TBT: Rim to Rim to Rim, Yosemite Valley

A time-honored tradition in the ultrarunning scene is to complete a rim-to-rim-to-rim run of the Grand Canyon: 48 miles, 10,000 foot elevation gain (and equal descent).

The National Park Service unequivocally states in all of its Grand Canyon literature:

Over 250 people are rescued from the canyon each year. The difference between a great adventure in Grand Canyon and a trip to the hospital (or worse) is up to YOU. DO NOT attempt to hike from the rim to the river and back in one day. [sic]

Yosemite ranks only slightly behind the Grand Canyon in number of rescues per year, though Yosemite has a much higher diversity of incidents. The Grand Canyon incidents revolve almost entirely around one problem: going down the ditch, surpassing one's limits to return back up the ditch. I have long said that Yosemite avoids having even greater numbers of rescues because the majority of visitors start at the bottom of the ditch rather than the top. 

Classic.

However, one can, if so desired, drive to the top of Yosemite's south rim, at Glacier Point, and return to Yosemite Valley via a couple of different trail options. Many people take this option, but it is almost exclusively one-way, with convenient bus shuttles to help with the logistics.

I so desire.

In spring 2015, while trying to get some serious vert training in, I decided to make a go of my local rim-to-rim-to-rim: Glacier Point to the top of Yosemite Falls to Glacier Point, via the 4-Mile Trail and Upper Yosemite Falls Trail, 20 miles, 5,000 feet of ascent (and equal descent).

Though it was a depressing fourth consecutive year of low-snow, drought conditions in California, I couldn't help but enjoy the lovely early season running in the Sierra highcountry. There are few years in Yosemite's history when I would have been able to drive to Glacier Point on April 4, so I took advantage and found myself up there with scant few people early that morning.

The morning graced me with cool weather and a Yosemite Falls rainbow, and I enjoyed a breezy, low-key effort down the 4-Mile Trail switchbacks. Along the way, I encountered several hiking parties headed the opposite direction, getting an early start on their floor-to-rim-to-floor hikes. Many of them were surprised to see me, and one remarked, "You already ran to to the top?!" I reassured him I hadn't: "I'm not crazy enough to do that." (And by "that," I meant, "get up that early." He didn't need to know my particular type of crazy...)

Never a bad day in Yosemite.

I hit the valley floor feeling only a touch of wobbly legs from the descent, crossed Swinging Bridge, and popped over to the Upper Yosemite Falls Trail after a quick swing into the Camp 4 restroom. As a Yosemite local for many years, I had done these trails literally dozens of times, but I enjoyed this new spin of an adventure. I also enjoyed the camaraderie of hikers on trail - the usual assortment of, "You're running this?!", "Wow, you go!", and "Can't you go faster? Har har."  

I reached the top a little more slowly than expected, but I had to remind myself that the best vertical training is slow and consistent. "Time on your legs, no matter how slow" has proven to be one of the most effective training techniques I've found for prepping for ultramarathons.  I tried to remember that as I trudged up the final sun-exposed switchbacks to the top.

Trudge-a-rific.  Halfway there.

Upon reaching the top, I treated myself to a Snickers bar and some seaweed snacks, and chatted with a roving PSAR volunteer (Preventative Search And Rescue). PSAR volunteers are a hearty group of hikers who gift their time to help educate the public about safety issues out on trail and respond to incidents as need be. This gentleman had driven two hours from the Sierra foothills several days this week to volunteer. His enthusiasm for Yosemite and meeting new people was infectious, and I left with a spring in my step.

Also known as Cho'lok.

The descent down Yosemite Falls was typical of every other time I had tried to run down Yosemite Falls - like running down a wavy sheet of slanted construction paper with finely-ground coffee and broken bowling ball chunks coating the top. In other words, hard to run.

Slippery beast.

As I descended, I started dreaming of the ice cream sandwich I would buy at the Yosemite Lodge gift shop. My legs turned to jelly, and I was grateful that my running flow was punctuated by bits of walking behind large groups of pokey hikers. I reminded myself that once I reached the valley floor, I was 3/4 of the way there.

Once I reached the valley floor, I dunked my head and shirt in the Camp 4 sink to cool down. I knew I was taking more time resting than I really should have, and once I got myself going, I resolved to keep an even effort for the rest of the run. I was pretty tired and knew the Yosemite Lodge would be wicked busy, so I decided to skip the ice cream sandwich in favor of finishing sooner rather than later.

Bad choice.

About halfway up the 4-Mile Trail switchbacks, I started to bonk.  I reached into my pack for an energy bar, then drank a little water from my hose...only to find out that I was out of water. In the bustle of Camp 4 and my decision-making about the Lodge, I had not only skipped an opportunity to get some easy calories, but I had forgotten to refill my water bladder. I knew I had to eat something, as I had eaten nothing on the entire descent down Yosemite Falls in order to focus on my footing and keep my hands free for potential slips. I started to feel nauseous and hiking quickly became desperately hard. I knew I would have to get some calories in, but with my mouth parched, gutting down an energy bar would be unpalatable, if not ineffective. 

I sat down on a rock at a switchback in the trail and rued the fact that I knew this trail like the back of my hand. I couldn't fool myself into thinking I was almost there. I wasn't. 

A couple hikers passed me, headed down. I mustered some positivity, smiled, and said, "hello." Despite my predicament, I couldn't bring myself to ask if they had any extra water. Part of this was pride - I wanted to finish this thing on my own. Another part of this was protecting the public opinion of distance runners. Ultrarunners sometimes receive flak from other users.  They are derided for traveling "too fast" through beautiful landscapes.  They are cast off as wilderness users who act like they own the place, not giving other users the space they need.  Any predicaments that occur while running are "deserved" since nobody should be doing that to their bodies, anyhow. A look at one rim-to-rim-to-rim Grand Canyon hiking website spells out the disdain:

Want some running advice? Unstable rocks and trail conditions can roll/break your ankles and send you flying over the edge to your death. Runners also spend their day looking down at the trail instead of looking up and enjoying the magnificent Grand Canyon. Oh – and runners do not have the right of way on the trail – mules do, then hikers. Seriously, what is the point of being in the GC if you don’t even see it?

I couldn't be that ultrarunner who was underprepared and needed saving from a nearby hiker. I would be polite, and damn it, I would finish this thing on my own.

Things got dark back on the south side of the valley.

After they passed, I had a flashback to an article I had read wherein the brain reacts to holding sport drink in one's mouth, even if you spit it out:

It's the brain that's influenced by mouth rinsing: fMRI studies have shown that certain regions of the brain light up when you have carbohydrate in the mouth, whether it's sweet or tasteless.

In essence, one's brain is temporarily tricked into putting out more effort, more easily. 

Though I didn't have any sport drink, I did have some ginger chews, so I put them in my mouth and tried to suck on them as long as possible as I soldiered on up the hill. Whether it was the placebo effect or true brain trickery, it worked.

As I pushed the last couple of miles, a woman hiking down the trail looked familiar. I realized I had seen her a few hours earlier on her way up and my way down. She exclaimed, "You're running this again?!" I chose not to correct her since, for all intents and purposes, I had basically run two Four-Mile Trails. Instead I gave her an impish smile and a shrug.

Looking back on the route.

I made sure to get an ice cream sandwich on the drive home.
--
I hope more people will be inspired to try this route on for themselves. Perhaps there is an FKT waiting to happen?
Check out my post on my mixed feelings about the FKT phenomenon.

--

Hutchinson, Alex. "When and Why to Swish-n-Spit Your Sports Drink: New Research Shows the Longer the Drink Stays in Your Mouth, the Bigger the Boost." 
     Runner's World. Rodale Inc., 17 July 2013. Web. 11 Sept. 2016.
     <http://www.runnersworld.com/sweat-science/when-and-why-to-swish-n-spit-your-sports-drink>

LaPena, Frank R., and Craig D. Bates. Legends of the Yosemite Miwok. Yosemite National Park, CA: Yosemite Natural History Association, 1981. Print. 

N., Jean. The Adventure Of A Life Time: Hiking Rim to Rim To Rim (R2R2R) In The Grand Canyon, 2013. Web. 11 Sept. 2016. <http://www.r2r2r.org/>
National Park Service. "Day Hiking." Grand Canyon National Park. U.S. Department of the Interior, 2016. Web. 11 Sept. 2016. 

     <https://www.nps.gov/grca/planyourvisit/day-hiking.htm>

Burly is the New Girly

Michelle Carter received a lot of press recently for her stunning gold medal victory in the shot put at the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. I love that Carter is highlighting that beauty can be found in all body types, regardless of size.  I commend her on her quest to impact young women, as well as her athletic prowess.

Quinn Rooney/Getty Images

However, there is one sticking point in her messaging.

"And it’s something I think a lot of girls and women shy away from because it’s not looked at as something a woman would want to do or a woman should do.” She believes that things are improving, though. “I think now, it’s like, ‘You know what? We’re girls and we can throw heavy balls and be in the dirt and we look good while we’re doing it.’ I think it’s bringing more attention to the sport and girls are realizing, Hey, I can do this and it’s O.K. to do this as a girl..."

Carter said she is often asked by parents and coaches to talk to younger female throwers. "The parents say, 'Can you talk to my daughter and say that it’s O.K.? That she can have muscles?' They’ll say, 'I show her pictures of you so they can know she’s good at what she does but still looks like a girl. She wears dresses.' It releases people to be whoever they want to be in the sport.”  

Yes, awesome, show girls that throwing a shot put can be a totally valid way of recreating and competing. But why do you have to "look good doing it?"  Carter rightfully puts emphasis on expanding the scope of female experience, but wrongfully continues to tell a narrative in which women must look a certain way to assert their femininity.

I have nothing against Carter or any woman wanting to doll herself up, wear nice clothing, use make-up, etc. However, I want it to be okay for a young girl to throw the shot put and wear whatever the hell she wants. Or wear camouflage board shorts and host a tea party. Or wear a non-pink Star Wars shirt and play with pirate Legos. Whatever. 
--

Backpacker Magazine

A while back, Backpacker Magazine offered up a hiking trip with their "Gear Chick" through a social media campaign highlighting one reader's comments:

She knows how to set up a tent, boil water, and bandage a blister. Plus, she is very easy on the eyes.

That may very well be true. It's okay for her to be beautiful and awesome at backpacking. It's okay for this guy to be attracted to her for both reasons. However, I feel frustrated that Backpacker Magazine felt the need to publicly sexualize their most-prominent female author/editor. To their credit, they have done plenty to honor her merits as an outdoorswoman over the long course of her career. Why couldn't they leave it at that? Can't that be enough? Must every burly woman be weighed against a standard of traditional beauty? They don't seem to feel the need to give airtime to the physical beauty of her male counterparts.
--

We have such a narrow definition of what it means to be feminine. Like homo sapiens of all genders, women have harbored a special connection to the natural world for thousands of years. I would argue that to be human is to be outdoorsy. I certainly know people who would not classify themselves as such, but I really think it’s been taught out of them.  We are undeniably drawn to beautiful, natural things: the beach, the sound of moving water, the sight of the brilliant night sky (for those of us privileged enough to have access to it any more).  There are tons of studies that show that being near nature is good for us (here's a good synthesis from National Geographic).

Being outdoorsy shouldn’t just be accepted alongside feminism; it should be celebrated as part and parcel of it. 

My entire life I've wondered: can my life be validated as a female experience, too?  I am not a man trapped in a woman's body.  I am proud to be a woman, feel drawn to female culture in many ways, relate to women in ways that only women can.  Part of opening up the outdoors for women is accepting the vast swath of female experience and preference.  If we continue to keep women confined to acting a certain way - pretty and stylish and demure and domestic, then we are limiting ourselves.  (There was a fantastic Modern Love article on this very topic recently.)

Outdoors enthusiast. Woman. Human.

--

I outlined some of these thoughts in an earlier blog post on the power of narrative. Perhaps that picture is too simplistic.  What is also pervasive is men being invited into outdoor culture, while women must work hardscrabble to get there, questioning whether they are allowed to join the club, defying stereotypes ("tomboy"), thinly veiled put-downs ("you throw like a girl"), and social condemning in matters of the heart ("when you act like one of the guys, they don't think of you like that").  

Those are all true to my personal experience and are only scratching the surface of a long list of barriers I have faced in wanting to be an athlete and an outdoorswoman.  If I wasn't so bull-headed, nor so overwhelmingly passionate about moving my body and spending time in nature, I would have turned away from those pursuits long ago due to social pressure.  We need to make room for women to just be exactly who they are.  

(And YES!, men suffer from the same social barriers, too. I could riff all night [and if you know me, you know I have] about the societal shackles we place on men, too, but I'm not going to right now. I will let men speak for themselves on this - a resource with lots of great blogs on this topic can be found at The Good Men Project.)

--

References

Echegaray, Luis Miguel. "Michelle Carter Wins USA's First Ever Women's Shot Put Gold." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 12 Aug. 2016. Web. 

     09 Sept. 2016.<https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/12/michelle-carter-shot-put-gold-medal-olympics-rio-2016>.

The Good Men Project. Goodmenproject.com, 2016. Web. 09 Sept. 2016.  <https://goodmenproject.com/>.

"Help A Hiker Win A Trip with Our Gear Chick - Backpacker." Backpacker Magazine. Cruz Bay Publishing, Inc., 2010. Web. 09 Sept. 2016. 
     <http://www.backpacker.com/news-and-events/news/trail-news/help-a-hiker-win-a-trip-with-our-gear-chick/>.
"Meet the Gear Testers: Kristin Hostetter - Backpacker." Backpacker Magazine. Cruz Bay Publishing, Inc., 2012. Web. 09 Sept. 2016. 
     <http://www.backpacker.com/news-and-events/monthly-issue/meet-the-gear-testers-kristin-hostetter/>.
Pilon, Mary. "You Throw, Girl: An Olympic Shot-Putter’s Feminist Mission." The New Yorker. N.p., 11 Aug. 2016. Web. 09 Sept. 2016. 
     <http://www.newyorker.com/news/sporting-scene/you-throw-girl-an-olympic-shot-putters-feminist-mission>.
Skinner, Delacey. "Modern Love: All Twisted Up by Gender Bending." The New York Times. The New York Times, 22 Apr. 2016. Web. 09 Sept. 2016. 
     <http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/fashion/transgender-modern-love-relationships.html>.
Williams, Florence. "This Is Your Brain on Nature." National Geographic. N.p., Jan. 2016. Web. 09 Sept. 2016. 
     <http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2016/01/call-to-wild-text>.

Gender Bender

I have been thinking about gender a lot recently - in part because of this historic political moment in the United States, in part because of personal efforts to educate myself on transgender issues, in part because writing this blog has made me a more critical thinker on gender.

A few months ago, I saw this video about a woman being removed from a bathroom line by the police because she could not "prove" she was female.  

As someone who frequently likes to wear a ball cap and sometimes blurs gendered notions of clothing and hair, I felt so hurt, so vulnerable, by the actions of these officers.  They are sworn to protect the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of the civilians in their ward.  Instead, they mistakenly robbed the liberty of that young woman to deal with her elemental human needs.

Before you assume I'm "authority-baiting" - I always try to believe the best in people.  Those cops were probably honestly trying to protect the public from "creeps" in a societally private space.

But this has got to stop.

We cannot create new daily horrors to prevent other (incredibly unlikely) horrors.  

When our stereotypes create injustices in people's basic American freedoms, we need to reevaluate them.  "Girls are girls and boys are boys and they are different" seems relatively straight-forward until we start trying to define exactly what that means.  I, for one, feel that "female" is one of the most defining characteristics of my identity, even though so many of the most traditional traits associated with femininity do not strike a chord with me. "Female" is different for each of us. 

Why do we pigeonhole the realm of possibility?  I am tickled by the range of human experience on this planet - there are infinite ways to pass one's day-to-day existence.  It's mind-boggling!  And fascinating.  And lovely.

So, can we broaden our definition of the feminine?  "Feminine," by definition is a contrast to the masculine, and this is where it starts getting tricky - the lines are blurry.  If we must contrast them to one another, we limit ourselves to binary opposites - only one side gets to be tough or strong, which leaves meek or weak for the other side. Should we do away with gender descriptors all together?  Some people argue that we should.  But to be gender-blind is to also miss the fact that women have a different relationship to our world than men do.

Yes, it does mean something to be a woman and a man and any other gender-bending identity on this planet, but each person gets to decide for themselves how they want to inhabit that.  

No one should have the right to regulate gender, not by spoken or printed word, not subtly through social cues and teasing, not by legislating rigid, archaic, limited social structures.  You don't get to tell that woman that she's not woman enough to use the restroom.

--
Check out the follow-up post on the the conundrum of being "girly" and burly.
--
References

May, Teneille. "Lesbian Harassed and Forced to Leave a Public Restroom Because the Police Insist She's a Man." YouTube. YouTube, 21 Apr. 2016. Web. 30 Apr. 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVuHAS2CtUM>.