Hiking a Honeymoon

Ah. It's November. Summer is finally fading here in Santa Cruz. Well, kind of. It's still 80 degrees out some days but cool enough in the mornings to wear boots to work. Maybe it will rain ... maybe ...

Our summer was amazing, largely because M and I got married (!!) and went on an epic, outdoorsy honeymoon adventure in Glacier National Park and Banff National Park.

We backpacked about 50 miles total, plus some day hikes. There are lots of stories to share, but for now, here are some photos.

(clockwise from top) Driving from Waterton Lakes to Banff; us at Waterton Lakes; our digs at Waterton Lake -- the Prince of Wales Hotel; hitchhiking efforts; us at Lake McDonald; signs of an active wildlife in Glacier National Park.

(clockwise from top) A chairlift ride at Lake Louise ski resort; Morraine Lake; the river in Lake Louise under full moon; a  glacier above Lake Louise; Canadian Rockies; the bucolic view on the drive from Waterton to Banff. 

Lake McDonald

The view from our campsite near Granite Park Chalet; the lake at Many Glacier. 

Lets Get Sweaty

M and I decided to kick our yoga game up a notch or three this year and, for the first time ever, I've found myself going to yoga class two or even three times a week AND IT'S HARD. Total surprise. This is a complete departure from my long-held contention that yoga is not exercise.

This change of pace came rather by accident; our gym offers free yoga classes and we got hooked on this one instructor, Yogi Greg. But all good things must come to an end, and Yogi Greg's tenure at Cabrillo Fitness expired when the Highway 1 evening commute became too soul-sucking for our pop-culture-savvy, sometimes-foul-mouthed Zen guru.

So we did what any fan does: we followed our yogi to a studio that specializes in hot vinyasa yoga and pilates. Although I only make it to one of Yogi Greg's classes a week, I've found a couple other instructors I enjoy taking classes from.

M and I had been all-stars in the front row of Tuesday classes at the gym. Turns out that class was bush league. Three weeks into my four-week trial, I'm a hot mess almost every class. High planks, vinyasa after vinyasa, balance poses for days -- you would never know if I'm crying because sweat is dripping from every part of my body. Some classes, the pace and the heat combine to make my heart pound and my head woozy. That's when child's pose is my favorite. Other days I think I'm killing it, but then I look around at all of the rail-thin Lululemon-wearing yoga chicks pushing up into crow pose like it's completely
normal to balance your legs on your arms and realize I have so far to go -- in my yoga practice and my wardrobe.

I think the classes would be difficult without the added heat and humidity, which makes me think that maybe sometimes yoga can be strength-building and — wait for it — even exercise. Yeah, I said it.

For now, though, I'm going to reserve any major judgements on these classes. I love the noodle-y feeling I have after yoga and my hips feel amazing when I run. But I'm waiting to see if regular practice leads to a stronger core and arms, or if I can ever master crow pose. If I apply what I know about running — it takes three weeks to benefit from a workout — to yoga, I might see some gains soon. I'll probably sign up for more time at this studio when my trial month is complete (M already pulled the trigger on a six-month membership, right after he got us the fancy yoga mat towels) and see how things go. Plus doing more yoga gives me a great reason to buy new workout tanks from Athleta … on sale, of course.

Race Report: Surfers Path 10K (on fumes)

In a masochistic move, I ran a 10K on Sunday morning, approximately 18 hours after completing this insane bike ride.

To be fair, the race had been a good idea in the beginning. I'd signed up for the inaugural Surfers Path 10K at the suggestion of a friend who I sometimes get the chance to run with. Plus having a race on the calendar always motivates me to run more, maybe even with said friend. And it worked — running group ramped up the training effort and I did get one run in with my friend together before the race — so the race was probably even a good idea in the middle.

But in the end, my legs were fried from 5,300 feet of climbing, followed immediately by a hot tub soak at the Dream Inn pool deck, then beers and burgers at West End Taphouse. Everything felt amazing; the food and drink was delicious.

But the Sunday morning 10K loomed. I foam-rolled at home and hydrated. In the morning, I briefly considered staying in but, but instead pulled on my Smartwool compression socks (a hopeful move to prevent cramping) and grabbed a cup of coffee. It was go time!

The race is put on by the same group that organizes the Surfers Path Marathon and Half Marathon in the spring. All of the courses cover popular running/cycling/walking routes along the Monterey Bay coastline from Capitola to Santa Cruz. The races on Sunday (a 5K and a 10K) started on 41st Avenue and headed out to Pleasure Point, then hooking a right onto East Cliff Drive. The 5K loops back around Moran Lake, while us 10Kers continued to Twin Lakes State Beach before turning back. Everyone runs past the start line and into Capitola Village for a nice downhill finish at the beach.

Road races can be big here (thousands run the She.Is.Beautiful race in the spring and the Wharf to Wharf sells out faster and faster every year). Maybe because the Surfers Path is new, or because it's November, the course wasn't packed and the whole event had a friendly, local vibe to it.

I had a few minutes to warm up before the 8 a.m. start. It was warming up, so I ditched my long sleeve at the sweat check (pretty posh for a local 10K). I didn't see my friend anywhere, but wasn't worried. I'd find her on the course.

Cinder and Callie (and Mike) came to cheer. 

I can't report much about my pacing. I managed to screw up my Garmin right at the start and didn't record about four-tenths of a mile. Instead of worrying about pace (and because my legs were beat), I focused on enjoying myself: great views, happy people. I chatted with a fellow racer who was struggling, spotted a few friends near the turn-around point, got a cheer from Mike and the dogs, and caught up with a running buddy who was out cruising on his bike. He and I ended up chatting through about three (painful) miles of the run before he ordered me to pass some people in the last half-mile.

At the finish, we found more friends, including Greg from South Valley Endurance, the timer who handles "my" race, the Santa Cruz Triathlon. There was cold-press coffee from Verve Coffee Roasters, great race shirts and a bag full of snacks from New Leaf Market for us.

It wasn't my best 10K time, not by a long shot. But I held essentially a 9-minute mile pace despite extreme fatigue. I'm definitely happy with the overall weekend effort and am ready to plan my next race! (Oh, and I need to find some new spandex shorts. Looking at race photos makes me realize what I for was not cool. Not cool at all.)

This is PROOF I need new racing
shorts. Seriously, what am I wearing?

Ride Report: Our Personal Santa Cruz Mountains Challenge

Some background to start: Mike, the fiancé, and I love playing outside together. We appreciate each other's activities — he's a surfer, I'm a runner — but often there is one person who truly loves what we're doing and one person who is along for the adventure. One area where that isn't true is road cycling. We both really, really like getting on bikes, climbing hills and covering a lot of pavement.

We set off this morning on an adventure Mike had mapped out. Inspired by the Santa Cruz Mountains Challenge, he wanted to tackle some of the toughest climbs in the county during a 55(ish)-mile-ride. Our weekend rides often include 2,500 or more feet of elevation gain over 25-30 miles, but increasing that didn't seem like a bad idea, especially if was just the two of us and no timeline.

Elevation Map

The plan entailed parking off West Cliff Drive in Santa Cruz, then heading through town to our first climb, a breezy warm up on Glen Canyon Road to Scotts Valley. From there, we rode the lower section of Glenwood Drive (a normal climb for us) and then headed up the infamous Mt. Charlie Road, a 5.2-mile climb with multiple short Cat 2 segments. Mt. Charlie was new for both of us. The steep sections left us gasping for breath but overall the ride was scenic and pleasant. We stopped at a historical marker at the top to learn about Mountain Charlie, a failed gold digger who survived a bear attack in the 1870s and went on to be a stagecoach operator in the area, before continuing our climb up Summit Road.

The road seemed remarkable free of cars. We pedaled past vineyards and Christmas Tree farms on Hwy. 35/Summit Road until the highway split at Bear Creek Road. We went left up, then down Bear Creek Road about 11 miles into the town of Boulder Creek. This was essentially the halfway point of Mike's plan: about 30 miles in and one of two significant climbs done. After a quick stop to refuel at Johnnie's Super (including a LARABAR and Hammer Gel) we were back on the road.

The next section covered more new terrain for us: Hwy. 236 toward Big Basin Redwoods State Park. Four miles in, we made a sharp left onto Jamison Creek Road. Mike had said this would be the steepest — but also shortest — climb of the ride. The hill started with a mellow 5% grade and we held the same conversational pace we'd carried throughout the ride. But 1.2 miles in, the hill changed. Here's a description from Stanford Cycling Team:  For people wanting to climb over 1,100 feet in 1.8 miles (read: masochists), this is the ride for you. This section of the climb averages 11.5% grade, with some areas nearing 14% grade. 

I made it about two-thirds the way up the hill (the whole hill, not just the really steep part) before my legs turned to Jell-o and I had to walk. Mike powered on, using a mix of out-of-the-saddle riding, weaving back-and-forth across the entire road (much to the chagrin of descending cyclists) and sheer willpower to summit the hill. I walked about a mile, pushing my bike and wishing for a passing motorist to hitchhike with. I tried (and failed) to ride again, and even considered carrying my bike on the back of a motorcycle. The bike-hike took about 25 minutes, but it turned out Mike had only beaten me to the top by a few minutes. That must have been one hell of a crawl up! 

(Let's just say, the only good Jamison is probably the whisky, and there should be a bottle at the top of that climb for poor cyclists like me.)

From there, we turned onto Empire Grade Road bemoaned all of the little hills on our back to town. Just before we passed UC Santa Cruz, we hit 37 mph on a downhill. The ride finished along West Cliff Drive, rounding out at 56 miles and about 5,600 feet of elevation.

These climbs are integral parts of a couple cool century rides that happen in here in the spring and summer: the Mt. Charlie Challenge in April and the Santa Cruz Mountains Challenge in late July or early August. I've heard the Mountains Challenge always includes Jamison, which may be a deal-breaker for me, but the Mt. Charlie ride could be exciting. I haven't ever attempted a century ride (metric or full 100 miles), but would like to. Maybe 2015 is the year! 

Backcountry Ski Trippin'

I'm new to snow sports.

Until the past couple of winters, my experience in the snow amounted to some sledding as a child and chaining up my '98 Mustang in college to get access to a snow-covered peak for a hike.

But the boyfriend is a snowboarder and, over the course of the past couple winters, I've learned how to get down a mild blue-square run and acquired all kinds of snow gear: the appropriate layers, snowshoes, waterproof boots and a complete snowboarding setup. 

Last weekend we put it all to the test by hiking in to the Benson Hut, a Sierra Club shelter three miles south of Sugarbowl and about six miles from Donner Pass. Our friends had, smartly, left a day earlier and made the five-mile hike from the ski resort parking lot in during idyllic conditions. 

The boyfriend, a buddy and I weren't so lucky. 

The only precipitation the Sierra has seen since the first week of December rolled in Saturday morning as we got geared up for the adventure. We cut off two miles of hiking by riding chairlifts up to the top of Sugarbowl, a cheat method that almost immediately knocked me out of the game because I didn't know how to snowboard with a 25-pound pack on. 

Kindly, the boyfriend carried both our packs (what a stud!) and we made it to the top of Sugarbowl, AKA Mt. Lincoln, elevation 8,400 feet. 

It looked like this: 

 

Yikes. Visibility was basically nothing. Winds whipped us, threatening to blow away stray gloves as we got our  gear organized and used a bike lock to chain our snowboards together between some boulders (for protection against blowing away, not theft). 

Then we hiked.

Three miles, even backpacking at altitude, should be nothing. We were able to hug the ridgeline enough to avoid getting lost (normally, it's a simple ridge hike and the path is visible throughout). But no one was having fun. Our buddy, hiking in Sorels with Yaktrax post-holed through the soft new snow. Once the boyfriend and I strapped on our snowshoes, we kept them on -- even when that meant crossing the rocks of wind-blown, snow-free saddles in the snowshoes. 

We hiked for two hours to reach the hut, quite off of the 30-minutes-a-mile pace we had accepted as the slowest we would possibly go. The boyfriend and most of the crew already the hut had made this same trek five years prior (one of them loves doing this trip as a birthday celebration) which also helped us find the way.

The hut was a welcome sight, nestled just below the peak of Mt. Anderson (8,500 feet). 

We spent the afternoon and evening sipping whiskey, making fajitas and enjoying the company of friends while it stormed outside. A few brave skiers in the group took their skis and skins out to test the fresh snow. I can't imagine being good enough at snowboarding to get a split board and skins and ski in the backcountry, but props to those who do. Resort skiing feels adventurous enough for me.

In the morning, we awoke to more snow and panoramic views. 

The return hike, with the sun shining and epic views surrounding us, felt like a walk in the park compared to our adventure the day prior. To avoid the snowboarding-with-a-pack debacle, get a little more cardio and ensure the guys got to a sports bar in time for the Niners game, I handed off my snowboard to a friend who had hiked in without one and chose to snowshoe down the ski runs with the boyfriend's sister. This added a little over two miles to our hike and was possibly the most pleasurable part of the weekend. Happy skiers paused to ask us about our adventure before zipping down the mountain. We trotted on.

The Benson Hut is open to the public for day use and as an emergency shelter. You also can book the hut for overnight stays and volunteer to maintain it (one of our friends does this, which is how we got hooked up with the hut). It's part of a network of huts on the Sierra Ski Trail in the Lake Tahoe area. Each are about a day's ski apart. 

After visiting, I'd love to go back in the summer.