Another day, another successful test!

Well I made it! I "ran" up to the summit of Bonanza Peak on Saturday. It was a blazing hot 98 degrees in Las Vegas when I landed and was a bit cooler when I arrived at the trailhead about 1 hour and 20 minutes northwest of Vegas. I headed out on my run at an altitude of about 7,500 feet in windless, sunny, hot weather and the trail was bone dry. My running pack was a little heavier than usual since I had almost 3 litres of water in my hydration bladder plus emergency stuff since there would be no water available on trail to drink if I were to run out.

I measured my pulse rate and blood-oxygen saturation before I started and my resting heart rate was up to 110bpm and my oxygen saturation was down to 93% already. Back at home at sea level it would have been 60bpm and 99%.

The first mile was brutal, it was hot and steep with lots of rocks in the trail to make it harder to keep a grip. The switchbacks were continual and after 0.25 miles I was gasping for air with my lungs burning. For a short amount of time I had doubts about making it up the mountain. My running was interspersed with fast walking while my pulse rate pushed up near 180bpm. My legs burned and my lungs seared for the rest of the first mile. Then the climate changed, as I rounded the mountain and ascended from a side protected from the sun and filled with Bristlecone Pines (which by the way are some of the oldest trees in the world), I encountered patches of snow on the trail which cooled the air around me. The snow slowed my progress down, I was continually stopping to scoop snow out from behind the tongue in my shoes and my pace slowed quite a bit. The snow covering got more frequent and deeper the higher I rose on the moutain side. At times I would sink up to my thighs in the icy cold frozen granules. I could see that an elk had very recently headed up the same path. Its tracks were fresh, and I was amazed such a large animal didn't even sink as deep as me when walking through the snow. I half expected to bump into the beast at any moment.

I could see the top of this mountain not far away, but I also knew that it was only the saddle, not the top of Bonanza Peak. As I came out of the tree cover at the top of the saddle the tempurature climbed decidedly but it was nice to get away from the snow patches which had slowed me down. At 2.6 miles I stopped to rest at the saddle. My pulse at rest was 100bpm but my oxygen saturdation was down to 82% at an altitude of 9,824 feet. The view was great but I could now see the top and I wanted to get up to the summit so I headed onward.

As the trail rounded the summit, I remembered that the map showed that the trail did not actually pass over the summit so I decided to go off trail and bushwack my way straight up the fall line to the summit. Boy was that hard going on my legs! The joke was on me though because when I scrambled up to the top of the rocky peak, I realized that I had not read my map close enough. About 1/2 mile away stood another peak which was about 100 feet higher in altitude... that one was Bonanza Peak! I scambled up to the wrong peak! I headed down to the trail and continued on until I got close and again set off bushwacking up to the summit, which by the way, was much steeper than the previous one. The summit was fantastic! I could see in every direction and especially the craggy peak of Mt Charleston, the highest peak in southern Nevada, and Area 51 which was almost dead north. There was a geocache box located in the cairn at the highest spot, so I sat down and wrote a little note in there for others who came along, took a few pictures (see my website http://webpages.charter.net/mtnrunner for those) and got ready to head back down. One last measurement showed my resting heart rate at 120 bpm and my oxygen saturation at 81%. I was at 10,406 feet above sea level and had run/climbed 4.71 miles and about 4,000 feet of elevation. Not a bad run.

One of the pictures I took at the summit was for a boy named Mikey C from New Canaan, CT. Mikey is friends with a friend and co-worker's sons and he is battling brain cancer currently. I have never met Mikey, but from the stories I heard about him, he is wise beyond his years and we could all use a little perspective like he has. He is beating the odds and I'll continue to think of him on my runs and carry his name on my back wherever I run. Never give up Mikey because we are all pulling for you! Even crazy people you have never met like me!

The run down was fast, I was decending with reckless abandon at times and was no longer worried about how cold the snow was. My legs and ankles actually ached with cold as I jumped through the snow banks. I hit bank at full speed and to my surprise, sunk up to my waist at full speed, which proceeded to stop me dead and I promptly face planted in the snow :-) My daughter Erica would have been proud! Of course this run through the snow had one bad effect, my shoes and socks were soaked and I could feel the chafing beginning but I just kept on flying down the hill to the car. In the end it was 8.63 miles round trip.

This run was a good test, but I have to say that adding another 4,000 feet of elevation to the run at Pike's Peak is going to make it SO much harder. I can't imagine how I will do it without walking at times. I know that I still don't fully comprehend the difficulty of the Pike's Peak Ascent but I did get a little sample this weekend!