Missouri in Winter - photos – Winter Training for Grand Traverse Ski Race

Sunday, February 15^th, 2009

Huge. In my training software (Ascent) they allow you to enter qualifications for workouts. Surprisingly it only comes with one: Medium. Then you have add your own, at least if you want to use this field. For this trip, I added: Huge.

The master of winter 14er ascents, Homie, called on Saturday afternoon. I was out playing tennis with my son in 28-degree weather (he’s the diehard tennis player, not me, but when my son asks me to play anything, I jump at the chance). I called him back at 5 p.m. and he said, “Interested in climbing Missouri? Or is that too far of a drive?” Homie knows I don’t like long drives in the winter, but I was expecting him to ask to me climb Lindsey and leave that night, so this meant a night at home. I asked, “Can you drive?” He said yes and I asked, “How long is it?” He said, “I don’t know.” I said, “Okay, let’s do it.”

When I got in his car the next morning at 3:30 a.m. he said, “23 miles.” Dang, I thought, that will be my longest winter adventure. We were going to be doing 19 of those miles on our skis, so it would be excellent training for the Grand Traverse ski race.

Homie drove us through Leadville and up the dirt road leading to the summer trailheads for many Sawatch 14ers. We expected to get within 6 miles of the trailhead leading up towards the west face of Missouri. This is not the usual summer route, but it was a flatter approach and should allow us to use the skis and avoid snowshoes. Homie drove about a third of a mile further than expected before the soft snow prompted us to call it good. Our elevation was just over 9000 feet.

We were skiing at 6:30 a.m. in 3-degree temperatures. I had toe-warmers in my boots and hand-warmers in my mittens. Less than a half mile up the road we could see evidence of other vehicles getting stuck. We passed a pick-up truck by the side and followed a set of boot prints in the snow. There wasn’t a fresh track on the road and we broke trail through a couple inches of snow.

After 3.7 miles we got to Vicksburg, which is just a trailhead and a few abandoned mining shacks from the 1800’s. There is an immaculate outhouse there and I availed myself of the opportunity to lighten the load. Another 2.2 miles up the road, we turned off onto a 4WD road that was completely buried in snow and now we broke trail with 4-5 inches of snow. We’d gained a thousand feet since the car and it had take us nearly two hours.

The going was now a lot slower as we climbed more steeply, though still not very steep. We went another 3.6 miles and 1400 more vertical feet, the last switchbacking up a steep snowslope to reach the rocks and avoid any postholing. We abandoned the skis and pulled on Microspikes. After some quick food and water, at 10:48 a.m. (4h18m into our day) we started up the steep snow, talus and tundra slopes.

We had 2700 vertical feet left to climb and I was still feeling pretty strong. It was windy and cold, though and my feet and hands became very cold. Because of this I wasn’t able to eat or drink for the next four hours. This isn’t a good strategy, but I had to protect my hands. I needed to tag the summit and get down as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, moving quickly on this terrain, in the cold, at this altitude and after all we had already done, wasn’t possible for me. I did move continuously, though, and maybe steady progress. Near what I thought was the top was a steep rock step and I laboriously climbed through this, knowing the summit was only two hundred feet higher, thanks to my GPS watch.

The disappointed I felt upon topping the rock step cannot be adequately described. I could see the summit a long way off, after a couple of nasty dips in the steep, rocky ridge. Indeed it was only 200 feet higher, but it was going to be a huge task getting there. I had been climbing ahead of Homie since we left the skis only because I left a bit earlier, trying to stay warm. I now wished he was here to lead the way over to the summit, as there was some postholing ahead.

I staggered onwards, head bent to the driving, freezing wind and fast losing the vestiges of my strength. I topped on out early intermediate summit and looked vainly for a summit cairn. It was stupid as I was clearly not on the summit, but so great was my fatigue that I hoped for salvation.

Just starting our ski descent. Homie is the tiny figure behind me.

The crux was a rock hard snowfield that had to be traversed. It would take me five kicks per step to get a platform that I trusted. I developed a novel strategy here in my quest to be as lazy, I mean, as efficient as possible. I would stretch my right foot out to the right and kick hard against the snow until I had a sufficient step. Then I would stand on the right foot and get balanced. Now to avoid kicking another step for my left foot, which wouldn’t gain me any horizontal distance, I hopped up and switched feet. My left foot now stood in the new step and I repeated kicking a new step with my right foot. This worked well, but you don’t want to make a mistake with the hop.

Figure 1: This profile shows the draining traverse at the top of the mountain, which was the hardest, most tiring part of the day.

Just before I got to the summit, Homie caught me and took over the lead. I was thankful to follow in his footsteps, even if it didn’t help much. At the summit, I wanted to just tag and go since my hands and feet were so cold. I knew I was bonking badly, but freezing was an even bigger concern. This is my biggest liability when doing winter ascents: my susceptibility to getting dangerously cold extremities, even with big mittens and chemical heaters. And my biggest weakness is one of Homie’s biggest strengths. I’ve never seen him cold, probably because if he was cold, then I’d be dead. Homie is an absolute winter climbing machine. He should go do Everest or Vinson. He has the skills and the fitness and the fortitude.

Homie convinced me to get out my second hand warmer right there on the summit, as I wasn’t likely to find a warm location for another hour or more. I sat down and struggled to open the package with my mittens and my teeth before giving up and tossing it Homie. He had no trouble exposing his bare hands and in seconds he tossed back the exposed warmers. I then had him help me secure my shell hood over my head. He must have thought he was climbing with this daughter Mia, but I was grateful.

I then turned down while Homie stayed on the summit to eat and drink. Climbing the small rises back along the ridge were draining and I was thankful to start down for good, but knew I had 2500 vertical feet to descend before getting back to the skis. The terrain did not lend itself to glissading as it either wasn’t steep enough, didn’t have enough snow on it, or the snow was rock hard. Near the end, though, I did manage to get some butt sliding in.

Back at the skis I ate and drank, hoping I’d recover enough to make the 9.5 miles back to the car. I had fun skiing down the steeper sections as the snow was perfect and we enjoyed the last minutes of the sun before it dipped behind the bulk of Mt. Huron, another 14er. Soon we were back on the nearly flat single-track and I cursed my grip-less skis. With my kicker skins on, my skis had terrible glide. With the skins off, I couldn’t climb even the smallest rise. I slipped and poled and struggled over every bump. Once the angle turned downwards, it was great, but it seemed this was rare. I don’t know you can go uphill on average for three miles and still lose a thousand feet of elevation, but that’s what it felt like to me. I need to learn about kick waxing…

Back at the road, with six miles to go, I put the kicker skins back on. It was just too frustrating without any grip at all. Without the skins, I wasn’t on XC skis, but on free-heeled alpine skis. It was now just a grind and Homie and I worked pretty hard for 90 minutes straight to finish in 11h26m, just before 6 p.m.

We did the 19 miles of skiing in about 7 hours and got little glide out of those 19 miles. In the Grand Traverse race we’ll be carrying more weight (required gear), but we hope to get at least 20 miles of gliding. I still haven’t seen a course map or elevation profile, though. Oh, and I hope to figure out kick wax by then.

Huge, huge day.