Training Log Archive: Bash

This was our day off - a chance to be tourists and overcome jet lag before pre-race tasks take over our time. We got up at 6 a.m. to take an awesome journey by train.

To back up in the story, this is my third visit to the Interlaken area and I have never visited its biggest tourist attraction - the Jungfraujoch. When I came here as a student backpacker, the weather was fantastic but I didn't have enough money. When 'Bent and I came a few years ago, we had the money but the weather was bad. Finally it all came together today!

The Jungfraujoch is a glaciated area at almost 12,000' in elevation surrounded by mountain peaks. There are lots of different things to do - outdoor glacier walks, a zip line, ice caves, restaurants, displays, shops, observatory, etc. To get there, you change trains a couple of times, climbing some very steep slopes on a cog wheel railway and enjoying spectacular scenery along the way. This is the village of Lauterbrunnen early in the journey.



And here we've climbed well above Lauterbrunnen, ascending a seemingly impossible slope on the train. By the way, we suspect that the APEX race will travel through this area as it is criss-crossed with trails and bike paths.



The final train, the Jungfraubahn, travels much of its journey inside the famous Eiger mountain.





As a mountain literature junkie, this last fact is exciting since there are a couple of holes in the walls of the train tunnel that open onto the north face of the Eiger. Over the past century, they have sometimes played a role when climbing expeditions have run into trouble.

The holes in the north face of the Eiger are covered with plexiglass now - at least the holes that they let tourists see. I wonder if there is still an escape route for climbers somewhere? I'll bet there is.



The weather was socked in when we first got up to the Jungfraujoch so we started with the ice caves and hoped it would burn off.





Today Hingo, T. Rex and I enjoyed the pleasant company of Dave Lamb (Team Granite in Untamed New England 2010), Carol Lamb and JayXC. Dave and JayXC are racing here on Team Untamed New England.



We did an uphill glacier hike that took us up to 3650 m in elevation. For some reason, the altitude didn't hit me as hard as it sometimes has at lower elevations but it was a surprisingly good workout to go uphill in the soft snow.



Our destination was a climbing hut near the Monch mountain. Incredible place to hang out for hot chocolate, photos and even postcard writing since they would accept mail and postmark it there.

















We got in trouble for this... At least, we were called back quite sternly by a hut staff member. (Sad what a few AR geeks like us will do in an attempt to reach exactly 12,000' feet on our altimeters!)



After all our fun at the hut, we hiked back down the glacier in much improved weather. (Temporarily... it socked in again later.) We were a little slap happy, singing "the hills are alive with the sound of music" and clowning around.







Next we were going to go up to this Dr. Suess-like observatory - the highest point of the day. For some reason, it is called The Sphinx.



This was the view when we first arrived but it soon clouded over.



Here's Getawaystix's altimeter watch. (Thank you!) I wonder if it's been this high before.



A few hours later, we went back down the Jungfraubahn to the village of Kleine Scheidegg and had lunch beneath the north face of the Eiger.



Then we went back to Interlaken where Mountain Dan soon arrived to join us. So the Tree Huggers have assembled and now it is time for race preparations. I finished putting my bike together tonight and took it for a test ride. I'm kinda amazed that everything seems to be working OK. The 10 lb bike bag worked! Big day tomorrow - groceries, weighing bags and other last-minute stuff. Two of our team members are renting bikes and hope to pick them up tomorrow. Not too many photos are likely over the next couple of days, so I made sure to take a lot (way too many!) today. :)

Packed up all my gear, much of the team gear and some food for APEX, weighed it and exceeded the maximum weight limit for my main bag (70 lb), took it all out, edited out some clothing, removed a bit of food and tried again. Then repeated that again. And again. By the time I got to the airport, I had one bag @68 lb, a bike bag @48 lb, a really heavy carry-on backpack and a $195 bill for excess baggage.



Flew to Zurich where I met Hingo and Rderunner. Immersing ourselves fully in the rich cultural experience of a foreign land, we had breakfast at the airport Starbucks.



Beautiful train ride from Zurich Airport to Interlaken via Bern (where the super-efficient Swiss rail system made a 6-minute train change seem almost too long). We were lucky to run into Chris, a race volunteer, and with our group of four, I almost never had to touch my monster bag. The bike was much easier to heave around and so far it appears to have arrived unscathed in the new lightweight Pika Packworks bag.





We checked in at Balmers Heberge where we have this beautiful view from our balcony.



Hingo and I set out to explore the town since it was too early to sleep.



Naturally, this effort required food and caffeine.



We saw a number of paragliders and discovered the downtown park where they land. One member of our team will be doing this in the race.



T. Rex and JayXC arrived in time for dinner at the Balmers Beer Garden.



Jungfraujoch tomorrow morning!

It's crazy time! Just 24 more hours to think of everything I'd like to have with me when I'm high in the Swiss Alps at 0C plus wind chill. Or during an 8-hour night paddle in a sit-on-top kayak in a glacier-fed lake while Hingo flings spray at me with his paddle. Getting there...

In case I run out of time, I'll post the link to the race coverage now. I've just posted our team bio and photos. The opening social is on Monday evening so they may start posting pics then. We do gear check and maps on Tuesday and start racing on Wednesday with a 6-8 hr prologue followed by a race restart. Looking forward to racing through a beautiful landscape with Hingo, T. Rex and Mountain Dan. Our goal is to experience all of the race course. No illusions beyond that, although of course we'll do our best - and we'll be cheering for our speedier compatriots, Team Running Free!

'Bent is working late so the job of cooking tonight's dinner was left in my incompetent hands. Who the hell burns asparagus? :(

A strange yellow orb appeared briefly in the sky and enticed me out for an easy run around Palgrave West. Great to clear my head from race packing for awhile and enjoy springtime in the forest - trilliums, violets, ferns and more. The Toronto and Region Conservation has just finished planting a few hundred native trees and shrubs on our property so it was fun to do a tour.

Outdoor Nuisances Report

1) I've got poison ivy on my inner forearm. The timing is right for it to have happened at STORM although I didn't see any PI up there this year. It might be from a piece of gear or clothing or even from one of our pooches, which has happened before.

2) Our vet is now doing Lyme tests on dogs when she does their annual heartworm test. After finding one or two ticks on dogs each year, she has found a number of ticks this year. One local dog (who did not travel anywhere) has had a positive Lyme test. 'Bent found 9 ticks on BulletDog after a recent trip to Picton - yikes! A vet there said he almost never sees a dog without a tick and he has had 40 positive Lyme tests.

This matters to humans too. Outdoor lovers here have been leading a charmed existence in south-central Ontario while our nearby friends in the northeast U.S. have been dealing with Lyme for years. With climate change, we knew this would be coming our way - arghh. Time to start checking yourself and your pets.

Anyone who has ever prepared for a big adventure race knows how crazy things always get in the final days regardless of how early you try to get ready. This morning we learned of a new requirement from Swiss marine police for each APEX team to have two all-round navigation lights - one for each of our double kayaks. We will wear them on our helmets.
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I had a great idea on the way home from MEC. CARA should start a "useless mandatory gear library" where Canadian adventure racers can borrow expensive mandatory items they will never use again. In the meantime, if anyone has plans to go boating in the vicinity of shipping lanes or ferry routes this summer, just give me a call. I'll set you up.

A couple of days ago, we learned that we'll need to bring crampons - a possibility that we'd been warned about from the start.

And so goes the week... I'm not expecting to get in much more training but as they say, the hay is in the barn. Not a lot of hay but it will have to do!

In the midst of this, I received an e-mail letting me know that the used kayak I bought for Coast to Coast in New Zealand had finally arrived in Toronto after surviving the Christchurch earthquake and a 3-month journey by ship, train, truck and (now) car to Palgrave. If I didn't pick it up by Friday (the day I fly to Zurich), they would start charging me $40/day for storage. So that was high on the priority list.

It takes a couple of hours to pick up something like this. First I went to Canada Customs to pay duty and HST. (Ouch, I forgot the HST.) Then to a huge warehouse where my Subaru lined up at a dock alongside a row of 18-wheelers. I'd brought a box of random tools since the shippers had talked about building a wooden box. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to extract the kayak myself but fortunately it arrived as a big blob of styrofoam, bubble wrap and plastic. The man on the forklift looked at me sadly and said, "Ma'am, this will not fit in your car."

He passed a knife to a friendly older gentleman who helped me remove all the tape and styrofoam and plastic. Halfway through, I remembered to take a picture.



When we were down to the final layers of bubble wrap, I picked up the kayak and put it on the roof of my car. The man raised his eyebrows, laughed and exclaimed in his lilting Jamaican accent, "Oh!! I would not want to mess with YOU!" Little did he know that the kayak only weighs about 10 kg. Can't wait to take "Jake" (aka JKK Eclipse) out for a paddle!

Just caught up on the last 3 days of log entries. Lots of photos! Quiet week coming up on the training front as I madly pack for APEX.