On Friday, Tim K, Tim M, Benji and I went to Culross Island in Prince William Sound in search of crust skiing. The weather forecast was for clear skies and calm winds, both of which are required in order to create crust in PWS this late in the season. Even though there were high overcast clouds on Thursday evening as we motored out to Goose Bay, we remained hopeful that it would clear off.

The next morning the conditions hadn’t changed and the snow was still soft. So we grabbed our waxless skis instead. Touring around on waxless skis was fun, but a lot different than crust cruising. As Benji said, it only takes a few Fahrenheit degrees to change pretty-boy crust cruising into wanker tourist shuffling.

We reached the ridge and headed south. The terrain was just starting to get interesting when low clouds moved in quickly and enshrouded us in fog. We had no interest in blindly skiing off a cornice and plummeting to the valley below, so we were forced to turn around and follow our tracks back through the fog. After we dropped off the ridge, we were below the clouds. So we explored a little bit in the valleys down below before heading back to the boat.

No crust, no sun. But we were skiing in Prince William Sound (on a work day no less) so I can’t complain!

[Click the photo above to view this photo album.]
You can check out all Tim’s photos here.

I don’t like racing when I am out of shape.  After years of training being priority #1, its is hard to come to terms with no longer being at that level of fitness.  It is frustrating to ‘push the button’ only to find out that the button is broken.  Or even worse, to lose the button completely.    So I haven’t done much racing the past few years, except for the really fun stuff (orienteering, Tuesday Night Races).  I keep saying “Once I start getting back in shape, I’ll start doing some races.”

Well, I’m starting to realize that racing needs to be part of journey to get back in shape, not the destination.  Races provide the motivation to get out and train, even in the face of all the other life responsibilities. And nothing is better training than hammering on yourself for an hour or two, which I rarely do unless I have a bib on.

So to that end, I entered my first running race of the season - the Turnagain Arm Trail Run - on Tuesday night.  The race starts with about 12 minutes of uphill, and I was pleasantly surprised to be feeling pretty good at the top.  Then the wheels fell off.   The downhill pounding, the fancy footwork to avoid rocks and roots, the mental battle to keep pushing even though I was careening slightly out of control - it was exhausting.  It was also embarrassing.  This stuff used to be second-nature to me, yet I felt like a road runner on his first trail run.  Am I out of shape?  Yep. Getting old?  Yep.  Not much running off pavement this spring?  Yep.  Mentally, I packed it in and decided to just enjoy the run.  Towards the end, when the trail got smoother and went back uphill, I picked up the pace just enough to avoid getting passed by the first couple of women.  yeehaw.  congratulations.

After all that, I was surprised to find out that my time (1:03:34) was only a minute and a half slower than last year.   I guess I was out of shape last year too.  No matter, it was a good workout and it provided plenty of motivation to improve.

2008 Turnagain Arm Trail Run Results

I bounced back with a pretty good showing in this week’s orienteering meet on Wednesday.  It was a fun course with more controls and shorter legs.  I finished second, only 1:18 beind Ian.  Of course, Ian raced without a compass, just to keep things interesting.

Dan and Anne’s O Meet

Flashback to April 20, 2008: After a great weekend of crust skiing to Grandview, Skookum, and Bear Valley, with tons of snow and plenty of sun, it appeared that our crust ski season was finally kicking into high gear. I was looking forward to a few more weekends of great crust.

Now, here we are a month later, and I haven’t been crust skiing since (other than at Glen Alps) . What happened?? Our 2008 crust season was largely swallowed up by a freak two-foot snowstorm in late April, and subsequent cloudy weather. You just never can tell what the crust gods have in store.

As early May turned into mid-May I was finally coming to terms with the fact that the crust was not coming back and it was time to move on to summer. Of course, the crust gods threw another curveball last night: a clear, cold night followed by a sunny day. So, back on the horse.

This morning, Tim, Tim, Benji and I attempted to ski a place we hadn’t been before, but were thwarted by poor snow conditions at the trailhead. To be expected in May, I guess. So instead, we hit Turnagain Pass, which was as good as I’ve ever seen it. You know the day can’t be too bad when when your backup plan looks like this…

[Click the photo above to view this photo album. I didn’t take many photos, so I borrowed some of Tim’s. You can check out all his photos here.]

In the past few years, I’ve really gotten into orienteering. I love the challenge of trying to think critically about navigation and route choice with an oxygen-deprived brain, while at he same time running full-steam dodging Devil’s Club and deadfall. Hmmm, when I describe it that way, it sounds more like torture. But I assure you, it is a blast. Except for those times when I make a mistake, then it is incredibly frustrating. But most of the time it is fun. Really.

Another reason I enjoy orienteering is that I am still improving, unlike skiing and most other sports where I am already several years past my prime. My navigational mistakes seem to be getting fewer, which makes up for my lack of fitness. But on the other hand, each mistake I do make is now even more costly and aggravating. For instance, in the first meet of the season, I ran really well, and was almost keeping pace with Ian (easily the fastest guy at our meets). But near the end I made one mistake that cost me about 15 minutes. Ouch.

Another great aspect of orienteering is analyzing route choices after the fact. To that end, a few of us use RouteGadget to compare our races virtually.  We keep track of our split times during the races, then draw our route into RouteGadget after the meet.  Since we never see each other during the meet, this is the only way we can ‘race’ head to head.  It’s a little bit geeky, but it’s also pretty cool.

Here’s how you can watch our race from this week:

1. Click this link for Wednesday’s meet
2. Select the “Red” course from the “Select class/course” dropdown menu
3. Select all the names, using Ctrl-Click
4. Check the “Names on/off” checkbox
5. Click “View Animation”
6. Click “Start”

View all recent RouteGadget courses here.

View all Orienteering results here.