12 Hours of Disco with Back to Back “Slaying the Dragon”

Well that was a doozy of a week!  After a solid couple months away from having to pin a number on any member of the spandex family, I finally made my way to the start-line of a race.  For the season opener I thought it was a great idea to kick it off with an experience that could only make every other race after feel, well, hopefully less painful.  I also liked the idea of changing up the race program as from year to year I find myself losing the motivation necessary to really push myself when I go to the same old events and race around the same old track.  Hence the decision to make the short trip down to Salmon, Idaho and give a go at the 12 hours of Disco solo.  I have done a series of 24 hour races (never solo) and quite a few 100 milers, but I’d never done a 12 hour race solo.  I thought it might be nice to start the race engine so to speak without going into the bright red heart attack zone in an cross country race, but rather see how well I can pace myself over 12 hours of trail racing.  Turns out my predictions should hold true…. It was incredibly painful!  I thought it might not be that much more challenging than say the Butte 100 where I’m usually in the saddle for around 10 hours, but no, it was a different kind of beast.  Sixteen times around the course yielded 136 miles, 16,000′ of climbing, and one whooped and sunburned Benny.  It was an interesting experiment in fueling and pacing as every endurance event is.  I ate way less than I suspected I would, and I wanted cold Coca-Cola more than anything in the world.  That stuff was truly like IV dextrose every time I pounded one in between laps.  My heart rate ever so gradually began in the high 170’s and by the end wouldn’t get above 145 (usually my base miles heart rate).  The legs hung in there, the brain stayed positive and tried not to wander to far as I couldn’t get good time checks on my position until the final three hours of the race.  Trying to do the math of how many laps I had left 2/3rds of the way through the race was pretty funny/frustrating.  It seemed comparable to what I’ve read mountaineers experience when they’re at 26,000′ on the shoulder of Everest and trying to justify why taking their clothes off and making a snow angel is a good idea.  It wasn’t until I was finishing what would be my last lap that I realized “Ok, this is it, phew”.  Reports had told me I was in second but nearly being caught by third, which put me in a mental battle to keep pushing myself and “Just. Keep. Moving.” which is what I told myself over and over to keep the motivation going.  That and my magical bell the boys from Sportsman mounted on my bars kept me going.  Every so often while I was out cruising through the sagebrush I would ding the bell and say a word that would bring me power.  “Coke. Ding…. God.  Ding….  Jen just pedaled through this same spot. Ding… Dad.  Ding…. Beer in two hours. Ding….” and so on.  I managed to cruise through after 11 and a half hours of riding for 2nd place on the day and humbled by the strength of race winner A.J. Linnell.  I had to lay in the back of the Element for a solid 30 minutes fighting back the urge to throw up and slowly gather some life back.  I was shattered!  If it wasn’t for good beer and a gourmet hot dog (yep, you read that right.  A hot dog- the only thing that sounded appetizing after the race) I probably would be wrapped around a sage brush somewhere with crows pecking at my carcass.

After coming home to 48 hours of work at the Fire Hall, I had gained enough “recovery” that I was game to head up “The Dragon” with Erich Peitzch for some quality spring skiing and a killer summit.  “The Dragon”, otherwise known as Great Northern, is a fantastic mountain that stands head and shoulders above all other peaks in the area and has many incredible features that lead to it’s desirability for spring, summer, fall, or winter travel.  But any way you slice it, it’s a bitch.  Hence, why my friends and I all refer to climbing Great Northern as “Slaying the Dragon”.  It’s steep, it’s a lot of vert, the conditions are always varied, the wind can rip across the ridge, the weather can come in fast, and did I mention, it’s steep!

Erich and I were stoked to nail a fantastic weather day where our schedules aligned and we were both tired from previous adventures so we weren’t going to drill each other into the ground, or the glacier rather on the climb.  Conditions were excellent if not a little warm, but we were able to strap skis on our feet within 20 minutes of the car and the rest was pleasure mixed with some skin failure, schmooey snow, and beautiful views.  We skinned up the glacier side to an eastern ridge that had some good steep ridge travel along with a little mixed snow on rock 4th/5th class moves.  We both commented that we felt a little “euro” climbing up the ridge with our skin suits, race skis, poles tucked into pack, and climbing an aesthetic ridge to the summit.  We skied the southwest face directly from the summit which is a line that I’ve lusted after for years.  It is thousands of feet of above treeline steep skiing that plummets down to a small basin where you can traverse over smaller ridges back to the original uproute.  The skiing was certainly variable, but there were some great high speed turns and it was so sustained we were both howling about our failing quads as we ripped down the face Warren Miller style.

We finished the day by noon (around 4 hours 40 minutes total for the trip) and while Erich headed to the office to earn his turns, I headed to Spencer to learn the ways of the Jedi trail warrior.  Six inch travel bikes are the new XC!!! I won’t roll off on a tangent just yet, but I will say that riding a trail bike on “Freeride” specific trails has opened my eyes to a completely new sport that is different from the mountain biking I have experienced my whole life.

That evening Jen and I were hatching plans on the quintessential spring day we wanted to experience together the next day, I suggested we ski the Dragon… She thought I was crazy for wanting to go up there again, and she is a wise woman, but it just sounded like a good idea.  My mind was still blown from how beautiful it had been to climb up the massive north side and cruise along the lofty ridge on a snow covered peak with lush forests and raging rivers below.  So naturally I was game to experience it all over again with her.  And this time, no spandex!  We had a super fun climb and this time skied back down the glacier which was a hoot, and a really long ski (3000′!)  We didn’t quite match Erich and my time from yesterday, but we did get some serious sun burns as no matter how much sunscreen I used, it was pretty hard to avoid serious solar radiation spending two days straight in the mountains on top of snow while we near the longest day of the year.