Death Valley Marathon

I’ve never wanted to run a marathon. There’s a few reasons for this; 1) I don’t like running. 2) Running for 3+ hours seems particularly onerus to me. The Death Valley Marathon/30k has some good points that counteract my dislike of running. 1) The run takes place in Titus Canyon, a beautifully narrow, remote section of DV. 2) With the exception of one section, which was probably about 2 or 3 miles long it’s all downhill, 15+ miles of downhill. 3) It takes place in beautiful Death Valley. So, after weighing the pros and cons being and some cajoling from Gant and Jared I signed up and decided to go for it.

The three of us were to meet up in DV somewhere on Friday night, check in and run early on Saturday morning and then spend the rest of Sat/Sun/Mon exploring. Jared and Gant both got there much earlier than me and being the high performance (read as: high maintenance) racing machines that they are, both brought race support crews to handle such tasks as pampering and pandering their fatigued little feet. So, with a full night of restful relaxation under our belts, Saturday morning dawned on Death Valley.

Seemingly on cue, when there’s a solution in need of a problem Gant came up with some unnecessarily complicated, not to mention blatantly illegal plan to get trucks and people here and there. He thought that we all caravan out to the end of Titus Canyon and park two trucks, then all seven of us pile into the last truck, with only six seat belts, hence the illegal part of the plan and drive to the beginning of the race. Somehow this was going to save us some time, somewhere along the trip. I’m not sure if it did save any time anywhere, but it did almost cost Jared and I a bus ride saving us 8 miles of running (which may have been his goal?). 99% of the competitors just took the bus ride to the start and at the end of the race took the bus ride back. Us three being that other 1% as far as I can tell. Gant’s plan pulled through though and we all made it to where we needed to be by the slimmest of margins.

Gant ran the full marathon while Jared, I and the rest of the 30k’ers were bussed up to White pass about 8 miles ahead of Gant and the Marathoners. With this head start we began the race. That extra 8 miles the marathon runners had to cover didn’t look all that interesting or fun to me. To start with it’s uphill, it’s not in Titus canyon, it’s on the approach to the canyon and it just looked drab to me, so I was personally glad I didn’t have to run it. Starting on White pass we started off downhill for about a mile or so and then began the only climb up to Red pass.

That climb was a bitch. There was snow on the ground, as we were topping out above 5,000 feet and it was cold as balls out there for the first hour or so. On the climb up to Red pass Jared left me in the dirt and I ran alone until the end of the race, 15 miles later. Once downhill on the backside of Red the entire race is a downhill or downslope. The snack tables were well placed and well stocked. The canyon was breathtaking. The requirement not to wear headphones while at first seemingly an arbitrary assholish move by management turned out to be quite nice. The canyon is so narrow at points you can hear the echo of your breath and your footsteps on the canyon walls.

This was the farthest either I or Jared had ever run. Our longest training run was 14 miles and it was rough. 18 miles went much smoother than I thought it would. When the canyon abruptly ended and we were on the final 3 miles I got my second wind. Jared was no more than 100 yards in front of me and I was flying to catch him. We ran together again for a few minutes and then I took off for the finish line. I came across the line so fast that Liz didn’t even get a picture of me doing it.

2 hours and 41 minutes after starting I was done. I felt great. Jared finished 1 minute behind me. I was 37th overall and 3rd in my age group. I am happy as hell about those results. When Gant finished at a brisk 4 hour and 10 minutes we sat around and waited for the racers to clear out the way so we could go get to the trucks that we had parked earlier, at this point I’m sure that Gant’s plan was as well thought out as my decision to enlist in the Corps.

Cut to acouple of hours later and we finally got our trucks and got out of Dodge. We went to spend the night at the Mesquite springs campground.

Here are the results.

Ubehebe crater, Teakettle Junction and the Racetrack

Sunday morning came too early, a bit too cold and with some light rain. This makes three years in a row that it’s precipitated on us in some form when visiting DV, from a snow storm on Telescope peak to snow at the Racetrack. Either way, it smelled like wet sagebrush and a new day. After another lengthy and laborious decision making process we decided to go to Scotty’s castle for the tour and then decide where to go from there after the tour.

The tour at Scotty’s castle was interesting. The castle itself was amazing and the guide did a nice job of passing along his knowledge to us. The only warning I would give is that the little deli there only takes cash, which is odd since the gift shop that shares the same building takes any kind of card.

At the Castle while Jared was trying to impress some random Rangers with his marathon exploits, without bothering them with the relatively inconsequential details like the fact that he ran the 30k, not the marathon. During this whole conversation he somehow worked some strange Palmdale desert magic and got some great information on an unpublicized canyon with the greatest collection of petroglyphs in the park.

I’m not going into details here, but we did scout the approach later that day and took a picture from afar. It’s an obscure little canyon, hardly looks like much but from what it was described as I wanted to make the hike despite the pain coming from my legs. I was outvoted and we went to Ubehebe crater and the Racetrack.

So, Ubehebe was cool. Scouted out little Hebe crater for the first time. Then after everyone got a good look at the crater and saw the location of Gant’s death defyingly dramatic descent and accompanying asinine ascent, some of us were caught napping. When everyone awoke we continued on the horrible, horrible road to the Racetrack .

Some of us climbed the grandstand , while others looked for moving rocks, and of course there was that 1% that stood around showing off medals to anyone and everyone that was looking, which I believe led us all to eventually split up. I took pictures.

Jared, Liz and I left after all that and journeyed back to a snowy Gorman. Gant and his crew stayed late into the night with raging bonfires, alcohol and hot dogs. I’m slightly jealous of them.

We are already planning a trip back to XXXXXX Canyon, in the next month or two. All in all, I loved the run and will be returning next year for it and would reccomend it to absolutely anyone, even if you don’t like running.

Album of pictures from trip

PS. I would be remiss if I did not mention the abundance of awesome that Gant produced in his Burrito Bar.

Gant, Vu and I went up with Dr. Dubowitz for some high altitude doctor crap.

Friday

It was Friday afternoon, Vu and I were slated to leave from for Yosemite at around 2:30pm; it was about 2:00 when Vu called to let me know he was having trouble picking up the rental bear canister from REI. Earlier in the week I had gone to pick up some last minute supplies and I reserved the canister for the weekend and asked Vu to pick up on Friday before we left for Yosemite. The guys at the rental-counter said it would be fine to have someone else pick it up, little did they know the incompetence of their co-workers.

Without getting into details, suffice to say someone at REI doesn’t know the difference between rental and purchase. Soon enough the whole deal was sorted out and Vu was pulling into the parking lot to pick me up. I threw my gear in the back of his car and we were off to the bank to deposit our well-earned paychecks. Little did I know how low Vu was on gas. As we were pulling out of the bank, his car stuttered and stalled. Thankfully, it started right back up again and we made it across the street to the gas station. After that, we were truly on our way to Yosemite, for me the first time in over a decade, and almost the same for Vu.

The drive up was largely uneventful, until we got into the park itself. There it began raining and snowing at higher elevations, there was fog in the valley and cold in the air, welcome to Yosemite. After the 25 or so miles of park driving we arrived at the Badger pass trailhead. At this point we drove around looking for the ranger station for awhile, without success. We did find that the employees of the lodge liked to stare at cars driving around after the place is closed though. So, instead of entering into a staring contest with the locals, we parked in the backpacker’s section of the parking lot and slept in the car.

Saturday

When morning came, we found the ranger station got a self issued backcountry permit and Vu remembered he had no fuel for his stove. So we drove back down to the nearest gas station, which was a bit over 20 miles away. Luckily the gas station had a clean, heated bathroom which was an unexpected treat. After this luxurious stop over, we returned to Badger pass and got ready to step off onto my second and Vu’s first snowshoe trip. We got our packs out, double checked all our gear, strapped on the snowshoes and left for Dewey point at about 9am.

About a half mile into the hike we see a trail sign that’s not marked on the topos, it says something like, “Most difficult ridge trail” to Dewey point. Neither of us being the kind of person who’s intimidated by some stupid inanimate sign, we took the difficult route. Well, the sign was right, it was difficult. We took many breaks and were breathing quite heavily in the cold, thin air of Yosemite’s high country for the next few steep miles. The snow was pretty well consolidated and that made it a bit easier than the powdery conditions I had in the Schulman grove area a couple of weeks prior to this though.

Upon arrival at Dewey point, we realized it was much more crowded than we expected. We hung out with the crowd, took some pictures and then setup camp. There was a tent hole already dug out for us, with nice wind blocking walls and a kitchen pit. Then we tried to fire up the stove for a little lunch time meal. The only problem was that Vu apparently believed that a piece of military issued gear would be good enough for that, as he had a pack of matches from an MRE. Well, after realizing those were a bad idea, we also learned that his lighter was also faulty. Luckily I had God’s own gift to fire-making; storm proof matches. If only those matches had been the only thing that would have gone wrong with that stove on the trip…

After lunch we took some more pictures and Vu wandered off to another, less crowded section to get some new angles on Yosemite Valley. At this point, I ran into Dr. Dubowitz, from the White Mountain research trip Jarr and I had done a few months ago. He is quite an accomplished mountaineer, but it was still shocking to see him out there, it’s a small world I guess. We chatted for a bit, his wife and parents were there along with a couple other people who I met for the first time and then I went off to make sure Vu wasn’t off somewhere plotting to mug tourists for their cameras…

Upon finding Vu, I noticed he was trying to body slide down a cliff. After talking him out of it, we hung out in the area for awhile longer and the sun began to get low in the horizon and the crowds finally began to disperse. I hung around to take some more pictures up at the point, while Vu returned to camp to start cooking up dinner. This is where things start to go wrong with that stove.

The clouds had been rolling in for a good while and the temperature is in the low 30’s, no big deal yet. It’s what we were expecting for the most part, as I start to return to camp Vu yells something about his stove being broken. Hmmm… this doesn’t sound too good, as we needed the stove to boil water for dinner, boil water for breakfast and to melt snow so we have drinking water for the hike back. A non-working stove would be a bad thing at this point.

So, after trying to duck tape, jerry rigging and focusing our combined mental energies on it, the stove still refused to pump, so we couldn’t pressurize it. Thankfully, it did still have a significant amount of pressure from the lunch meal that was cooked, so we fire it up and cooked dinner. It worked, it wasn’t pretty and it definitely didn’t inspire any confidence in me, but it worked. After dinner, we tried out a new Mountain House Blueberry Cheesecake meal. That was about the best meal I’ve ever had in the backcountry.

So, at that point it’s dark, about 6pm, the temperature is in the 20’s and lightly snowing. We notice the cameras had a good bit of ice on them, but still worked fine, thankfully. I head up to the point to take some nighttime photos of the area and Vu starts getting into the tent. After I was done with my photo excursion, I entered the tent as well. Unfortunately, since neither of us brought Uno cards or anything else to do in the tent, all we could do was check out the pictures we took on the cameras that day and then fall asleep, which we did right around 8pm. Knowing the sun wouldn’t come up until about 6 or 6:30 we had a long night ahead of us.

Sunday

Finally, daybreak came with a thoroughly disappointing sunrise. The sky was locked solid with high clouds so there was no morning light show over the granite valley walls of Yosemite. As the temperatures warmed up to the 30’s we started packing up camp and began the hike back. Since the stove was out of pressure, we only had about half a nalgene bottle of water each for the trek. Since the trail wasn’t all that long we weren’t too worried about it though.

On the hike back, we planned to avoid the “Most difficult ridge trail” and take the summit meadow route back to Glacier Point road and the parking lot. We made great time back, what with trying to outpace a crazy weirdo guy that had been trying to talk to us all weekend following close behind.

As soon as we got back to the car, we dropped those crazy packs and proceeded to return to Sunny Orange County. Before we got too far through Yosemite, we noticed a couple nice spots to take some photos (though really I just wanted to get out of the car for a bit to stretch my legs out). So we stopped at the Merced River, and then at an open meadow that used to be an airfield to flex some photographic muscle and to stretch some physical muscle, both of which turned out to be less impressive than Jarr’s muscles though.

Another six hours of driving later, we were back at the parking lot where Vu dropped me off and we went our separate ways.

Epilogue

Good trip, it needed a full day of exploration in between hiking out and hiking back though, as almost all trips do. The blueberry cheesecake meal was very good; I must buy more for future trips. I need to go to Yosemite more often, the place was astoundingly beautiful.

My pics from trip (note Vu’s site likely has many pics as well)

Vu’s take on the trip