Posted on 03/13/08 1:03 AM| by Team Kagome
January 18 -19, 2008
Well it was an interesting training outing this weekend. We got a little later start than intended which is to be expected. We met at Rick and Jen’s house near Green Lake on Friday night. Once we were all packed up Rick gave us the maps and the list of checkpoints we needed to hit. We made some minor gear adjustments and were on our bikes by about 8:30 p.m. We rode down to the Burke Gilman from Jen’s house. The Seattle skyline all lit up was beautiful as we road down Stone (I think that was the street) toward the trail. We got on the trail near Gas Works Park and rode it to Marymoor. We cut through Marymoor and got on the Sammamish Trail and rode into Issaquah. We road through town and got on a trail system that put us at the Highpoint Exit off of I-90 which is one of the entry points to Tiger Mt. It was a cold ride with temperatures near or below freezing the entire ride. I was glad for my booties, but Dave and Jen hadn’t worn theirs and had some cold or numb tootsies as a result, ouch. Rick met us at Highpoint and we transitioned from our bikes to our trekking gear. It was about 1:10 a.m. and Rick took our bikes and bike gear home with him as we headed off for a long night on foot (what a guy). We were in transition for just over ten minutes. Only an adventure racer or a spouse of an adventure racer would be crazy enough to get out of a warm bed on a Friday night/Saturday morning to pick up some bikes for fools out in the middle of the night. What a guy, I can’t stress that enough.
We were in snow almost immediately. Fortunately these trails were well tracked and Dave, being an Issaquah Alps expert, knew most of the trails like the back of his hand. We really lucked out with the weather. It was cloudy and cold with occasional brief pockets of clearing, but there was almost no precipitation all night. We were making steady consistent progress and things began to get interesting around 3 a.m. The sleep monsters attached Dave first. We were on a snow covered forest service road that was long and mostly straight. There were two troughs in the snow from trucks driving to service the cell towers and walking was much easier in these tracks. Gradually Dave started to fall off the pace. I would be spacing out in my own world telling myself to keep moving forward and to ignore the sleepiness and I would occasionally look back to make sure we were all together. I look back and I can see Dave has faded way back. So we wait and Dave wanders up and says he is feeling fine physically but he keeps falling asleep. He says he is walking along and the next thing he knows he is just standing there a little disoriented and realizes he has fallen asleep. He comes to and catches up and it replays itself all over again. Jen says she is fighting the sleep monsters a bit too. I feel tired and I really want to lie down, but I haven’t been attacked yet.
We go a while longer on the service roads and now the monsters get me. This was a first for me. I have never fallen asleep walking. I used to sleep walk as a kid, but this was much different. I would walk in the trough telling myself “keep walking, keep walking” and then I would close my eyes and try to grab a few winks while walking. You would stumble around like you were really drunk, but the trough would keep you moving in the right direction. It was humorous to watch the headlamps bounce around erratically. It looked like drunks walking out of the bar at closing.
There was a steep hill full of snow on my right that I kept dreaming was a bank of clouds that was being lit by the lights from the city below. It was just the light from my head lamp indirectly lighting the snow. Each time it would take me a while for my head to clear and for me to realize that it was a snow bank and not clouds. One time I woke up standing still in the trough with my hands out like I was trying to catch my balance. I had dreamed that I was walking off a cliff. The best was I dreamt that I was walking through a bunch of crushed green Gatorade cups like you would see at an aid station in a run. It was just the foot prints in the snow but my mind turned them into Gatorade cups…crazy.
By about 5 we were back on the trail in the trees and this seemed to stimulate our brains enough that we were able to shake the sleep monsters. By seven it was beginning to get light and I felt a lot better. As we were finally coming off Tiger we went through some strong wind and were pelted by freezing rain. I am not complaining because we were only in it for just under an hour and that was it for the harsh conditions, we really lucked out.
We walked the Issaquah Hobart road, went through a neighborhood and were on Squawk Mt. The trail was silky and relatively snow free which was awesome after an entire night of walking in the snow. It didn’t take too long to get across Squawk and onto Cougar Mt. Jen called Rick and let him know our progress and he headed out to meet us at the Red Town Trail head on the other side of Cougar. We made quick work of Cougar and were all glad to see Rick. I think it was about 12:30 when we met him. Jen had a sore knee and Dave had a family function to get to so Rick was nice enough to accompany me on the ride back to their house. It was a good thing because I would have had a heck of a time working my way from Newcastle across I-90 through the U-District to Green Lake. Rick road my legs off and trying to keep up was challenging, but it felt great to crank the heart rate up a bit. It also became clear that I need to start logging more hill climbing hours. I would hit a slight incline and the legs would disappear. The hard ride home took about an hour forty and took what I had left out of me which is the way you should end a quality outing.
Final stats were 94 miles which broke down to about 64 bike miles and 30 trekking miles. The elevation gain was a little over 7,000 feet and it took just under 19 and a half hours.
The take way lesson was I need a much better bike lighting system, I need to work the hills a lot more especially on the bike, and I need to adapt the shoulders to carrying weight.
Questions – how in the world do you do this for another 6 to 9 days straight? PQ is going to average around 10 to 12K of elevation gain a day – HOLY COW – OUCH. Rick told me that the sleep monsters are much more difficult to deal with from day 3 on. All I can say to that is WOW! I guess I will figure out how to deal with that when the time comes. Preparing for PQ is one interesting endeavor.
I hope your weekend was great. ~ Roger
