Adventures in Utah

Waterfalls on a hike up Mt. Timpanogos

Earlier this summer, as I was slaving away ;) in Williamstown doing statistics, my mom moved to Park City, UT. Luckily, I got some time to visit her for part of July and August and was joined by Robby Cuthbert ('11). If it weren't for the start of school soon, I don't think I would have ever left. Not only is it constantly sunny and not humid there, the surrounding mountains make for some of the best training I've ever encountered. It seems like I did a different running trail every day, and still hadn't fully explored every trail the mountains had to offer. Not only are the trails endless, the views are spectacular. Here is the view from a run to the top of Deer Valley resort.

It is no wonder that this is where the USSA built the Center of Excellence, a brand new training facility for US ski and snowboard team members, including CO native, Noah Hoffman who now lives and trains in Park City. He was nice enough to give me a tour of the facility, which is closed to the public, and even let me jump on the trampoline into the foam pit. Another perk of being in Park City was getting to do some training with a UNH skier Elizabeth Guiney. It was especially great to have company during part of an intensity block. Notable workouts include bounding up Park City Mountain Resort,

Classic 30-30's up Little Cottonwood Canyon (road up to Alta/Snowbird ski areas from Salt Lake City),

and Skating 4x4's at Soldier Hollow.

While I was there I managed to have a lot of fun outside of training as well. Park City is home to the Utah Olympic Park where the ski jumping, bobsled, luge, and skeleton took place during the 2002 Olympics. During the summer, ski jumpers can still go off the K90 and K120 jumps in their ski gear on this sort of plastic material that gets watered down with sprinklers. The olympic park has two ziplines going over these jumps to experience how it feels to fly through the air on such large jumps. The aerialists also practice at the olympic park in the summer, skiing off jumps and doing aerials into a pool. Every saturday they put on a show for the public. Here's a picture of some aerialists about to start a synchronized jump.

Maybe the best part of the olympic park is that bobsled racers give rides to the public, driving them down the full bobsled track at 70 mph in a bobsled that has been outfitted with wheels for the summer. I took a trip to the Utah Olympic park with my brother and Robby to ride the zipline and bobsled.

If anyone is looking for a place to spend a summer between school years, I would highly recommend Park City. While I was sad to leave, I'm so excite to see y'all soon!!

Hannah H.

Moose's Tooth Marathon

On Sunday I ran my first marathon, finishing with a time of 3:30. It was a great experience and helped to have many friendly faces cheering me on throughout. I ran about 8:02 pace the whole way and was able to pass three women in the last 10k. I came in 6th for women, 2nd for my age group, and qualified to run the Boston Marathon in the spring.

AK Mountains

The best part of training in Anchorage is the access to mountains. I've been able to go hiking a few times and even worked in my first mountain race of the summer. I did the Alyeska Mountain Climb, which goes up the alpine ski area starting from the base to the top of the tram. It is only 2k, but gains 2000 feet so the whole way up is very steep. The mountain is beautiful though and the race is filled with lots of skiers, including the Alaskans on the Eastern circuit. Then later in the week I went for a rollerski up Hatcher Pass, the best early-season skiing near Anchorage. Now I am tapering off slightly in preparation for my first marathon on Sunday!

Alyeska

Arctic Valley

Hatcher Pass

The fort doesn't need holding down, these NRA members can hold it just fine.

When Dorothea said those famous words in the 1939 movie that changed the world, I don't think she was talking as a college student both going to school and living in her hometown over the summer. Still, I've more than managed to entertain myself this summer despite the same-old same-old of Williamstown, the place I've lived for the past 21 years. I've gotten my hands into a very diverse collection of things this summer, from building bridges and hiking 10 miles a day while blazing trails and clearing nettles the size of my fingers; to seeing incredible musicians like Amos Lee, Earth Wind and Fire, James Taylor, M. Ward and Paul McCartney play live at shows and music festivals; to discovering new trail runs for the team to use in the fall and getting caught on exposed ridges in severe thunderstorms; all the way across the spectrum to developing my own fully functional weather website hosted from an old Apple computer and a new Oregon Scientific weatherstation located in my bedroom.
(Yes. You can now check the weather in Williamstown with just a click. I've embraced my nerdiness. I even have a webcam. All hail the king of the internet.)
Actually it's a little scary, since now all I have to do to become a Giant Dweeb is to move back in with my parents after college. Too real.

The completion of the Roaring Brook Bridge, a proud moment for an amateur carpenter.


This one time early in June I was on a run out on Stone Hill. I was feeling pretty good about myself, I probably had on some gaudy sleeveless tank top and felt like I was drawing plentiful stares from young campusgoing women, which probably gave me just enough confidence to make some questionable route decisions. I was almost all the way out to Scott Hill road when I decided it would be kind of fun to bushwhack east down the hill to get to rt. 43 quicker. So I blatantly ignored some "Posted" banners and some bright orange "Private Property" signs and made my way down through cornfields, thinly forested areas, and grassy clearings towards the road. It was in one such large innocent grassy clearing that I had an encounter with some locals. Let me explain. Halfway through the field I looked up from my blissful endorphin high to see an electric fence about a hundred-fifty yards off. Some cute sheep are grazing in the enclosure, and I look back down so as not to break my ankle in any holes. A couple seconds later I look up again to check on the sheep, and I think oh that's funny, I didn't notice any sheep outside the fence when I looked last. I looked back down again, but realized at that moment that maybe there hadn't been any sheep outside the pen when I first saw them. I looked back up and suddenly there are like 50 white woolly sheep bearing down on me at a pace I couldn't quite understand. In the heat of the moment I made probably one of the worst snap judgements in my lifetime, spotting a huge patch of thorn bushes and thinking to myself, "sheep don't like thorn bushes, right?" for reasons I can't even fathom, and jumping feet-first into the thickest part I could see. My adrenaline was high so I didn't really feel anything at first. A couple of dumbstruck seconds went by I looked back to see an entire flock of 50-or-so sheep just standing there looking at me in disbelief as if to say, "Well aren't you a dumbass." That was when the realization of how irrational I'd just been set in, and with that came the pain. I still have the scars to prove it.

It's been that kind of summer. Another weird bushwhacking experience happened today that actually reminded me a little of the stupid sheep encounter. I ran up the '98 trail to the AT and over to Pine Cobble, and I was going to come down the trail like a normal person, when inspiration struck me and I decided it would be awesome to run down a trail I'd hiked in a freshman year GEOS class looking at boulders that had been displaced by glaciers. Most of the way down was either animal path or bushwhacking, which was really fun. I got a little bit lost in thought, however, and when I thought I was going back towards the Pine Cobble Trail, I was actually headed nearly 90º east of where I wanted to go. I had an "uh-oh" realization when I encountered an ATV road, and I knew there were none of those on the Pine Cobble I knew. I knew exactly where I was when I hit a section of powerlines crossing from Williamstown into North Adams. I was probably two miles from my house, and I'd gone in a very wrong direction. I decided to continue downwards because I thought the road would be faster. A few minutes later I was standing in between two families' back yards who, given the equipment sitting there (two pickups per family, each equipped with loaded gun rack) and the stickers on their cars (Remington, NRA, and Guns America), I knew had the means to protect their property much more than I had the means to protect myself. I tried to make it into the woods between the two houses but encountered some type of...I don't even know what...there were lots of broken/mutilated life-sized baby dolls and other creepy shit along with knives, broken bottles, and shotgun shells. There I was, in the middle of Blackinton gun country, wearing a dorky looking fanny pack full of water, with no phone, imagining all the scenarios in which my trespassing ass would be shot at or turned into a life-sized baby doll, and I was just standing there. After a minute of standing and pondering the scene muttering "well this is creepy," I decided to just GTFO and make a break for the road. And I'm still in one piece. Beat that, Truckee.

I really look forward to when you guys come back in a couple weeks. I think this year is going to be incredibly exciting and I can't wait to watch it happen. Till then I'll be holding down the fort back here in Billsville. There's no place like home, right?

From 100 to 50

I am back in Alaska now, leaving behind the hottest summer on record in the DC area to return to pleasant 50 degree andrainy Anchorage. I said goodbye to lasers, fresh strawberries and zucchini, and sightseeing in the national capitol and have been welcomed back with newly caught salmon, mountain runs, orienteering, early morning sculling, and a mudfight on the mudflats. Wildlife count for my first two days back includes 8 moose and 1 bear.

Glacier 3000 run

Hey Team

It took a while, but my summer did include an exciting event at last. Yesterday my almost-eph sister Elena '15, my dad and I participated in the Glacier 3000 run. It was the 2nd participation for my dad and sister and the 3rd for me, in this run that is as excruciatingly difficult as its views are breathtaking. It starts in the high-society ski resort of Gstaad to finish 26km further and 2000m higher up at the 3000m high glacier of Les Diablerets. Supposedly it is the only run in the world that includes a section on a glacier. Normally there is a good snow cover up there and cross-country as well as freestyle skiers use it for summer and fall training. This year however, the glacier resembled more a giant puddle.

As last year Elena ran the first 18km rolling section to the base station of the gondola, before passing the relay to my dad who took care of the 8km ascent to the glacier. They shaved over 15 minutes off their time from the previous edition, and I took 10 minutes longer, so that my dad almost caught me. My dad had dusted-off his old cleated orienteering shoes which proved to be a great advantage. A few k's before the finish a glacial rain set in, not only sending many competitors into near hypothermia, but also turning the vertical dirt trail into a mud slide.

By the end the sun had come back to reward the finishers with great views on the Swiss/Italian Alps, foremost the majestic Matterhorn. In the end, a great distance workout, a lot of pain but a great course and an amazing panorama.

Happy faces before the race (before the pain...)

Elena

Dimitri

Previous flyer, with a good overview of the second section of the course.

View from the finish: the x-c trails with the Matterhorn backdrop.