Before Broken Arrow: California Winters and Pandemic Progression

It was late January 2020 when I first heard about the Broken Arrow Sky Race.  I had just finished up a run on a beautiful Sunday morning with Mountain View Area Run Club.  As a runner, I tend to perform my best in cold weather, and mornings in Silicon Valley during the month of January are typically in the low forties with plenty of sunshine.  The sun rises at around 7:15 AM, the air is cold and refreshing, the air quality index is generally very good, everything seems to be greener and more colorful thanks to rain season, and the distant mountain peaks have dustings of snow on top of them at certain times.  I call it a California Winter.  California Winter mornings are fantastic for running and I was feeling particularly energetic after this run.  I sat at a table outside of Starbuck's at the corner of Pear Avenue and Shoreline Boulevard in Mountain View, our usual meeting spot.  I was clad in flip flops, running shorts, a warm jacket, and a winter beanie hat, double fisting a dark roast coffee and a cup of water.  I had just finished telling the group stories about the St. Croix Winter Ultra, which I had run a couple of weeks earlier.  As I finished the story about eating nothing but chocolate chip cookies during the entire thirty-eight mile run, my friend Mariele asked me if I would ever consider running Broken Arrow.  After I arrived home later that morning I did some research.  A 52-kilometer trail race in Lake Tahoe in June, circumnavigating the Palisades at Tahoe Ski Resort (formerly Squaw Valley) on a course mostly above treeline, with some snowy sections, steep climbs, beautiful scenery, and a climb to the summit of Emigrant Pass at nearly 9,000 feet in elevation?  Holy shit...sign me up!  When I saw Mariele a couple of weeks later I thanked her for her suggestion and told her that I had signed up.  I later found out that she is Mike Wardian's sister, which would at least partially explain her fondness of ultramarathons.

When I received the email that the race would be cancelled, it massively pissed me off.  I knew that we were going through a very challenging time in the early stages of the pandemic, but it made me angry.  On the morning I saw the email, I had tossed my snowshoes and poles in my car and driven two hours and forty-five minutes out to Pinecrest to get one more snowshoeing trip in before the spring, only to be intercepted by a forest ranger at the junction where the mountain road flanks off and leads to the trailhead.  "Okay, no problem.  All I want to do is go snowshoeing for a few hours.  That doesn't violate any social distancing rules".  I thought as I drove forward.   "How're ya doing?" I said with a smile as I rolled down my window.  "Good, thanks.  Where are you traveling from?"  the ranger asked.  "The Bay Area".  "What are you here for?"  "Just to do some snowshoeing at the Crabtree Trail before Spring kicks in" I replied.  I smiled sheepishly as if to say "look dude, I know I'm not from here, but please let me just go to the friggin' trail for a little while.  I drove a long way".  I knew that saying this out loud to the ranger wouldn't help anything, so I just answered his questions.  He was a polite guy, but my response didn't sit well with him.  He proceeded to give me the whole spiel on sheltering in place, no non-essential travel allowed, bleh, blah bleh, blah bleh.  Arguing would have done me no good, so I graciously turned my car around and headed home.  Annoyed about the fact that I wouldn't be able to have some nature therapy during hard times, I searched my email for updates on Broken Arrow to lighten my mood.  The cancelation email was in my "promotions" folder...and it had been sent two weeks ago, but I didn't see it.  Son of a bitch.  The race was still two months away and I was shocked that they had pulled the plug so early.  It just goes to show how little I knew in April 2020 about how big of an impact covid would have on the world.  Fed up with the pandemic, races being cancelled left and right, and the overall impact that covid was having on my life, I arrived home, threw all my gear on the floor in anger, and went straight to my bedroom to take a nap.  It was really the only tantrum that I threw since the start of the pandemic, but I was just overwhelmed with how things were unfolding.  The nap did help, and I calmed down and came to my senses later that afternoon.  

Fast forward to September 2021.  Thanks to advanced research by top scientists, vaccines, and the actions that people have taken to help mitigate the spread of covid, the 2021 race is on.  Despite the recent delta variant surge and wildfires, the organizers deemed it safe to put the race on with a few modifications.  The race was pushed forward to October, the course would be slightly modified due to construction on the gondola at the ski resort, and we would be required to mask up at the start line.  The nice thing is that even though it wasn't possible to get a refund for the cancelled 2020 event, my entry was rolled into the 2021 race at no cost.  Now let's talk about my current situation.  It's been busy at work.  Like, super busy.  My department is transitioning into an exciting new phase that will hopefully be great for my career, but a heavy focus on work over the last several months has left me with little time and energy to run on mountain trails.  Most of my training has been on flat, paved paths like the Stevens Creek Trail and Guadalupe River Trail, both of which are very close to where I live.  I've managed to get a couple of mountain trail runs in, but with the race being one week away, I'm about as ready as I'm going to be.  This race is definitely not going to be a PR.  Broken Arrow features 10,000 feet of climbing at high altitude on tough terrain, and I fully expect that this race could take me around eight hours to complete.  That's okay though.  What matters most is the experience.  With that, I will simply hope for the best and see what happens.  For now, I'm going to enjoy the final week of training and I'm looking forward to another adventure in one of my favorite places!

Going Easy

The first of the Gem Lakes

The nighttime air was chilly and refreshing as we sat around the campfire.  Stars filled the sky above and huge mountain peaks rose above us in every direction.  Opposite the campfire from me were some familiar faces, but faces I hadn't seen in person for quite some time.  "Just so you know, Liam" said my friend Iris "tomorrow we were planning on getting started around 7:30 or 8:00 in the morning and going for a nice, easy eight or nine mile hike.  Hope that's okay".  Not only was it okay, but I was relieved.  "That sounds perfect to me" I responded.  Iris and Dave looked surprised. "Are you sure you don't mind?  We thought you were going to want to run the whole thing maybe even twice".  I laughed.  "Yeah, right" I said.  "No, a nice easy hike sounds great.  It's actually what I was hoping for".  

                                                           Our campsite at Convict Lake

Anyone who reads these blogs knows that I'm an adventure junkie.  They know that I love running stupidly long distances, hiking up mountains at 10,000 feet or higher in altitude, and putting my body through hell while doing it.  Yes, there is an element of physically pushing myself involved, and that is part of the thrill that fuels my desire to keep running ultras and hiking up massive mountains.  But despite what some people think, I actually live a pretty normal life.  My weekday morning runs are between three and five miles, I go to work everyday, I spend time with my girlfriend and my friends, I get six to seven hours a sleep per night, and my diet is pretty normal.  Yes, I'm an ultrarunner, but that doesn't mean that I approach every experience in life with the same attitude as when I toe the start line of a fifty-mile race.  Yes, I like to push myself, but I'm more focused on the experience and journey.  This is especially true when I go hiking with my friends.  Dave and Iris seemed to actually think that I might be turned off by their plans.  I think they wondered if my response was going to be more like "What?  How come we're not going all the way to the summit?" or "Come on guys, let's make it a sixteen mile hike, otherwise it won't be worth it".  Or "Okay, well I think I'm going to run the trail instead.  I'll see you guys along the route somewhere".  Believe it or not, sometimes I like to take it easy and just enjoy the experience.  Not only is it a good thing to do psychologically, but it also creates a more enjoyable situation because I'm not being as rough on my body.  This hiking trip with three of my good friends from Southern California really brought this sentiment to the surface of my mind.

                           The group (Iris, Dave, Tony, and yours truly) midway through the hike

The journey began when I left Silicon Valley on Friday afternoon in mid-August.  Since I moved to the Bay Area from Los Angeles in 2019, it has since become a tradition that my SoCal friends and I meet up at least once every summer for an overnight hiking trip.  In 2019 we hiked Mount Shasta together, last year was Big Pine Lakes, and this year, we would be hiking Little Lakes Valley.  The plan was to spend the night at a campsite that Iris and Dave had reserved at Convict Lake, then drive to the trailhead the next morning.  I had never been to Little Lakes Valley before and when I left home that afternoon, I didn't quite know what to expect or what my friends had in mind in terms of what time they wanted to start or how far they wanted to hike.  The seven hour drive to Convict Lake from Sunnyvale was relatively calm, and showcased some beautiful forest and mountain scenery.  After the first couple of hours of driving through farmland, the route ascended up through the Sierra Nevada mountains, and  eventually make the big climb over Sonora Pass.  This stretch of highway 108 is notorious for being one of the steepest and highest highway passes in California, approaching a grade of 26% in some areas, and cresting at 9,600 feet of elevation over Sonora Pass.  I completed this ascent just as the sun was setting, which made it much easier to tackle, as opposed to last year when I had to contend with the drive in the dark.  Highway 108 eventually dumped me out onto highway 395, where I turned right and continued south through the town of Bridgeport, past Mammoth Mountain, and followed the dark, winding road into the campground at Convict Lake, where Iris and Dave were awaiting my arrival.  They had driven up from their home in Rancho Cucamonga and arrived a few hours earlier.  Sitting around the fire and catching up with them, beer in hand, I was instantly at ease when they mentioned their plans for going on an easy hike the next day.  After a solid month of being busy at work and finishing the Badger fifty-miler two weeks prior, it was exactly what I had in mind.  Eventually our friend Tony showed up, who had also driven up from Southern California.  Shortly after midnight, we packed it in for the night.  Tony, Dave, and Iris set up their tents and I folded the seats down in the back of my Rav4 and created a makeshift sleeping area with my pillow, sleeping bag, and sleeping pad.

                                         Rock Creek with Bear Creek Spire in the background

I awoke the next morning at 5:45 AM after sleeping surprisingly well.  One thing I love about waking up in nature, especially in the mountains, is that the sun always seems to rise earlier than at home and as the sun rises, I tend to wake up with it.  As I stood outside sipping from a paper cup of instant coffee, I admired the surroundings.  We were treated to a beautiful starry sky the night before, and now the sun was lighting up the towering peaks that surrounded the campsite.  I felt a great energy coursing through my veins and I was excited for what lay ahead.  Our hike ended up being exactly what I had hoped for.  We drove thirty minutes to the trailhead and began around 7:45 AM.  The route began at Mosquito Flat trailhead, which lies at around 10,000 feet of elevation.  Our nine mile hike featured only modest elevation gain, reaching a peak of around 10,600 feet, and took us past the beautiful Gem Lakes and Rock Creek.  As we took a break for lunch, we admired how blue and clear the mountain lakes were.  Like most lakes in the Sierra Nevada mountains, the Gem Lakes are formed by snow and glacier melt and the water is typically very cold, clear, and clean.  Several prominent mountain peaks dominated the horizon in the distance in front of us.  One of those peaks was Beak Creek Spire.  "I wonder which route Nemo took to get up there?" Tony asked.  Although the overall mood of the trip had been very positive thus far, it had turned into a somber moment as the four of us stared off into the distance.  Nemo Hernandez, a good friend of ours, had set out on a solo trip from Mosquito Flat over fourth of July weekend, six weeks earlier.  He never returned and tragically, his body was found several days later by a search and rescue team.  He was a fanatical hiker and rock climber, and had attempted a solo climb up to the peak of Bear Creek Spire.  Nobody knows the exact circumstances of what transpired, but we speculated that he slipped during his climb and apparently fell to his death.  The news of Nemo's untimely demise was a shock to our community and all of us were deeply saddened by the loss.  He was a healthy guy with a family, and had such a zest for life.  Then he was gone in a flash.  I had not seen him in a few years, but we had formed a bond through hiking together and running races.  We concluded that he likely continued along one of the few trails that led from the Gem Lakes over a ridge to the base of Bear Creek Spire, but being the animal that he was, we also wondered if he just free climbed the ridge as a shortcut.  These questions will forever go unanswered.  In the end, he died doing what he loved in his happy place, and he will be forever missed.  After paying our respects to Nemo, we headed back down the trail to the parking lot taking in the beauty of our surroundings along the way. 

                                                 The crest of Sonora Pass on Highway 108

                                    

We were back down to the parking lot by 2:00 PM, enjoyed some hamburgers and beers in Bishop, and I was back on the road to head home by 4:15 PM.  I had once again made it over Sonora Pass in daylight, much to my relief.  The summer before, I drove over the pass in the dark both ways, and the return trip was especially not fun.  I was sleep deprived and exhausted from the long hike and the steep road and sharp turns in the dark really put me on edge.  This year was much better because not only was it easier in daylight, but I could also enjoy the amazing scenery that the drive had to offer.  I ended up getting home around 11:15 PM that night, a fairly decent time.  Overall, it was an excellent trip.  Logistically, it was a huge improvement from last year, and it really couldn't have gone any smoother.  In 2020 when we hiked Big Pine Lakes, I had left the Bay Area later in the evening, gotten to the trailhead in the middle of the night, gotten maybe two hours of sleep, hiked sixteen miles, got a later start on the drive home, and arrived back home at 2:30 in the morning.  It was still fun, but this year was much better, logistically.  And why was it better?  Because I had decided to take it easy.  It doesn't always have to be a situation where I'm crushing through huge miles in hard terrain on virtually no sleep, then driving home and arriving in the middle of the night, half dead.  I realized after this trip that sometimes going easy and allowing more time for rest and logistics can make all the difference.  It was a cool experience and a valuable lesson.