Ode To The Whites

Training for the White Mountains 100 required a lot of skiing.  What better place to train for the Whites than the Whites? In March this year I skied over 200 miles in the White Mountains alone.  I did a 36-mile daytrip at the start of the month, a 70ish-mile ski over 4 days the following week, and then did the White Mountains 100.

Wickersham Dome to Moose Creek Cabin to Wickersham Creek and Back

This post covers the first two trips, since I've already said all I can about the race.  On March 2nd my friend Erik and I began the 36-mile ski from the Wickersham Dome trailhead to Moose Creek Cabin, where we turned onto the Moose Creek Trail and back to Wickersham Creek Trail shelter, then back to the trailhead.  It took us around 9.5 hours, with breaks and picture taking.

As usual, I coincidentally saw Joel Homan and company at the trailhead.  They had a similar day to ours, except two in a row.

To Echo, patience is not a virtue.

Thanks to recent temperature swings, the trees were loaded with hoar frost.  It burned off then fell out of the trees like dandruff later in the day, however.

This is one of the better pictures I got all day except for the camera strap in the photo and the dust on either the lens, the sensor, or both.  I'll learn how to use photoshop one day, I promise.  And I've cleaned the lens and sensor.

Lefty really just runs in between Erik's skis like that.  He actually stays out of the way, which is impressive.

Starting up the wall in the evening light, looking back across Wickersham Creek.

Colorado Creek Trailhead to McKay Creek Trailhead

The next weekend was on for another Whites trip.  Laura booked the Wolf Run, Windy Gap, and Cache Mountain cabins and invited me along.  We started at the Colorado Creek Trailhead on the Elliot Highway and finished on the Steese at the McKay Creek Trailhead.  We were supposed to meet friends with snowmachines at Windy Gap, but we heard that they were having trouble getting the machines running prior to the trip....

The first 12 miles are a bit of a slog - just a gradual uphill up a valley.

She looks dejected, doesn't she? She seemed cheerful enough, this photo just caught her in a moment.  But the pack chafed her armpit, and at lunch on the first day she yelped when I tried to put it back on her.  It came off of her and went into my backpack for the remaining 60 miles of the trip.  I was a little bummed about that.

The Dorse, always adorable.

It is actually hard to get a picture of Echo moving down the trail because as soon as she hears me stop skiing (to take a picture) she turns around to check and make sure everything is okay.

Wolf Run Cabin.  End of the first day.

The second day as we make our way back into the mountains.

A large ungulate preceded us.

Windy Arch.  See it?  This bump is on a height of land where we crossed from one valley into another  The terrain had become quite a bit more dramatic at this point.

Windy Gap Cabin.  This day was only about 9 miles and we got to the cabin early in the afternoon.

I went for an afternoon ski a short distance down the Fossil Creek Trail, which I had never been on before.  However, it is part of the WM100 course, so I've skied it now - albeit entirely in the dark.

Windy Gap cabin. Our motorized friends did not show.

We were headed to Cache Mountain, but I think it's actually a little shorter than that.

Skiing up the Fossil Creek Trail (the opposite direction as the previous afternoon's jaunt) towards the Cache Mountain Divide.  These rocks are the Limestone Jags.  Fairbanks climbers often talk about potential in the Limestone Jags, but I'd rather just ski past them, then fly to Yosemite to rock climb.

Limestone Jags.

The beginning of the Ice Lakes.  For non-Fairbanksans, this is called overflow, and it happens when a body of water freezes and then water flows on top of that ice.  It can be water, ice, or anything in between, and happens all winter long. The Ice Lakes are a section of trail where a pretty small stream consistently forms overflow and ends up creating a sheet of ice the width of the valley.  Overflow can range from  a convenience (making for fast travel on a hard surface), a nuisance, an impassable obstacle, to something that is sneaky and dangerous.  This section of trail is notorious, but it was no problem for us on this trip (conditions change fast with overflow, since for one person it can be wet and awful and then a few hours later it can be frozen and no-big-deal). 

This is part of the ice lakes with snow on them. 

Echo considers her options.

The Cache Mountain Divide.

As I had expected, we ran into friends that were also training for the WM100.

Cody and Amy.  We saw them exactly on top of the divide, so even though we were going opposite directions, we were both starting long downhills.  They had just finished pushing their bikes for 7 miles - bikes are fast, but when the biking sucks, bikes really suck. 

Leaving the mountains even quicker than we entered them.

Cache Mountain Cabin.  I think we skied the 22ish miles in about 5 hours (but I could be wrong).

A little more overflow just before the cabin.

A well situated cabin.   

And then B-Buk made it! The dogs were glad to see him. Me too,

B-Buk and Joe took our backpacks out for us, so we got to ski the last day with no loads.  This is leaving Cache Mountain Cabin just before the turnoff onto McKay Creek Trail.

Crossing Beaver Creek.  While taking this photo I heard cracking, then found myself standing in six inches of water as I broke through the thin layer of ice that had formed on the overflow.  I knew I should have kept moving, but I thought I saw a good photo opportunity!

Some hoar frost on the willows, then a short distance further and it was a rip-shit 5 mile descent to the car we left on the Steese Highway.  Another great trip to the Whites!

The White Mountains 100

On Sunday I started the White Mountains 100, which turned out to be, hands down, the best and funnest race of my life.  The following was my Facebook post explaining how it all happened; edited somewhat to remove a few typos, make tenses agree, and to clarify a thing or two:

The People probably crave an explanation of how a back-of-the-pack skier like myself came to get second place in the White Mountains 100 this year, and I'll see if I can deliver. 

This is the 4th year for the race, and my first year doing it. It was my first 100-mile race, and my second "ultra", the first having been the 100-kilometer Homer Epic the week before, where I delivered a decidedly un-notable performance. That race is groomed for skating, and I hadn't done much skating during the winter, so my quads were quivering by kilometer 40. It was downhill (but only figuratively) from there.

Bob Gillis and I carpooled to the start line of the WM100. "I'm kind of hoping for difficult conditions," I told Bob greedily, "because I think it'll affect me less than it affects other people."
"I was kinda thinking the same thing." Bob admitted with the earnestness of a genuinely, exceptionally nice guy who is admitting that he's hoping that everyone but him has a shitty day.

The White Mountains trail is a backcountry trail groomed for multiple use by the BLM. In many places the trail is narrow. Traditionally, badass skiers plan to skate the whole 100 miles, double poling when the trail is too narrow to skate. The weak, the slow, the timid and the cautious classic it. I classiced. So did Bob. Classic is much more of a sure thing in the Whites. Two years ago, in perfect conditions, Rob Whitney skated the course record in something like 11 hours. Even atheists begin to Believe whenever they discuss The Time Rob Whitney Skied The Whites.

My toes were already numb by the time I walked to the start line. The previous night was cold and windy, and the snow was slow. Skate skiers were struggling right away, and in the first 20 miles there was lots of drifted snow and soft snow. But I didn't think much of it - typical day in the Whites. It was only on the approach to Cache Mountain Cabin, at around mile 38, when Drew Herrington told me that it was "by far the worst he had ever seen", that I learned that conditions were bad.

Cache Mountain Cabin was a party scene. People were hanging out and cracking jokes, and it was a great backdrop for how badass and fun this race is. I inhaled a delicious baked potato with bacon and sour cream and shredded cheese and Chips Ahoy!s and M&Ms and Coca Cola and for the first time in my life I didn't wonder where in the hell all that entry fee money actually goes. Taking advice I had gotten from Matias Saari, I hurried out of there, racing against food coma.

The next section - I'm not sure how far, maybe 10 miles? - is an uphill slog to the Cache Mountain Divide. I had been down this section two weeks before, and knew not to expect much. I slogged up the hill, taking it easy and going steadily. I had over-eaten at the cabin, and racing would have caused me to toss my hard-earned potato into the snow. I passed one other skier, John Shook, on this section as he changed layers (he was putting his tuxedo back on). It had started snowing.

The sudden emergence into the alpine at the Divide is awesome, and I was met there by my friend Mark Simon, who is one of the race medics. Having an ER doctor, who would also be perfectly capable of doing the race himself, as a volunteer medic for the race is an excellent analogy for how badass and well-organized this race is. (I think some of the other medics are equally badass, but I don't know them and so am not sure of their credentials.) Mark and I high-fived, and I kept on keeping on.

After a few more miles and some overflow I arrived at the Windy Gap Cabin, frozen into my ski binding (after this point I would be frozen into my binding always, so I won't mention it again). I was ready for food and a break. The only people in the cabin were skiers from Fairbanks. Everyone was a friend or a friend of friends. Ed Plumb, the badass race director, was there and he commented that it was more like a cabin trip with friends than like a race. I had a bowl of delicious meatball soup pushed at me by a wonderful lady and some Pringles and some more coca cola and it was an excellent painting of how badass and friendly this race is.

...but, upon taking inventory of the people in the cabin, I fatefully asked Teresa Hollingsworth, one of the top-notch volunteers, what skiers were ahead of me on the trail. Mike Kramer was long gone, but Bob Gillis and Matias had just walked out the door. And Matias was skating, and that was clearly not going well for anyone who made that decision. Steve Taylor was making moves toward the door, but he was skating too. Brian Young was also making threatening motions, but he was also skating, and for him nearly everything was going wrong, including broken equipment and damaged body parts. "YOU MEAN I'M IN 4TH PLACE?????? AND MAYBE NO ONE WILL TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME?????" was my mental dialogue. I tried to play it cool, but my pace quickened. 

As I was packing up and putting a coat of kick wax on my skis another cohort of racers came in; people with whom I had mostly shared the trail from the start line to Cache Mountain Cabin. They included Tom Moran, Christie Haupert, Drew Herrington and Kristen Rozell. I regard these people as "my people", and consider myself to be about their same ability level. But they were struggling more with the conditions than I was. A competitive fire, long neglected, lit up in my chest. I saw glory in my future. (As an aside, I returned to work today and was reminded that nobody in the Real World gives the least bit of a shit.)

I had eaten dinner, it was now night (I left the cabin at 9:40pm), it was snowing, I was on a new-to-me section of trail (that I knew was 20 miles of gradual downhill), and I felt fantastic. I put in my iPod for the first time and put on my AllDivas playlist and I remembered that I love to ski. Steve Taylor passed me skating fast on some overflow, but not long later he got bogged down in soft, slow snow, and I passed him back. Then he passed me when I stopped to dig in my pack. Then I saw his headlamp in the distance, and one other. He and Matias had stopped at the junction for with the Fossil Gap trail. Passing Matias, an Alaska endurance-racing legend, felt a bit like raping a nun. I genuinely felt bad for him, but I didn't want to stop there, I felt great, and kept going. I wouldn't see them again until the finish. A little later I passed Bob, who looked to be slowing down. 

Mostly, up to this point, my position in this race was luck. I don't for one second think that I'm a better skier than Matias or Brian or Steve or John Shook, but they were skating, and so they were hosed. Drew and Tom and Bob and Christie and Kristen are all more experienced with ultra endurance and are generally fitter than me. But my stars were aligning. I had gotten all my food and clothing right. I was comfortable and all my systems were working (experience plays into this some, but very experienced people get this stuff wrong sometimes, too, so luck plays a role as well). After Windy Gap I had mostly quit eating real food and had switched to mainly gels with one clif bar and a couple of bars of Halva that my mom had given me (the Halva was delicious and awesome, fyi). I also started dosing myself heavily with caffeine, which partly explains my energy level and excellent mood.

Another thing that worked well for me was - I'm slow. I ski slow. It's what I do, and what I train for. I live in Fairbanks and ski all winter, and I even kinda like skiing in the obscene cold because I find a certain elegance in it. When the other racers complained that conditions were bad I genuinely didn't know what they were talking about. It seemed normal enough to me. If conditions had been great, I think I would have been only a tiny bit faster - and much farther back in the final standings. It was turning out to be a year tailored to my strengths.

I arrived at Borealis, the final checkpoint at about mile 80, at 1:40 in the morning. I made it clear that I did not intend to stay. The volunteers there were awesome, but I knew I needed to run away. They offered me food. I declined. They offered me candy - gesturing towards a Costco-sized bag of Skittles - and I wavered. "...no," I said apologetically, "it's just... my tummy... and I have food ...and I should get going. Actually, I'll take some of those gels there." "Oh!" said the surprised volunteer. "Those haven't been very popular."

I ducked out six minutes after I entered. Bob showed up right as I was leaving. I gave him a fist bump.

I felt like a hunted man after that. I wanted my second place, goddamnit, and I didn't want Bob taking it from me. I skied out of there, looking over my shoulder the whole way, looking for either for Bob Gillis or The Devil. I knew the trail from here back, having done some of it two years before and the last portion three weeks before.

Halfway between Borealis and the finish is the Trail Shelter. It's not a checkpoint, and you're not required to stop. But I had only a liter of water accessible without taking my pack off, and I knew that that would get me to the trail shelter. Stopping there for more hot water would be quicker than taking off my pack.

I arrived there at about 3:40 in the morning. There was one guy standing out there. It was cold, it was snowing, and it was 3:40 in the morning. He was friendly, encouraging, and great. I only got his name as Jim. He is an excellent analog for how the volunteers for this race are badass and devoted. Doing the race is tough, but the volunteers are tougher. I filled up on hot water and split. 11 miles to go.

The first few are flat. Mentally, it was more of the same. I got passed in here by a biker. She scared the life out of me, because I thought she was Bob when I saw her headlamp blazing toward me. I kept looking back at the figure I was certain was Bob, but Bob was moving fast with a perfectly quiet upper body. I thought that maybe Bob had become a vampire.

Then I finally realized it was a biker. 

The trail is in a low creek valley here, and I chased her all the way to the base of the "last" major climb in the race, the Wickersham Wall. There was a lot of overflow in this section - just enough to keep icing up the base of my skis - and I was skiing panicky and badly through here. Some combination of the fright Janice gave me and the legitimate need to hurry crossing the overflow caused me to ski the way you would imagine that a giraffe might the first time it tried skiing, and I nearly fell once as she and I crossed section of wet overflow.

Apparently she is a badass rider from Anchorage - last year's winner - that was just having a terrible race and had stopped to sleep. I could tell she was good by how fast she was going on the flats. I also figured out that she was having a terrible race by how slow she went on the Wall. I passed her early on in the climb and didn't see her again. (obviously, skiing up hills is much quicker than pushing a bike up them.) 

In the pre-race meeting Ed makes a big joke about how the final six miles - the only trail that you repeat in the race - will seem new to you on the return. Everyone laughs, because, sitting there in the Schaible Auditorium, it's funny. It wasn't funny. I was even ready for that phenomenon, since I had done a long training ski here a few weeks back. But suddenly small hills were never-fucking-ending. And steep climbs appeared out of nowhere.

It was also beginning to get light. At first it wasn't obvious, since the overcast night had been lit by an appreciated-but-never-seen full moon. Eventually, it became obvious that day was breaking. I had been running from Bob. Then I was racing Janice. Then, mentally, I wanted to finish before it got light. I revised my goal from "before it got light" to "before the sun rose". But I kept racing something.

I had also been chasing Kramer all this time. At Borealis they said he left two hours before me. At the Trail Shelter Jim said the same. I mostly had no ambition of catching him, since I continued to see his tracks - which told me that he was still skating - all along. They were also filling with snow, which clued me in to the fact that he was a ways off.

I don't know Kramer. I've never met him. But everyone else on skate skis had given up and was putting on kick wax, climbing skins and frowns, but Kramer was still skating. It had to have been a Herculean effort. This is a man with a fire deep in his chest. I wondered if I was seeing the shreds of an athletic performance of Ancient Grecian proportions, and if those ski tracks were the sound of a gigantic tree falling in the forest; a sound being muffled as the tracks filled in with softly falling snow. But after the trail shelter, I could see that he was tired. His tracks were shorter and closer together. Sometimes I could see that he was double-poling. Sometimes, out of curiosity, I matched my own poling to his tracks, to see if I could glide as far as him. I couldn't. 

Between the trail shelter and the finish, however, I gained an hour on him.

In all my talk about my result in this race being luck and a fluke, the one thing that I can't take away from myself is that, right to the bitter end, I felt good and was skiing well. So though I'll never be fast, I got a strong second wind at mile 60 and it lasted until mile 100. Maybe I'm an okay ultra-racer as long as conditions are bad.

In the vagaries of pre-dawn light, the trees came alive. At first I saw buildings I knew weren't there. Then I scared the shit out of myself when I saw a couple of moose right on the side of the trail that were actually just willows. Then the trees began to appear as mythical or cartoonish animals. Sometimes tiny little helmeted soliders. I've never hallucinated before, but this was as close as I've come. At first I found them irritating or terrifying, but I learned what people mean when they start to enjoy them. Eventually, I started saying hello.

In the car on the drive up Bob and I discussed that we were hoping for bad conditions, since it would help us. I got 2nd place, and Bob tied for 3rd with Matias. But we also talked about how much we love the final downhill getting to the parking lot. Little did we know, we sounded like those Tea Partiers that wave the signs saying "keep your goddamn government hands off my medicare." The snow was so slow that I had to actively classic and double-pole down what is usually a gentle, effortless cruise. It was the first time in the race that I was really miserable.

But finally, there it was.

(a special thanks to Drew Herrington who told me not to be a pussy and to do race, and then gave me lots of very useful notes on strategy, including the suggestion that I perish the thought of skating the course.  And of course thanks to Bobby G and all the other skiers - you guys are what made it fun.)

This is not really what it looked like, but there is nothing about white balance that my camera can't get wrong.  And it's pretty, so I'll leave it.

Patrick Sartz skis ahead on the first leg - I had met him once before, one drunken morning a little over a year before.   

Me pulling into Checkpoint 1.  I was walking up this hill, which was a mile long, but began skiing for real when I saw the camera :)  This is how the day really looked.
This photo is copyright Mark Conde - you can see his entire race album here: http://zubenelgenubi.smugmug.com/Events/WhiteMtns100/28614422_zJRbKN#!i=2426883655&k=psCsjXG and you can find his contact info there as well.

At the checkpoint.  I was laughing because I had joked that they should have the race in late March instead of early February, and someone else commented on the irony of having a professional weather forecaster as the race director.  Then another guy said that he was interested in "control, not prediction," which I thought was pretty funny.  This photo was taken by a checkpoint volunteer that liked my frostache, but unfortunately I'm not sure who it was.  I stole the photo from the WM100's Facewaste page.

Rolling out of Checkpoint 1, eating a cookie.  Once again, this photo is copyright Mark Conde.

Again, this is not the way the colors were.

I think that this is Tom Moran, on his way down to Beaver Creek on the 2nd leg.

Kristen Rozell.  For the first two legs every time I turned around, there she was - cheerful and reminding me to keep on my toes, 'cuz she might be dangerous.  Kristen ended up winning for women!  Nice work, Kristen!
I edited this photo to fix the color, but it still wasn't good, so I'm leaving it.

Skiing through the woods between Cache Mountain Cabin and the Divide there wasn't much to take pictures of, so I shot a self-portrait.

This is me, arriving at the Cache Mountain Divide halfway into the race.  Mark Simon sent me this photo, but I think it was probably taken by Katie The Medic.  Thanks, Katie!

Me and Dr. Mark at the Divide.  This is the last picture I took since my camera froze and I knew it would be dark soon, so I didn't bother trying to thaw it out.

This was taken by the race volunteers at the Borealis Checkpoint at 1:40 in the morning, at mile 80. I look like Santa Claus.

At the finish line around 7am.  I don't know who the other person in this photo is, nor do I remember talking to him.  I think Andrew Balser took this photo.

Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!
I received an award for "one of a kind" because I was skiing on mismatched skis and poles, which attracted a lot of attention.  But I always wonder what other people do with the survivor when one ski breaks?

I was also mouthing-off at the checkpoints.  I should clarify that I was NOT talking shit, but rather explaining that Steve and Matias had given up on going fast and that that was why they weren't beating me.

The First Church of Cross Country

I ski a lot.  Spending hours on skis gives me a lot of time to think, including thinking about skiing.  Winter is calm.  Fewer projects, fewer obligations, less daylight.  Summer is just so fucking manic.  In the winter, I have time to think.

That's where all these short blog posts are coming from: mental diarrhea from the previous hours on skis.  Then the long evenings give me time to put my thoughts on silicon.

This is something that I wrote for an unpaid spot in Alaska Magazine.  They've implied that they intend to publish it, but not for over a year.  I don't think they'll mind if six people (seven, if you count my mom as a person) see it first on my blog.  Here goes:

In high school my friend Gina’s family used to go to church on Sundays.  All of them except her dad, who would slyly tell us that, on Sundays, he goes to the First Church of Cross Country.

15 years later, Echo looks at me like she’s been waiting for a thousand years.  I’m standing motionless on my skis, adjusting layers and getting pole straps set properly on my wrist.  Echo hates this process, and, during these moments when her purpose of existence seems suspended, I sometimes think she hates me.  I finally finish.

“Alright Echo Dog,” I say, repeating a familiar refrain, “Let’s go to church.”

This is her cue.   We simultaneously bolt down the trail, both of us tearing across the snow as though recently unchained.  It’s a pace that neither of us can keep up for very long, but we do it anyway in celebration of being back on the skinny skis.  As we settle into a sustainable rhythm, only the slight exaggeration in the way I shift my weight from one ski to the other gives away the happiness in my hips.  Echo trots ahead, and only the rhythmic swish of her tail betrays the happiness in hers.

Fairbanks is crisscrossed with trails.  Perfect little ski trails are practically ubiquitous in neighborhoods around Fairbanks.  Most of them are unofficial and unmaintained except for regular use by snowmachiners, skiers, bikers, dog walkers and mushers.  And no one knows them all.  It would be impossible to know them all, since, like a braided river bed, they change from year to year due to the fickle nature of user-maintained trails.  One favorite trail might suddenly disappear one year because only one snowmachiner regularly used it, and that person moved away, or their machine broke down, or who knows why.

And, like in church, we don’t question the little miracles or the minor setbacks.  I might not believe that there is a plan, but the chaotic nature of things appears to be working just fine.

Cold snaps are the most tranquil.  It’s the time when the voices in my ADD-addled brain are reduced to a murmur as my breath struggles to find passage through my ice-encrusted balaclava.  My windproof hat muffles sounds, but the creaking of my pole tips penetrating the dry snow is loud enough to add a metronomic rhythm to my thoughts.  The cold weakens the batteries in my headlamp, and the sphere of illumination is reduced to a small space in front of my skis.  On these cold, nighttime skis I think I must enter a mild state of sensory deprivation.  I can’t see far, I can’t hear much, and my whole energy is focused on keeping moving, since I can feel the cold fighting into my layers.  It's meditation in motion, but I didn’t have to succumb to another person’s dogma.  It’s the First Church of Cross Country.

And the First Church of Cross Country is open to the congregants all winter.  My favorite pastime, something that many people regard as a rare privilege, is available to me and Echo every day, all winter.  And, like church, it’s free.

Erik and Lefty enjoy the final hours of 2012 on the Stiles Creek Trail.

I'm not necessarily a douchebag

Some people are douchebags.  It happens.  I could be one of them, that's up to you to decide.  But people are douchebags whether or not they have a blog, and a douchebag with a blog doesn't stop being a douchebag because he or she took down his or her blog.  A blog cannot create or destroy a douchebag.    Its not causal, and I would personally argue that even the correlation is weak.

This tirade is not in response to anything specific, but merely the general feeling of social anxiety I get whenever the subject of having a blog comes up.  The word itself may be partly to blame - a slightly different turn of history could have had the word "blog" already in use as the widely accepted onomatopoeia for vomit, and then the original blogger would have had to come up with a more acceptable word, and the bloggers would rejoice.

A rare and wonderful event comes around from time to time when someone, in some sort of social situation, tells me that they read my blog and liked it.  The specter of social acceptance, like cheesecake, is one of those biochemical buttons that, in me, causes instant dopamine release.  But the euphoria is inevitably short-lived as I'm immediately regarded with suspicion by the third party, who had until that moment been thinking that they might actually like me.  "You have a blog?" they inevitably ask, in a way that suggests its not actually a question.

"Um, yeah" I start.  How do I defend myself?  Its mostly writing and photography - great, now I'm not just a douchebag, I'm a self-absorbed douchebag.  Its mainly about skiing and climbing - "Oh, you blog about your adventures, do you?" somehow the word "adventure" suddenly has a biting irony all by itself. "I suppose there must be lots of self-portraits of yourself flexing?  Don't need a pond now that we have digital technology, do we, Narcissus?"  No, I don't believe I'll explain that I mostly blog about my adventures.  That wouldn't even be true these days, would it?

"Um, yeah.  I have a blog.  I mostly use it to make myself look like a douchebag, though."

The Things Echo Knows

The sound of a zipper can wake her from the dead.  The tinkle of a belt buckle, too.  While I change clothes she's certain that she must stand within six inches of me, and she often plays it safe by putting the top of her head against my leg.
She knows my ski clothes by sight and smell.  If I simply open the duffel bag she comes to investigate.
If I have occasion to be at my mom's house, Echo knows that if I disappear into the back bedroom, that she must stand sentry at the door until I emerge.  No amount of time is too long.  Then she stands within six inches of me, often with the top of her head against my leg.
Anytime I appear at my mom's house, in fact, Echo comes to greet me with a look that is nothing less than beseeching.  She would be ashamed to beg for food or tummy scratches with the same abandon that she begs to be taken skiing. 
If its cold, or there is fresh snow to clump up in her paws, then I pick up her booties and call her over.  When she sees the booties she puts her tail in between her legs and begins to circle with the same look on her face that she gets when she's in trouble.  But she comes over, and sometimes even graciously raises a paw to have the booties put on.  She knows that this is the hate of the love/hate relationship, but that the love comes later.
Once her booties are on, she freezes.  Moving only to stay within six inches of me, and filling herself with hate with each moment that I spend adjusting layers, putting on my own boots, or corking the wax into my skis.
Only once she begins to hear the gentle skoosh of my skis down the trail does she relax, the nervous tension gone from her demeanor.  The stunted movement brought on by the booties disappears as she tears off down the trail, finally free from the prison of wondering if this time she might be left behind.  After this, the only sign that she's even happy is the gentle swish of her tail as she trots ahead down the trail.  But that swish means a lot.

"COME FUCKING ON!!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING????"

Deceptively happy.  Even I wasn't certain she was enjoying herself at first.

The happy tail swish in the White Mountains.

The dog, back in nervous mode, in the cabin at Tolovana Hotsprings.

"please keep your dog off of the benches." You tell her that.

Relationship Building

(You can now read this post on The Climbing Zine)

I'd been reading a book on relationships.  It suggests not to spring things on your partner; that if you have bad news you should give your partner time to digest it.  I cleared my throat.
"Neale," I started nervously, "I think I need a rest day."
Neale didn't respond.  He simply continued peeling the last apple, but his bouncy, happy countenance darkened and he began moving more deliberately.  He leaned closer to the BLM picnic table where he was working, which focused the light of his headlamp into a smaller area, darkening the evening.
I began talking too fast, "Not tomorrow! We'll still stick to plan for tomorrow," I blurt, desperate to avoid the inevitable fight.  "We'll rest the next day.  We haven't had a rest day in 8 days!  You're running me rag..."
I stopped.  I realized that these were accusations, which I knew to avoid.  I needed to stick to "I" messages.  I dug my hands deeper into the pockets of my puffy jacket and felt my head retreating into the back of the hood.  The cold desert night seemed to get colder.
"I just... my knuckles are swollen.  My skin is cracked.  I can't raise my left arm above my head.  It takes a full minute to straighten my hands.  I'm tired, Neale."
Neale looked up at the horizon.  Someone who didn't know Neale might think it was an innocent glance, but after all these years I knew what he was doing.   He was reminding himself that the starry desert sky was perfectly clear, not a cloud in sight.  Perfect for climbing.
I stopped a moment, then started again, speaking softly, "this morning" I said, ashamed, "when my alarm went off at 4:30, I started sobbing, and I don't even know why."
He looked at me.  Perhaps sympathetic, but still obviously angry.
"And how do you propose spending this day of my life?  Probably updating your twitter?"
"There's no need to be that way, Neale." I said. "Rest days are important for you too.  Besides, we'll still stick to the plan for tomorrow, remember?  The Enormodome?  Remember?  Even though I'm exhausted, I'll do that for you."
Neale nodded, happy at the thought of the Enormodome tomorrow.  And with that, he returned to eating the apple peel, and peace returned to the desert evening.

(author's note: I'm exaggerating. Neale doesn't know what Twitter is.)