Top 10 Lists on the Internet

Last year my wife and I planned to climb Mt. Rainier and we had a wonderful time doing so over the 4th of July weekend. This year my wife wanted to do the Rim-2-Rim hike in the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately wildfires in the area have burned the North Rim lodge and so the area will be closed at least until the spring of next year. That makes it tough to do a Rim-2-Rim with one of the rims closed. Now we are looking at alternative trips as it is really depressing not being able to carry out our plans.

Today my wife sent me 15 bucket-list hikes in the USA. While not all of the hikes are in National Parks, some of them are and it is a pretty good list.  I like how it is divided into hard-moderate-and-easy hikes so you can choose them depending upon your ability. While I like the list, my bucket-list of hikes is much different. Yours probably is too. If you do an Internet search for bucket-list hikes, none of the lists will be the same unless one plagiarizes another. That's okay. All Internet lists should only be treated as a starting point, allowing you to cherry pick your favorites and leave off those you have done or know are not your cup of tea.

In my YouTube channel, I list a number of ski areas that make various top 5 lists. While one may think that I view myself as the absolute expert on each of the resorts, the real power of the channel is when others comment about how their list is different than mine. When it comes to the steepest areas in North America I talked about why I removed Squaw Valley, which is now Palisades Tahoe, from the list. I enjoy the friendly comments with others asking me to add it back. I also enjoy all of the other recommendations, which is why I skied Kicking Horse a year ago. The ski area did not disappoint and made it onto an updated list.

When you come across lists of any kind on the Internet, remember that they are not sacred nor infallible. Instead treat them as mere suggestions. They are starting points for you to create your own lists. My wife and I have a list of vacations we would like to take. As we come across lists of interesting places, we see if there are any additions or changes we need to make. Ultimately our list will become better because of the suggestions of others.

Different Vacations

For the past year I have been training to climb Mt. Rainier. Now that the trip is over I find myself with a lot of extra time in the evenings and on weekends. This is both a blessing and a curse. While the training for climbing a mountain overwhelmed my schedule, it provided a needed focus in my life. While I have another vacation approaching, it is much less physically demanding.

In September I will be headed to Disney World with two of my grandchildren and wife. I am making sure to keep up on my evening walks so we won't get tired by all the walking we plan to do. I am also leveraging online resources to help plan the event. With Mt. Rainier, I utilized a lot of material from the Uphill Athlete. With Disney World, there are a lot of YouTube videos to help with the preparation. Fortunately most of the work can be done on the computer while relaxing on the couch.

Tomorrow starts a week of getting on the Internet early and making dining reservations to maximize my grand-kids' time with princesses and themed meals. It won't be nearly as physically draining as waking up early and hiking a thousand vertical feet. To be honest, I miss the physical preparation.

I had a friend ask if I am going to let my physical fitness decline now that my Mt. Rainier trip is over. I don't think I can as I have come to enjoy being able to walk up hills faster than I ever have before. As soon as we get some early season snow, I plan to hike up Alta with my skis and do my best to avoid rocks on the way down. There are also a lot of mountain peaks in the area that we couldn't climb earlier in the summer because of dangerous snow. The snow is all but gone and so my wife and I plan summit some of them in the coming days.

Ultimately I need another physical vacation in the next year to train for. Do I pull out my bike and plan for a century ride (that would be 100-miles in a single day) or try for another mountain? My wife has asked about doing Mt. Whitney in California or perhaps Mt. Adams in Washington. Ultimately I have worked hard to achieve this fitness level and while I have joked about sitting on the couch for the next 3 months, I'd prefer to continue improving my fitness.

Learning From Failure

We are often told that we learn the most from our failures. While it may be true, that doesn't make failure easy to deal with. This past weekend my wife and I attempted to summit Mt. Rainier in Washington. We have been training for a year and both felt prepared to make the 9,000 vertical-foot trek up the mountain reaching a height of 14,410 feet. As you can guess from the title of today's entry, we didn't quite make it.

We signed on with the RMI guide service at the end of last summer and then trained relentlessly to make our goal. I would say that I bordered on over training every week. During the process of our lengthy hikes, I developed a nasty case of Plantar Fasciitis. In the course of the year, I have tried a number of remedies and the one that seems to work the best is good old fashion stretching. I guess I need to add that to my daily exercise list. Who knew? Probably about every exercise instructor on the planet. Now I have first-hand experience in why stretching is important.

My wife and I felt very prepared for the climb and had a workout schedule that had us increasing our long hikes progressively higher each week. Often times we would have to cut our distance short because of snow. In hindsight, we should have embraced the snow and continued upwards with crampons and ice axes. Instead we turned around, hiked down, and then back up to reach our vertical goal. As part of the training from RMI before starting our climb, they taught us how to walk up and downhill safely in the snow. As an avid skier, I thought I had those skills already. I didn't but now I do.

On one of our last hikes preparing for Mt. Rainier, we hiked to the top of Mt. Olympus in Utah. It is a hike of about 4200 vertical feet over the course of 3.5 miles. The last quarter mile is more of a rock scramble than a hike and rock climbing skills come in handy. You go up about 700 vertical feet in that short distance and that turned out to be incredibly useful as there is a similar section on Mt. Rainier, only much longer and sketchier.

So what went wrong? We started hiking Mt. Rainier at around 10am on Friday morning and hiked about 5,000 vertical feet up to Camp Muir over the course of 4 miles. We knew about that as that is what we trained for. The whole team took a nice pace that we all felt we could keep and made it to our stopping point at about 3pm. Then we got some food and rested. Some of us even fell asleep. Then at 10pm our guides came into our bunkhouse and told us to get ready for the push to the summit. Unfortunately, I never trained for that. I probably should have as there is a mental element I didn't quite anticipate.

We started hiking up the Cowlitz Glacier and about 100 yards later, I had a wind gust blow me off the trail and onto the ground, spraining my ankle in the process. I jumped right back up and didn't tell anyone about my ankle as I didn't want to end my climb that early. We continued up to the Ingraham Glacier where we took our first break of the night. The guides asked how we felt and I wanted to continue.

Next came Disappointment Cleaver, an aptly named feature on the mountain. For those that don't know, a cleaver is an outcropping of rock that cuts a glacier in two. Imagine a shark fin slicing massive blocks of ice as they slowly work their way down the mountain. A cleaver has the advantage that you are walking on solid ground instead of ice and snow. Unfortunately that rock is crumbly and very unstable. It made the rock scramble on Olympus look super easy. We fought our way to the top of the cleaver and had our second break of the night. I felt spent. I tried to eat a Snickers bar as I needed calories and food. My stomach politely informed me not to put anything else in it or I would experience a Technicolor burp. Who can't finish a Snickers bar? Well this is one instance I couldn't. When the guides asked me if I could continue, my stomach said no, my ankle said no, and before I could stop my mouth, it said no loud enough for the guides to hear. I had reached my high point of the trip. I had thought everyone else had too as the winds gusted into the 50 mile per hour range. The guides almost made that the high point for the entire group. Fortunately for the others, they persevered to the top.

In hindsight I know I could have made it to the top. Getting all the way to the bottom safely is a different story. If I had gone to the top, my other team members would have gotten to see a helicopter rescue and that isn't good for anyone. Instead I safely made my way back to Camp Muir with several other climbers and a guide. I waited for the rest of the team to descend and then headed all the way back to the parking lot. Fortunately I could glissade below Camp Muir which is a fancy way of saying I slid down on my butt. It is a highly effective means of travel on snow and I highly recommend it. I don't think my ankle could have made it down without it.

The final lesson I learned from this adventure is that I need to be in better fitness condition. While I exercise a lot and am in better shape than 98% of the general population, I really need to be better than 99%. Upon hearing about our adventures, my daughter now wants to give it a shot. Perhaps I will try to improve my fitness and accompany her. If not, I may give up mountain climbing and enter a few pie eating contests instead.