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Mt. Hood Circumnavigation

July 5, 2019 (Morning)

Exercise Type: Run

Weather: 60ish...nice day (only shitty once: windy and cloudy on the east side)

Comments:
This has been on CA's bucket list for a long time. I could go either way, but it seemed time for an adventure, and a big long run.

After Butte to Butte and the Creswell 4th of July Parade, we came home and packed up, leaving around 5ish. Callie drove nearly the whole way, while I napped, in between a fair amount of studying.

We found a sweet tiny, quiet campground at the base of the mountain just before sundown, had a nice fire and dinner, then hit the sack.

****
Slept it, sort of, and got up to Timberline Lodge and off and running by 7:45. To our estimates, the loop is 40 miles and "a lot of vertical".

We ran clockwise. CA was excited - and I think had some ideas to run relatively fast (compared to some of the female FKTs she'd read about), but I was having nothing of it. I was tired and stiff from the 10K, and going really easy. As such, we spent most of the early morning with her 50-200m ahead of me.

The first part of the trail -- 6 o'clock to 8 o'clock -- is super-mellow, well-groomed PCT, and nearly all downhill. We didn't crush it; in fact, we ran about 9:00 miles, as it was undulating and techy at points. I waited as my legs very slowly came around.

From 8-10 o'clock, we'd dropped a lot of vert, and began to climb, or roll, at least. It was mid-morning by then, and we ran into a lot of folks around bigger attractions such as Ramona Falls. I still wasn't feeling great, but the trail and area was beautiful.

10 to 11 o'clock featured a big climb -- the "biggest switchback in trail running", which ran up this finger of the mountain, west, then at the tip, swtiched back to the east and climbed even more. We ran a lot of the initial switch, but hiked more of the second. By the time we were nearing 12 o'clock on the route, we were definitely high alpine, which featured cool meadows, lots of small creeks, and the occasional techy river (glaciel melt) crossings, all of which were bridge-less and required both navigation and - at times - very careful stepping and hopping.

At just over halfway, 20.5 miles, we actually stopped to eat "lunch" -- PB&Js we'd packed. My legs had come around a bit...but were now starting to decline, again. Not great. Sitting was a relief, but getting going was harder.

After lunch we had a cool, sub-alpine section that ran through an old burn area. Unfortunately there was a lot of blowdown, but it was still cool, and featured big views to the north and east, including the Columbia and glimpes of St Helens and Rainier (shrouded by some sort of haze or smoke, we think).

After we passed the 1 o'clock point - the Cloud Cap area - shit got real: relentless climbing into volcanic shit. Think about 7 mlies of what the final half-mile of Maiden is like: "baby skull" rock, ash and everythign in between. And snow. Big-ass snow fields.

That was our life, for the next couple hours: slowly trudging uphill through shit. Seeing the mileage splits, which had slowly bled from 12s to 14s to 15s...now were beeping 25s. Nauseating. And so fatiguing.

But we trudged on, into some cloudy, cool and windy conditions. We actually lost the trail - by this point only marked by large cairns in a tree- and grass-less volcanic field - after erroneously following inaccurate footpaths in the snow. Thank God Callie had the route loaded onto her phone (which also showed our positioning) and we scrambled back to it.

Finally we got to "Gnarl Ridge", which, if we hadn't been so goddamn tired, would've been pretty exciting. The views of these volcanic moraine drainages were incredible. But the trail was super-tech, so even downhill was slow and difficult. The wind didn't help; I had to hold my hat in my hand to avoid losing it.

As we descended, the beginning of the end was near. We were back in the woods, and my watch had mid-30s mileage. A couple trail junctions got us to 4 o'clock on the loop, and heading back east.

Even though it was running through ski areas, this might've been the nicest part of the loop: big, green meadows with wildflowers, and nice single track. We shuffled along on the flats, but, once there was any appreciable uphill, we were hiking.

As we got closer...we realized we had more to go. We'd somehow gotten long on our watches, and at 36 miles, we still had six to go! Brutal.

The final six were pretty but tough:

* a long, almost Deadwood Canyon (but longer!) descent to a massive glacial flood plain river bed, complete with one final sketchy-ass crossing
* at least two more up and over ridges and rivers
* one more big climb up to the PCT

And finally, the final 1.5 miles? Uphill and 4" deep sandy ash! Brutal!

But the lodge, and the UP Van, was in sight. Once around the final drainage, we jogged in the flat and downhill to the parking lot.

TOUGH, TOUGH DAY:

41.9 miles
10K+ vert (my watch had 12, but it is long)
11.5 hours!!!

Good...but too tough. Not adviseable the day after a 10K, that's for sure!

The rest of the night!
* collapsed on the floor and ground in/around the van, drinking "Spindrifts"
* hobbled into the historic Timberline Lodge...and snuck a shower
* back to the van, sat in the van, looking at Hood and eating the most delicious ham sandwiches, ever!
* down the hill...to luckily find another campsite at the same CG! Another dusk fire andn beer to round out the day.

It wasn't pretty but this was the longest exercise outing I've done since Superior 2016.