Automatically, you trigger your wiper fluid and blind youself. Cursing, you resolve not to be so foolish again. But it happens, again and again.

Underlying principle #1: The cue that reveals a problem can be created by a high-demand environment, and that same environment makes immediate correction the wrong move.

Underlying principle #2: Our inability to tolerate momentary imperfection leads us into deeper imperfection as we try to extinguish our discomfort.

The antidote:

“Is this really so bad?”

“What is making this looks so bad right now?”

“Do I need to fix this, or just learn to be comfortable with it?

“When is the best time to fix this?”

The post Note to Self: Cleaning Windshields appeared first on Mountain Lessons.

It was a hot morning in the mountains today. I almost didn’t go, didn’t bother to hitch up the sled and drag it up to Dutchman because the snow level overnight was high and the cameras in the lots looked wet and gloomy. But supposedly it had snowed some up high and the rest of my week is spoken for, so off I went.

I sledded up through dense wet cloud goop, goggles fogging and my parka wetting out. Touring into Broken Top bowl the clouds began to break and the heat came into full effect. The sun was strong, and the little bit of clouds were keeping it ricocheting around like a microwave.

This season has been so odd. I really hope that we get to count this as an anomaly and not the new normal. It’s March 2nd, and neither the snowpack nor the weather are midwinter. A better mindset for the day was an early spring outlook, planning for everything to fall to pieces once the heat ramped up.

I’d wanted to go explore on the West Face, but as I set skintrack up the East facing terrain I quickly decided that I didn’t want to return though the area after it had warmed more. After some cornice kicking and ski cutting, I decided that the instability was only within the 6 cm of new snow, and manageable at that. Hot pow turns let back into the clouds.

I headed for the only piece of shade, and quickly too. Natural avalanches were starting to waterfall off the the cliffs, and some rockfall too. Time to punch my ticket and get clear before the glue came further undone. I’d never been up 3 O’clock couloir, but it’s due West aspect and the adjacent large cliff were keeping it free from the roasting sun. Setting a careful track and bootpack to avoid lanes of debris from the adjacent face was entertaining in a not-too-dangerous kind of way.

The turns down were good. Clouds rolled back in and I couldn’t get a picture. I was running away to the sled through the glowing cloud light and made good time back to town for lunch and kid life. As usual, it was worth the trouble, a lesson that I’m slow to learn. Today was also an interesting exercise in changing plans and managing conditions that didn’t match the model I’d formed at the car. This kind of hazard is good to play with – like an avalanche sandbox.

The post Hot Box appeared first on Mountain Lessons.

It occurred to me today that I like to have books, to keep books, because it feels like I can capture and accumulate the reading I’ve done. Though reading is just a passing through, either you through a book or it through you, to see books on the book case feels like evidence of the work done.

I saw also that until now I’ve felt like my world only grew and amassed on the basis my own doings. Where I went, what I did, my training, my goals, and my achievements accrued to me.

Today I watched my son absolutely light up with the energy of achieving something that to him was a big step. In that moment, it felt like my world also grew. Anything that accrues to him accrues to me in some sense. Same deal with my daughter. But also, it’s not about me. It’s now about this bigger thing that we are together.

One of the feelings that accompanies adulthood is the feeling of doors closing. That sounds rough, but it’s just the consequence of making choices, of picking one thing over another. When I was a kid, when I though of almost anything, like climbing Mt. Everest or learning to fly a plane, I’d think that I would experience all of those things one day. Time felt infinite and there was no reason to expect otherwise. Now with two kids and a house and the job that I’ll probably keep to retirement I can anoint myself “middle-aged”.  Closing doors is essential in middle-age. If you keep all of your doors open, the house goes cold. I have to close the door on so many things to be a good dad, husband, and doc.

Then, poof! my kids hit an age where they start doing things I’ve never really done or never got to do at their age. For them, the doors are all open. For that bigger thing that we are together, those doors are all open. The contraction of possibility that I felt at 30 feels like expansion again at 37.

Maybe that brings us back to the books. George Martin wrote, “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.” Books, like kids, are sources of concentrated possibility. Our lives are more with them than without them. But I’m taking a stack of them to Goodwill to make some more space for the kids.

The post On Keeping Books appeared first on Mountain Lessons.

The Ramp

Spring 2024. An attractive little line on the West side of Broken Top. Somewhat minigolf but with great position and exposure. My fellow ER doc and fast-walking ski partner Noah was game to go give it a look. It turned out to be perfect corn. Good enough that we knocked out a second lap in time to get back for kids and work.

Midwinter, 2025

Post-surgery. I wasn’t allowed to really start skiing again until the second week of February this year, so I missed a lot of the very robust start to our season. Thankfully, there were still chances for a number of quite good powder days before the spring sun returned.

Diller Headwall

I’ve been remiss not to get out and ski more with Jason, founder and editor over at The High Route. He has been nothing but generous with his time, energy, and information.

At my suggestion, we started at 0515 from Pole Creek trailhead for a look at the Diller Headwall, the king line on Middle Sister and a temptation visible from town. He admitted that he thought we were heading up awfully early, but as usual, I needed to get back to the kids.

Sunrise was stellar, the day clear and calm. The snow was, however, quite firmly frozen. The first look that we got towards the Diller looked good. Smooooth. And still somewhat far away. It’s steep and East facing, so it catches the sun. Right?

Though walking up the chunky rime in the windy shade of the South ridge of Middle Sister didn’t increase my confidence at all that we’d have passable conditions, one look over into the Diller Headwall revealed perfectly smooth and just-ripe corn snow. The angle and the directness of the line gave us some heartburn, but I volunteered to “check” the first few turns and we were soon rewarded.

It was damn near perfect. You’d be hard pressed to talk me into skiing it in anything but, particularly now. We were even back at the car by noon and home by 1, just in time for nap lay down.

The post Pre and Post appeared first on Mountain Lessons.

Yesterday, November 2nd, I had surgery for only the second time in my life, and for the first time on my back.

Things moved pretty quickly this week. On Sunday, I developed a strong, sharp pain in my left hip that overnight became fairly severe and kept me from sleeping. By 4 am I was laying on the floor of my living room crying, trying not to wake up the house. On Monday, I was able to walk around, but the muscles of my left glute, thigh, and lateral calf were twitching. I went for a massage instead of going to jiu-jitsu, and it was absolute murder getting those muscles worked on.

Tuesday, I went to work in the ER. The pain was a little bit better, but during the day I started to feel numbness in my left foot. I wondered if I was walking wrong or just couldn’t feel my toes quite right. Wednesday morning, I went to see sports medicine and ER doc Mark Goodman, who was kind enough to squeeze me into a cancellation spot. He examined me, and only then did I see the weirdness: my left foot wasn’t working right. Walk on your tip toes, now walk on your heels. When I tried to walk on my heels, my left foot would slap to the floor. There was no holding it up, and I had no ability to extend my left big toe against any resistance. That was a weird thing to see. I felt like I gained a small appreciation for what it’s like to have a stroke.

Thursday evening I was back in the ER and worried that the weakness was getting worse, so at the end of my shift I decided to check in and get the MRI done. The result is below.

“IMPRESSION:
L5/S1 severe left and mild right neural foraminal narrowing secondary to disc extrusion with associated left foraminal disc extrusion fragment and compression of the exiting left L5 nerve root.”

Translation, my disc herniated and was pushing on my nerve. The fact that I had weakness to accompany it meant that there was more than just pain, there was a risk of permanent damage to the nerve if it didn’t improve soon.

I’m grateful that I am a member of the healthcare system, and because of that I’m able make things happen much faster than the public. If I had to navigate this without that insight, the only hope would have been to come to the ER when my symptoms became too worrisome and hope that I got connected with the care I needed. By Firday morning, I was able to see an ortho-spine surgeon who reviewed the MRI, recommended surgery vs an epidural injection and observation. I decided on the injection, not wanting to be too hasty to let someone cut on my back. But that evening, I spoke with a well-regarded neurosurgeon on the phone. “Don’t wait on weakness” she said, “with your activity level, you should only watch it if you’d be ok with having this deficit for the rest of your life”.

That sealed it. By Saturday morning 9am, 7 days after things first flared, I checked into the Bend ER and went from there to pre-op. In just an hour under the knife, a chunk of my disc came out through a one-inch incision in my back, and I woke groggily in recovery.

My foot isn’t normal, but it’s much, much better. maybe 80% better, and expected to improve. I was able to walk three careful miles today down along the river and back, and I have just soreness where I was cut, none of the searing nerve pain.  I’m lucky to be able to get this done so quickly, and lucky that we live in an era where this is possible.

Everyone has been asking me, what was the trigger? I have no idea. Since around 2020 I’ve had intermittent left-sided back and hip spasms that I attributed to pulling toddlers out of cribs or having some kind of muscle imbalance, dumb butt syndrome, or other musculoskeletal explanation. The spine surgeon that I saw on Friday told me that the spasms I’d been having in my glute were the symptoms of my budding disc bulge. The outside of a disc, the annulus fibrosis, is pretty tough stuff, like the belting on a tire. I must have weakened this over time with old injuries or repetitive movement patterns that weren’t ideal. Then, at some point last weekend, I finally popped the balloon. L5/S1 is the most common level for this kind of thing to happen because that’s where there’s the most load above the disc, and it’s also where the mobile spine articulates with the relatively immobile pelvis.

I think that I have probably suffered poor mechanics at that level for a while, with tight hip flexors (the plague of the sitting worker) putting me into an anterior pelvic tilt, squishing at that disc. Then over the last year and a half as I’ve added more weight and strength training to my regimen, I eventually taxed that disc beyond what it could handle.

I’m now looking at 6 weeks of no bending  or twisting of the spine and no lifting over 8 lbs (gallon of milk). I can’t put on my own socks or lift my kids. After that, it will be about 3 months until I can return to normal activities. Future-proofing myself is going to involve a ton of core strengthening and review of movement mechanics to avoid putting myself back in this position. And I’m probably going to ditch the deadlifting. Someone else can lift the 240 lb guy off the floor.

The post Floppy Foot appeared first on Mountain Lessons.

The post Broken Sun, Broken Top appeared first on Mountain Lessons.

If you know me in the real world, then you already know that last spring we plucked up our little family and transplanted from Salt Lake City to Bend, OR. We moved out of Utah because the pollution, the politics, the liquor laws, the water crisis, the traffic, the and the weird LDS culture were too much to tolerate. While I miss the long Wasatch couloirs that lead right to the road, and miss being close to my parents in Park City, Bend has been an incredibly positive change.

The other boon has been the opportunity to explore a new mountain range. Things are only fresh once, and I relish the experience of filling in my own mental map. The familiar has its own appeal, but one needn’t hurry to experience it, as the familiar gradually takes over the unknown until it becomes hard to find that freshness without traveling.

There have been many new things here. Approaches are longer. The snowpack is different, the weather different. Learning the right places and times to ski under different conditions requires experimentation and exploration

A few weeks ago we had an anomalous stretch of warm weather in early march that produced a short corn snow cycle. My ER group, in addition to being a great group of providers, is also populated in large part by backcountry skiers. I made plans with two to go sniff out some steep corn on Broken Top, and when we arrived to the cirque, another two of our docs were already high on the ridge, making a total of 5 ER docs on the mountain with nobody else around.

High clouds and wind portended the closure of the springtime window, so we sniffed around and decided on the east-facing line called Pucker Up, which was sheltered from the wind. Pucker Up lived up to its name, with a 45+ degree opening pitch and committing entrance. I hadn’t skied it before, so I was given the honor of first tracks.

Good steep corn was enjoyed by all, we headed to the central crater to find more. A bootpack up the tower couloir led us to the NE rim of the crater, and we opted for more smooth corn on the 1 o’clock face.

As I write this, the weather is true spring. Yesterday was 75f in town, and today temperatures will drop below freezing, bringing snow down to 2000′. Friday may bring the last powder skiing for the year, but you never know. Then begins the corn cycle that can extend to mid-summer, a benefit sorely missing in Utah.

The post A New Range appeared first on Mountain Lessons.

Earlier this summer, I was not very smart. Overwhelmingly excited to have relocated to the mountain biking mecca that is Bend, OR, I was going ham on a local trail while riding my hardtail bike like a fool and solidly planted my face and torso into a downed tree.

It’s always interesting to note what you think of in the brief, slow-motion moments that arise when you realize you’ve lost all control. The two thoughts that I recall are “I’m glad that I have disability insurance” and “I wonder what facial bone I’m going to break”.

Wrong I was. Though fat-lipped, my face was fine. The following day it was clear– I’d broken some ribs. At work I ultrasounded my chest and sure enough, I had one broken rib on the upper left chest and two on the lower right. My plan to race in the Cascade 100 was fried, as it hurt to breath more than just shallowly. I sheepishly emailed the race director, and he graciously let me shift my registration to the Ring of Fire, a 50-mile race in the late summer.

On Saturday, September 23rd, I lined up with about 250 other riders in a wildfire smoke haze to see how much my legs could tolerate. I hadn’t trained per se. I spent this summer riding, lifting, paddleboarding, and doing whatever sounded like the most fun and best aligned with the air quality. This was also my first real bike race, so I wasn’t sure of pacing or how my legs would feel. I resolved to race in thirds. First third: Use the energy and momentum of the start to go fast but not get fried. Second third: Smooth is fast. Third third: embrace the suck.

The course began with around 2000′ of climbing right out of the gate. The start was exhilarating chaos; a tight pack rolling fast on dirt roads, the clouds of dust and whirring freewheels made for great ambiance. We vied for best lines on the loose roads as the pack stretched out, and by the time we hit singletrack after a few miles, I had settled into a group of four riders of similar pace.

My heart rate was a source of some stress. I saw that I was averaging an HR around 172-174 for the first hour. I haven’t tested my HR zones recently, and in the past when reasonably trained, this is zone 3 for me, but I was worried that I was pushing a bit hard and would pay later. It seemed too early to rein it in though.

The other point of worry was fueling. It’s much harder to eat and drink on a mountain bike than on a road bike or while running. I started with my calories dissolved in my electrolyte drink and managed to force down both bottles before reaching aid, and that seems to have been effective, but man, it is hard to force it down while riding avoiding crashes.

I’d found a mantra of sorts, a mindset, that was working well for me. My guilty pleasure TV show is Formula 1: Drive to Survive. For those unfamiliar with the sport of high end car racing, the radio traffic between teams and drivers is broadcast and recorded. Interestingly, the prevailing culture seems to be absolute deadpan communication, no emotional excitement. Simple, brief, overtake, Verstappen is 1.2 back, pit now pit now. Even congratulations are without intonation. This voice came to me as my race mantra, a command that I recalled from the show: push mode. Push mode meant riding the edge of the what was clearly sustainable and looking for any small opportunity to make gains.

The descent from the race’s highpoint descents Flagline, a great technical enduro-style trail with some really choppy features. Here my local knowledge was useful, and I passed a few riders by using faster and knowing my way through the blind drops. More fast gravel road eventually led back through the start zone and over to aid. My split was slightly faster than I’d hoped and my legs felt good. The plan for first third had worked. Transition to second third.

I ate a handfull of potato chips, stuffed 3 gels in my jersey, pulled off my leg and arm warmers, and was out of aid in just a couple of minutes. The second half of the course started with some rocky XC riding before hitting the Tiddlywinks flow trail. It was a fun experience to ride Tiddly in race mode. Normally I meander around, jump off a rock here, whip off that jump over there, but this time I was staying low, squashing the jumps and laughing at the speed.

At the bottom of Tiddly, the course spills over to Larsen’s Trail, a rolling and gradually climbing XC romp. It was here that I started to have to earn my keep. Not accustomed to the punishment currently being doled out to them, the medial part of both of my quads started to try to cramp. Standing to try to stretch, I was ambushed by a retort from my calves. For several minutes, my legs were quite miserable. Here, experience racing other endurance sports served me. Experience said that the race is long, and things always change. Tolerate and observe. I forced myself to smile and relax, acknowledged that if need be I could finish through the cramping, and eventually, the pain subsided.

Enter final third. Climbing up the climb trail for Tyler’s traverse, I fell in with the gent who ultimately won the Masters 60+ category. I am inspired by the tow he gave me up this hill before I eventually passed. I hope to be so strong when I’m 60. The Tyler’s climb behind me, I started chasing down another rider on the miserable endless tiny hills of Dina Mo Hum trail.

The last four miles or so were on forest service roads that were starving for rain. Rutted and with 2-3 inches of loose sand on top, the riding was moderately miserable. Embrace the suck. Smelling the barn and feeling like I had juice left to give, I pulled past a few more riders who gave chase. I knew that the course turned downhill on good gravel at an approaching corner. I also knew that if I made it to that corner with a good gap I wouldn’t be caught and it would be fast flying to the finish. Push mode.

I cleared the corner with a solid gap and spun a solid 30 mph+ through to the line. 4 hours 24 minutes, 14th in open men’s and 19th overall. I’m very happy with that and look forward to trying to best it next year. The real question is whether to race the Cascade 100, the 24 hour race the week before, or both?

Kit Notes:
-2022 Specialized Epic Evo Pro
-Rapha XC jersey and pro team bibs with undershirt
-Specialized arm and leg warmers for 45 degree start
-2x 20oz bottles, starting with Gnarly Fuel2O carb drink
-Total 4×20 oz bottles, total ~900 calories

The post Ring of Fire 2023 appeared first on Mountain Lessons.

At the same time, SLC local Andy Dorais reinvigorated the route as an FKT loop in 2016 when he went under 6 hrs. Since then Payson McElveen, Quinn Simmons, and Keegan Swenson have swapped FKT bests and in the process created a consensus starting point and direction for the loop.

While I had no aspirations to come close to their times, I was interested to give the loop a go this year, as I’ve been riding more than running this summer (because bikes are fun) and this past Monday I finally lined everything up to give it a go.

Route Stats: 100 mi even, around 7100′ climbing with an average altitude around 4800′. Desert 4×4 road with lots of sand, deep ruts, rock slabs etc. FS-MTB recommended, leave the gravel bike at home. No available water during times of year when the route is rideable.

I left the Mineral Bottom Rd fork from Island in the Sky Rd right at 7am, headed counter-clockwise. It was barely dawn and around 43 degrees F. Mineral Bottom Rd undulates and descends to the Mineral Bottom switchbacks, and I made reasonable time, trying to take advantage of downhills to bank some pace without stressing my legs.

The sun still wasn’t on me when I hit the mineral bottom switchbacks and made the quick and committing descent down to the bank of the Green River. There you join the White Rim Rd proper, and it became immediately apparent that dry conditions meant widespread sand, with deep 2-3″ layers of moon dust laying thick over 100 yard sections of the road. Still, the sun was coming up, legs were fresh, spirits high.

Through the late morning I made the short and rough climb over “hardscrabble”, a little peninsula of a butte. This gains access to the central portion if the White Rim Road, which follows the geological formation of the same name. Here the scenery is less dramatic but for those places that the road comes to the rim’s edge.

Around 45 miles in I started to feel some early fatigue in the legs. The dust was also getting to my drivetrain, so I made a quick stop and lubed my chain before finally granting myself permission to use my earbuds. The middle hours passed reasonably quickly, and I only talked out loud to myself occasionally.

The altitude profile of the ride is a bit tough. Uphill both ways is a fair characterization.

I had it in my head that the middle, flatter section was more of a V-shape than the inverted V above. As I cruised through the 55 mi mark I was wondering when I would encounter the gradual, demoralizing uphill, not having realized that I’d already spun through it. I drank and fueled steadily, aiming for 200-300 calories and ~16oz water per hour.

Much of the variability of routes among early FKT attempts centered around when to tackle the roughest climb of the day, the Schafer switchbacks. While Andy Dorais and Quinn Simmons opted to begin their rides from the bottom of Schafer to knock it out while cool and fresh, subsequent FKTs started from the more logical start point on Island in the Sky Rd and consequently tackle Schafer towards the end of the ride.

I knew it was coming, and I was nervous. I’d ridden the climb once while I was doing a training with the National Park Service in 2021, and I knew it was rough, loose, and exposed.

When I rounded a small corner and could finally see the switchbacks, I settled in and buckled down. You reach the 1300′ climb at around 88 miles in, but it marks the end of the dirt. Once up Schafer, it’s about a mile before you hit the highway around 91 mi, and it’s pavement back to the start point.

Ultimately, Schafer wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Lesser grades, more shade, and good fueling to that point let me sit in my aerobic comfort zone and spin up, and I was up the core 1.25 mi of the switchbacks in about 19 minutes. Back on level dirt and smelling the barn, I picked up the pace to the road.

Here again my memory was wrong. I thought I got to go downhill… Instead it was a demoralizing series of rolling uphills over 8-9 miles with a 5-10 mph headwind. There was nothing to do but suck it up and get it done. As I passed the road to Horsethief Butte, I saw that my time was getting close to 8:45 and I made in an arbitrary goal to slip under. I hammered the last two miles at about 25 mph and eeked into the parking lot at 8:44:36 elapsed time.

My off-the-cuff guess was that I was going to land around 10 hrs, as I thought that a 10 mph average was probably where my fitness was, but having managed sustained higher speeds during the second half of the ride, I was very pleased to come in 1:15 faster at an average of just under 12 mph. I’m sure that with some concerted training effort and less enjoyment of the scenery that I could get down to 7-7.5 hours, but no thank you. The pieces came together for an awesome long ride without undue suffering, and I’ll take it.

Food: 2400 kcal divided in stinger waffles, Gu rocktane, stinger chomps, and one tube of shot blocks. Finished with 1 pack of stinger chews extra.

Water: 3.4L Gnarly hydrate electrolyte solution, 0.6 L gnarly Fuel2O carb drink, total 4L. Finished with about 2 oz extra.

Kit:
-Specialized Epic Evo Mtb running Specialized Ground Control tires
-Rapha Pro Team Training jersey, powerweave bibs, gilet, Specialized thermal engineered arm and leg warmers, body geometry grail full finger gloves
-Specialized Recon 3 shoe, spd cleat for XTR pedal
-USWE Outlander Pro 2l pack with hip pouch, phone pouch
-Repair kit: 2x tubolito lite tubes, co2 x 1, tire boot, tire lever, small rag, tiny bottle chain lube, small pump, specialized SWAT concealed carry tool in head tube, dynaplug race tire plugs.

The post White Rim in a Day appeared first on Mountain Lessons.

With this change, I’ll be sharing more here. The world of outdoors blogging, at least among those that I follow, has been getting pretty quiet. I worry that this is a product of changing attention spans and a world that pushes us towards short form, quick hitting media. I won’t proselytize, but I will recommend a trio of books for the interested: Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier, Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, and Four Thousand Weeks, by Oliver Burkeman.

If you like what I get up to here, welcome back.

Drought

It has been dry recently, very very dry. After a strong start to our backcountry season we entered January at around 110% of average snowpack. On the cold morning of January 1, I skied great powder in sub-zero temps. That was the beginning of the end. Since then we’ve had no meaningful snow, and we’re now around 75% of normal. Wind and sun have wrecked the snow while cold, clear nights are faceting everything in sight. The only upside is that the lack of snow has dropped the avalanche danger to near zero. It’s possible to get out on the big hills, provided you can make fun out of bad snow.

Alternatives

Thankfully, this winter I was also gifted some skate skis by my prents. As with any good alternate activity, its quality improves as the inverse of the reference activity. As the touring gets worse, the skating gets better. Some days it’s just better to skate in the sun than to chase after scraps.

As an aside, in my wilderness medicine fellowship I’m making some progress on an exciting and interesting project in avalanche research. It’s generating some interesting visuals as well. I’ll share more when appropriate, but here’s a taste for now.

Scraps

This week, my friend Nick VF, a medical school colleague and current EMS fellow in Pittsburgh is both visiting and insatiably interested in touring. With the help of beta from more-devoted-skiers-than-I, we found some high, north facing sugar to make some turns. Thanks for the inspiration, friend.

Until next time.

The post Coming Back appeared first on Mountain Lessons.