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Trail Running

Everything leading up to running three 5000 meters was going great, until it was time to go. Elevation proved a tough variable we could only do so much to prepare for.

“Are you German-monking,” Dan calls from a twenty yards ahead and in an annoyingly chipper tone. I’m just pulling myself upright after retching. Some years ago there was a popular TED talk by Brother David Steindl-Rast. Google it. He teaches that happiness comes from gratefulness, and gratefulness comes from recognizing that the most valuable thing that can be given to you is this moment. This one. In this moment, what we have that is so valuable is the opportunity to enjoy, or at least the opportunity to learn from a challenge. There’s more to his talk, but we’ve latched onto this part as a mantra. We call it German monk-ing. And as much as I was trying to do that, the let-me-just-wallow-in-my-pain, leave-me-to-rot-on-the-trail-side, look I shoot back at him reveals that maybe, just for a moment, I’m not German monk-ing. I just want to stop. Just lie on the ground and call it done.

Running the 3 Passes Trail is what drew us to the Khumbu. For Dan, it’s his eighth time to Nepal’s Himalaya, for me, it’s my first. Nepal is famously home to some of the world’s best trails...

After producing the trail running guide to the Swiss Alps, Run the Alps Switzerland, we realized that we had stumbled upon what we feel is the best multi-day trail run imaginable. Our story of creating an iconic trail running grand tour.

I always flip to the last page of a book first. I read the last sentence to see how everything in the story leads to the final punctuation. Creating the Via Valais—a trail-running super route in the Alps—was a lot like that. Spoiler: we knew the final stage. We knew that everything ended well. Actually it ended better than well. It ended in a victory lap above Zermatt on perfect singletrack before plummeting into the center of town at the base of the Matterhorn.

What we didn’t know on our grand tour was a few key connecting trails. And the biggest question: where would it start? ...

Connecting glaciers from Chamonix to Zermatt is what every ski tourer dreams of doing, the Haute Route. We decided to run it - earning ourselves some decidedly nasty looks and comments about our method of travel in what is considered alpine terrain. Were we irresponsible? Or are we evolving as mountain sport athletes?

“If he starts to slide, jump into that crevasse.” Dan tells me. The counter weight would be the best way to keep us all from skidding into the next slit below.

I look down into a bottomless hole, blue and terrifying. For a second, or maybe even two, I imagine drinking coffee, a cat on my lap, running shoes waiting on the door mat. I would give anything to be there. To be anyplace other than tied between two guys on a melting glacier. There are no crevasses in the kitchen in my apartment on a normal Tuesday morning.

CLIMBING

Most every climber in the Alps collects 4000 meter peaks. You have to start somewhere, and it might as well be on one of the ultra-classics. Kim Strom's take on being 1 down, 81 to go.

A hard frost glistens on the rocks. The air is cold, but windless, and for now the only light comes from a few stars, headlamps, and their glow on the freshly white ground. Conditions seem good, as long as sunrise warms the verglas from the rocks. We just can’t be too quick to reach the steeper sections of the ridge. When we get there, the summit of Weissmies will be my first 4000-meter climb.

In the Alps, 4000 meters is a benchmark...

Ski touring

Mountains, snow, couloirs, huts - Bulgaria's Pirin Mountains have everything the Alps have. We thought we'd have a look to see how it would all come together. Turns out their mountain culture is something special.

Our van rattles through the fog towards someplace brighter ahead. Windows down, jackets stripped-off, folk songs wailing. We’ve just met in Sofia, stacked our skis in the back, and are now speeding over bumpy roads to the Pirin mountains for a week of hut-to-hut touring. Road signs in cyrillic and latin alphabets indicate the way to unfamiliar places as we exit the city to a brown-grey hillside with no snow to hide the deadness of February. In a better year, Bulgaria promises plenty of powder, but this winter...

Straddling the Swiss Italian border, the Ortler Tour has become a hot spot for spring ski tours, and for good reason. It's a skier's paradise, with peaks to climb, luxurious huts, and outrageous meals.

Conditions are arid, but it’s last call for turns this April...so we finish packing our gear in the dusty parking lot. The only things missing: motivation and probably snow. In this heat, I’m ready to hang up the avi gear and skis. Our gang is just arriving to start a week of touring in Italy’s Ortler range. Two guys wearing nothing but spandex shorts, boots, and overflowing packs saunter past us. Spaghetti western extras with holstered ice axes and dangling ski crampons. An upsurge of dust follows them...

The Berner Haute Route could be on one of those "Best Ski Tours No One Knows About!" lists. Because... it's true.

We met a single skier on the 3100-meter col perched above the Gerstengletscher. As we arrived from the opposite side of the col, she stood topless, changing out of her sweat soaked shirt into a dry one for her descent. We chatted and told her we were writing an article about the tour. “Don’t tell everyone,” she winks to us, “or they will come.” We were sharing a secret, a place that’s not meant to be crowded, a tour that’s not for everyone...

Three girlfriends set out for a spring ski tour full of glaciers, a 4ooo meter peak and a 2000 meter descent.

“Ski touring isn’t about skiing,” Dan shouts over the chatter of our skis on the icey washboard slope. “Have you learned that by now?” We’re beginning our descent from the Bishorn to Zinal. It’s a good thing we’re not out here for powder turns, I think to myself, as the frozen ripples give way to breakable crust, and later to deep cement. On the descent, there’s every type of snow, except the type we’d all love to ski.

The Bishorn is one of the Alps’ easiest 4000m peaks, ironically called the 4000 des Dames, the crowd of tourers going up it is almost entirely men. While it’s more about the journey to get there, the 2500-meter descent makes me think touring might be just a little bit about skiing too
...

English or German text.

Yurt life, Russian vans, horseback approaches and plenty of ski lines... Discovering the massive potential of Kyrgyzstan's ski touring.

“Is the tunnel still closed?” Alex, our tour guide and driver asks a man in Kyrgyz at a refueling stop.

“You will see.” That’s the only reliable response he can give. “Ak jol,” he wishes us a white road. It means to have a good trip. Safe travel. They nod their tall kalpak hats and we continue driving in the darkness.

There’s a four hour drive south from the capital, Bishkek, to reach the tunnel that may or may not be passable. The magic tunnel, as Simon calls it, connects to Too-Ashuu, meaning mountain pass. It’s the location of one of the country’s few ski resorts - a cluster of simple cabins and a single lift imported from Switzerland. Simon Duverney, our friend, mountain guide, climber, and epic-hero, heard about the magic tunnel from another friend who’d previously skied in Kyrgyzstan’s Suusamyr valley. “On this side of the tunnel it’s dry and early spring, but the other side…”, he says, a glint in his eye, “glistens magically. All white.” ...

Hiking

Trekking in to one of the world's most beautiful mountains, which also happens to be at the source of the world's most spiritual river. A big journey to the Indian Himalaya.

I roll onto my side expecting him to be there to smell my unwashed shirt. Someone to say, you got to smell this, to and they would do it. I hadn’t taken it off in about eight days and eight nights. It smelled rank. Sweet and edible. A combination of dal and momos, masala, deep-fried everything, sleep and sweat. We all want that someone. Someone to be the person we want to tell everything. What we ate Tuesday for lunch or how long we stood in line at the post office. And we want them to tell us those things too. How late the bus was this morning, that the washing machine is broken, again, and that the grass is turning brown since it hasn’t rained in weeks. At least I think acceptance and connection in these mundane moments is what many of us crave - even if we say we want adventure. We can want that too. I wouldn’t be sleeping alone in a snow covered tent in the Himalaya if I didn’t want that too. I rolled back to my other side, the sleeping pad grumbling with each move. Three weeks. This was the longest we’d been apart in more than fifteen years. I wished he could stand outside the tent with me at 3am to marvel at Shivling, fresh with snow in the white moonlight. Or at least smell the abandoned hygiene of Himalayan adventure...

He had seen a portrait of Shivling on the cover of a climbing book decades ago: an emblem of adventure. A more exotic Matterhorn. Symmetrical from the right vantage, imposing, pointed. Magnetic. A mountain he always knew he would come to, and will probably come back to climb. That was Dan—aspirational. I never had such ambitions. I didn’t imagine standing in the Himalaya, staring up at Bhagirathi. Meru. Shivling. But I liked the idea. I thought about the first time I saw mountains: John Denver was on the radio, lightning flashed between the peaks, and the horizontal world I knew suddenly stood upright. I was twelve, and riding in the back seat of my grandparent’s silver Cadillac from Illinois to Colorado. I had never been west of the Mississippi River. My search for mountains started as soon as we crossed the bridge to leave the state, Land of Lincoln...

One of the Alps' wildest treks with long days following goat paths, cursing the difficult terrain, but loving the silence and stone huts.

Lake Maggiore, reflects the abundant sunshine, bright buildings, and tall palm trees. Locarno’s feel of a beach town gives no indication that in a single day’s walk, you can find yourself someplace so wild it seems that no one has walked there before you. But they have, and that’s how the trail originated. The Via Alta Vallemaggia was first worn by hooves and by the desire to connect the stone alpes high above the valley. The route makes its way from one alpe to the next on trails first made by goats and shepherds. The Via Alta Vallemaggia is a rugged and pastoral multi-day hiking route in Switzerland’s Ticino region. Traveling South to North, the alpine route hovers above the Maggia Valley. Hikers can hut-to-hut from Locarno, all the way to Fusio. Spanning 55 kilometers while accumulating 5,500 meters of vertical gain, the hike keeps to high and technical terrain...

A six day journey along a rugged and remote ridgeline in Switzerland's Ticino Region. Long, difficult days are rewarded each night with cozy huts.

Ticino’s Valle Verzasca is famous for what lies at its bottom; the crystal clear, turquoise Verzasca river and all its pools and waterfalls sitting amongst idyllic villages built from the local granite. In these deep valleys Ticinese life ticks along at its own pace, tranquilo.

When we arrive late in September, it isn’t the treasures found in the depths of the valley that we’re seeking, rather it’s what sits well above and out of sight for most of the visitors. For here, towering above the valley floor is one of the Alps most unique hiking tours, the Via Alta Verzasca. I learned a long time ago to pay close attention to trails that stay on ridge lines ...

Cycling

Gravel biking old military roads along the Italian French border, cyclists stay in high mountain huts, and climb the infamous gravel pass, the Colle delle Finestre, the scene of many Giro d'Italia showdowns.

I have every reason to hate the Strada dell’Assietta. This 30km dirt road between Sestrières and the Colle delle Finestre in Piemonte was a mandatory section of the 2015 Transcontinental Race, an unsupported bikepacking adventure which I completed. On a road bike. I suffered multiple pinch flats on the rough gravel of the Assietta and had to walk the last five kilometers to save my last intact tube and make my way to Istanbul.

Still, I was blown away by the savage beauty of this stretch of road between 2,000m and 2,500m and promised myself I would come back to enjoy it in less stressful conditions.

The opportunity came one summer ...