Photo taken by Brenden Goetz.
“Are you opposed to running in the
rain?” Brenden asked.
“I am just concerned with
hypothermia issues,” I lied. The truth was that I really hate running in the
rain.
We continued our crouch under the
overhang of the chest high boulder, silent in our individual thoughts. The rock
was located at 12,500’ of elevation, high in Maggie Basin, quite exposed in one
of Colorado’s stereotypical alpine mountainsides. It really wasn’t a good place
to be hiding from the lightning storm that was now very real all around us. We
were too high, in an area that was too treeless. We were too visible to the
mighty Thor.
“Let’s
give it another couple of minutes and then reassess,” I said. Hoping to delay
making a decision - especially a decision to go out and run in the rain.
We
had 500’ vertical feet of steep goat path to climb to make it to the exposed
ridge. This was one of the only sections I hadn’t run a reconnaissance mission
before the race. I didn’t know what lay beyond gaining the ridge but I was pretty
sure the trail remained high and exposed for a while. “Best be sure that the
storm has passed before trying to do any exposed traversing, ” I told myself.
Mentally, I was thinking of any excuse I could to justify not going out in the
rain.
A
few more minutes passed and the rain showed signs of abating. I stood up
slowly, creekily. 85 miles of running in 36 hours followed by 25 minutes of
crouching under a low boulder had made all my muscles below my forehead stiff.
Looking to the southeast the ragged-bottomed, low-lying clouds looked to continue
to the ridgeline less than two miles away. My best guess was that it was going
to continue to rain.
Hoping
to see signs of good news, I turned slowly in the opposite direction and looked
to the Northwest. Four heads popped above a rock less than 200 feet away, all
debating the same simple question: stay or go?
Seeing
several others around me kickstarted my brain into action. “Wanna go?” I asked
Brenden sharply. “Yes” he responded, and I didn’t wait for him to get up before
I took off. He could move much faster than I could at this point and would
catch up within a few of his long strides.
The
threat of lightning loomed as we restarted our march to the ridge. This time we
had a much faster pace. It’s amazing what adrenaline can do for performance. I
kept one eye on the trail and one on the cloudy ridgeline. Every nanosecond I
was calculating the possibility of another close lightning strike, calculating
the amount of time I would spend exposed on this ridge, searching for escape
possibilities. My mind was buzzing with assessing the conditions and
calculating the routes toward survival. Finally, a true test.
The
trail got weaker and started to traverse a slope. I saw scuffed dirt, a sign
that someone wasn’t far ahead. The driving rain hadn’t washed away the
footprints yet.
Three hundred feet to the ridge.
Two hundred feet. A switchback. One hundred. The summit. Now where do we go? I had hoped that
the race course would drop down the other side of the ridge but the trail
appeared to continue up the ridgeline from the pass that we are standing on.
How’s the weather? Improving. Good.
Let’s go.
A
short climb and we reach the top of the bump on the ridgeline. This must be the
bump they call “Buffalo Boy” that stands above its namesake basin. The
adrenaline is still fueling my muscles as we pass a runner that Brenden and I
had dubbed “Our Green-shirted Friend” several hours earlier. He appears to be
cold, but still coherent and still moving, his arms drawn into his thin
windbreaker. The sleeves flapped, empty in the misty wind.
I had been worried about him, but seeing his condition makes
me a little less concerned. Minutes earlier, in the middle of the worst part of
the thunderstorm, Brenden and I watched as our Green-shirted Friend had walked
by our spot under the boulder of protection. “Crazy,” we had thought.
We
continued, traversing high on the ridge, for several minutes before taking a
slowly descending traverse off the ridge. The weather improving, I still didn’t
want to be high any longer. The trail wasn’t descending fast enough. On, and
on, and on. The search for Stony Pass. Then we would have just 13 miles to go…
