Mr Trail Safety Speaks!

The Angeles Crest, looking east from Mt Wilson The Angeles Crest 100 is facing serious threats to its continued existence. Both are man-made.  The AC100 had been given an informal pass though the Pleasant View Ridge Wilderness by the USFS since 2011, because of their over-stressed/underfunded assets. Since 1996 the Race has contributed thousands of hours of trail work. This has been extremely important . Hal Winton, co-RD, has been the lead on all this. He's sat through more endless grinding meetings, then driven to remote areas, bucked chainsaws and deadfalls, and introduced hundreds of runners to trail-work. The 2014 Monument decision merely opened up the whole mess for review. Yes, the 1984 Granite Chief Wilderness decision affected the Western States 100, and they were able to grandfather the race in. Antonio Rossman was part of the legal team that made that happen. Was a phone-call put in to Reagan from his old friend Wendell Robie? Maybe. That would sure...

The best Lost Hunter Story of 2014 was a father/son combo, about 1.5 miles below the Mt Wilson summit on the Kenyon Devore Trail. Dad was carrying both .30cal deer rifles. Son was splayed out on the trail. They'd started that morning from Short Cut Saddle on Hwy 2, which was 9+mi away. Taken a wrong turn, etc. Hoping to call a friend at the top for a ride. That's when I noticed that their hiking poles were 4' sections of #8 rebar.

Every neighborhood has its shrine. A year ago I was pulling out of a crash dive of injury and illness where I wasn't running at all. It also occurred to me that I took the wrong ten years off from ultras. No, I didn't wind up with cancer like one friend of mine. I just got served with reality. By March, I was progressing well enough to hold down a 20-mile run—until I broke my left wrist in an airborne fall on a trail that ended with a loud SNAP. Thanks to Rainer and Dave, who splinted me, then drove my whiteout self to Huntington Memorial ER, where it got cast up. And to Catherine Schulz who was my advocate in the ER, who could talk doctor-talk with the ER MDs. Few are this lucky. Would've been nice if I could've washed that arm before it went into the cast, but it didn't go all rank on me. In the Huntington General ER, an hour after I fractured my wrist. I'm being clown-slapped to keep my mind off the break. The drugs came later. Broken bones are com...

Latest addition to the Book of Ultra-Numbers. I raised SKT Mastery to whole new depths at Saturday's San Juan Trail 50k, finishing 14min after finish cutoff. This is a career first. Back at the campsite, I got out the matches and built a fire. ‪#‎SlowAndShit‬   First time for everything. I was playing it pretty conservative for the first 20mi. Figured I could hit the last 11 in 3 hrs. Wrong-O. Stride tightened up, trail got a lot more technical up to, then down Holy Jim, then up Horse Thief to the Divide Road. It wasn't until the last 2 miles off the top did I remember something Andy Roth had told me [letting hips relax, rolling into the stride] that I was able to open it up. But then it was too late. When I crossed the finish line, I joked with RD Baz Hawley that it was only 23 years earlier, I'd done the late San Juan Trail 50-Mile. "And you're just now finishing!" Remember the hunters? they weren't looking for deer...they were looking for s...

Puzzling Evidence of priapic symmetry. Recently there have been reports of nubile young women, dewy ultrarunner wannabes, inexplicably lured off the Pacific Crest Trail from either direction. Perhaps they were getting lost, in the finest Chet Baker tradition. The Judgmental Brothers had discovered enigmatically puzzling land formations on top of Mt Williamson. Ritual observance? Fetish object? Geo-directional ley-line indicator? Was this directional art for aliens? Or merely the lithic whoopie-cushion for pre-contact indigenous peoples? Palmdale to the north. Sculpture points west, albeit foreshortened, enhancing its girthy aspect. Descending the peak, view to the southwest. Each expedition member was left with their own sobering thoughts as to the origin and purpose of these enigmatic land sculptures, far from the sight and purview of commentators and critics.