Manzanita Deathmarch

There's a very remote spot near the headwaters of the North Fork of the American River, right at the start of the Royal Gorge, that Grant and I visited a few years ago. The spot is Heath Falls, and it's quite difficult to get to due to overgrown and unmaintained trails. I went there again last weekend with my dad, who'd wanted to see it ever since hearing about the first visit.

Thinking we'd outsmart the approach that Grant and I took, we parked at a slightly different spot and made our way down into the Gorge. It turns out that Grant and I picked the better parking spot, as we fought with some manzanita in the early parts of the hike. Further down, however, the dark forest floor, piled with deadfall, had some vibrant residents for us to play with.


Baby snowplant


Bigger snowplants

Crunched for time, we pressed downstream where Serena Creek dumps into the North Fork. Not too much longer, the canyon walls got darker, signaling the start of Royal Gorge, and we were greeted with the pervasive sound of rushing and falling water. The reason Grant and I hiked down there was so he could recon the falls for a potential kayak trip down the Gorge. This next photo shows the start of 3 days of largely unportageable Class V+ whitewater, if you're in to that sort of thing.


Heath Falls (that's 50 feet tall, by the way...super wide-angle photo)


Minimal moonscape

Making our way back up through the forest, we found ourselves navigating some larger seas of manzanita than we had on the way down, and it is not the most friendly member of Sierra flora. By a long shot. Stiff, strong, pokey, and scratchy, it grows very densely and is soul-sapping, skin-shredding purgatory. Mind you, this entire portion of the hike was overland, so we didn't really have a trail to follow, and the last 500m to the car took us over an hour. At one point, we were less than 100 feet from a graded dirt road, and it may as well have been miles away, as the mature manzanita was taller than we were and most unforgiving for routefinding purposes. Daylight leaving us, we finally buckled down and forced our way through. Just in case you think I'm exaggerating how awful this stuff is:


D^2 and his legs, posing in front of manzanita

Exceedingly happy to be out of the death shrub, we gathered Ethel at Northstar as her volunteer duties ended and slunk away to an awesome dinner at the lake. A week later, my legs still look like they got caned. It's a special part of the Sierras to visit, but be prepared to pay the price...

Goodnight Lu

One door closes so another shall open...


Last glimpse of a brilliant automobile while my now-primary transportation peeks out



Fare thee well.

Tour de Nez '10

Reno was invaded last weekend by the Tour de Nez, our long-running professional cycling race. Featuring 3 days of racing, mint juleps, and frighteningly large shaved legs, it's always a fun weekend.

This year, Ethel got invited to be a podium girl, which means that she'd be kissing a bunch of guys who are better bikers than I am. To the winners go the spoils, eh?

The only day I made it to was the downtown Reno criterium, so here are photos from that race. Photo geeks: all shot with a 300mm f/4.


Receiving detailed instructions from race creator Tim Healion; note the laser-like focus


The pack, early on in the hourlong race

This race has always been timed around twilight, which means the lighting conditions change drastically from the start to the finish. As such, a lot of the racers opt for no sunglasses so they can still see things when it gets dark. And by "things," I'm referring to the other racers they're shoulder-to-shoulder with through corners at thirty miles an hour.


Giving chase


Two riders on a breakaway

The pack is a living, breathing beast, silently deciding when to pull back breakaways and when to change the pace. The riders have to stay aware of their surroundings as they suffer endlessly, as crashes in crits can be pretty ugly.


The pack motors along


Some familiar faces get spied on from 6 stories up


Riley acts all professional and stuff

The racing was fun to watch, with a group of 6 or so going off the front and staying away for quite some time. As the sunset turned to dusk, the pace picked up.


The chase pack


A modest lead for the break

As the race ended, Reno's hooligans planned the rest of their activities for the night, downtown cleanup began, and the riders headed off to recover as best they could before the road race at Northstar the next day.


One such hooligan, scheming

Good times.

Nosebleed

Our office recently moved from the hospital to a building directly across the street from the Aces' ballpark. There's a vacant space on our 14th floor that will hopefully make for some good viewing opportunities, but this photo was taken from a ledge on the 11th floor of parking.



The view from the 14th floor is better, but this ain't bad either!

Playaphiles

We took advantage of an unexpected day off for Ethel to spend a night in the Black Rock Desert with Riley and Ed. It was new territory for Riley and Ed, and neither Ethel nor I had ever been there outside of Burning Man. She's got an excuse, not being a Nevadan and all, but I'm grasping at straws to justify my unfamiliarity with the place aside from that annual late-summer week.

Anyhow, we camped at Frog Pond, a hot spring that's not very hot and otherwise aptly named for the amphibian presence. They kept noisy throughout the night having their little frog-offs.

Here are a few long exposures from that night:







Wide awake early the next morning, we took the time to explore the frogs and their habitat a little bit more. These ponds are an amazing display of all stages of growth for these guys, with all sizes and numbers of appendages represented.

Here are a few fully-grown froggies:







After breakfast and coffee, we broke camp and headed onto the playa at the normal entrance to Burning Man. After cruising around for a bit and ending up quite a bit north of the furthest extent of the festival, we parked for a picnic and a photo session.


All business


Sweet relief


The arteest has signed his canvas


Big girl sunnies


Bundled


Unbundled


Ed looking rugged


Spring sun


Perfect playa

Traipsing further north, we got above the playa on Soldier Meadows Road where we found this overlook.


Storm cell

The vastness of this landscape is always striking, and even more so without 50,000 of our closest friends wandering about. It's a remote and rugged environment, but nonetheless a true jewel of the Western US.

She Rock

As I mentioned previously, my cousin Connor had the lead in her high school play a few weeks ago.


Connor Norton, "All Shook Up"

She's a stupendous performer, and she's worked astoundingly hard to follow her dreams.

For all you Reno peeps, she's performing at the Bruka in "The Great American Trailer Park Musical" starting this Thursday, May 27.

Back to Racing

Well, it's been since August last year since I've been involved in any competition.

While I've got a few tasty races scheduled later on this year, I've got my cousins to thank for cruelly tricking me into kicking off my racing season earlier than planned.

A slew of my cousins came to town a couple weekends ago to watch Connor absolutely rock the leading role in her high school play, "All Shook Up" (photos to come). The morning after the play marked Reno's Rock-n-River Marathon, Half Marathon, 10K, and Kids' Race. It ended up being a bit of a family affair, with Frances in the Kids' Race; Amy in the 10K; and Frank, Richard, Elaine, and I all in the Half Marathon (none of us were dumb enough to run the full).

The only unfortunate thing is that I didn't find out about this race until 5 days beforehand, and I hadn't been putting in lots of running miles, much less 1/2-mary specific training. And I made one of my Achilles quite angry early in the week, which brought that week's running to a quick halt. Not like I was going to get more fit, anyway.

Actually, that wasn't the only unfortunate thing. What really complicated the matter is that I arrived at the start line just fit enough to get myself into heaps of trouble. What does that mean? Well, if I had been a bit more out of shape, I wouldn't have stuck my nose in with the fast guys and girls. But I did, and then stubbornness took over, and I paid the price.

One thing that did go well was my pacing. Let me qualify that by noting that I don't run with a watch, so I've got no way of actually knowing, but our time through Mile 1 was within a few seconds per mile of my average pace, so that data point backs up my perception that I didn't go out too hard and then fade.

Pacing it well may have been nothing short of a miracle, as I'm only used to running after a swim and a bike ride, meaning that I'm already tired but am at least warmed up. Let's take a moment to review my lifetime results from running-only races:

Arm Run, 26km, Queenstown NZ, 2008: 3 weeks after Ironman NZ, with NO running up 'til 2 days before the race and very little exercise otherwise. Decided to race while drinking beer on a hot afternoon 3 days beforehand. Result - 3rd, vowed never to do anything stupid like that again.

Black Rock City 5k, Burning Man, 2008: During peak training for Silverman '08. Got tangled up with a woman at the start and helped her back to her feet as the field departed. Result - 1st, won a 12-pack of PBR.

Black Rock City 5k, Burning Man, 2009: Generally fit, but no specific training for anything in particular. Result - 2nd, got beat by a dirty little hippie wearing a sarong...and a GPS watch...goddamn sandbagger.

And that's it. Not the fullest race resume, eh?

So experienced in these things I am not. Which means that figuring out proper pacing for a footrace of any given length is not my strong suit. Back to this race, my perceived exertion was "Uncomfortable" by Mile 2 and remained somewhere between "Uncomfortable" and "Angry Hornet Nest" for Miles 2-13. Which is apparently the way to do it.


Near the turnaround at Patagonia. Photo courtesy d-squared.

At this point, I'm in fourth and in front of the eventual second-place guy, shortly before he ran away from me. We both caught a couple people between here and the finish, which was sweet.

Running into the finishing chute and then directly to the massage tent (uncrowded!), I was unable to stretch without cramping for about 2 hours. I established a good starting point for all half marathon forays from here on out, running about 10 minutes faster than my fastest half-ironman run. It took a full 2 weeks to recover, too, which I'm pretty sure wouldn't have been the case if I had actually prepared for the infernal thing.

Beyond all that, the rest of the fam' posted great results. Richard did a few minutes better than he expected given the altitude. Frank finished his first half marathon ever way faster than he was planning on. Elaine and Amy both held down the fort for the women's races. And little Frances has darn good form, bound to be some sort of stupendous athlete when she gets older.

So that's the whole story. Special thanks to my cousins for convincing me to get out there, and big ups to all of them for running so well. I'm done licking my wounds now, and it's time to look forward to whatever's next!