The Wind is Your Friend!

The Wind is Your Friend!

"Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.  Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.  The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves." ~John Muir

Wasn’t John Muir fantastic?  I’ve read many of his stories and he had this way of looking at nature and weather with optimism and positivity.  I think of the quote above often when the winds are blowing snow, rain, dirt and anything not connected to the earth into me.

We’ve had some great times this winter training in the outdoors.  It seems this season has been unusually windy or maybe I’ve just been hanging out in the great outdoors enjoying it more.  Wind is the great equalizer and dealing with it is as much mental as it is physical.

A couple of weeks ago, we went winter camping with some friends outside of Nederland.  It was a rare mid-afternoon Friday departure for me and I was looking forward to spending a few days in a tent.  We arrived at the parking lot, got our gear in order and headed off with big packs wearing snowshoes.  It was cold and windy so a normally busy parking lot only had a few cars in it and most people were heading in the opposite direction on the trail.

 

It wasn’t until we got a half mile or so in that we noticed quite a few freshly fallen evergreens.  In fact, a couple of places along the trail were blocked by trees and it looked as though a bomb went off or some huge Yetis had pushed them down.  Yes, it was quite windy and we were keeping an eye out for other trees ready to fall.

Reaching our goal for the night just before sunset, we worked hard to get our camp set up and make dinner.  Our tent has this great vestibule which is large enough for 4 adults to cook dinner and eat in relative comfort.  We even had enough space for the dog.  Sitting there sharing stories of past adventures was fun and we were looking forward to what the next day would bring.

That night brought wind and the next day brought wind, lots of it.  We climbed up to Niwot Mountain and as luck would have it, we found even more wind than we expected.  I think the speed which knocks a reasonably fit adult off balance is in the 60-mph range.  During one memorable gust on the summit, I almost got blown right off my feet.

Once we had our fill of the wind’s “freshness”, we headed down to camp, got some lunch and snowshoed in the trees for a few miles.  That afternoon started to settle down and the woods got a bit quieter.  Finishing the day in our tent like the day before, we reveled in our abilities to suffer with the best of them and return with sanity mostly intact.

Our tracks looked like this:

A couple of weekends ago, Kriss and I took a nice training hike up our beloved neighborhood glacier and on to Kingston Peak.  It’s a four mile, three-hour round trip with heavy packs including an elevation gain of a couple thousand feet and topping out over 12,000 ft.  It’s the perfect way to get some exercise on a weekend day morning before taking care of the usual household tasks like hauling and splitting wood, servicing the generator and plowing the driveway.

It was a cold morning with the thermometer reading in the teens at the house so easily single digits on and above the glacier.  The winds were ferocious!  30 MPH sustained, with concentrated gusts on the glacier in the 50’s.  We moved quickly only stopping twice on the way up to add layers as we became more and more exposed to the wind.  There’s a stretch about midway up the glacier where the deep U-shape concentrates the wind and you realize where the gaps in your clothing and headgear are.

Dropping our snowshoes and climbing the south-east side of Kingston, we had the wind in our faces and sun over our left shoulders.  It’s a crazy thing but just the location of the sun affected whether we were warm or cold.  My gloves were black and my left hand was in the sun and warm.  My right hand, however was shaded and quite cold.  In a colder place on a taller mountain, just this subtle difference could determine whether you get frostbite or not.

 

Reaching the summit, we took a quick look around and got the heck out of there.  We bombed down to our snowshoes and were greeted by slowing winds and warmer temps.  Finally, a chance to get a snack and a drink and shed some clothes.  This was clearly the coldest day we’ve had up there after at least 50 visits over the years.  Suffering by any other name is still challenging but if you take the viewpoint of John Muir, it’s not so bad.

 

Training Totals

Distance Running, Hiking or Climbing  - 396 Miles

Total Elevation Gain – 112,691 ft

Mountaineering Work – 1,096,657 PFM-HR

Number Pushups – 7,331

Number Sit-ups – 10,510

Time Weightlifting – 39.9 hours