Deep like the rivers

2018 started off with a trip to New Zealand and has continued to be amazing in terms of travel:

Niagara Falls ~ Canadian Falls

• Niagara Falls with the Michigander nieces and nephew. We drove from Detroit and stayed on the Canadian side. It was good to be there in the off-season: the town itself is super touristy and reminded me a lot of a family-friendly version of Las Vegas. In early April it was uncrowded so I can only imagine how jam-packed everything would be during peak season.
  
  Mi Hermana and I really wanted to ride the famous boat on the river up to the Falls, but the boat tour only operates in late spring and summer. Besides, the Niagara River was frozen -- frozen! My Northwest brain was so fascinated by a frozen river-- and boats couldn't get in the water anyway.
  
  The Falls themselves (both Canadian and American) were stunning, as were the cheesy tours that brought you closer to the water. The butterfly conservatory was unexpectedly enjoyable for me -- I didn't realize we'd actually be walking around in a heated room with thousands of butterflies flitting around us. Mi Hermana and I also sampled many, many local Niagara wines.
  
  On the way back, we stopped at an Underground Railroad museum in Ontario. I really liked reading the stories of former slaves who made it to freedom in Canada and had to create a new life, build communities, and fight for rights. It was... interesting and awkward to observe the vastly differing reactions of kids ages 6,8, and 10. The 6yo thought everything was fun and games; the 8yo monopolized the history doctoral student/museum staffer's time with questions about everything under the sun, indicating a slow awareness that human history is not just; and the 10yo in full tween mode kept saying loudly she'd studied this in school.
  



Peyto Lake, Banff 

• I went back to Canada in August with old college friends, this time to Jasper and Banff National Parks. Unfortunately, most of British Columbia, Alberta, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana was blanketed in smoke from wildfires, so we couldn't really see the world-renowned mountains and glaciers surrounding us. Nevertheless, we went hiking and canoeing and kayaking and swimming and whitewater rafting. When we caught glimpses of the Rockies, though, it was definitely gorgeous. Will have to go back.
  
• This summer I also attempted to summit both Mt Rainier and Mt Adams -- Rainier for the second time, Adams for the first. On Rainier, I got further than I did on my 2015 attempt, and did it sans anxiety attack! Our group didn't end up summiting due to unsafe conditions but I'm wildly happy about our trip. Will definitely try again, and soon.
  
  On Adams, we probably should have camped halfway up instead of trying to summit in one day. We made it an impressive 1700 feet short of the summit, though. It was very long day. But now we know, for next time!  

Society, where none intrudes

I've discovered a new mystery series that helps me escape the existentially terrifying year that is 2017: a whole series with a female detective park ranger, with each book taking place in a different National Park!

The heroine is a kind of tomboy loner, which is probably why I like the series. And after last year's centennial celebration of the National Park Service, it's piqued my interest in visiting more parks, especially since I've had an America the Beautiful pass for the past 2 years.

Speaking of National Parks, we made it to Glacier! Unfortunately we didn't have time to do more than a few short 2-hour hikes, but based on the small taste I got this summer before the wildfires decimated chunks of the park, I need to go back to do some actual hiking.

Two things I was not expecting about Glacier:

1) IT'S DROP-DEAD GORGEOUS EVERYWHERE You can seriously just take pictures at pullouts along the highways, and it looks like you've hiked in the backcountry to a secret, serene spot.  

2) THERE ARE BEARS! Googling "bears Glacier Montana" before leaving was both a mistake and very educational. PSA: you can rent bear spray in the park! It helped calm my paranoia about unexpectedly encountering a grizzly or black bear on the trail... especially on the one hike I did alone, at 5am, on one of the more isolated trails, while my friends were all 40 miles away lining up to run a half-marathon. (The half-marathon had armed guys in ATVs on bear patrol.) 

Before I saw the sign about bears 

being spotted on the trail.

I didn't see anybody (or bears) on that eeeeearly morning trail for at least 2 hours, but I did see a handwritten sign saying bears had been on the trail the day before.

I did, however, see a bull moose! By then there were a few other people on the trail. The moose, with his huge gore-tastic antlers, stopped all foot traffic for about 20 minutes on the trail while he moseyed around finding his breakfast. 

Mt Baker: So close, yet so far!

Speaking of glaciers, it's been almost two months since our Mt Baker summit attempt. Our group had three chances to summit: it was stormy and rainy on the first two, which meant the last day on the mountain would be loooong. No one made it to the summit, though some made it to the crater rim; our party had several injuries or health issues. I think we are all glad we attempted the summit, though.

The mountains are calling, and I must go... where, next?

New Zealand, actually, to visit La Otra Hermana, the nieces and nephew I haven't seen in 5 years except on Skype, and the nephew I've only ever met over the computer. They're all too young to go on the Great Walks or multi-day tramps I want to try, but I'm researching kid-friendly short hikes.

A friend recently reminded me of the Japanese term "forest bathing," and the more I think about it, the more I like the idea.

I could use some more forest bathing.

On the rooftop of Africa

It's been a little over 10 weeks since my Kilimanjaro summit. I haven't had much time to reflect on the experience -- returning to the States, I hit the ground running with an annual work convention, canvass deployment, and then election season. But now that I'm suffering from the annual post-election cough and sniffles, I had the opportunity to go through all my Kili pics again and re-live the trip.

Like most vacations, I wish I could go back. I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.

I never did find out the name of the flower whose nighttime scent welcomed me to Africa. As I deboarded the plane in Tanzania and walked across the tarmac, and the aroma was spicy and pleasant in the dark.

Day 1: Shira I camp (3550m/11,686ft)

Our trekking group assembled at the lodge - two British girls, an Australian, a California mother/daughter duo, and me. All women again, which was nice! I had misread the weight limit for our packs as 15 lbs when in reality it was 15 kgs, so by accident I packed the lightest and most efficiently. Turns out I didn't need much else than the bare minimum. Unlike our Peru trip, the weather was very dry so I didn't sweat as much, and luckily my hair didn't get so greasy-dirty-nasty! Both Rainier and Peru also taught me that I didn't need to carry as much food as I would otherwise normally do.

Day 4: on our way to Lava Tower Camp
(4550m/15,748ft)

It was eight straight days of walking. Except for the final summit push, the trails were not actually that difficult; the distance and elevation gain were on par with regular hikes around the PNW. It's the altitude that made it tough: standing up from a camp chair or the toilet or just walking would reduce your breath to gasps and cause your heart to beat like a rabbit's. Small headaches, lack of hunger despite nonstop walking, breathlessness.... but we were all very good about staying hydrated!

Dust was everywhere. It was windy everywhere. Our noses ran and dried up and were raw, and we practically choked on dirt and sand. It was cold at night and in the early mornings, but once the sun came out it became rather toasty.

Each time we reached a new high altitude (a record we would break daily), I marveled that I was higher than the tallest peak in my state, higher than I'd ever hiked before on three continents, and that mountains around the world can be so vastly, beautifully different at the same elevations.

Everybody but me took Diamox. I tried it once on Day 4, but it made my vision blurry so I stopped. Three of us had emergency oxygen, which I tested during an acclimatization hike on Day 4 and used for about an hour on summit night until it broke. Maybe that was kismet after all: in the end, I underestimated my own lung capacity and adaptability because as long as I walked pole-pole and followed our head guide Mussa's advice  to "Walk at your own pace," I didn't need the backup oxygen. If it's possible to owe a debt of gratitude to a mountain, there's a part of me that thanks Kilimanjaro for teaching me not to cop out so easily or question my own abilities. I made it to the summit on my own, at my own pace.

Day 6: Barafu Camp (4600m/15,091ft),

less than 8 hours before summit push

We saw fellow climbers being escorted down all along the way to the summit; altitude sickness is still the leading reason why people don't make it to the top. (Another sober reminder occurred just weeks after our summit, that Kilimanjaro is still quite dangerous despite not being a "technical" mountaineering feat.)

I had enough layers on both my upper and lower body to keep me warm, but during the coldest wee hours of the morning I honestly thought I might lose my fingers and toes to frostbite. My godsend of a guide, Julian, kept saying "The sun is coming, don't worry. Keep going."

Day 7: sunrise at about 6:15am, after

7-8 hours of climbing in the dark

I'll never forget the sunrise, about 85% of the way to the top from the final high camp. After seven or eight hours of climbing in the dark, of slogging through the bitterest, freezing hours from 2 - 4am, we stopped for a tea break to watch the sunrise. The minute the sun peeked up from the eastern horizon, every climber on the mountain cheered. It was a wondrous sound: whoops and claps and cheers coming from above and below, from near and far, echoing down the valley.

Reaching the crater rim at the top was the first tangible milestone. Like Rainier's Muir Snowfield, it is seemingly close but a never-ending anguish; like St Helens above the tree line, it is nothing but ash and pumice boulders and a humbling testament to the Earth's geological forces.

Day 7: Uhuru Peak, the summit of 

Kilimanjaro (5895m/19,341ft)

Out of a mixture of exhaustion and altitude, I cried when reaching the crater rim, then again at the summit for simply making it and thankful to Julian for pushing me... aaand then again on the descent down the ashy slopes (though that last tearful bout was mainly due to frustration and dehydration).

Climbing Kilimanjaro and going on a safari (accomplished three days later in Kenya with close friends from college) have been on my bucket list since before I knew what a bucket list was.

Somewhere back in time, teenage me feels the eerie tug of a future unknown accomplishment. The intervening twenty years will teach her that, through 6 deaths and 7 births, anxiety and depression, love and loss, two lessons from the rooftop of Africa can reorient her.

The sun is coming. Just walk at your own pace.

Tawantinsuyu

Since my adventure buddy was just diagnosed with breast cancer, I've been thinking a lot about our recent trip to Peru.

We read Turn Right at Machu Picchu  before we left. It's a hilarious memoir by a travel writer following in Hiram Bingham's footsteps, tracing the 1911 jungle trek that led to Bingham's (re)discovery of Machu Picchu.

Going from 0 to 11,000 feet was horrible; we felt the effects of the altitude within 2 hours of our arrival in Cuzco.  We had 4 days to acclimate before starting on the Inca Trail, and there were plenty of things to see in Cuzco: the Qorikancha, the Sacred Valley (Pisaq, Ollantaytambo, Chinchera), and Saqsaywaman.  At every site, the ruins were a stunning testament to Inca engineering: amazingly precise stonework and astronomy.

And Peru is BEAUTIFUL.

Ollantaytambo

On the road to Chinchera

On the road to Chinchera

The Inca Trail itself was not as difficult as we anticipated it would be. (I think Muir Snowfield is a tougher hike.)  But there were SO MANY STAIRS. It's completely mind-boggling that the Inca road system, which stretches across thousands of miles in 5 modern countries, could be made up of so many stones and stairways.

 

The terrain was breathtaking: desert to alpine to jungle in all varieties, over every other hill.

And the highest I've now hiked is now 13,828 feet, to Dead Woman's Pass on the Inca Trail.

There were several more Inca ruins on the 4-day trek to Machu Picchu. Honestly, when our group got to the end of our destination, where a thousand international tourists roamed around us with cameras, it was a bit much - especially after being on the trail for over 3 days with few other people.

Huayna Picchu towering above
Machu Picchu

But then we climbed Huayna Picchu. In the rain. And though we didn't feel particularly bad-ass after the Inca Trail itself, we absolutely did after finishing Huayna Picchu. BECAUSE IT'S ALL STAIRS. 1,180 VERTICAL FEET OF STAIRS.

After the super touristy Machu Picchu experience, we headed west to Arequipa. There was a general strike going on in the region, so our plans had to be a little flexible. We took a tour of Colca Canyon, where we saw condors; the same tour took us to see more awe-inspiring mountains. And the bus sneaked up to 16,108 feet -- the highest I've been, period (even if I've only hiked up 13,828).

A condor flies over
Colca Canyon

Sabancay, the smoking volcano

El Misti

There was so much of Peru we didn't have time to explore: Lake Titicaca, the Amazon, the Nazca Lines, the foodie scene in Lima, other gorgeous hikes in the Andes.  But it was so beautiful, and the mix of cultures so proud and fascinating, that we just might have to go back some day!

And yes, I did eat a guinea pig....

.... Meh.

Unfinished business: Movies

I've been binge-watching shows on Netflix and Amazon lately, instead of watching movies online. However, I've seen a surprising number of movies in actual theatres in the past few months.

I wasn't the biggest fan of Wild the book, and I was less a fan of the movie. For starters, I don't think Reese Witherspoon was the right actress to play Cheryl Strayed: she's too delicate-looking and tiny and wholesome-seeming. The movie also left out quite a lot of the book that detracted from Strayed's personal journey. Her ex-husband's role in the movie is reduced to a simply supportive character rather than a best friend who becomes a casualty of her grief and rage; her stepfather is completely absent; her mother comes across as flighty instead of complex.  I really don't know how this got nominated for Best Picture.

Fury was a pretty by-the-book WWII movie. I grew up watching them, so it was fairly predictable. The audience is initiated into the horrors of war through the experience of the young soldier who wasn't supposed to be on the front lines: he has to be taught to kill, has to be shown by his commanding officer how to interact with civilians amid chaos,  has to learn how to be part of a team in order to survive. It wasn't the greatest or most poignant war movie (though it tried to be), but it was a decent addition to the genre.

Dear White People was a movie I would have really related to when I was 21 or 22. Because it definitely reads like it was written by people fresh out of an elite private college. (It's clearly supposed to take place at a Harvard clone.) The basic plot revolves around a largely white fraternity hosting a racist Halloween party, and the events that lead up to it: attempts by the college administration to get rid of a historically all-black dorm, the role of money in higher education, and media depictions of blackness. The film attempts to explore nuances of African-American identity, which I as someone who isn't black don't feel I can critique as heavily; I feel I can say, however, that that is the most intriguing part of the movie. It reminded me of Spike Lee's Bamboozled, but set on a college campus and filled with angsty young adults trying find themselves amidst a cloud of hormones, historical race relations, and the influence of money. I left the theatre with long-buried, unsettling flashbacks to my own college experience, but feeling that the movie tried too hard with too much material. It could have been a more powerful statement on race in higher education. In the moment, I appreciated certain scenes in the movie; but stepping back it was barely even a surface-scratching look at a very serious set of issues.

Mi Hermana and I ran out to watch the third movie in the Hunger Games series. As a huge fan of the books, I was a huge fan of this movie. The third book in the trilogy is split into two movies, and Mockingjay: Part I was pretty amazing. Friends who saw it before me told me that the communications team (following Katniss around bombed-out areas of Districts supporting her revolution) reminded them of me, which is rather flattering but funny. And weeks after seeing the movie, I was a little horrified to hear the remixed version of Katniss' inspiring a cappella call to revolution: "The Hanging Tree" all beat-ified is actually playing on mainstream radio stations.

Mi Hermana, who hasn't read the HG books, was highly disturbed by the scenes of Peeta's psychological struggles. She said she's been watching too much Dora the Explorer, Super Why, and My Little Ponies in the past few years to dive full-scale into a movie about violently overthrowing an oppressive system...

... and yet she was completely fine watching The Eagle, a highly forgettable movie about the 9th Legion in Britain. We watched it on Netflix back-to-back with Centurion, so we might have overdosed on B-quality films about the famous Roman legion lost to time somewhere in the mists of Scotland. The unexpected role of Jamie Bell (who we last saw in Billy Elliott) was one of the only highlights. Like most stories about Roman Britain, it had to bridge the political and cultural divide between occupier and occupied with some sort of hint that the eventual melding of the two would solidify into what we now see as the indomitable British bulldog spirit.

While I was critiquing the history, Mi Hermana the linguist was critiquing the lack of adequate explanations as to how all the different characters from the polyglot Empire were actually communicating.

Fun times.

Y Ddraig Goch ddyry gychwyn

Mt Snowdon - My first
summit outside the US!

It's been three months since I got back from the Great Welsh Hiking Adventure.

It wasn't life-changing in the sense that mental fireworks went off at the top of each summit and I descended with Zen-like universal truths. But it was substantially personally introspective and incredibly fun... despite the fact that I got rained on, mud-slogged, and then horribly sunburned at various points.

Several things contributed to my obsession with making the trip possible:

• Reading too much about King Arthur as an impressionable tween
• Reading the entire Brother Cadfael series as a teenager
• Having my only experience in Wales (as a solo traveller during my study abroad Christmas holiday) involve staying at a sketchy Cardiff hostel and then getting crapped on by a bird and having to wash my hair in a public restroom at a mall packed by January sales shoppers
• Seeing Jasper Fforde post about hiking multiple Welsh peaks in one day
• Reading about the British Special Forces training in Wales
• Reading a popular but not-so-amazing book about a female hiker
• Knowing The Planning Committee & Co. would only be expats in the UK for a few more months 

Breacon Beacons - Stopped 

here to have lunch. Also
realized exactly whyso many
of the mystery series I used
to read had so many people
fall off mountaintops in
Wales: the slopes were

incredibly steep and strewn
with boulders, with nothing
to grab ahold of except
blades of grass.

Brecon Beacons - View of the 

first 3 peaks (Corn Du, Pen Y 

Fan, Cribyn) from the 4th (Fan 

Y Big).

The trip started with Mt. Snowdon - my first summit outside the US! With no tree cover, slippery rock trails, hail, 40mph winds at the trailhead and 55mph winds at the summit, and rain coming down nonstop in sheets, the weather conditions were the worst I've ever been hiking in (and if I had been in the PNW, I wouldn't have even gone). Though my phone and camera got horribly waterlogged during the hike, I have so many cheesy selfies of me looking like a drowned rat all over Snowdonia. And even after traipsing around the mountains for seven hours, when I found out the town where I was staying had the ruins of a keep built by Llywelyn the Great, I strolled the extra two miles to check it out.

After a few Bristol-based days with the coolest hosts in the world, I set off to walk around the Brecon Beacons: 4 peaks in one loop!

Wales Coastal Path

Then I hopped on a lot of public buses to get to the ocean to start hiking the Wales Coastal Path in Pembrokeshire and Ceredigion, ending up in Aberystwyth.

From there, I hopped another bus to Dolgellau via Machynlleth (where, due to an unexpectedly missed bus, I spent a pleasant few hours at the Owain Glyndwr Centre learning about the last Welshman to hold the title of Prince of Wales).

Wales Coastal Path
Trusty shoes and backpack!

My last summit was Cader Idris. It dumped rain on me for the first hour, then alternated clear skies and thunderstorms for the next five. I was the only person on the trail (which was one of two to the top), slogging through muddy, hilly sheep fields. But I couldn't stop grinning the whole time! It was so beautiful and green and rainy, I couldn't help thinking that maybe Gwynedd was a magical place after all and that if Arthur is sleeping somewhere in Britain awaiting her hour of need, it would definitely be somewhere in Wales. It was a great end to my trip.

walking up Cader Idris
Such a gorgeous green (rainy, muddy) hike!

I estimated that I walked or hiked 53 miles in the 10 days I was in the UK. I wish I could have had a longer trip, but I'm pretty satisfied that I still got to see quite a bit of Wales.

Though I still couldn't seem to grasp the basics of Welsh. It was cool hearing it everywhere (more so in Snowdonia), but I totally butchered the names of most of the towns where I stayed.

And then, because I indicated on my customs form that I'd crossed numerous cow pastures, I even had my hiking boots cleaned and disinfected by U.S. Homeland Security in Dublin.

This was my meal every

morning at every B&B.

Glad DHS did it instead of me!

A swashing and a martial

Because more than a few people suggested it to me, I finally read Wild. It was funny. It was predictable, even though as one person's journey to find herself it was unique: nature retreat stories all have a similar undercurrent, and this one was no different.

What I did like about it was the fact that it was a memoir of a woman who took off on her own, for her own reasons, to prove something to herself and no one else. (I like it because I'm currently plotting my own hiking trips in Wales, but I plan to try and drag The Planning Committee if I can.)

What I can't believe is that she did it with basically no hiking experience or basic gear knowledge. It's both incredibly amazing and incredibly stupid, because people die every year on shorter, more basic hikes for doing the same thing. Maybe that's part of the life lesson, though: that luck plays a bigger role in our ups and downs than we like to admit.

The chapters where she first leaves her motel at the starting point had me rolling with laughter: going to extreme acrobatic lengths to turtle yourself into your super-heavy, really big hiking pack? Been there! I totally understood the small descriptions of trail life for beginners. Constantly being one of the only women on the trail (see also: sports team, online communications staff)? Been there! Totally understand both the fury at the belittling comments and the internal pride of trusting your own skills and sticking through it.

I didn't really get a full sense of Cheryl Strayed as a person, though: just as a reflection of events that happen to her, rather than her mental (and, one can infer, quasi-spiritual) journey. It's a little problematic, because if her hike on the Pacific Crest Trail is supposed to be a balm for her wounded life, it would have been better to have greater insight into her psyche at the start of it. She does a great job of painting her pre-PCT life as an overgriefed, oversexed, and overdrugged whirlwind - beginning with the sudden death of her mother from cancer, and continuing on to her string of affairs that eventually lead to her divorce. But what kept bugging me was the lack of insight into the very character and being she supposedly lost in this downward spiral.

In a way, Wild reminded me of The Wanderer, the Sharon Creech young adult story about a girl who sails with her male cousins and uncles across the Atlantic in a sailboat.

As with Strayed's memoir, it didn't quite capture the personality of the protagonist - and as a result, couldn't entire relate or even like her. Sophie, the girl, is braver and smarter than the boys in some respects, and the history of her adoption is told impassively. Sophie herself seems detached from events in her own life before the sailing trip. And though half the book is told in first person, the reader doesn't quite understand why she keeps lying to her family about stories their grandfather in England never told her.

In both cases, I closed the book jacket disappointed, wanting to be able to see the story through the figurative eyes of the female characters themselves. But I really just saw it from the vantage point of a third person. Though I really, really appreciate these stories about females finding identity in a male-dominated arena, in the end sometimes they end up masking the heroine's true voice even more. It can be annoying.

Mountain mama

Northwesterners call Mt. Rainier "The Mountain".  At 14,410 feet, it's the tallest mountain in Washington State and the entire Cascade range.

When The Mountain is "out", as Northwesterners also say on clear sunny days when it's visible, this is what it looks like from my neighborhood in Seattle (photo credit: a University of Washington site):

Rainier is a regional icon (it's on the state's license plate).  It's also a dormant stratovolcano, considered one of the most dangerous in the world. 

But it's such a beautiful and awe-inspiring volcano!

This is what it looks like from one of the trails near the Mount Rainier National Park Visitors Center:

I love, love, love mountain meadows! The wildflowers are so amazing.

(There was a mama deer! With her two fawns! How much more picturesque could it get? Photo credits for the rest of this post: me)

This is what it looks like when you get a little further from the tourist center:

It's still a hefty hike, even on the paved pathways.   

I finally saw a marmot in the wild!

This is what The Mountain looks like when you reach Muir Snowfield:

(Do NOT google anything like "deaths Rainier Muir snowfield" in the days before you set out to hike it. Otherwise you might be tempted to run out and buy a ton of emergency equipment at REI. *cough* )

Muir Snowfield is 2.2 miles long and has an elevation gain of 2800 feet.

This is how steep the slope is: 

It was brutal. I was worried about altitude and dehydration, so I stopped often. (Also, I huffed and puffed nonstop.)

But the view was amazing! 

The Tatoosh Mountains, which I've only ever seen in winter, were beautiful. Beyond them, both Mt. Adams and Mt. St. Helens were visible - it's as if three tall mountains in the Cascade range get to say "Hello!" to each other every sunny day.

And this is what Mt. Rainier looks like at the almost-top!

We made it to Camp Muir! I'm so proud of myself and my two friends - we weren't sure if we could make it, but we did!

10,188 feet is the highest I've ever been (not counting airplanes, obviously).

4600 feet in elevation gain is the most I've ever hiked.

Personal records FTW!

Then we glissaded down the snowfield. So amazingly fun!