We had a fun sprint Orienteering race at APU on Wednesday.  It was less about navigation and more about making decisions quickly.  It was a lot of fun, and I managed to win.  Here are the results and the race in RouteGadget.

The orienteering season is pretty much over, so now its time for me to move on to another obscure sport.  Cyclocross.

The Arctic Cross season starts on Sept 6th and I’m pretty excited about it.  So excited, in fact, that I wrote an article for FasterSkier.com. The Anchorage Daily News also mentioned my new fondness for ‘cross, but nobody is going to read that article, because apparently there was some other news story today.

Photo: Peter Lekisch

Two of my favorite summer activities are running in the mountains and orienteering. So I always look forward to the Arctic Orienteering Club’s Mountain Orienteering event each summer. It’s like chocolate and peanut butter. Two great tastes that taste great together.

This year’s event was on August 16, held in Bear Valley above Anchorage. It was organized by Trond Flagstad. Trond was this year’s Alaska Mountain Running Champion, so we knew it would be a challenging course. Trond also recruited a few fast runners to show up as well. It was shaping up to be an great event.

The race started with a 1500 foot climb to the ridge above Bear Valley, where the first control was located. When we reached the ridge, I was in fourth place and had a perfect view as Ian pulled off one of the best orienteering moves I’ve seen. He and Patrick (a very fast runner doing his first orienteering race) were in the lead together, chatting a bit as they ran. The trail headed uphill, just above a small band of rocky cliffs. Patrick headed up the trail, while Ian knew from reading his map that the control was at the base of the small cliff. Ian skirted below the cliff, as if he was merely avoiding the excess elevation gain on the trail. In the few seconds he was out of Patrick’s sight, Ian swept down and punched the control, without hardly breaking stride. He then rejoined the trail, and he and Patrick began chatting again. Ian let a couple minutes go by before he kindly told Patrick that he already found #1. D’oh. As Patrick turned around and headed back to find #1, he said “I didn’t know trickery was part of this.” I was so jazzed up by the great fake-out, that I could help but respond with a little smack about how we weren’t “going to hold his hand the whole way.”

We all had a hard time finding #2. The ridge line was moving in and out of fog, and it made the navigation more difficult. Ian, Bastien, Andrew and I were all wandering in circles looking for #2 when Patrick came by and asked if I needed him to hold my hand. Touché, nicely played.

Eventually all those other guys managed to find the control and slip off into the fog, while I was left wandering. Maybe I should have held someone’s hand. It wasn’t until another group of orienteers including Karl, Jen, Eeva, and Lindsey arrived, ten minutes later, that I was eventually able to punch #2 and move on. By then I was way back in the pack and pretty bummed. I didn’t know it at the time, but it turns out I was in last place for men doing the long course. Ouch. I had been looking forward to chasing Ian and Bastien through the mountains, and now I was all alone trying to catch people I couldn’t see in the fog.

I picked off the next few controls cleanly and also passed a lot of people along the way. As I descended off the ridge towards control #7 on a mix of scree, snow and tundra, I could see Patrick at the control about 5 minutes ahead of me. Bastien was about 5 minutes in front of him, climbing back up the ridge towards #8. Maybe I could catch those guys! Ian was out of sight, well on this way to an easy victory.

The second half of the race was almost all nasty side-hilling. My shoes were filled with gravel from the scree descent, and now my feet were screaming in pain with every side-hill step. I could feel the blisters forming, as the skin on my heels and forefoot moved independently from the rest of my feet. I was envisioning a shredded mess of blood and skin at the finish.

I caught Patrick at the next-to-last control. We said a few words (no smack this time, I learned my lesson) and departed on different routes. He went down the valley and up the other side, while I decided to side-hill (Arrrrgh!) around rather than lose elevation. I was confident that my route was faster, but my feet were so painful that I was barely limping along. When I reached the last control, I thought there was a chance that I was ahead of Patrick. But that hope evaporated as I descended out of the fog towards the finish when I saw him about a minute ahead of me. Bastien was three minutes ahead of Patrick, and Ian was way ahead, winning by twenty minutes.

Oh well, fourth place for me. I had been hoping for second, or even to challenge Ian for first, but it was a pretty good recovery considering my bad start.

When I took off my shoes at the finish, my feet were indeed riddled with blisters. But shockingly, none of them had popped. Ten minutes before, I never would have believed that to be the case.

The day after the race, I could not walk very well. When I did walk it was like I was stepping on tiny waterbeds. Very painful waterbeds. As I write this, two days later, the swelling has gone down and I am walking again. The pain has been replaced by thoughts of a great day racing through the mountains with friends.

Who knows, I might even be ready to run in Wednesday’s orienteering meet.

Results Here
Watch Ian school me in RouteGadget (we’re the only two who put in our routes)

Every day when I drive home up O’Malley Road, I look up and see False Peak, with the higher O’Malley Peak hiding behind it. Well, not for this summer, because its been hidden in clouds every day. But in years past I’ve seen it regularly.

O’Malley Peak is a great day hike from Glen Alps, and I’ve hiked and skied on both sides of many times, but never got around to hike it. So when I woke up Sunday morning to unexpected clear(ish) skies, and I had a few hours to spare, I figured it was a good time to give O’Malley a go.

I hiked from Glen Alps up through the Ballfield, took a short detour to look down over Black Lake, then started up the scree gully to get to the ridge. The ridge had some fog on it, so when I got to the top, it took me a few minutes to figure out that I couldn’t go any higher.

Looking east on the ridge from O\’Malley Peak

Yes, that is fresh snow (and some hail) in the photo above. Is it still called ‘Termination Dust’ if its been falling all summer? Is there really a summer to terminate? I digress. My goal was to continue back along the ridge to Hidden Peak. I stayed just below the ridgeline on the south side, since the north side drops vertically for a couple thousand feet. It was good traveling (at least by Chugach ridgeline standards), until I reached the point where I started ascending to Hidden Peak. There was some fog, and I couldn’t see a safe route to the top. I traversed around at about the 4500 contour line, hoping to find a gully to take me up. But I kept getting pushed downward by small cliffs, and eventually I had gone by the peak without seeing a good route up. By then I was running out of time, so I decided to head straight down the scree and snow to Hidden Lake, then run the trail back to Glen Alps. The trip took three and a half hours of hiking and jogging.

Hidden Lake and the scree field I descended below Hidden Peak.

O’Malley ridgeline, viewed from the south. Click for panorama

Chugach State Park is so close to home that I often take it for granted and forget what a spectacular playground it can be. This was a great hike. Many people travel thousands of miles to hike through rugged Alaskan scenery like this. And I was home in time for lunch.

No doubt you’ve heard about the biggest sporting event of the year, which kicked off on August 8, 2008 (8/8/8). Apparently the organizing committee of this spectacular event, which was created to bring together the world’s best athletes in competition and celebration, chose the date 8/8/8 because eight is a special number that brings good luck. It’s sure to be a momentous occasion watched by billions around the globe.

I am talking, of course, about the World Championships of the World Summer Slalom, Extreme and Big Air XC Skiing Championships, the first ever on-snow xc skiing competition in Anchorage in August! You were thinking of some other event? Nope, this is bigger.

You know how extreme skiers have Powder 8 competitions? Well, this is the summer equivalent. The chance to ski some eights on 8/8/08 comes around once every millennium, so we had to take advantage. The event was Tim Kelley’s brainchild. He rounded up Benji, Tim M, Ian and I and we hiked up the Rabbit Creek trail to a nice snowpatch just before the lake. After the opening ceremony pyrotechnics, consisting of thunder, lightning, hail, and rain, the skies cleared a bit and the games began! Check out the photos below. I only had my cell phone camera, so my pictures aren’t very good.

Check Tim’s website for better photos and results from the big event.

P.S. I just realized that 3 of the 5 photo sets in my Summer ‘08 album are ski trips. Its been that kind of summer.

P.P.S. Tim also posted a video of the event, which you can view by clicking on the link to his website. It’s quite funny, in an embarrassing kind of way. We look like a bunch of old geezers feebly trying to ‘go big’ like the kids do. Which, my wife reminded me, is a pretty accurate description. Oh well, at least the music rocks.

Last summer, Ian and I tried to hike from Turnagain Pass to Spencer Glacier Lake, then packraft out the Placer River. I call this trip “Center² Spencer” (Center to Spencer) because the route is Center Ridge to Center Creek to Spencer Glacier. Its as clever as I could get.

Unfortunately, we had to turn back at the pass near Tincan Peak, above Center Ridge. The cliff was a little too high and we didn’t have the right gear. So its been on my list to complete this summer. Friday was a nice day, so we jumped at the chance to do it again. We also took along Bastien, an orienteer who is visiting from France.

This time we made it. It was a great trip, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you that some parts sucked. The bushwhack up to the top of Center Ridge wasn’t fun, but it was only half an hour. And after that, the walking on Center Ridge was great. Going over the pass was a challenge, but was made much more doable by good snow conditions and the fact that we had ice axes. The walking on the other side of the pass was easy-going with spectacular views, except for one steep bushwhacking section just before Center Creek Pass. And then, of course, the descent from Center Creek to Spencer Lake was awful. Some of the nastiest bushwhacking I’ve done. If they ever build the proposed whistle-stop trail down this slope, this could become a classic packraft trip. But not until then.

The trip took a total of 11 hours. We hiked quickly, but didn’t push the pace, and we stopped for a few snack breaks. We had a great time and made the most of a rare sunny day. Check out the photos for more details. Thanks to Bill for giving us info from his ski trip on this route in June.