Sunday, July 10, 2011

Checking out the snow at Mt. Baker/Artist Point

Decided to drive up and check it out for ourselves, since we've been hearing so much about the snow pack at Artist point and the fact that they decided not to plow to the parking lot this year. The parking lot at the ski area is open and snow free. The road that continues up is barricaded. We heard a volunteer forest service person say that the next parking lot up should be plowed out possibly next weekend and probably will be open by two weeks. That is the parking lot that the old "slush cup" event used to empty into. That was fun to watch, anything and everything was skied into a little pond in the early summer. Here's a quote from the History of Mt. Baker website.

"On July 4, 1948, the Koma Kulshan ski club organized a giant slalom race and promoted the event as the only ski tournament in the country during the month of July. This was the unofficial beginning of a long tradition of spontaneous and merry July 4th "Slush Cup" events that lasted into the 1980"s until the U.S. Forest Service alleged damage to the alpine environment and shut down the Slush Cup."

We walked past the barricade up the road to see how far the plow was.
(Remember just click on the pictures to enlarge them!)


                                                               Not very far -



Table mtn. in the distance with a cute little snow hat on top.
This photo was taken at the first parking lot looking towards
Bagley lake.


This photo was taken on Canyon creek road
(which is closed to vehicles because of road damage)
Wonderful example of "goats beard" on the trees.

Just a side note update on my calf injury -  Regular walking is fine and this last week I was able to do a "very" short hike and a 13 mile bike ride without any twinges. Yay, no running yet, but at least "some things" are possible!

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Western States 100 (trail run) - can you say inspired?!?

I watched the live stream last night of the overall male winner Kilian Jornet of Puigcerda, Spain run the 100 mile distance in 15 hours and 34 minutes 24 seconds. The first woman finisher was Ellie Greenwood of Banff, BC Canada with a time of 17 hours and 55 minutes 29 seconds and she was 18th place overall - wow!!!

Click here for photo's of the course and elevation profiles

Here are the highs and lows of the course -

The start was, Squaw valley: 6,229 ft (1,899 m)
The highest point on the course was, Watson's monument: 8,713 ft. (2656 M)
The lowest point on the course was, No hands bridge: 543 ft. (166 m)
The Auburn finish was, 1292 ft. (394 m)

The first 50 and over woman (setting a new 50 - 59 record, breaking the old record of 21 hours 58 minutes 37 seconds) was, Meghan Arbogast of Corvallis, Oregon with a time of 18 hours and 50 minutes 19 seconds AND she placed 29th overall. The next woman of the over 50's was Angie Pozzi of Granite Bay, California with a finish time of 24 hours and 37 minutes. Such a huge time gap between the two.

I thought the woman's 2nd place finish was really exciting, because after running 100 miles they ran in just a couple seconds apart. Kami Semick of Bend, Oregon took second with a time of 18 hours and 17 minutes 34 seconds and Nikki Kimball of Bozeman, Montana at 3rd with a time of 18 hours and 17 minutes 39 seconds. There was a story of a mama bear on the trail protecting her cub that may have slowed down some of them. This is according to the chat window that was going beside the video stream. I don't know if that was actually the case, but it does make it a bit more daring. *added later Kami's blog about the bear and the close finish. click here for her post

Such a hardcore group, I'm in awe and admiration for all of them and their accomplishment.