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Fall: the Limited Edition

Fall is my favorite! The brilliant colors, the crisp leaves, the cool breezes with a hint of winter on their breaths.

As much as I love this season it always makes me feel a bit panicky. Since fall is a limited time offer, and the threat of winter only elevates its exclusivity, any moments not spent out in its golden and fiery hues seem a bit wasted. Once I sense that the countdown to the chill has begun, like the ticking of a bomb that is set to go off, I feel compelled to shove as much of autumn into my life as possible while I still can.

This year our fall here in Utah has been unbelievable. The weather has been beautiful and unseasonably warm so I have been especially determined not to squander what precious little is left of the loveliness. Jason and I, therefore, biked three different canyons in three consecutive weekends in a blatant attempt to savor the smell of decaying leaves and enjoy the slanted autumn sunshine: Millcreek, American Fork, and Provo. But biking alone didn’t satisfy my craving to be out in the midst of fall so we crammed as many other outdoor activities as we could into our already stuffed schedule.

The Millcreek Pipeline Trail was, as always, completely delightful but we got a little too distracted by the majestic scenery and somehow forgot about the early approach of darkness this time of year. So the last couple miles back to our car we had to ride like the Flash as our vision became increasingly obscured by the night. (Word to the wise: biking along the side of a cliff on a trail that’s a foot wide does not work well in the dark.)

Size isnMillcreek may be a smallish canyon bit it
Size isn't everything. Millcreek may be a smallish canyon bit it lacks nothing in beauty.
I smashed my rather
I paused on the Pipeline to patch up a booboo.

The Great Western Trail to Pine Hollow up American Fork Canyon, one of our most frequented paths, was our second ride. We biked to my favorite meadow and even though its now-dry grasses weren’t nearly as beautiful as they are in the spring it was still a nice secluded spot for a quick break and snack.

Jason thought the trail surrounding the meadow was not nearly
Jason thought the trail surrounding the meadow was not nearly as much fun to ride as the meadow itself.
Jason
Jason is quite the crazy biker. He cruised down this tricky part.

Big Spring Hollow Trail up South Fork in Provo Canyon, the last ride in our three week bike extravaganza, was deliciously colorful and incredibly warm (high 70s). We hadn’t done this trail in a few years and I distinctly remembered the uphill section being very challenging. This time, however, it was no big deal. I guess recently training for a half marathon does have its perks. Oh the ego boost!

Big Spring Hollow was divine!
Big Spring Hollow was divine...even the pesky uphill section.
Ah...blue sky, red leaves...beautiful!
Ah...blue skies, red leaves...beautiful!

In addition to biking pretty much everywhere, we went rock climbing up American Fork Canyon with my friend David and took on the face of Eight to Eleven where his brother Danny fell and shattered his ankle bone last time we climbed. The memory of that accident gave me a lot of unexpected nerves as I tried to scale up at his fall spot. I got stuck once, probably partially due to my fear and partially due to my short arm span, and had to come down. But the boys convinced me to try once more and this time I relaxed and conquered it. I’m glad they didn’t let me give up because I am not prone to going easy on myself; I’m sure I would have regretted not pushing to the top…not to mention the bantering I surely would have received from those two had I called it quits.

Jason rocked Eight to Eleven.
Jason rocked Eight to Eleven. Being part monkey does come in handy now and then.
Two manly men posing together on a cute little bridge
Two manly men posing together on a cute little bridge; now that's not something you see everyday.

We also took our friend Arvinder, who is visiting from India, up to Timpanogos Cave. He’s not accustomed to trekking straight up mountains but his heart survived the over 1,000 ft ascend and we all enjoyed the unusual innards of this national monument together. Since we were already up in the canyon, after we hiked to the cave we opted to take a detour to Cascade Springs on the way home and see how the season was altering that landscape. I have to say that although Cascade Springs is quite picturesque there are many places in our surrounding canyons that are just as lovely, if not more so, that don’t have dozens of people milling about them. So I think I’ll pass on Cascade Springs next time. Man! Good thing I have feet and a bike to take me to where you only have to do crowd control on chipmunks and mosquitoes.

Timp Cave: I wished my insides looked so sweet!
Timp Cave: I wish my insides looked so sweet!
I took a moment on the way back to chill in the cool twisted
I took a moment on the way down from the cave to chill in the cool twisted branches of this tree.

Fall may be terminal but while it’s still kicking I hope I will get more opportunities to bike, hike, climb, or just read a good book in the backyard. It would be a shame to squander a season so colorful, pleasant, and fleeting.

Rachel October 24, 2010 No Comments

The Gait Keepers

My racing team from last summer got together to run the Utah Marathon Relay again this year. The Utah Marathon Relay takes place in South Jordan every September and, as the name suggests, it’s the length of a marathon, 26.2 miles. Fortunately, the course is split into 5 loops so each team member only has to run 5.2 miles, which makes the race completely doable even for the non-nutsy. Although our team hit some unexpected snags this year, we still managed to beat our previous time. Yeah us!

That look on Jeremy
That look on Jeremy's face is the look of a man that knows he may lose bowel control at any moment.

Jason, Fran, and I were all very prepared for this race since we had run a half marathon just a month before. Nothing makes five miles look like a walk in the park like running thirteen. Jason’s brother Jeremy seemed reasonably ready for the event as well, though he didn’t train as much for it as last year. I think running five miles didn’t scare him this year since he knew he could do it so the fear of being the humiliated downfall of our team didn’t inspire him as it had previously. My brother Drew, after he barely survived last year’s race, intended on thoroughly training for his run this year but somehow those good intentions never resulted in actual exercise. The race got closer yet his plans to prepare remained in the indefinite future so he only got in a few pathetic runs before the relay.

The first runners waited valiantly in the cold for the race to start.
The first runners waited valiantly in the cold for the race to start. I'm there somewhere in their midst freezing my tukus off.
Drew looks surpsingly peppy here as he pases the 4 mile mark.
Drew looks surprisingly peppy here as he passes the 4 mile mark.

But, ready or not, our race day came and that’s when things got a little messy. The day before the relay I was showing signs of catching a cold: headache, sore throat, stuffiness…the usual. Although a cold wouldn’t stop me from racing I was concerned that it would hinder me from doing my best. Then Jeremy came down with something in the wee hours of the morning on the day of the race that, unlike my cold, was a showstopper. He got a bout of food poisoning and warmed up for the relay by running to the toilet over and over again during the night. While he still showed up bright and early at the starting point ready to run there was no telling if the large quantities of Pepto-Bismol he had downed would be enough to keep all his fluids in their proper places inside of him. We had him do a little trial run across the parking lot to see how his stomach held up and that didn’t go over well so Jason and I collectively decided that he needed to abort. Running and the runs may sound like things that go together but they really aren’t. With Jeremy off to be buddies with his bathroom we had to hurry and find another runner. Luckily, we know an abnormal number of active people so Fran was able to find a friend willing to be a last minute addition to our team.

I came zipping through the finish line at 50 minutes and 35 seconds
I came zipping through the finish line at 50 minutes and 35 seconds. I'm pretty proud of that; my short legs had to work hard for it.

So after all that how did we do? Being a little under the weather had no ill-effects on my performance; in fact the opposite surprisingly seemed to be true. I shaved about a minute and half off my time from last year and crossed the finish line in just over 50 minutes. This trend continued for my teammates who all bettered their runs from last year, even Drew was about a minute faster than the year before. (I’m sure not getting lost helped.) Jason’s time was the most impressive though. He was almost five minutes quicker this year than the preceding at 41:38. Way to go Jas!

Team Name
Team name? The Gait Keepers. Average Team Speed? 9:15/mile.
With about an 8 minute
With about an 8 minute/mile average, Jas was flying! This picture makes it look like I might mean that literally.

All our slightly quicker paces paid off. We finished at 4 hours and 2 minutes, which was 11 minutes faster than our previous time of 4 hours and 13 minutes. This put us in 82nd place out of 124 teams. Not too shabby considering Andrew was in our group. LOL. Just kidding Drew…mostly.

Here
Here's my dramatic handoff to Fran. Cue the Chariots of Fire music.

Good job everyone! May we rock even more awesome next year!

Rachel September 22, 2010 No Comments

Rock and Bone

Jason and I are extreme sports enthusiasts. We gladly put ourselves in potentially painful situations again and again for the thrill of speeding through the trees or the challenge of a beautifully chaotic gravelly slope. However, we didn’t expect our first experience with a new extreme hobby, rock climbing, to be quite as wild as it turned out.

Jason was a good monkey boy
Jason was a good monkey boy. Those long legs and arms came in handy as he searched for crevices to aid his ascent.

Jason’s grandparents spent many of their retirement years repelling down cliffs and setting up ropes courses so when they passed away they left behind a lot of climbing gear. Jason and I ended up inheriting this equipment; I think mostly because everyone in the family thought we were the only ones that might actually use the stuff. They were probably right. We supplemented our inheritance with some new gear and we were ready for our first outdoor climbing adventure.

You might recognize that rope from pictures of Nana and Gramps
You might recognize that rope from pictures of Nana and Gramps repelling. Yup, it's the same one.

One of my good friends, David, is an avid climber so we were happy that he agreed to take us climbing with him. For our first climbs we went up American Fork Canyon to the south face of Hard Rock. There are two great walls for beginners in this cluster of cliffs: Rockapella (5.7) and Stoic Calculus (5.8).

Don
Jason and David may look like goofs but when it came to climbing they were all business. David made it up Stoic Calculus in under 2 minutes. Yup, he's a crazy spider monkey.

That morning David also brought his brother, Danny, and a buddy, Hamilton, with him so we had a good climbing group and we had a great time scaling 80 feet up those two sheer faces until our arms and legs could take no more. Compared to climbing in indoor facilities, which we have done before, it was pretty exciting to clamber up real rocks. I’m mildly afraid of heights so I thought that phobia might decrease my enjoyment of this sport but I didn’t find those elevations nearly as terrifying as I thought I would. Sure, looking down from 80 feet up was a little intimidating but looking around you at 80 feet up was amazing.

Rockapella is only a 5.7 so it was
Rockapella is only a 5.7 so it was a relatively easy climb even for a beginner like me but the view from the top was still spectacular.

On my second climb, which was on Stoic Calculus, my rope got caught on a ledge when I was about 50 feet up and I couldn’t free it. A few minutes later, while it was still jammed, I slipped. (Yeah, it figures that the only time I lost my footing while we were climbing happened to be when my rope was stuck.) When I slipped the caught rope made me swing down and around and slam into the wall. I won’t lie, it didn’t feel awesome but I just got a few cuts, scrapes, and bruises from the affair so my injuries weren’t anything out of the ordinary for me.

Stoic Calculus was a little trickier than Rockapella but it was still completely doable, even for the wholly unskilled.

When we were ready for a new challenge we decided that an adjacent wall, Eight to Eleven, looked pretty sweet for the climbing. Danny began to lead the rope for this climb but when he was about 30 feet up, and trying to reach the next bolt, he slipped and fell roughly 10 feet onto a small outcropping. Although this wasn’t a big fall, he landed funny and immediately started yelling in a panic that he had broken his ankle. (Yeah, that’s the edited version of what he said. For the sake of the children I will leave it at that.) No one questioned whether he actually had or hadn’t, we simply got beneath him and helped lower him to the ground. It was instantly apparent, upon inspection, that his ankle was already swelling and did require medical attention so our next task became getting him back down the narrow mountain trail we had traveled to reach Hard Rock. We hadn’t hiked too long to get to these cliffs but still, getting Danny back to the parking lot was not a simple or easy task. Jason and Hamilton both took a side and supported him, David held his injured foot up as much as possible, and I brought up the rear carrying as much gear as I could. Our strange group slowly made its way downhill and where the pathway tapered here and there we became odder still. When the trail narrowed too much to allow our makeshift man-crutches to squeeze through Danny had no choice but to slide on his bum while David continued to walk backwards in front of him struggling to elevate his jacked-up appendage. Finally, after a very laborious descent, we got Danny back to his car and off to the hospital.

Danny was showing off his Tom Cruise moves
Danny was showing off his Tom Cruise moves just minutes before he fell.

It turned out that he had done more than just broken his ankle bone-he had shattered it and severed his ligament almost all the way down to his big toe. He had to undergo emergency surgery the next day to screw his bone back together. Poor guy.

Both Jason and I
Both Jason and I had a blast climbing but, sadly, he was faster than me. Sigh.

While all of this made our first outdoor climbing experience a very eventful and memorable one, I hope our next time will be a little less exciting. But this accident didn’t frighten me and Jason into giving up our newfound hobby, as it might have with lesser noobs. We plan on going climbing again as soon as David will take us. After all, the beautiful things in life are worth a broken bone now and then…but I do think I’ll get a climbing helmet. I’d prefer to have my cranium remain in its unbroken state.

Rachel August 21, 2010 No Comments
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