After a long delay filled with nothing at all but endeavoring to train consistently and dealing with real life, here are a few photos of some of the runs I wrote about in my previous post. And yes, I will be posting more frequently now that some non-running related stresses have been removed, and that there appears to be a bit of light at the end of the tunnel to this whole Covid thing.

About an hour north of Ojai along Highway 33 is a lone stretch of landscape called Rancho Nuevo in the Los Padres National Forest. The road runs about 20 miles north up into a land of scrub pine and year round springs, then down into appropriately named Dry Canyon.

This area is, by far, THE most remote feeling location I’ve ever run in. Not even runs in bona fide wilderness areas feel as remote as this run, which is why I return to it as often as I can.

This bucolic scene is called the San Rafael Wilderness, about an hour north west of Santa Barbara. To get to this particular trailhead, you have to navigate a paved road where the word “paved” means that careless driving can remove an axle, particularly from a twenty year old low-slung Honda Civic.

The trail itself is called the Manzana Trail, and it leads about 8.5 miles from the start near Nira Campground to a turn of the (previous) century one room school house where homesteaders attempted to settle and tame the land. It didn’t work, but the upside is it’s an amazing place to spend three hours running through streams without slipping, and dodging resident horses who claim the space where a working ranch still exists by ambling up to you out of nowhere and neighing a horsy “hello.”

This beautiful photo of the southern Owens Valley was taken half way up three miles of living hell. You can see a portion of the Lower Whitney Portal trail on the lower right, which from that point ascends a lung busting 20% grade up to my current vantage point, a mere two and a half miles from the start, with about another mile and a half to go. The entire route ascends nearly four thousand feet in elevation over four miles. But it takes you up to Whitney Portal where they serve an awesome turkey burger. Which is perfect mid level ballast for the harrowing descent back down.

Through the burning hell of a forest fire I ascended. My reservation at Reds Meadow Resort and rental car too expensive to waste sitting around stewing in ash and getting angrier and more frustrated by the second, I put my lungs to the test and ascended the nine mile segment of the Pacific Crest Trail north of the Devils Post Pile National Monument up to an intersection with the John Muir Trail at Thousand Island lake. Oddly enough, the smoke seemed to dissipate once I passed 10,000 feet elevation, but that may have been the hypoxia speaking.

But seriously. The weather was clear as a bell all the way up I-395 until just south of Mammoth Lakes, when a bank of storm clouds I assumed was some sort of late season thunderstorm resolved into an ash cloud generated by the fires near Fresno and the western entrance into Yosemite National Park. I knew there was a health risk when I took off for this six hour excursion, and I should have made other plans. But I survived, and the lingering cough I caught from it dissipated after a few days. After the fact, I find myself googling terms like “lung cancer risk” and PM2.5 hazards. What’s done is done, but…

Eighteen round trip miles of Sierra awesomeness with 3,000 feet of elevation gain, but at what cost? WHAT COST?

The runs will continue. Moving through wilderness at person speed is essential to maintaining my love of running so that I can reach the goals I’ve set for myself, and most importantly, surpassing them. Because if not now, when?

See you next.