Training Log Archive: Bash

In my post-race-weekend haze, I couldn't remember what Leanimal and I had decided about our weekly run. I had to go into town anyway, so I dressed for running and stopped by her office, which was locked. That's OK, because I wanted to run outside of Palgrave anyway for cougar avoidance reasons, so I ran some of the HVT west of Duffy's. Unbearably hot in the open, but surprisingly nice in the shade.

Sunny morning after a sound post-race sleep... sitting on the deck drinking coffee with friends... enjoying the expansive view of the Ottawa River from Esprit Rafting... As some people have pointed out, it's not all bad when a race ends early.

We sought out the University of Waterloo students who were doing their first race - the ones who had been unaccounted for at the time we went to bed. It turns out that they were one of the teams who put their boats into the initial rapid by mistake, so they had a nasty beginning to their paddle. After 3 hours of paddling, they arrived at CP4. It was 6 p.m., and they hoped to get some help. One teammate was bleeding quite a bit from running into a rock, and one of the two pontoons of their boat was mostly deflated. I don't know about them, but we didn't get the boat patch kit that was supposed to be included. Well, there were no volunteers at CP4. They'd mentioned that they had no radio contact, but this was only Saturday at 6 p.m., and these guys were at the place that had been set as a dark zone. I would have expected them to be planning to camp, and I'd also expect them to have more first aid gear than most CPs, given their location. But they were gone, and so were the volunteers at the next rapid, who were supposed to help teams scout.

So the students had to overcome adversity on their own - dealing with the injury with their limited first aid kit, deciding how to handle the major rapids without scouting assistance, and sitting in their boat on an awkward angle for hours because they were relying on a single pontoon. They solved their problems and made it through all the whitewater - way to go, kids! And then at 9 p.m., when they were 21 hours into the race and only 2 hours from the finish line, paddling in flat water, their support crew was waiting for them at a bridge. They were told that they were lost and needed to be pulled off the course. They were stunned. They'd aimed to finish the race in 30 hrs, and they were well ahead of schedule. But they were told that the course was closed ahead of them, and so they got a good night's sleep like the rest of us. They were very disappointed, but I was relieved to hear that they plan to come back and do another race. I was afraid they might not give the sport another chance.

We also talked with the woman who got her foot caught under her backpack, which was attached to an upside-down Tomcat, and got dragged underwater through huge, rocky rapids. She really thought she was going to die. Her leg was heavily bandaged from bashing it on rocks.

So there were some epic stories from this race, and fortunately none of them belonged to our team! I'm just glad that everyone is OK and keen to race again.

This was a very different Raid The North from the ones we've done in the past. Traditionally, these races are 24-36 hrs long, and a significant percentage of teams don't finish. I haven't yet heard what the winning time was, but we were 6th of 14 teams with a time of 17 hrs 37 min, so this race was much shorter than usual. It was a fun race course in a beautiful area, but it had the feeling of an Adventure Challenge Long Course rather than a Raid The North.

Unfortunately, we approached the race with the expectation that we would be out for 30-36 hrs, so we spent considerable time packing food and gear in the days leading up to the race. At first, we carried larger packs than we needed, anticipating long sections with possible stops due to the heavy rain and thunderstorms that were in the forecast when we left home. Our early transitions were longer than they would have been if we had realized that we would be back to base camp for Saturday dinner. We kept assuming that unknown challenges lay ahead that would take more time than the distances on the map indicated. Maybe the logging roads were really nasty to bike on, or maybe the speed on the 60 km river paddle would be slow in the new inflatable kayaks. After all, there were a couple of dark zones specified on the paddle section, so there seemed to be the expectation that teams might spend the night out before racing to the finish by the Sunday noon deadline. However, the entire race course was closed by dark on Saturday night.

We began at midnight on mountain bikes. It was supposed to be a 38 km ride on logging roads west of the Noire River. ThreePin was navigating this section with a 1978 map. We got to a junction where the main trail clearly went left with lots of signage, and an overgrown-looking trail went right. Pete Dobos went right, and our team went left. We should have gone with Pete. Many teams made the same error - or worse. Because the map was so old, it took awhile before it was truly clear that this trail couldn't possibly go where we needed to go. We turned around after 7 km, with some long hill climbs. We started a trend, and a number of teams turned around after we did. We spent the last part of this section riding with the Milton Basement Racers, arriving at the TA with our odometers at 52 km instead of 38 km - sigh. Surprisingly, we were in 6th place! Team Running Free spent 7 hrs on the bike section, which took us 3.5 hrs even with our big detour, and they did some bushwhacking with their bikes, too. After that, they skipped the trek and went straight to the paddle, which would make for a fun day even though they were unranked. Note to self: NiteRider Storm light lasted 3:20 hrs, then failed suddenly.

We transitioned to the trek, where I was navigating. I'd planned to go 6 km on a road to a lake, then turn off on an ATV trail and do a fairly short bushwhack (just over 2 km) to another ATV trail, where we could either go 4 km around a big hill or just bushwhack 2 km over the top. Then it was about a 4 km road run to our bikes. We jog-walked faster on the road than I'd estimated, and the road hadn't been on our map, so I wasn't sure how accurate my distance estimations were. When we got to an ATV trail by a lake that headed the wrong direction and appeared to be a private driveway, I decided to continue on the road. It turned out that we'd been at the correct lake after all, and when we got to another lake 2 km later, I checked the shape carefully in the first light and headed off on a slightly different bearing to the same spot. It was only 2.5 km of bushwhacking, and we continued on roads as planned. However, we got passed by a couple of teams on the trek, so I was annoyed at myself. It probably only cost us about 25 minutes, but there wasn't time to make up for errors in this race.

We picked up our bikes at a bike drop and rode 12 km to meet our crew at the TA. Once we arrived, they could start pumping up the Tomcat inflatable kayaks that we'd heard so much about from the RTNX racers. That took them over half an hour with one pump while we had hot food and prepared to spend all day on the water. We carried extra layers in case we needed to stop due to thunderstorms. It was a 60 km paddle with lots of whitewater sections. We headed toward the water shortly before 10 a.m., realizing now that we would likely finish on Saturday evening.

The TA was by the Rapides Enrages, a very difficult rapid with many sections that shouldn't be run in open boats. The diagrams in our river guide showed a complex Class 3 route that required one short portage around a dangerous ledge. Since we were only doing Class 1 and 2 in this race, we were supposed to take the portage trail to the end, then put into the water at the bottom. Unfortunately, portage trails around rapids usually have many beginnings and many ends, and it wasn't clear where to go, so several teams put into the river well before the end of the portage trail. I'm sure that Tiny will provide a colourful explanation of how his boat folded in half lengthwise shortly before it expelled both paddlers! Some young first-time racers from the University of Waterloo went in by mistake, and another woman told us about how her boat flipped upside down, but her foot got caught under her backpack, and she was going down big rapids underwater banging off rocks, with rare gasps of air. She thought she was going to die, and was lucky to escape with bad cuts on her leg. Another team got into the water, then noticed the big chutes ahead, and managed to just make the far shore where they bushwhacked around. Not a good scene.

Oblivious to all this, we portaged the pigs - er boats - to the bottom of the rapid and headed out. There were several mandatory portages and a mandatory scout rapid, plus lots of Class 1 and 2 rapids that we could run. We aren't fans of the inflatable Tomcats for paddling on flat water, and 'Bent looked like he wanted to take an axe to our boat after the first portage crunched his neck. You don't expect an inflatable boat to have good performance, but you would at least expect it to be light - but you'd be wrong. It's big and awkward too, and the most surprising thing to me is that the darned things don't slide. You could be on a 45 degree angle on smooth rock, and you still would have to heave like crazy to get the barge into the river. However... having said all that, the Tomcats are very forgiving in whitewater, and they may even have saved some lives at Rapides Enrages. They certainly made it possible for teams who might otherwise have smashed or lost their canoes there to continue the race.

I'm not a big fan of whitewater in adventure racing, even though I've enjoyed paddling it with 'Bent occasionally in places like the Nahanni River. I worry that some people take risks beyond their abilities while racing that they wouldn't take on a recreational trip, and I doubt that some new racers would know what to do in the event of a foot-trap situation or whatever. At the RTN Champs in 2005, all teams had a mandatory session on whitewater safety before paddling in the same area. That would have been good, since there was no whitewater certification required. The Tomcats reduced the skill required, which was probably the thinking, but there are still some things to know about what to do if you end up outside your boat, which some racers did.

It was a gorgeous day - not a drop of rain in spite of the forecast - and for awhile, we got lulled into a feeling of being on vacation. We couldn't see a team ahead or behind, and it was easy to let the boat spin occasionally while we ate a chocolate bar or to admire the scenery while chatting to our teammates. Then we saw a team appear well behind us, and we leapt into action. For about 40 minutes, we paddled as hard as we could and hauled our boats down a lining section where we slipped on slimy rocks. No matter how hard we worked, it became clear that the other team were better paddlers, and eventually they caught up. It turned out to be Running Free. They were just out to enjoy the paddle, and they had seen us, so they had decided to catch up to chat. Phew! We talked with them for 10 minutes or so, then headed off again. It was lucky for us that they had lit a fire under us, because we caught a glimpse of the team ahead. GO!! They noticed us too and began to paddle hard to get away.

We got off the water around 4 p.m. and dashed to our TA, where we just threw on our climbing harnesses and ran to the zip line across Chutes Coulonges - a big waterfall. This is the same waterfall that we zipped across in the RTN Champs in 2005, but that was at night, so this was the first time that we'd seen it! Padre and Team Hunger were just getting their team across as we arrived, and we had to wait for them. We all went across, then scrambled up to an ATV trail. The instructions said to follow the ATV trail signs to Fort Coulonge, but there was no posted sign when we got to the intersection, although the team 45 minutes ahead of us saw one. We found the sign on the ground about 30 m past the turn-off, then went a couple of minutes further before deciding that the intersection must have been our turn. It felt all wrong, because it looked like only a few hundred meters on the map from the river gorge, but it was a much longer, very circuitous route along the edge of full-grown corn fields. When we emerged at the road, I was surprised and happy to see our support crew right there, since I figured that we'd need to run along the road a bit to the TA, given all the twists and turns in our trail. I spoke with several navigators, all of whom agreed that the last section was nothing like what we expected. (Not that there's anything wrong with that!)

We treated this TA like a bike pick-up, just hopping on and pedaling for the finish. We did the last section of road and rail trail in a pace line, with 'Bent leading, followed by ThreePin towing LoTox, and I just stuck to her wheel. We finished at 5:37 p.m., in plenty of time for dinner! We were 13 minutes behind the 5th place team, and maybe 40 minutes behind 4th place. So in spite of it not being a perfect race for us, it was a respectable finish.

ThreePin and LoTox are accustomed to racing together, and this was our first time racing as a 4-person team with them. I think we blended well. Our pace and skills are similar enough in all the disciplines, and while it wasn't fast enough to win, it was good enough for the 5-team podium if we had spent a bit less time detouring in the first two sections. The one big difference is that 'Bent and I have had some epic race experiences with cold rain and no support crew access for almost 24 hrs, so our backpacks are heavier with extra layers and safety gear, and we spend longer at transitions ensuring that we leave warm and well fed. LoTox and ThreePin are normally very speedy at transitions, although they haven't done an RTN before, so they kindly agreed to slow down for us. As it turned out, their style was the correct one for this race, and that's what we did for the final two TAs. If I'd known that I'd be out for less than 18 hrs, I would have dressed differently, eaten less, etc.

Kudos to Esprit Rafting for expertly and graciously changing their plans to feed dinner to almost 100 RTN racers, support crew and volunteers a full day earlier than expected - and at the same time as all the teams from the Frontier Adventure Challenge. Esprit seems like a very well-run company, and we were blown away to learn about all their environmental policies and involvement.

Big thanks to our support crew - Mrs. ThreePin, Skye (age 7) and New Guy Tom. They were incredibly organized and helpful.

As we hit our sleeping bags around 9:30 p.m., we heard that people were heading out to the river to look for the first-time racers from the University of Waterloo. I'd talked with them before the race and really hoped that they were OK!

Arrived at Esprit Rafting to check in for Raid The North. Our team this time was a new combination of ThreePin, LoTox, 'Bent and myself. We were accused of hogging all the females, since several teams had difficulty finding a woman to race with, as they are required to do - and we had two!

Because of the midnight start for RTN, I always make unrealistic plans to find time for a nap in the afternoon or evening. Of course, it rarely happens, since there are always friends to chat with, gear to fuss with and support crew to set up. The race briefing was at 4 p.m., which is when maps were to be handed out. We got race instructions then, but the maps didn't arrive until 8 p.m., and we had to leave for the start line at 10 p.m. A bit rough on us navigators - sigh. After awhile, they posted a couple of topo maps with the checkpoints drawn on. These maps were newer than the maps we eventually got, so it was actually helpful to see them, and it didn't take too long to plot the info on our maps when they arrived. On a positive note, we had a fantastic BBQ dinner on the patio overlooking the beautiful Ottawa River. Esprit Rafting is an incredible host site.

So... I was working on maps until much later than expected, and I was rushing a bit as I got ready for our mountain bike start. While I got dressed, my teammates and support crew worked to load all the gear boxes, food and bikes into the van, including two bikes on a rear bumper rack that blocked access to the vehicle. Around the time they tightened the final strap, I remembered that my race food was in my gear box - behind the bumper rack and underneath another couple of heavy gear boxes. Arggh... Everyone was very gracious about it.

The Race Director kindly drove us to the start line, since our van couldn't fit seven people and gear. It was a very warm night with thunderstorms in the forecast. Compared with my usual pre-race jitters, I felt surprisingly relaxed for much of the day. (Definitely not all. See "maps" above.) Not sure why, but I hope I can find that sense of calm before races more often.

Note to Meridian: It's a good thing you moved away, because you wouldn't want to come visit us. Crash saw a COUGAR in the Palgrave conservation area today, just behind both of our houses. Yikes!!! I think we might both be looking for running partners more often over the next while.

No matter how hard I try to convince myself to pack a few days earlier, it seems that I am always dashing around at the last minute before we leave for any adventure race. Today was no exception. We eventually made it to Kingston to pick up LoTox, then on to Smith's Falls for a good 7-hr sleep.

Leanimal was busy today, so I had to rely on my own will power to get out the door for a mid-day run. Yikes, that's never good. I was distracted by my to-do list, so I made this one short and fast. Lots of monarch butterflies and raspberries - really glad I got out to enjoy them! Earlier in the day, ThunderDog and I went hiking, and she's been cheerful all day.

See 'Bent's log. He had to run most of the way home dragging his bike with its broken derailleur. I swear that thing seems to be made of tissue paper sometimes! Luckily, he was able to scavenge a part from his old bike, because this could have been very time-consuming. Not very timely, since we leave for RTN in less than 48 hours. And then, when he went over to the BBQ to celebrate his success, he was attacked by hornets and got itchy and covered in hives all over his body. So now we should probably take an epi-pen to RTN, just in case he's become sensitive to stings. Phew, it was pretty scary when he first started reacting.

Later on, I dressed up in full rain gear including rubber boots, plus a bug hat, neoprene gloves and protective glasses, then I went out and knocked down the nests into a big bucket of water. Almost as exciting as the skunk with distemper we had here a few days ago. Life in the country - never a dull moment!

Vino, Vino, Vino... what a disappointment. I commented to 'Bent last night that his horrible/wonderful performances on Sunday/Monday reminded me of Floyd Landis' similar performances in 2006, but I was hoping it really was competitive spirit, not blood doping. Sigh.

Return trip to Crash's place for interview and photos for Sideroads magazine. Not much of a training session, but I'm afraid it's all I did today, given all the other stuff I need to get done this week before Raid The North. By the way, Crash makes great coffee. If you're invited over, say yes.

Rode with 'Bent to Albion Hills and around some of the trails. Beautiful day with perfect trail conditions, although a cool breeze would have been a welcome touch. I hate to confess that I'm so absorbed in packing and logistics for next weekend's Raid The North event, along with the other tasks that need to be completed before we go, that today's outing felt more like a training requirement than fun. I hope I'm not as out of shape as it seems when I compare myself to 'Bent. We were only on vacation for 2.5 weeks, so I shouldn't have lost that much fitness. But somewhere along the line, he's gotten fitter!

'Bent, the dogs and I had a great hike in Palgrave with Sharon, who is home for a brief visit from Bangkok, where she now lives. She and Terry are keen to do the marathon on the Great Wall of China. I've been thinking of running a marathon once in my life, so maybe that would be a good time for us to visit them? :-)

Wow, today's TDF time trial was riveting till the very end!!!

'Bent and I did my old 30K training loop in reverse, since we needed some bum-in-saddle time after our backpacking trip. The loop is mostly dirt roads and rail trail, with a few km each of paved roads and hilly trail riding. For the locals: Finnerty - Centreville Creek - Coolihan's - Glen Haffy road allowance - Innis Lake Rd. - Rail Trail - Duffy's - trails to home. (The real training loop leaves Glen Haffy and heads back to Centreville Creek, but we forgot, since we were doing it backwards!)

When we got to the rail trail at Humber Station, we met three 11-year-old boys who had hiked from their campsite at Albion Hills and were eager to find their way back. They were city boys, and they all had backpacks and water, so they were actually pretty well-prepared, even though they didn't have a clue where they were. They'd been out for 3 hours at that point. So we took a break from our biking and slowly escorted them to the back road that leads into the park. Along the way, we showed them how to recognize poison ivy, and we all took a break to eat black raspberries. Beautiful sunny day to be out and about!

Didn't feel great most of this week. Had a headache that lasted several days, and felt jet-lagged and fatigued. When 'Bent came down with his cold Tuesday afternoon, I expected to be next - but it looks like all the extra Vitamin C is doing its job. 'Bent has improved quickly with Cold FX.

The Raid The North Competitor Update #1 arrived tonight at last - one week before our departure. For those of us who have seen RTN newsletters before, there is little new information in this one - and I'm not sure that I trust any of the course info, since the document is a modified version of a previous newsletter. For example, the type of trekking to expect near Sun Peaks, B.C. is described at one point. (This was the location of a RTN event in a previous year.) Much of the text looks word-for-word familiar from the RTN Champs in 2005, e.g. there are supposed to be two ropes sections - a rappel and a zip line across a waterfall. Maybe some of that stuff is true for this race course too, but it would be an unusual coincidence!

Anyway... the good news is that I think it's finally safe to believe that the race is really going to happen. A couple of important Raid The North events have been cancelled in recent years, so e-mails have been flying around between racers who have wondered about the lack of race info until today. Guess I'd better get serious about packing! It's too late for the training.

After a 3-week break, it was great to head out with Leanimal for our Tuesday trail run, in spite of the hot, humid day. Fun to catch up on all the stories that we've missed while we were away. There wasn't much spring in my step, but our standard route took about the same running time as usual, even though I walked a couple of hills that we usually run. I made a point of saving my best stories for those hills so that Leanimal would have to slow down too, heh heh.

Back home again! The air is full of monarch butterflies, and the forest is full of lush poison ivy. ThunderDog and I went for a walk which culminated in a soapy dog bath after she plunged into a big patch of poison ivy. Normally 'Bent does the dog baths, since he seems to be immune to PI. He wasn't around, so I had to follow the dog bath with a soapy shower of my own - and now I'll keep my fingers crossed!

Sleep deprivation training. Vienna-London-Toronto travel day. Started with 4.5 hrs of sleep, then 24 hrs on the go before getting to bed in Palgrave. The only potential training opportunity was at 4:50 a.m. when we discovered that the door leading out of our 5th floor hotel lobby to the stairway was locked from the inside with a key that had been taken away. The hotel knew we were leaving early for our flight, as they had ordered our taxi for 5 a.m. and asked us to pay in advance, mentioning that nobody would be at the desk when we left. After searching around for solutions, we were about 60 seconds away from making the decision to kick open the tall (but thin) historic wooden double doors when I found a secret alternate route to the stairwell through the hotel's kitchen and laundry. Pretty irresponsible of them if there had been a fire and all the guests had needed to get out quickly!

Nice to get back to Canada and visit my parents when we picked up ThunderDog and BulletDog in Brantford. Thanks to Slice for house sitting!

Walking tour of Vienna with 'Bent. Out all day, but we only scratched the surface. Highlights included an exhibition of the Terra Cotta Warriors from China, Hofburg Palace, Sachertorte from the Hotel Sacher, Italienischer Eiskaffee (ice cream & coffee treat), amazing architecture and streetscapes, a moonlight orchestra concert (we stood nearby, but didn't have tickets), the Rathaus music film festival with all kinds of international food stands, and an Internet cafe where nobody was smoking at all - quite rare! Perhaps I could count some strength training, considering all the times that I had to fend off men in Mozart suits, agressively pushing concert tickets for that evening. If you shook your head, they would stick themselves in your face again, "What? You don't like Mozart?!?" After the 20th time, I was tempted to say, "Not anymore!"

Bike tour of Graz, Austria with our friend Neil Bird, who moved here from Canada in early 2005. We had a chance to try out his beautiful bike commute from the country, which mostly follows dedicated bike trails through forested hills east of the town. He has a 30-minute trip each way in summer and winter - wow. Nice town without much tourism from English-speaking countries, even though it's the 2nd largest city in Austria (about the size of Hamilton). I didn't want to be a wimp, so I gritted my teeth and agreed to ride on city streets and bike paths all day, in spite of my pathological hatred of biking in traffic. The bike paths were great, and I'd love to come back to Europe and tour one or more of the long distance, dedicated bike trails. The city streets were another matter - just as bad as I'd imagined, except that the drivers are accustomed to seeing bikes, so the odds of getting hit are somewhat less than at home.

As it turned out, the one road-biking-related disaster was entirely my own doing. After crossing dozens of streetcar tracks without incident, I finally misjudged the best direction when I had to cut into the street to avoid some construction. I crossed the track at an angle that would have been OK for a mountain bike, but that wasn't good enough, and my tire got sucked into the track and I went down hard on the pavement. 'Bent gallantly stepped out to block oncoming traffic. Sigh... A bit of blood on my elbows and knee, but the only worrisome injury was a sudden, unnatural stretch of the soft tissues around my hip which made it hard to lift my leg to go upstairs. Stupid road biking. Stupid Bash. Actually, it was still a fun day, and I'm really glad we did our city tour by bike. But when Neil suggested that we could also tour Vienna by bike tomorrow, I smiled politely and started reading about the walking tours. Even though I'm a country girl at heart, I should (hopefully) be able to WALK safely in a city. We'll see!

A very cool day! We put our bikes in the special bicycle car on the train to Landeck-Zams, then rode the train up the Inn Valley for 75 minutes. Then we rode 79 km back to Innsbruck, much of it along a dedicated, paved bike trail - sometimes with a few local vehicles passing by, and sometimes riding on quiet roads through little villages. I'm told that there are trails like this all around Austria and Northern Italy. What a great way to explore the countryside without getting pushed around by trucks and buses! I had a few equipment problems near the start because it's been years since I've ridden a road bike or used platform pedals without so much as a toe strap to lift the pedal. After I finally figured out what my capabilities were, it was loads of fun!

Rode our rental bikes back to the hotel in preparation for tomorrow. For someone who almost never rides on roads outside of adventure races, it was a challenge to take on the traffic in downtown Innsbruck!

Everyone smokes in Austria. We miss Italy, which is far more progressive in non-smoking laws and environmental initiatives than we had ever imagined.

Thunderstorms with hail during the night - glad we missed being out in those! We did the hike out with our German and Italian crew. We went down another 1500 m in elevation, but the trails and roads were well-graded today, and it didn't feel so bad. I was just thinking of this as a hike out to the road, but this area was lovely in its own right. Our guidebook says that the steep, partially vegetated limestone towers are reminiscent of China, which seems reasonable, although I haven't got firsthand experience. It also looked a bit like photos I've seen of Machu Picchu.

When we got to the road, we had officially finished the Alta Via 1! There are 8 or 9 Alta Vias (high routes) in the Dolomites, but this one is considered to be a good one to start on. Most of them require some climbing equipment for the via ferrata sections. I'd definitely come back and try another one of the Dolomite routes some day, and I'd recommend it to anyone with average or better fitness who doesn't mind paying hotel prices while they backpack ($30-50 per person per day, including dinner and breakfast). It is possible to do shorter or longer stages each day than we did, since there are so many different rifigios.

Oh, and the severe storms really DID come in the afternoon, so our plan worked out. There were photos in the newspaper of a section of road that had washed out, so I think it was bad even by Dolomites standards.

Tough decision this morning. The weather forecast for tomorrow is really nasty - 100% chance of severe storms throughout the Dolomites. The rifugio where we were booked for tonight is remote with no safe way out in the event of really bad weather - and tomorrow's trek is supposed to be 7 hours including a very long, exposed pass. Then the day after tomorrow, a taxi is scheduled to meet us at 10:30 a.m. for a long pre-paid ride back to the hotel at the start of the trek, where our extra luggage is waiting. So it would be a particularly bad time to be stuck in a remote hut. Then the icing on the cake - another trekker warned us that there are 'lots of ticks' at the 2nd rifugio we are headed for. I've been a bit obsessed about the tickborne encephalitis that is endemic to the region, so that tilted the balance toward catching an earlier train to Austria.

In the end, we decided to go for it, but try to hike three scheduled days in two, which meant that we should clear the high pass today, then hopefully get out before the nastiest weather tomorrow afternoon. This worked out perfectly, and it was actually good because our first planned Rifigio (Pramperet) was celebrating its 30th anniversary today, so there were over 100 people there, including a choir (who sang Kum Ba Ya very well!), a priest, picnicking families and the mayor, etc. Amazing, considering that everyone had to hike for at least a couple of hours from the closest road. The high pass after that was a bit hairy, since dark clouds started swirling 80% of the way up, and it was very exposed both ahead and behind. The forecast had mentioned thunderstorms, so we kept up a very good pace! After a section on a knife-edge ridge where I was almost afraid to breathe for fear of falling off with my big pack, we started a long descent - about 800 m achieved very quickly. My knees don't have much cartilage to spare, and now they have even less!

Pleasant evening at Rifugio Pian de Fontana, where we hung out with Germans and Italians all evening, feeling embarrassed that their English is so good compared to our attempts at their languages.

Long day! (Elapsed time about 8.5 hrs.) We'd been warned to start early in case of storms, since much of today's route was quite exposed on steep scree slopes. It was quiet and cool descending from Rifigio Tissi into some farmland, then continuing behind the Civetta, where we discovered dozens of climbers on the towers or coming up the road. It was Sunday, and everyone was out enjoying the mountains - people walking their dogs, mountain runners, Moms with babies, trekkers in knickers, and so on. After leaving the main trail to skirt the scree slopes, we met almost no one. There was one pass after another, then finally we could see a rifugio in the distance. Fantasizing about cold beer on a hot day, we hurried for the next hour only to find that it was closed for renovations. Right after that, we made our one nav error of the trip, following a trail downhill for 20 minutes before realizing that we needed to come back up and take another one - sigh. The good news was that our Rifugio San Sebastiano sold ice cream!! So our long hike had a very nice finish.

Perfect weather today, all day - finally! It was a day of climbing from malgas (farms) and ski areas up to the high rock towers and sheer faces of Mt. Civetta. Lots of switchbacks in the hot sun and lots of wishing that I hadn't packed quite so much gear. (Actually, 'Bent is being a true gentleman by carrying all the books I brought to read, so I can't complain much.) We had cappucino at Rifugio Coldai, then continued around behind Civetta to a pass where we could see our destination, Rifugio Tissi, impossibly perched on a steep green slope in the distance - well above us at that point and sitting close to the edge of a 1300 m drop. We arrived early in the afternoon, which had been the plan since it would have been impossible to get up there in the thunderstorms that often happen in late afternoon. So we had lots of time to look at the stunning face of Civetta, other mountains in the distance in a 360 degree panorama, and the village of Alleghe 1300 m below us. (No guard rails, of course!) When the sun started to set, the pink-orange-red alpenglow on the Civetta was incredible. I took over 100 photos today - good thing it's so easy to delete digital pics.

Cultural Note #1: Cell phones everywhere, ringing at high mountain passes and in remote rigufios. Around here, getting into the mountains does not equate to getting away from it all. I think most people I know would purposely turn off their cell phones in such places, even if they could get reception - which we normally wouldn't have on mountain tops at home.

Note #2: After some language issues, one of the dinner choices was described as 'Tagliatelle Bambi'!

Took a taxi from Cortina back to Paso Giau to rejoin our trekking route. We had some fantastic weather today - interspersed with occasional 10-minute bursts of hail blowing sideways, pelting rain, high winds, etc. Most of the time we had excellent views, which we'd been missing in the last few days of bad weather. We were in some exposed places today, and it was nice to be able to enjoy them, rather than rushing through. We stopped at Rifugio Citta di Fiume an hour before the end of the day, and watched large groups of schoolchildren having organized fun - tug of war, foot races, group photos, etc. With such a stunning mountain backdrop, it really looked like the dream school trip!

In spite of my plan to start eating less today, I had to put it off for yet another day, because the food at our Rifugio Staulanza was the best we've had so far in Italy! That's saying a lot, because the food has been excellent everywhere here. And the wine is cheaper than the Coca Cola. Our rifugio host was Marco Salo, an Italian mountaineer who has climbed K2, Cho Oyu, Shishapangma and a bunch of other peaks. Must read about him when we get home. We made our first attempt at watching Italian TV - a fencing match and a game show where the contestant has to match a line-up of people to their professions. Any shows more complex than that would have required a command of Italian, so the pickings for us were rather slim!

Hiked from Cinque Torri to Passo Giau to meet a taxi for a planned day in Cortina d'Ampezzo, a ski town that was the site of the 1956 Olympics. Weather was extremely nasty, with high wind and hail. I had the best hot chocolate I've ever had at Passo Giau as we waited for the taxi.

If I had to choose only one food ethnicity to eat for the rest of my life, it would be Italian - but I might be getting too much of a good thing. After a final splurge during our day in Cortina, I'm going to have to go on a diet! (And that's while I'm carrying a pack for 5-6 hrs a day.)

No more Internet until next week. Ciao!

Another morning that started with a steep climb to a plateau. Once we were up there, we continued climbing at a more gentle rate, but we barely noticed it because it got so interesting! Today we were hiking along part of the Italian-German front line from World War I, and there is still a lot to look at. There are some areas on these high plateaus that have been declared an Open Air Museum by the EU, and in a few places there are signs explaining what we were looking at. After we'd ascended to almost 2800 m (with me gasping for oxygen), we had the option of descending the other side of the mountain through a very steep Galleria (tunnel) built by the Italians in an attempt to blow the Austrians off the top of the mountain. It was a bit of a hairy, high-altitude walk with a pack to get to the entrance to the tunnel, and it was a good 90 minutes until we came out the bottom. Very, very cool. We needed headlamps, and most of the time we were descending in pools of water on rock steps. There were occasional openings to the outside where the Italians would dump rock waste at night when the Austrians couldn't see. There were officers' quarters and bunkrooms for the enlisted men who lived and worked in there. We saw engine rooms and ruined compressors and lots of other remnants of this amazing chapter in history.

A very cool afternoon - and it made up for the fact that we missed most of the famed panoramic view at the mountain top because it was cloudy again. Naturally, we had another big climb to finish our day, arriving at Rifigio Cinque Torri. We tried their hot wine, then went for a hike to see a 300 m long restored Italian trench nearby. I decided that in future, I will never drink and hike! But it was interesting anyway, even if I wasn't so good with my footing.

We left Rifugio Fodara Vedla and descended a narrow World War I era road that may be the steepest road I've ever seen. Lots of switchbacks, and we slipped more than a few times in our hiking boots. A few vehicles still use this road, and probably the cattle in the alpine pasture do too - hard to believe. Then, of course, it was time to climb wa-a-ay back up to Rifugio Fanes for lunch. We saw more than a dozen mountain bikers ascending the old road that parallelled our trail. Looks like it might be fun - but LOTS of climbing. Then we had a beautiful half-afternoon on a high plateau between beautiful jagged peaks - and then the thunderstorm hit. We are carrying metal hiking sticks amongst other things, so we decided to put everything down and step away from the packs until the worst was over. I guess that will teach us to linger over lunch. We'd been told that mid-afternoon thunderstorms are common here. After a hair-raising descent along a cliff face as the lightning began, our day finally finished with a big climb to Rifugio Scotone. We were totally drenched and had to turn our little room into a mess of clotheslines draped with dripping clothes. Hope we see more of the mountains (and less of the clouds) tomorrow!

Happy Canada Day! I'm not sure if I've ever spent a Canada Day without running into any other Canadians - except for 'Bent, of course. We started our Dolomites trek today at Lago Braies / Prager Wildsee, a dark emerald green lake with huge, near-vertical black cliffs along one side. (By law, every place around here has both a German and an Italian name. We're learning lots about World Wars here.) It was a steep climb until our lunch stop, but we aren't carrying camping gear because of the mountain huts, so our packs are only about 17-20 kg. Great views, excellent trails. We stopped at a rifugio (mountain hut) for a double espresso around 3 p.m. No, this is nothing like our Canadian backpacking trips! We got to our rifugio around 4:30 p.m., then hiked up to see some nearby caves after our hot shower and cold beer (!!) I think I could get used to this style of roughing it. All trekking times for this and subsequent treks are heavily discounted from the actual elapsed times to account for photography, wildflower admiration and chocolate consumption. In between, though, there was some good aerobic exercise, and I can definitely feel that a few muscles are getting an extra workout.