside my mind. Who was I asking? The Mountains of this Range? It’s not unusual for people to anthropomorphise places and things, but I usually don’t. My history with the Tantalus Range had skewed my usual high tolerance to apophenia however. I’ve written about this history before (see: Tantalized by the Tantalus) and I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t played at least a small part in my decision to turn around when attempting to push into the heart of the Tantalus Range from the North this Spring (see: When Sisyphus met Zeno: Tantalus Digressions). Curiously, I’ve never written a post about the events of last year though, about my injury and the ramifications of it. I suppose that is telling. Anyway, this history of trying to push into the Tantalus Range and feeling as though it is constantly trying to push back was wearing on me. As I continued to hike, I tried to reason with myself. My ankle was weaker than usual and causing me more pain as, the previous weekend, I had run in the Squamish50 trail race, completing the 23km variation of the course (see: Running the Arc’teryx Squamish 50 23k). Wasps were everywhere this year, so getting stung was not unusual at all. The Tantalus Range is known for being difficult to access and for having complicated terrain, the weather here is also known for being gnarly at the best of times. I remembered a quote, by a...
Hiking: Tips and Tricks
Sometimes, the best tips and tricks are learnt the hard way, so I thought I’d compile a list of some of mine that I’ve picked up over the last few years from hiking and backpacking through all four seasons and from valley floor to mountain top. Tie your shoe laces properly: This is a bit of a life hack as you can utilize it outside of hiking. If you find your boot laces start to loosen every few hours when you’re hiking you probably learned to tie a granny knot instead of a square knot when you first learnt to tie up your shoes. I realized this mistake myself and went searching for a solution. Not only does this method guarantee you tie a square knot, but it’s also a lot quicker. I also find this method of tying up my shoes a lot easier with large winter gloves on than the usual method. Use a Buff: You need to buy a buff if you’re hiking and camping. It has so many uses through all 4 seasons of the year. It can be used as a; Balaclava, Face mask, Neck gaiter, helmet liner, Beanie, Headband, eye mask, wristband. I never leave home without it. Stuff don’t Roll: If you roll up your tent or sleeping bag before putting it in a sack then stop. Stuff it into the sack. I used to roll up everything and I needed to use a 65L pack to go on an overnight trip. When I switched to stuffing everything I was able to get a much lighter 32L pack and still bring the same items. Here’s why, when I’d roll up my sleeping bag I needed a sack that had an opening large enough to fit the entire sleeping bag inside it all at once. These sacks were so large that I couldn’t compress any additional airspace out of them. When I switched to stuffing I only needed a sack with an opening that would fit whatever part of the sleeping bag was bunched up in my hand as I fed it into the sack. I went from using 25L compression sacks to using 8L compression sacks. On most overnight trips, even in the Winter, I can use one 12L compression sack for all my spare clothes, jackets and winter sleeping bag. Here is Spring @ pebbleshoo quickly unstuffing her sleeping bag from her compression sack on one of our recent trips. Start using Compression Sacks: I use a the OR compression sacks, the heavier ones. They’re burly and can take a beating while still being pretty light. They save you weight though by...
