A PCT hiker in Kings Canyon National Park

Life as a Beach Gal

June 13, 2022 in New Places

It’s been a while. Life is getting crazy. Time is moving fast. Sometimes it’s hard to keep up. I just want to sit down and process it all, so that’s what we’re doing here:

In the last few months, I’ve been working and living for the weekends. Trying not to think too far in the future. I’ve learned that the world is unpredictable and it’s hard to plan specifics more than a few months in advance, except for loose life ideas like:

“Maybe I’ll go to grad school in Italy”

“I might go to South America this fall and work remotely”

“Ah man I really need to start making money”

“What if I went to Bali for six months and worked from there?”

There haven’t been many big adventures that push me to think about life and tell stories in the last few months. So this short little blog post will just be a culmination of my thoughts and short stories from my current chaotic existence.

I haven’t slept in my own bed in a week. One of my roommates currently has COVID, so we’ve been giving her space and left her with the house. I’ve been bouncing between my best friend, Summerlyn’s house, my boyfriend’s apartment in Ventura, and the back of my car for the last few nights. I needed some alone time, so I drove up to Lone Pine, California on Saturday to meet my friend, Ana, and do a short hike in the Sierras on Sunday. I haven’t gone on a solo road-trip in a few months and it was liberating to be on the road again. I miss traveling. I miss feeling like a bum a bit, going from gas station bathroom to gas station bathroom. I miss lighting up my JetBoil in my trunk to make a quick, hot meal or a thermos of instant coffee while watching the sun sink behind some towering peaks.

My beloved Honda Pilot hit 200,000 miles a few weeks ago. I celebrated such a milestone by naming her “Roxy” as we drove North along the 101 to Goleta after a long hike in Montecito. Cheers to Roxy for all the crazy adventures we’ve been on in the last seven years!

On Sunday, Ana and I hiked up to Kearsarge Pass at 11,760 feet, the main artery that PCT hikers use to enter into Kings Canyon National Park from the John Muir Wilderness. Even though I’ve been living at sea level since February, my lungs felt happy and healthy up at elevation again. Thank god.

On July 23rd, I will park my car at Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite National Park to begin my 120-ish mile hike through the park, all by myself. I’ve never done a solo hike before. But I’m not nearly as nervous about being alone for 12 days in the wilderness as I am about my fitness level. I’ve been running, lifting, hiking, hiking, and more hiking in the last few months to build my cardio strength and endurance for this trip. Quick weekends in the mountains, like this weekend with Ana, are building my confidence.

I live in a townhome in Goleta, California, which is about 15 minutes north from Santa Barbara, and this view is only a ten-minute walk from my house. I have an entire nature preserve, featuring a lagoon, one of the most beautiful beaches in the Santa Barbara area, and a big network of trails right outside my front door. When I first moved in February, this area, called The Bluffs, was blooming with these yellow flowers. Everything was so green. And the sunsets were this vibrant every night.

It’s hard not to love Santa Barbara.

An alpine lake in Ansel Adams Wilderness

On the way up to Mt. Lamarck (13,417') in John Muir Wilderness

My friend, Sarah, approaching the summit of Mt. Lamarck

Summerlyn near the summit of Mount Lamarck

While I’ve technically been living it up as a beach gal in Santa Barbara for the last few months, I’ve never felt more like a mountain gal. I manage to get in a short hike or two every week, and over the last few months, every-other weekend has been filled with a 10+ mile day-hike in mountains of some shape or form.

My short weekly hikes are usually within Los Padres National Forest, the wilderness area that encompasses most of the small foothills within the Santa Barbara, Goleta, and Montecito area. The hikes all feel the same—steep enough for about 20 minutes to get your heart pounding, and then you hit a random road that you could easily drive up instead of hike to. It’s hot, it’s dry, and it’s brown. It ends with a view of the ocean.

These short hikes taunt me.

When I first went up to the Sierra Nevadas with a few friends for Memorial Day weekend, I was instantly reminded of the amazing gifts that these big mountains give us. Endless views, rugged skylines, jagged peaks—big mountains take your breath away. I wish I could dive into the Sierras for the entire summer and explore. There’s countless lakes, 12ers, 13ers, and a few massive 14ers to summit. I could easily spend a lifetime in the Sierras, spoiling myself with these mountains.

Once Ana and I were at the top of Kearsarge Pass the other day, watching PCT hikers descend into Kings Canyon, I looked down at the big lakes below us and wanted to go check them out. Ana wasn’t feeling it as much—she’s planning on summiting Mt. Whitney later this week and wanted to have a more chill day. So I gave Ana my car keys and headed down into the basin by myself. My first taste of solo hiking in the Sierras before my trip.

I’ve never felt so strong hiking before. Strong glutes, quads, calves, lungs—my training is paying off. I’ve never appreciated uphill like this before. Get those lungs moving. Feel so, so alive.

The Kearsarge Lakes are beautiful. Those big, iconic, Sierra slabs of granite tower over the lakes. The wind was blowing hard, moving the surface of the water with each gust.

I’m free in the mountains. Free from responsibility, free to think about relationships—old and new, free to define myself, who I am, and who I want to become.

It’s all uphill from here.

Kearsarge Lakes in Kings Canyon National Park

Vegetables and Olives

January 10, 2022 in Tales from Italy

After a very long travel day consisting of five different trains, I arrived at the Conegliano station in the Veneto region of Northeastern Italy. I immediately spotted my host, Giorgia, with her bright red and long hair as she jumped out of her car to pick me up. Giorgia spoke excellent English and it was immediately clear that she was passionate about environmentalism and her work as a farmer. I learned in the first five minutes of our drive from the train station to her farm near the town of Colle Umberto, that she grows just about every vegetable that you can imagine. Except for asparagus.

This was my first experience as a WWOOFer, with the program, WWOOF, or “World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms”. I have a few friends from college who WWOOFed on farms abroad and have told me amazing stories from their experiences, so figured I’d try it. The deal is you work part-time on a farm in exchange for food and a place to sleep, while also exchanging knowledge and stories between WWOOF hosts and WWOOFers. I found two farms in Italy that agreed to let me WWOOF for them—this one (a vegetable farm) with Giorgia in Veneto for two weeks, and an olive farm in the town of Ventimiglia, Liguria, for another two weeks. I was beyond excited to learn more about food in Italy.

Twenty minutes later, we pulled into the little gated entrance at Giorgia’s farm, which she named “Easy Bisi di Giorgia Tonon,” so she can market her vegetables and organic methods behind the name on social media. I met Giulio, Giorgia’s husband, who was sweet, quirky, and still learning English. Giulio’s father, Giovanni, owns the property and helps Giorgia with all the routine chores and labor required for managing the farm. There is a two-story house on the property, where Giovanni, Giulio’s mother and sister live on the first floor; and Giulio and Giorgia on the second. I would be staying in a spare room on the second floor with Giulio and Giorgia.

Giorgia showed me my room and left me to relax for a few minutes. There was a big window with a view of the backyard, made up of rows of crops, and the view of the “Pre-Alps” beyond. It was beautiful, I’m living on a farm in Italy.

Over the next two weeks, I weeded, sowed spinach, watered plants in the greenhouse, fed the chickens, harvested eggplant, cabbages, radicchio, zucchini, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, a few different varieties of beans, cauliflower, baby tomatoes, and helped prepare Giorgia’s little “store” for customers to come and pick up their orders. I met a few of Giorgia and Giulio’s lovely friends, practiced my basic italian skills, and participated in a traditional Italian meal (you know, the one where there’s a primi, secondi, salad, side dishes, dessert, and espresso all in the span of an hour) that Giulio’s mother prepared for us on the day of the sweet potato harvest. Giorgia and Giulio took me to a market one Sunday, where I helped set up their table of vegetables and got to shop around, picking out cheese from local farmers, and pastries from local bakers. One of Giorgia’s friends sold his homemade wine, called clinto, at the market, and he wrote my name on a bottle with a colored sharpie and gave it to me as a gift.

In my free time, I went for runs through the prosecco vineyards surrounding the farm, helped Giorgia cook dinner, learned how to make a proper tiramisu (Giorgia’s mother’s recipe), read a few books, meditated, and thought about life. On one Saturday, I took a train to Venezia and spent a day exploring the city’s maze of narrow streets and canals. On Sunday, Giorgia, Giulio, and I drove two hours North into the Alps and went for a hike at Tre Cime, a famous set of three rugged peaks in the Dolomites. We laughed and taught each other slang in our native languages, and made fun of the U.S. for still using imperial units. It was approaching late-October, so one day I carved a proper American jack-o-lantern out of one of Giorgia’s pumpkins to display in her store.

Of all the things I did during my two weeks on the vegetable farm, I had some of the most fun sitting around the dinner table with Giorgia and Giulio, trying to learn Italian. There were a few nights when Giorgia had to leave after dinner to attend a meeting, so I was left with Giulio, who was learning English. His English was much better than my Italian, and we both knew enough of each other’s languages to get by. So we’d sit at the table for hours after we finished eating, teaching each other how to say certain phrases, googling the origins of words, and laughing at literal translations that don’t really “translate”. On those nights, doing the dishes became an ordeal, because we’d pause between every action and try to describe what we were doing in our new language. It was way too much fun. Giulio, Giorgia, and I also played Links a few times, which is a basic card game that was a perfect game for me to work on my Italian vocabulary and for Giulio to practice translating Italian into English, all while Giorgia mediated as the household-expert in both languages.

So, thanks Giorgia and Giulio for making my first WWOOF experience amazing. Not only will I never forget how to say “sick rocks” in Italian (I can’t write it here, the accurate translation involves too many Italian swear words), but I’m beyond grateful for having two amazing friends in Treviso.

Harvesting olives near Ventimiglia, Italy

I arrived in Ventimiglia, a small city only seven kilometers away from the French-Italian border, a few days before Halloween. My host’s girlfriend, Elisa, picked me up in her tiny car at the train station and drove me up the steep hill and ridiculously windy and steep road, littered with blind corners, to their farm, where I met Dario, who I’d be helping with the olive harvest for the next two weeks.

When I arrived at the farm, I immediately thought back to Cinque Terre, where I hiked up next to steep terraces overlooking the sea, and thought it was crazy that people actually farmed that land. When I remembered that Ventimiglia is in the region, Liguria, the same as Cinque Terre, I realized that that thought was now my reality—because for the next two weeks I would be one of those crazy people harvesting olives on terraces overlooking the sea.

As crazy as the land seemed, it was breathtaking. Dario inherited his farm from his parents, who inherited it from their parents, who used the bomb shelters scattered throughout the hills (and still visible today) to hide from the Americans and the Germans during World War II. So Ventimiglia had both a crazy history, and a crazy landscape—built on the narrow stretch of flat land between the steep cliffs and the sea. There was a big two-story house on the land, and the setup was similar to Giorgia and Giulio’s, with Dario’s mother downstairs and Dario and Elisa upstairs. The house was perched on one of several terraces, that each had a few plots of various vegetables. There were four olive tree fields (each made up of several terraces of trees) that were all between a 5-20 minute drive from the house, and had all been inherited by Dario.

My room in the house faced South, with a big set of doors opening up to the porch that overlooked Ventimiglia and the sea. To the West, I could see France. I watched many epic rainstorms and lightning shows move in from the French side of the border to the Italian side, all from the comfort of my bedroom.

A week into my stay at Dario’s, another WWOOFer showed up. His name was Albie, from Leipzig, Germany. Albie was a few years older than me, was a DJ, and was spending a few months in Italy as well, but was mostly working on farms in the South. For the next week, Albie and I had a lot of fun struggling through the olive harvest together, talking about our travels and about life.

The olive harvest was tough. Thanks to my many weeks spent measuring fish in the Grand Canyon, I had plenty of experience doing physical labor, and the olive harvest on the terraces of Liguria were no joke. After a hearty breakfast, Dario, Albie, and I would drive over to one of the olive tree fields, where we’d stay for eight hours, laying nets, “shaking” trees, collecting olives, and moving nets. This process took forever, but was oddly satisfying. Dario had about thirty, huge (probably 10 ft by 20 ft), green nets that we’d strategically spread out underneath the olive trees. This took some rigging, since some of the trees were hanging over a steep embankment and we were determined to collect as many olives as possible. Then, we’d go in with the shakers, which were baskets attached to a 6-foot pole that was connected to a car battery. The basket vibrated and spun when you switched it on, which we’d then use to literally “shake” the olives loose from their branches. And you’d have to wear glasses of some sort, as you were constantly getting pelted in the face by flying olives. After spending hours shaking a few trees, we’d use the nets to collect the olives into a pile, and then into a basket, and move the nets to the next set of trees further down the terrace. My neck was always sore at the end of the day, but time flew by, and it was pretty cool to see the dozens of baskets full of olives at the end of the day.

The work was much more demanding in Ventimiglia than on my last farm, but I still made time for adventures. On one rainy Saturday, I took the train to Monaco, which is a tiny country on the coast and surrounded by France. It was interesting, but there seemed to be more yachts than culture. So the next weekend, Albie and I spent a day in Nice, France, where I ate the best crepe of my entire life, and we poked around in a few high-end French shops, relaxed on the beach, and went to an art museum. On our way back from Nice, we picked up Chinese takeout in Ventimiglia, and laughed at how that day included: one American, one German, an Italian house, activities in France, and Chinese food made by Chinese-Italians. On Halloween, Dario told me about the “abandoned village” up the hill from the farm, so I went exploring up there. It was maybe a little too creepy of an activity to do by yourself in a foreign country on Halloween. Throughout my stay, I also went on a few runs in the trails nearby, that wound their way through the forests and olive groves.

On one of these runs, I noticed some damage in the trail that looked like a bunch of loose soil, and remembered Dario pointing out similar damage on one of his olive fields, which he said was made by wild boars. WILD BOARS! “Ha!” I thought to myself at the time. So I just kept running up the trail, past a couple houses, onto a paved road in a small neighborhood, looked up into one of the vineyards just off the road, and there, looking straight back at me, were two wild boars. Oh, shit. I was totally alone, and the boars saw me and I saw them. I was far enough away to be momentarily safe, but also close enough to be concerning. I grabbed my phone, pulled up my camera, and went to take their picture, but they were gone. Then a second later, they shot across the road I was running along, less than one-hundred feet in front of me, and bolted down into the same general direction that I was headed. I stood there for a second, dumbfounded, that in the span of one year I had managed to have a wolf encounter and a grizzly encounter in Alaska, and now a wild boar encounter in Italy. I waited for a few minutes and observed the valley that I was about to run down into, looking for any sign of movement. I saw none, and took comfort in carrying a rock with me, singing my whole way down the trail, and the fact that there were plenty of people around. So I continued on, keeping my eye out for the boars. I made it back to the farm without another sighting, but with a good story.

Dario and Elisa also let me into their community of friends during my stay. They took me to see one of their friend’s shows, which was a jazz concert at an osteria about a half-hour away. I joined for a dinner party one night at their friend Olga’s house, where I was the only person in the group of ten who did not speak fluent Italian, and spent most of the night trying to understand the conversation (which was apparently political, lots of people were shouting). Dario’s sister, Carla, and her partner, Paulo invited us all to her house for lunch one day, which was delicious, and Albie and I will forever be grateful for their kindness and hospitality. Near the end of my two weeks there, Dario, Elisa, Albie, and I, drove into the nearby town, Dolceacqua, which is famous for its medieval bridge that Claude Monet painted in one of his works. We explored the medieval city center, and saw a movie in a “four-dimensional cinema” before going over their friend’s apartment for dinner.

So, Dario, Elisa, and Albie—thank you for the unforgettable views, countless olives, and great conversations. I’ll never forget being pelted in the face by olives for hours on end, making authentic Ligurian pesto, and our nightly liquor selection. Indeed, you’ll always have a place to stay and a friend in the U.S.A.

The Big Waves of Cinque Terre

December 15, 2021 in Tales from Italy

I had a two hour layover in the small town of Pisa, on the day that I traveled from Lucca to Manarola. Lucca, is a town about two hours North of Firenze and it’s surrounded by a twenty-foot tall brick wall, making it a “walled city”. I had just come off my five-day high of being in Firenze, and I was hoping that I would enjoy a two-night visit to a small town in the Tuscan countryside. I enjoyed walking around its medieval-feeling city center, but I didn’t need to stay for two nights. Without a car, there wasn’t much for me to do there. So I was a little anxious to leave.

I was heading to Manarola, one of the five towns that make up Cinque Terre, a section of coastline on the Ligurian Sea that is famous for its vistas, seafood, and hiking, which would consume the next four days of my life. But, I was taking a pit stop in Pisa because if you haven’t heard, there’s a tower there that looks like it’s about to fall over.

When they say that the Tower of Pisa is “leaning”, they are not kidding. It is leaning at an impressive angle. I was a little on edge walking next to it. When I first recognized it as I was walking from the train station to the square that it stands (“leans”) in, I actually burst out laughing. Who designed this thing? How could they have screwed it up this badly? All funniness aside, the Tower and its surrounding square are actually pretty cool, and the Tower has been leaning like that for centuries.

I walked around the square, admired the Leaning Tower, the church, and the baptistery. I sprawled out on the lawn next to the baptistery to read and enjoy watching the tourists try to line-up that cheesy, iconic photo where you put your hands up so it looks like you’re holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I tried so hard to contain my eye-rolls and chuckles as one tourist after another attempted to take this iconic photo. Sometimes, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. I walked through the city center a bit and found an aperitivi, made up of a bruschetta and aperol spritz. Eventually it started to rain, which was perfect timing since I had to jump on my next train to Manarola anyways.

Before arriving in Manarola, I was warned that there was some bad weather coming in and they would be at a “level orange” for about 24 hours after my train dropped me off at the station. That was all the information I got… What the heck does “level orange” mean? Google told me that it meant there was a gnarly storm coming in and there was the potential for flooding. And since all of the restaurants and shops in Cinque Terre reside in old buildings at sea level, and since most of them do not have more than one exit, “level orange” meant that everything would be closed except for three restaurants in Manarola (the three restaurants that have more than one exit). I quickly made a dinner reservation for that night at one of them, worried that I’d be spending an evening without food.

When I walked through the long tunnel from the train station into the actual town of Manarola, it wasn’t raining, just a little windy with an overcast. There was nobody there, except for my Airbnb host, waiting to greet me. He walked me through the little maze of the town to my room, which was a one-bedroom built into a stone wall overlooking the sea, and facing the main tower of buildings that made up the majority of the town. The room came with access to a little covered balcony up a flight of stairs. From my room and the balcony were unobstructed views of the sea. The waves beating up against the stone barrier protecting Manarola’s little cove were MASSIVE. A storm was coming and it was going to get crazy. My host, a very kind Italian man who spoke little English, reminded me that nearly everything was going to be closed until the next day and then said that I came to Cinque Terre at the worst time.

I walked around Manarola a little and explored it’s various paved and unpaved paths that led to different views of the sea. The lighting was beautiful, with an amazing contrast from the overcasting clouds while the sea, cliffs, and vegetation all popped with color. The waves, the surf, the sea, were rocking— and crashing over the rocks, splashing up thirty feet high. It was quite the show. Before arriving, I had seen photos of the same main street, the same main drag, so packed with tourists that you could hardly move. And now, there was nobody in town. It was a ghost town, like a ski resort in the middle of winter. Everyone had gone home, or everyone had taken cover from the storm. My room was steps away from the restaurant I would eat at later that night, enclosed in their covered outdoor patio, listening to the sound of rain as I ate an entire plate of spaghetti alla vongole. There were only a few other tourists at the restaurant. I loved chatting with my Airbnb host and I appreciated his help, but he was absolutely wrong… I came to Manarola at the best time.

It rained all night, but the next morning was perfect. It was still cloudy and a little windy, but the rain had stopped. I found a brioche and cappuccino and watched the waves, still as massive as before, from the little balcony above my room overlooking the sea. I could sit there and watch the sea for hours and never get bored, it was the perfect perch, the perfect place to be calm throughout the storm.

A few hours later, I decided it was time for some exercise. So I navigated myself to the trail from Manarola to Riomaggiore, the next town to the South. The trail was straight up a steep hill, and then straight down into town. The straight-line distance between the two towns couldn’t be more than a mile and the trail was steep, a true stair-city. There was hardly anyone on it, so I cruised up and down and was in Riomaggiore in about an hour. It felt amazing to have my legs burning and my heart pounding.

I explored Riomaggiore a bit and admired it’s beautiful cove and brightly-colored buildings, while listening to the waves crash up against the cliffs below. So magnificent. I was glad I was staying in Manarola though—it was quieter and felt a bit cozier.

The next day was one of my best yet on this amazing three-month journey. I woke up early, around 7:30 (that’s a alpine start when you’re on vacation in Italy), grabbed a cappuccino and a brioche, and headed for the trail to Corniglia, which was just a few steep switchbacks up the paved path right outside my room.

And on that trail, I found pure paradise. In fact, I think I saw God. The trail wound its way up through olive trees to a small town called Volastra, where it then remained flat and high up above the sea and passed through vineyards. Green and purple olives, and grapes were everywhere. The vines were slowly turning a light green as fall was coming, the sea was the most beautiful shade of teal you could possible imagine. It was the color you see in travel magazines and think to yourself that a sea could never look like that in real life. The light poking between the dark clouds was golden and heavenly. There was no one else on the trail, which was a fantastic contrast to the chaos that I experienced on the Path of the Gods along the Amalfi Coast. The views of Manarola and Corniglia, both made up of brightly colored buildings stacked on top of cliffs overlooking the sea, stood proudly illuminated under rays of golden sunlight. This is heaven. This is one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

It truly felt as if the Universe was trying to tell me something.

I would have never come to Cinque Terre if it weren’t for my friend, Cyn. Cyn, short for Cynthia, is a friend of my dad’s and has become a good friend of mine in the last two years. She lives in Evergreen, my hometown, and has two teenage boys. Cyn is a counselor and a therapist and also loves to cook. She has spent a good amount of time in Italy and in France, learning how to cook beautiful food. She is one of the people who have inspired my recent realization of my love for food and cooking, and part of my inspiration to come to Italy. If Cyn hadn’t told me about Cinque Terre in a random text message a few months ago when I asked her for recommendations on where I should go, I would never have visited. So thank you, Miss Cyn, for putting this place on my map.

I explored Corniglia for a little while before taking the train back to Manarola, where I found a delicious focaccia for a snack, took a shower, relaxed on the balcony, and later ate a pizza topped with prosciutto and buffalo mozzarella for dinner. What a day.

Over the course of the four days that I spent in Manarola, the weather slowly cleared and the town slowly filled up with tourists. One day I took a train to Vernazza and hiked all the way back to my room at the bottom of the switchbacks in Manarola. I got plenty of good exercise in, which (hopefully) made up for my daily carbo-loading of pasta, bread, and brioche.

I also spent a lot of time on that balcony. I read, journaled, mediated, and thought about life up there, all while enjoying the sights and sounds of the turquoise sea and the crashing waves from the storm. On the balcony, there were no problems in the world. I just watched my concerns, fears, emotions, hopes, and dreams all crash through me like the waves of the sea. I was standing at the shore, completely unfazed. I was at peace.

In the months since my stay in Cinque Terre, I have thought back to that day hiking between Manarola and Corniglia, wondering what it was exactly that the Universe was trying to tell me. To be honest, I really have no idea. But I did write the following in my journal one day up on that balcony, which I think sums up my thoughts, feelings, and attitudes during my five days in beautiful Cinque Terre:

Can I just sit here and watch
These waves crash on the rocks
and let my thoughts crash
Through me forever?
Waves of blue, and turquoise,
and navy, and
Thoughts of love and freedom
and longing and loneliness
and independence?
They’re so incredible, all
Of these waves and thoughts.
The sea is violent and chaotic
But I am so at peace.
I finally found peace.
I’m free from my thoughts,
From the world and the madness.
My soul is liberated.
My river has reached a sea.
The sun pokes through the
Clouds on the horizon and
I know that everything will be alright.
Truly, I believe it now.
No matter where I go or
Who I love or
What I do
It will be alright.
A river always finds a sea.

FIRENZE

October 28, 2021 in Tales from Italy

I really enjoyed my first night sleeping on a soft mattress. I slept so damn well. The first two rooms I had stayed in, one in Rome and one in Salerno, both had firm mattresses. At first they were fine, but after six hours or so, my shoulders started to ache. Maybe Europeans just prefer a firm mattress, or maybe the entire world does and Americans are truly the weird ones with their soft, pillow-top like mattresses that swallow you up.

Either way, I slept very well during my five-day stay in Florence, or Firenze, which might have contributed to it being my favorite city in Italy so far (and still is one month later as I write this).

When I first arrived in Firenze (can we take a second to appreciate how lovely that word is, “Fear-en-say”), I walked five minutes from the apartment that my room was in and saw the massive Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, or the duomo for short. It took my breath away with its unique marble walls of green, pink, and white, and with its red-bronze dome. The entire exterior of the Duomo was covered in art, which reminded me of the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel. I could, and I did, stare at the Duomo from some cafe in the square surrounding the Duomo for hours, sipping on a cappuccino and munching on a brioche. I never went inside the Duomo, as every time I walked through the busy square, the line to go inside snaked it’s way around the exterior of the building, and the people always looked so miserable, standing, waiting for probably an hour or so in the hot sun. No thanks, I’m content just seeing it from the outside.

I explored all over Firenze’s pedestrian-friendly city center. I loved that the city felt so big and spacious, but that it only took ten minutes to walk from my room on the North side of the city center, to the Arno River on the South side. I loved the wide piazzas and Renaissance artwork. And the food…. oh my god, the food. From endless glasses of wine, to a simple panino stuffed with salami and soft cheese, that would be so boring in any other city on Earth but was somehow extraordinary here; to truffles, tagliere or a meat and cheese platter, to the gelato in it’s purest form (apparently gelato originates in Firenze)… the food was spectacular.

I spent an afternoon in the Uffizi Gallery and loved soaking up every room filled with Renaissance art. I listened to Rick Steves’ free audio guide on his app that you can download. This has been a good pro-tip I got from Reddit, so you don’t need to pay the 10 euros for an audio guide at the museum. Rick walked me through Uffizi and pointed out all the interesting differences between the countless Madonna and Child frescoes, marble busts, and tall statues of perfectly-sculpted Greek gods and goddesses. But the pieces that stood out the most to me were The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli and Annuciazione by Leonardo da Vinci. Neither of these works were obviously religious like the other art in Uffizi (at least not obviously religious to a non-religious person) and they both had bright colors and depicted scenes that were revolutionary for their time. In The Birth of Venus stands a naked woman, posed in a somewhat-promiscuous manner, and I think it radiates a powerful feminine energy that must have stunned viewers in the 15th century. Annuciazione stood out because of it’s extreme horizontal composition, with lines pulling you to the trees and mountains in the landscape behind the figures in the center of the piece. And the colors are so dark and vibrant, so ominous and mysterious.

Of course I had to pay a visit to the Galleria Accademia to see Michelangelo’s David one day. It was definitely impressive, David is massive, 17-feet tall, and incredibly handsome, for a statue. I also spent a morning in the Bargello museum to see more sculpture work and more Michelangelo masterpieces. As highly regarded as Italian sculpture is, I think it’s still an underrated art form. All of these pieces, including David, started out as a regular block of marble, where they were transported (can you imagine transporting a 17-foot tall block of heavy marble into a busy city center just so some dude could carve a body out of it?), and chiseled into perfect pieces of art. Michelangelo always said that he wasn’t a sculptor, but was working for God to expose beautiful human bodies and faces in the stone. I honestly don’t think that’s too crazy of a statement.

In Firenze, I quickly became aware of a type of Italian food establishment called an enoteca, or a wine bar. We definitely have them in the US, but I’ve never been to one and it’s hard to imagine that they can compare to the enotecas that I’ve been enjoying in Italy.

One night for dinner, I walked about twenty-minutes or so from my room, and headed South through the city center, across the Ponte Vecchio, or a medieval bridge lined with gold jewelry shops, to a little enoteca, tucked away in some discreet corner, called Le Volpi e l’Uva. I sat down at the bar and told the barman that I’d like a glass of Tuscan wine that is a good place to start for a beginner wine connoisseur, someone on the beginning of their lifelong wine journey. After all, I was in Tuscany, a region known for their wines, in a country known for their wines, and I’m the daughter of a guy who is a bit of a wine nut.

In the last year or so, I’ve gone through many glasses of wine, scanned many bottles on Vivino, successfully attempted, and sometimes failed, to pair my wine with a meal that I just slaved over, and I’ve started learning about the types of wine that I prefer (a daunting task). But if you were to ask me now, what my favorite type of wine is, I’d probably answer the same way that my dad does (which is really quite annoying) and say, “good wine is my favorite type of wine.” But it’s true! I LOVE syrah. I love a nice crisp Chardonnay, but I also love a sweeter Sauvignon Blanc. I’ve learned in Italy that I love big beautiful reds like a Rosso di Montalcino or a classic Cabernet Sauvignon. One time I had a glass of Spanish Rioja at the Spanish-Italian restaurant that my Dad and I love in Basalt, Colorado, and it blew my freaking mind. And sometimes, a glass of really, really good rosé just hits the spot. To sum it up, there’s way too much good wine in the world for me to pick a favorite. And I’m currently living in wine paradise and it’s pretty awesome.

So the barman at Le Volpi e l’Uva brought me a glass of rosso di montalcino and a wooden tagliere with a sausage and cheese crostone to pair. It was lovely. We started chatting as I salivated over this epic trio of meat, wine, and cheese. Ciro, was his name, and Ciro had been working at this enoteca in Firenze for 25 years. About three years ago, he started making his own wine. Wine is his life. He brought me a glass of his own next, a trebbiano, which is a unique white wine aged with the grape skins in the barrel (white wines are usually aged without the skin). It was orange and heavy for a white. But it smelled like oranges, tasted like oranges, but wasn’t overpowering. It was amazing, and became even more amazing when he brought out another crostone for me, this one topped with artichoke, capers, cheese, and lemon zest. Hands down, fantastic.

By the way, I just gazed over the menu and the list of wines by the glass on the blackboard inside. I had no idea what to order. I told Ciro, “mi fido di te” or “I trust you” and he made the difficult decisions for me. I’ve done this a few times ordering food in Italy, and it hasn’t let me down yet.

Crostone with cheese, artichoke, capers, and lemon zest. AKA heaven on Earth.

The day that sticks out the most to me from my time in Firenze, was the day that I bought the dress. I spent a whole morning looking at David and other sculptures in the Galleria Accademia, stopping by the Cordon Bleu Culinary School just to check it out, and sipping on an amaretto cappuchino and eating a chocolate-cream filled brioche in a cafe. I had no plans for my afternoon.

Lately, I’d noticed at just how fashionable Europeans, and specifically Italians, are. Americans can certainly be fashionable, but I spent the last five years of my life in Boulder, Colorado, where “sockos”, jeans, and Melanzana hoodies are perfectly acceptable attire. I am not fashionable by the European standards.

The street I was walking down, the Via dei Calzaiuoli, is one of the oldest streets in Firenze, where merchants used to hustle and bustle up and down the street between the Duomo and the Piazza della Signorina. Now, it is lined with high-end and elegant shops, and is one of the main touristy streets in town. I randomly decided to go into one of those high end, elegant shops, just to poke around for a bit. I had no intention of buy anything, I was simply looking.

Immediately, a bright, orange, floral dress caught my eye and I was peeking at it when a very pretty Italian saleswoman walked up to me wearing the same dress. Ugh, she looked so good, and with some convincing, she grabbed one that was my size and had me try it on.

Before I knew it, she and the other saleswomen (who were all equally fabulous), had me in the dress and were accessorizing me with belts, sweaters, and coats, showing me how versatile this dress could be. I was soon in a pair of Mary Jane heels, walking around, admiring myself. Heels? Orange? Flowers? Me??? Now, pre-Italy-trip Katherine would have never, ever, ever, even thought about wearing something like that. All I knew was that I had reddish-blonde hair that orange simply doesn’t work with. And I don’t do flowers. But as I stood there looking in the mirror, I had to admit to myself that I looked stunning. Who the hell is that girl looking like she’s about to go out and conquer the world? I imagined myself talking to clients at my future law firm in this dress, being a badass business woman in this dress, and going on countless dates in this dress. I remembered the conversation I had with my Dad over breakfast before he drove me to the airport a few weeks ago, where he told me not to worry about the money on this trip. He said, obviously not to get crazy, but to experience Italy as much as I could. And that meant splurging on tours of the Vatican, meals with views overlooking Positano, and that meant to buy myself a nice dress if I found one.

So, I did. I spent more money on that one dress than I have probably spent on 99% of the articles of clothing I have ever owned. I felt no shame. The saleswomen told me that all women deserve to feel beautiful like that every damn day. I think she’s right. And I walked out of that store and down the Via dei Calzaiuoli feeling like a million bucks, and feeling that incredible sense of freedom that was becoming more familiar to me as the weeks went by in Italy. It was the same feeling I felt running to catch my plane in Denver International Airport, the same thing I felt watching my last sunset in Rome at the top of the Spanish Steps. I felt it in the restaurant, eating clams and drinking prosecco and overlooking Positano, and I felt it floating in the Mediterranean, looking up at those beautiful limestone cliffs.

And now here I was, walking through Firenze, the city where the Renaissance all began, with an absurdly expensive dress in my hands, and feeling absolutely liberated. Now I just needed to find some shoes that I could wear with it.

Trains, Trails, Views, and Seafood

October 21, 2021 in Tales from Italy

It turns out the train system in Italy is really quite easy to figure out. We don’t use public transportation much in Colorado, as it’s not nearly as thorough as it is in Europe. So I entered Italy with this somewhat-rational fear that I would really struggle with the trains while trying to get from city to city. But who knew that walking into a train station with your ticket downloaded onto your phone, and looking up onto a big screen that says partenze, or departures, finding your train number and then reading it’s binario, or platform, and following the signs to your appropriate train, could be so easy.

I took two trains to get from Rome to Salerno. The first one stopped in Naples and I bought the ticket so that I’d have an hour to explore Naples if I wanted to. But once I arrived in the Napoli Centrale station and walked outside, I wasn’t feeling it. So I hung out in the station and found some food before hopping on my train to take me to Salerno.

But on my train from Rome to Naples, I was ecstatic. There I was, sitting on a train going through the Italian countryside, past vineyards and old farm plots, all by myself. Ten year-old me would be so proud of twenty-three year-old me. I was absorbed in the little cloud of freedom that I had found, with my feet up on the seat in front of me. There was no one else on the train car that I was sitting in, so I was relaxed, spread out, and enjoying the ride.

Then one of the Trenitalia employees, this one an older Italian man, walked by me to check my ticket. He took one look at me with my feet up on the seat and waved his finger at me with a stern “no”, like I was an absolute trash person who puts their feet on chairs. Clearly I disgusted him. “Sorry!! Spiacente!” I tried to smile at him under my mask. He looked at my ticket, glared at me, and continued by. I still haven’t figured out if it’s bad form to put your feet up in Italy, but I’ve been on dozens of trains in the last month since I arrived in Rome, and I haven’t put my feet up once since.

My first night in Salerno was fantastic. My Airbnb was a private bedroom of an apartment belonging to an elderly Italian couple who had lived in Salerno their whole lives—Anna Maria and Tony. The didn’t speak much English, but they were wonderfully kind. I needed to do some laundry, and Tony insisted that he put my dirty clothes in their washing machine and hang it up to dry on their clothesline for me. It was part of the service, I guess, but I managed to pick my clean underwear and reusable masks out of the pile before he hung them up on the line. I didn’t want my limited underwear supply and essential masks getting blown away by the wind, and this old Italian man shouldn’t feel like he has to touch my undies. It was awfully funny.

I left the apartment and began walking around downtown Salerno to explore a bit and find a good spot for dinner. The main road next to the beach was lined with touristy restaurants and sushi bars. I wasn’t interested in that… I walked up a few blocks to the hilly part of town and found a tiny restaurant with a few tables outside in an alley called Casa Cavour.

My waiter’s name was Diego and I (later) found out that he owned the restaurant. I told him that I was learning Italian, sto imperando l’italiano, and he was very gracious and picked out a dish for me on the menu, promising me I would love it. A little while later, he brought out one of the prettiest plates of pasta I’d ever seen. A large, oval shaped, shallow bowl with square-shaped penne-like pasta. There were two whole shrimp, squid, mussels, and arugula scattered between the pasta and seafood. Bellisimo cibo! Diego wished me, bon appetito, and left me to enjoy my pasta and seafood-induced bliss. The pasta was perfectly cooked, a little al dente, the seafood was so full of flavor but not fishy tasting at all, and the arugula was a perfect touch of freshness. I washed it down with a fruity, smooth, and delicious glass of red wine.

When Diego came back to take my plate, I told him that this was the best pasta I’d had in Italy so far, il miglior pasta in Italia finora. He was so flattered, so humbled, by my extreme compliment. I have come to understand that in Italy they take these things seriously! What I told him was true, and he brought be a glass of limoncello, the sweet and tart lemon liquor of the Italian riviera, on the house.

I love that Italians take so much pride in their meals and appreciate people appreciating their creations. I will gladly appreciate amazing Italian food and proudly tell them that it’s amazing, any day. What a simple and wonderful existence—a love for food and fresh ingredients, and for both new and familiar flavors. I love this country.

View of the Amalfi Coast from Sentiero Deghli Dei.

One day in Salerno, I woke up early to catch a ferry into the town of Amalfi, one of many small towns along the Amalfi Coast that I was looking to explore. I’m really starting to Planes, Trains, and Automobiles this trip.

The ferry rounded a corner of cliffs, and the other tourists and I gazed west up along the Amalfi Coast, cliffed up against the light blue Mediterranean Sea. There were huge limestone faces hanging over the sea, and the occasional house built in an impossible-looking spot, with no clear path to civilization. Eventually, the town of Amalfi came into view, with its old buildings looking like they might fall into the sea at any moment. It was a beautiful and charming little town.

Amalfi, the town, revolves around lemons—limoncello, lemon risotto, lemon granita, and if you walk even five minutes out of the tourist chaos in the town’s center and up the main road into the mountains, you’ll see the lemon groves woven into the neighborhoods, wrapping around each and every face of Amalfi’s little canyon, and the hills beyond.

I hopped on a bus that would take me from Amalfi to the even smaller town of Praiano, about a 30-minute drive up the road from Amalfi. The road that connects all of these little towns—Salerno, Maiori, Minori, Amalfi, Praiano, Positano, and Sorrento—is absolutely crazy. I’m a mountain girl, I’m used to roads with heights, cliffs, loose rocks, you name it. But this road was just barely wide enough for two cars to pass. More than half of the road has a cliff with a several-hundred foot sheer drop into the ocean on one side, and my bus driver drove with a frightening confidence. Whenever we’d approach a blind hairpin turn, he’d lay down on the horn to alert oncoming traffic that a huge bus with a hundred wide-eyed tourists were coming, and then zip around the turn, hardly braking at all. There were several times when some confident tourists in an oncoming car would try to pass the bus in a narrow section of road. With only a three-foot high stone wall between their car and a sheer drop into the sea, it was wild watching their faces sink with panic when the bus would squeeze between the car and the edge of the road, inches from the guarding wall and only inches from the bus. Needless to say, I was really happy to get off that bus.

I didn’t spend much time in Praiano. After being on that windy road in that hot bus, I was ready to get moving. My plan was to hike along the Sentiero Deghli Dei, or the Path of the Gods, a trail that was used to travel between these towns for centuries before the road was built. I began climbing up a long set of staircases to reach the Sentiero, which I would follow until it reached the next town, Positano. I quickly caught up with an Israeli couple who were moving slowly up the endless stairs. They were friendly and interesting, so I slowed my Colorado legs down for a bit so I could hike with them. We talked about all the places we’ve visited across the world and the adventures that we’d hope would come. Eventually, we reached the “summit” which was a water fountain with a breathtaking panoramic overlook of the sea, with Praiano to our left, and Positano to our right. The overlook was busy with tourists and I was ready to continue on, so I said goodbye to my Israeli friends and headed to Positano.

The view of Positano was stunning, one of the best ocean landscapes on Planet Earth. Huge limestone cliffs with sparkling turquoise water, and the literal cliff dwellings of Positano crowded up against the sea, all competing for that magnificent ocean view. But as I continued on towards Positano, the trail became busier and busier. At first, I didn’t mind so much. But eventually, trying to pass literally every other human being on the trail became pretty annoying. It actually put a bit of a damper on my mood. I was reminded that I just move faster than most people (which is crazy because I’m not even close to being the fastest hiker in my group of friends back home), and patience was going to be the key to my success on this trip.

By the time I descended thousands of stairs and actually reached Positano, I was pretty done and food was my top priority. I found a restaurant on a narrow street, overlooking town and the sea below. Normally, I would not ever choose to go to a restaurant like this, because I know I would be paying for that view along with the food. But I was hungry and exhausted and this was the first restaurant I set my eyes on, so it was a go. And to my surprise, my waiter sat me at the best table in the house, up against the railing overlooking the amazing view. I ordered a glass of prosecco and a bowl of linguine alla vongole, or linguine with clams. It was worth a splurge.

I settled into some newly-discovered state of relaxation on that balcony, sipping on my prosecco and clams bathed in garlicy-olive-oily-goodness. What is this life? How am I so lucky to be able to do this? I was truly living. I told my waiter, “siamo molto fortunati!!” or “we are so lucky!”.

With a full belly, I ran down to the beach. I was headed for those alluring blue Mediterranean waters. I stripped down into my swimsuit, locked my bag to a railing, was assured by a nice Italian woman that she would watch it for me, and dove into the waves. I floated on my back and stared up at the cliffs and stacked buildings and laughed. I was so free. I thought to myself, I love this life that I have—the freedom to see the world and to do whatever I want. It was like my heart opened up to the world and let out the most beautiful sigh of bliss and joy. I was at peace.

Linguine alla vongole and a glass of prosecco looking over Positano.

ROMA. Something Different

October 19, 2021 in Tales from Italy

I spent the second half of August in an Anchorage Airbnb with two good friends, Zach and Katie, who I decided to hang out with for a few weeks after our ten-day trip to the Gates of the Arctic. It had been raining for about five days straight, so we were confined to our warm and dry little townhome, where I took it upon myself to plan a trip to Italy. I had been toying with the idea for a few weeks, as Europe was one of the few places I could safely travel to during the pandemic and I wanted to continue cultivating my newfound love for delicious food. Zach and Katie did a three-month trip to Europe a few years ago and they were telling me stories, giving me tips, and filling me with ideas. A few days before I left Anchorage to head home to Colorado, I was feeling a little spontaneous, so in that moment I booked a flight to Rome.

And before I knew it, only two weeks had gone by. It was September 16th, and I was giving my Dad an extra-long hug on the Denver International Airport drop-off curb before spending an hour in the check-in line because I forgot to fill out some COVID form, and then I was asking strangers if I could cut in front of them to bypass the longest security line I’d ever seen, only to sprint through the airport and walk right onto my plane. I was full of adrenaline when I was finally seated and looked out the airplane window. I was actually doing it, I’m actually going to Italy for three months.

Twelve hours later, I was in Rome and was struggling to navigate myself from the airport to the Roma Termini train station. I met a family who was traveling from New Jersey and was headed in the same direction as me, so we helped each other get on the correct train. Once at Termini, I was alone again, but easily found my Airbnb nearby, dropped my backpack in my room, took a few minutes to compose my jetlagged-self, and headed out to explore the city.

I found the Trevi Fountain and admired it’s beautiful turquoise waters. I stopped for a cappuccino and a panino at a cafe nearby, and then for a gelato later. Yes, the gelato is as amazing as everyone says it is. I was so excited to be in this new world, to soak up the culture, and to try to speak as much Italian as possible. But after finishing my first gelato, I was exhausted. So I headed back to my room for a long nap before having a delicious bowl of spaghetti for dinner.

By the end of my second day in Rome, I could tell that this was one of the best decisions I have ever made in my life. I met a girl from Patagonia, Chile, named Risa (pronounced Rye-sa) while I was relaxing for a few minutes in a park after a morning of walking through the city. Risa and I explored a few churches, the Pantheon, and found delicious panini e vino. Eventually we parted ways, only to return to my Airbnb to meet two German girls who were staying in the room next to me. Piacere Anja and Diandra!

That night I went out with Anja and Diandra to a district of Rome called Trastevere, which I learned is the “cool and hip” part of town. Diandra studied abroad in Rome during one of her semesters in university, so she was fluent in Italian and knew all about Rome. Trastevere was full of young people, probably college kids, and full to the brim with delicious restaurants.

We wandered around for a while before deciding on a trattoria where we watched them bring out delicious-looking pizza. I sat down and there was no English on the menu, which I learned was a good sign for authentic food. Diandra ordered a bruschetta, three suppli, a plate of fresh sautéed eggplant and peppers, and a perfect pizza complete with basil springs and baby tomatoes. Oh my god, I am in the right country.

The Vatican Museums were my favorite part of my stay in Rome. At home before my trip, I decided to book a guided tour for the Vatican, because I knew there would be an overwhelming amount of information to absorb. And I was totally right… every inch of the building that is known today as the Vatican Museum is covered in artwork. From sculpture, to frescos, to tapestries, to the ceilings, to the the actual building itself, art is on every visible surface. Each piece of art has an entire history to it, and every piece of art and it’s history is only a piece of the entire puzzle of Roman Catholic history.

I loved listening to my tour guide tell stories of rivalry between Michelangelo and Raphael. Gazing up at the ceilings was incredible. Walking down the Room of Maps and admiring the attention to detail of each panel representing a small section of Italy was fascinating. But nothing compared to when I finally walked into the Sistine Chapel at the end of the tour and gazed up to the ceiling that Michelangelo so famously painted for Pope Sixtus from 1477-1480. Filled with biblical scenes and The Creation of Adam, the ceiling took my breath away. I could spend a lifetime gazing up at that ceiling and picking out new details that I had never noticed before. Michelangelo was really onto something.

As much as I liked the Vatican Museums, I wasn’t a huge fan of St. Peter’s Basilica, the massive church and the center of Catholicism which was next-door to the Museums. It was too much for me. A cathedral that big, and full of every expensive material found on the planet (mostly gold and stunning marble), cost an unfathomable amount of money to build. It was a supposed symbol of power and strength in the world, built on funds from the richest Catholics in Italy who were “donating money” to be “forgiven for their sins.” And yet we still have starving and suffering people in the world….? To be honest, I’ve never known much about or had much interest in organized religion in my life. I’m sure organized religion has a place in this world, maybe I’m just doubtful about what that is.

I digress.

On my way home from the Vatican, I tried to speak a lot of Italian. When asking random strangers for help on how to buy a ticket at a subway station, “Mi puoi aiutare?”, and then immediately after, “Parli inglese?” I was surprised at how many people spoke enough English to help a lone tourist like me. I ducked into some grocery store to try to find some laundry detergent and relied on Google Translate to ask the friendly security guard if some box of detergent was the right box of detergent. Italian really is a beautiful language and my first few days in Italy, spent wandering around the streets of Rome, marked the beginning of my determination to learn it.

After stopping for gelato on my way home (where I asked the gelato-man what his favorite flavor was in Italian, and ended up nearly crying from pure joy over the delicious fig-flavored gelato I had just devoured), I found that Diandra and Anja had left and gone home. But they messaged me, saying that they forgot about a bottle of lambrusco they left in the shared fridge, and it was now mine.

I promptly poured myself a glass of lambrusco, which is similar to prosecco but not quite as sweet. It was delicious and I was riding high from the fascinating day I had. I ended up drinking the entire bottle in one go in my little bedroom, and then quickly fell asleep.

I spent my last evening in Rome walking towards the Spanish Steps, the one major landmark I hadn’t yet found in the city. I was a little tired of the constant chaos and hustle and bustle of the city, and I was ready for my next adventure on the Amalfi Coast, which I was hoping would be more relaxed. But I walked the streets of Rome with a good sense of direction and I felt more confident than ever as a solo-traveler in a foreign city.

On the way, I found a nice restaurant with a space for outdoor seating among a busy street of traffic, where I enjoyed a beautiful bowl of spaghetti carbonara. The carbonara in Rome is like an egg sauce, different from any kind of carbonara I’ve had in the US. It was garnished with little bits of crispy bacon and pecorino cheese.

The Spanish Steps were crowded with tourists. Without hesitation, I climbed to the top of the steps, where the Trínità dei Monti was standing and walked inside. It was instantly quiet, a much-needed relief from the crazy going on just outside the church’s doors. There was a preacher giving a sermon in French to a few loyal listeners and I sat down in the back and listened to those beautiful French syllables reverberate around the massive marble walls and painted ceilings.

I thought back to my life that I knew only five days ago. It was full of a constant thinking about what to do next and a worry over how I am going to find success in the world. In the year since I graduated from college, I had found a place to live in Boulder with three of my closest friends. I kept the great part-time job that was in the Environmental field (the same field that I studied in college), I worked part-time at Whole Foods, and I spent most of the year studying for the LSAT. In my free time, I hiked, backpacked, skied, climbed, and even tried mountain biking. I nurtured many wonderful friendships and enjoyed a wonderful relationship, though that was over now. Objectively, I did pretty well for myself that first year.

But at the same time, I was always looking forward and thinking about what would be the next chapter of my life. What I was doing never felt like it was good enough at the time. I didn’t even come close to the LSAT score that I wanted. I applied for a few jobs, interviewed for one, but nothing came about. Always, always thinking… How am I going to get into law school? How am I going to get a job if I haven’t already? What the heck am I going to do with my life? I spent so much time worrying about the future that I didn’t even notice my happiness during that last year in Boulder.

In the Trínità dei Monti in Rome, the sound of the preacher preaching and a few worshippers singing, it felt like it was time to let go of something. I felt an emotion swelling up inside of me, and I began to cry. I let go of the worries of my future, I let go of my few failures in the last year, I let go of the relationship I was leaving behind, and felt the urge to make a promise to myself—I will be more present while in Italy. So no more worrying about anything, I’m in Italy, busy eating beautiful food and doing whatever it is that I want to do. And I will do my best to not think about what I’m going to do after this trip. Let the past go, you’re here now, your future will always be there, you will find the right path. Just have some fun.

I gathered myself and walked out of the Church and back onto the busy street at the top of the Spanish Steps. Feeling a little liberated and a little relieved, I sat down at the top of the Steps to watch the sun set over the magnificent dome of St. Peter’s Basilica and I enjoyed listening to the bustle of the city on my last night in Rome. I had a new outlook on my three-month trip in Italia, and I couldn’t wait to find more freedom, beauty, and incredible food, wherever that may be.

Grizzly bear tracks

Caribou antler

Creatures of the Arctic

September 03, 2021 in New Places

I woke up in a daze on our second day in Gates of the Arctic National Park in Alaska. I thought to myself, “this is incredible, I am so lucky to be here.” It still hadn’t quite hit me that after Zach had asked me in the climbing gym a few months ago about potentially doing a trip in Gates, and after all the trip planning, that we had finally made it here. We seemed so far away.

We had oatmeal for breakfast and continued West along a big river for the first few miles of our day. It was sunny and beautiful out, I was only wearing my sun hoodie and I hadn’t even pulled my rain jacket out of my backpack yet. The peaks, covered in a loose talus, gleamed under the strong summer sun. We found all sorts of tracks in the mud along the river bank. Big grizzly prints the size of my foot, big wolf prints that were about half the size of my foot, and dozens of other unknown and non-threatening critters that called this place home.

Eventually we left the river bank and began climbing up onto a grassy plateau and stopped for a break. I broke out my lunch which consisted of one tortilla, one packet of Justin’s almond butter of various flavors, a handful of banana chips, and a handful of chocolate chips to form a sweet wrap of sorts, a few handfuls of pistachios, a few strips of dried mango, and a few gummy bears. Not much, but an honest ration.

As we were packing up, Yusuf looked up and spotted a wolf up on the ridge that we were heading towards. Zach pulled out his binoculars and each of my friends took turns gazing up at it. It was black and looked huge way up there on that ridge. I was handed the binoculars, and the wolf stared back at us, at me, into my soul, wondering if I was something that would be worth fighting in order to make a meal out of. Its eyes were piercing, stunning, like eyes I had never seen before on a wild animal. It was mystifying and slightly terrifying.

The wolf must have decided that we were not worthy of its next dinner and it disappeared over the other side of the ridge, never to be seen again. We continued on our path, towards its general direction. The air felt a little eery and we were all certain that it was still watching us.

It was only our second day of the trip and we had already seen a wolf, the most elusive creature in Gates of the Arctic??? A park ranger in Fairbanks had told us only a few days before that most people who travel through the Park never see any wildlife. I wondered what else this trip would have in store for us.

On our sixth morning in Gates of the Arctic National Park in Alaska, I opened the rain fly to big snowflakes landing on the Arctic tundra surrounding us. The day before, we had gone over our highest point along our route, Peregrine Pass, which lies at about 5,500 feet, and it was snowing. We couldn’t see much at the top of the pass, a disappointment for each of us, and we descended into our next valley with the hope that we would get a break from the weather. That break was yet to come. Everyone saw the snow, and our moods instantly tanked.

It was supposed to be our rest day, but after receiving weather updates that called for more snow from Zach’s wife Katie over his inReach, we agreed that we’d all rather hike to stay warm through the cold, rather than sit in the tent all day. So on we went.

I got out of the tent first—I was sick of being horizontal. The sun never seems to really set or rise in the Arctic summer, but we would crawl into the tents each night right after dinner, usually around 7 or 8:00 since we were cold, wet, and tired. The tents were our only shelter, our only way to get warm and dry after a long day. But getting into the tent that early meant that we all fell asleep pretty early, so there was no shortage of sleep in Gates. But I’d wake up in the morning and be anxious to get off my inflatable sleeping pad after 10 or 12 hours, even if that meant putting on wet clothes and going out into the cold. I walked away from our tents towards the bear cans and took a baby wipe bath (my first time I’d done any form of bathing in 5 days), combed my hair, brushed my teeth, and washed my face while braving the cold. But the snow had stopped, it seemed to warm up a bit, and I felt instantly better after being semi-clean.

By the time we started hiking, around 12:30pm, it was much warmer out. The clouds lifted a bit and we were able to see most of the valley that we were making our way through. The peaks were still covered in low clouds, and there was still a crisp to the air, but it was bearable. Almost enjoyable. In our first few hours on the trail that day, we walked through what seemed like endless blueberry patches. Every fifty feet or so, we would all stop and kneel down to grab some berries, then continue on. At one point, we found ourself surrounded by blueberries and spent at least ten minutes picking berries non-stop!

Down the valley we could see clouds moving in and realized it would likely storm soon, so we decided to take a quick lunch break in a field of short willows. This wasn’t the best spot—when we were all sitting down we couldn’t see over the tops of the bushes, making it hard to see any approaching wildlife. Someone mentioned that we had been walking on a game trail through lots of berry patches, and Zach found some bear scat nearby. So I enjoyed my lunch standing up while all my friends sat on the ground. I felt like someone had to keep watch.

It wasn’t long after we continued hiking that Yusuf turned around and sternly said, “BEAR.” I looked up and saw a mother grizzly and three cubs on the slope, probably about a quarter-mile in front of us, in the same direction we were headed. It all made perfect sense—the berry patches, the game trail, the bear scat—and there were four magnificent creatures on the Arctic tundra, on the side of a hill in a massive valley in Gates of the Arctic. How lucky were we to have seen these creatures. But we were downwind of the bears, and the wind was blowing hard, so as we stood there for only a few seconds and as I quickly snapped a few photos, the bears didn’t smell, hear, or even see us. They had no idea that we were so close.

Yusuf said we needed to get out of there as quickly as possible without disturbing Mama Bear, so we all retreated down the steep slope to our left onto a wide shelf high above the river at the bottom of the valley. Once on the shelf, we could see the bears again. I looked up and there was the Mama Bear high up on the slope, peering down at us, watching us move through the valley. She and her three cubs were probably enjoying the berries and the temporary break in weather just as we were. I wondered what she was thinking, and what we must have looked like. We probably seemed so out of place in the Arctic.

We moved quickly along the shelf, trying to get out of her view while giving her as much space as possible. We ended up adding nearly a mile and 800 feet of extra elevation onto our already long day. But once she was long behind us and out of our sight, we stopped, all sighed a sigh of relief, and began talking about how perfect our first grizzly bear encounter had gone. We were glad Yusuf saw her when she was still a ways out in front of us. Being downwind from her, we could have easily snuck up on her, startled her, and could have had a much more dangerous encounter. We were all filled with respect for that bear. It was possible that she and her cubs had never seen a human being before.

A mother grizzly and three cubs. I zoomed in all the way on my Panasonic Lumix (250mm) for this shot.

A cropped version of the image above. There is a cub directly to the right of the mother, in the center of the frame, and on the right side of the frame.

Throughout the rest of the trip, we continued to see dozens more bear tracks and wolf tracks in the mud along river banks. We spotted a few herds of sheep on steep and loose slopes way up in the valleys. There were hundreds of caribou antlers scattered across the tundra and occasionally we’d notice a pika or small ground squirrel moving between rocks. Like the desert, the Arctic initially seems like a barren wasteland, but soon it’s obvious that it’s brimming with life.

I feel so lucky to have had both a grizzly and a wolf encounter on the trip. How many people can say they’ve seen a grizzly bear or a wolf not only in the wild, but in the Arctic?

Our trip in Gates was difficult to say the least. I found myself constantly wishing I was warm and dry and sometimes anywhere else but there. But it was those moments where we were up close and personal with nature, in its truest sense, whether it be a within sight of a grizzly bear or a wolf, where I felt my love and respect for the Arctic grow. The Arctic is truly a wild place.

Filling up water at a creek in Gates of the Arctic National Park.

Arctic Distractions

August 19, 2021 in New Places

If you had asked me a few days ago how I felt about my ten-day adventure in Gates of the Arctic National Park, I would have hesitated to say it was fun. Instead I would have complained about the never-ending cold and wet that surrounded my four friends and I, and the brutal terrain, and the ongoing sufferfest that the trip turned out to be. But after a few days of processing the trip in my comfortable Airbnb in Anchorage, Alaska, I can now say that the trip was the experience of a lifetime and I’m so grateful that my friends and I made it happen.

On August 7th, we watched as the van that we had spent the last six hours in speed off North along the Dalton Highway to Prudhoe Bay. The Dalton Highway runs from Fairbanks to the Arctic Ocean, and is the main route for truckers to get from civilization to the oil fields up North. The “highway” is really more of a dirt road, and my friends and I watched with caution as our van driver slowed down and pulled off to the side of the road every time a big semi went roaring by us through the rain and mud.

But as the van drove out of sight and the five of us were left on the side of the road, with no one around for miles and a general sense of direction, in the middle of the Arctic Wilderness in Northern Alaska, we were chaotically excited. We were totally alone—this was the beginning of our real wilderness experience that is so rare for outdoor-enthusiasts. It was highly unlikely that we would see anyone for the next ten days.

Our first three days in the Arctic were amazing. It was sunny, warm, and not too windy. We slept in as the sun never really set at night, making it nearly impossible to tell what time it was based on the outside light. We started hiking around noon, and would go until 7 or 8pm, when we’d stop and set up camp before turning in for the night. We passed through massive valleys, with equally massive rivers and peaks within them. We saw caribou antlers scattered across the tundra and grizzly and wolf prints in mud next to streams and creeks. It was the Gates of the Arctic trip that we were all hoping for.

It wasn’t until after our lunch-break on Day 4 that our luck ran out. We packed up our lunch spread and took a left turn into a valley where we would hike to Summit Lake, the halfway point along our route from the Dalton Highway, to the small Native town of Anaktuvuk Pass in the middle of the park. It was only a few minutes after we began walking that we stopped to put on our rain gear. Rain pants, jacket, waterproof socks and gloves—these would prove to be essential as we remained wet for the majority of the trip.

The sky opened up and began raining pretty hard. We were walking through a mix of bog and tussocks, the worst type of terrain to encounter on an off-trail backpacking trip in Alaska.

Walking over bog in the Arctic tundra is like walking on a temper-pedic mattress. Your feet sink in several inches as the bog gives way under your weight, but doesn’t deform or crumble. It springs back to life as soon as your foot leaves it. The bog is made of small plants, shrubs, and permafrost layers and it usually isn’t too bad. Once you get used to it, walking in the bog can be predictable and it’s easy to adjust your body and walking technique to account for the initial sinking of your feet into its “squish”. Sometimes though, especially in low-lying areas, the bog is fully saturated with water, and as your feet sink into it, they sink into a saturated sponge, soaking your shoes, socks, and feet.

The bog quickly becomes a dream when you enter a field of tussocks in Alaska. The tussocks, or “tus-SUCK” as my friends and I dubbed it, are a hiker’s worst nightmare. The tussocks are clumps of grass that grow through bog in odd ball-shape formations. They look like unsuspecting piles of grass scattered across the tundra, usually with a few inches of space between each clump. Quickly, you learn that you can’t trust the tussocks. After stepping on a few, I realized that the tussock is less trust-worthy than a scree field on a steep mountain slope. The tussocks roll over so easily. For example, if you put any weight on top of a pile of grass, it acts like a giant bowling-ball, and will roll over in an unpredictable direction. This makes the tussocks fantastic ankle-rolling terrain, and is slow-going and eventually brutal on your joints and hips, after spending hours walking through only a mile of delicate, sneaky tussocks.

Anyways, it was raining. And it was raining hard. And we found ourselves in the middle of a mile-long stretch of tussocks and saturated bog, which we had to hike through to reach Summit Lake, where we would make camp for the night. We were soaked and annoyed at our slow pace, but eventually we reached the end of the tussock field and walked up to a huge marsh area.

The marsh is the third annoying type of terrain in the Arctic. It is endlessly vast, brutally cold, standing water. In the marsh, your feet can sink so deep into a filthy, muddy, freezing-cold stew. I once watched the bottom-half of my 120cm trekking pole disappear into the marsh before stepping in the same area and quickly turned around to find another way through. Except there was no other way through. I just had to suck it up, and accept the fact that me, my pants, socks, and shoes, are all going to be soaking wet.

Tussocks Field

Arctic Bog

The Marsh

So, after another hour of wading through the worst marshland I had ever seen, we were soaked from the ridiculous rain storm that just passed over us, our shoes were soaked and our feet were numb from the marsh, and our bodies ached from the miles of tussocks and bog. And it was only Day 4.

The weather and the terrain remained brutal for the rest of the trip. The rain did not let up on Day 5. We had planned to take a rest day then, but decided to push on along our route. Sitting in the tent all day to avoid the freezing-cold rain sounded way worse than hiking through the freezing-cold rain, where at least our physical activity would keep our core temperatures up. We had to go over Peregrine Pass, the highest point of our route, which stood at about 5,000 feet elevation. The rain turned to snow as we approached the pass, and we couldn’t see any of the surrounding peaks that were smothered in clouds and fog. We followed our route on an inReach, only to realize that the USGS map we were using was actually wrong, and we had gone over the wrong pass and had to go up and over another pass, the real one, in order to get back on track.

We emerged from the tent on the morning of Day 6 to more snow. It wasn’t sticking, but it was snowing and the wind was blowing hard. Our rest day would have to wait again. We kept hiking. It kept raining and snowing. We would stop for five minutes to gather ourselves and take a few sips of water, and we’d get cold and our fingers and toes would go numb. Other than a few hours of sunshine, the next four days were the same until we flew out of Anaktuvuk Pass on August 16th. It was cold, rainy, and windy. We’d wake up to snow each morning. We only sometimes could make out the shape of a jagged peak behind thick clouds. We crossed dozens of cold rivers and found our way through miles of tussocks and bog.

Keep hiking, keep hiking, keep hiking. Stay warm. These were the only thoughts that my brain had the capacity for. This trip was not a life-changing experience. I went into Gates thinking I’d learn something about myself, about who I am and what I want out of life. That’s what has happened on the other long wilderness trips I’d done, so I figured this wouldn’t be any different. But as I was continually cold and as it rained and as the wind blew, I asked myself each day, “just how far can I push my limits before I break? Just how much longer can I go on with this before I crack?” That was the mentality that we all had. There were no revelations in Gates. We were fully immersed and distracted by staying warm, staying dry, staying fed, and staying sane. In Gates, there was only surviving.

As I sit in my warm and dry room and look back on a trip that had so much potential to be epic, but was less than ideal due to weather, I am grateful that nothing else went horribly wrong. We all had a pair of dry socks and a dry change of clothes, and a tent that kept us dry and warm each night. Without any of these things, we would have been a lot worse off. We all had food, plenty of food! Our food barely fit in our four bear cans and two ursacks on the first night! Without food, or if something had happened to our food, our trip would have been a lot more difficult. We had two inReaches to help with the route navigation. If we had gotten lost, or off track, we could have run out of supplies, or our tent could have given into the constant rain and snow, and we could have been in real trouble. We were so lucky that we only had bad weather.

I didn’t get the epic, life-changing experience, or any kind of epiphany in the ten days I spent in Gates of the Arctic. Instead, I had a ten-day, all-encompassing distraction from my every day life. I had no time or energy to think about my life, where I’m going, what I’m doing, or about my relationships. All I could focus on was doing my best on the trip, and getting out safely with my four other friends. Maybe that was the beauty of Gates. Maybe the wilderness doesn’t always have to be beautiful and full of lessons. Maybe a ten-day intense distraction was exactly what we all needed.

Summerlyn and Sarah on the trail heading up to the lakes, looking back at the Sierras.

The Stars Aligned in Yosemite

July 14, 2021 in New Places

Yosemite National Park. The holy grail of our National Parks. The Park that anyone who is even remotely familiar with our iconic American landscapes wants to visit. Its most famous formations, El Capitan and Half Dome, cover photographs, stickers, postcards, magazines, and climbing films. Of course I have always wanted to visit Yosemite.

As I sit in my room in Santa Barbara, reminiscing about one of my best backpacking trips, I find this story a little hard to write. Where to begin?

I guess I’ll start by saying that Yosemite is not over-hyped. Not even one bit. For someone like me, who considers themself to be a hiker, backpacker, semi rock-climber, and outdoor enthusiast, Yosemite is a dream come true. However, there are two main problems with a trip to the Park:

Unless you live in California, it’s kinda hard to get to. From my home in Colorado, I’d have to fly in to San Francisco, rent a car, and drive a few hours just to get into the Valley. It’s hard to justify such high travel costs and such high travel times when your backyard is filled with countless accessible wilderness areas.
It’s crowded. One of the big reasons I choose to spend so much time outside is to escape society. The last thing I want to do is go to a National Park where I have to wait in lines, wait in traffic, and navigate crowds on popular trails.

However, the stars seemed to align for my friend, Summerlyn, and I to plan a trip to Yosemite. I have been enjoying the flexibility of working remotely during the pandemic, and found a place to live in Santa Barbara for a month to hang out with Summerlyn. And due to the pandemic, the National Park implemented a day-use reservation system, where a reservation is required to even drive through the park. This is all in an effort to try to control the risk of COVID-19. But the system also happens to control the crowds during the summer months, and honestly, I hope it stays past the pandemic.

When Summerlyn and I scored a day-use reservation and a backcountry permit, we were stoked. I’m not going to explain how exactly we pulled it off merely a week before we were trying to go (in an attempt to keep these places wild and to free the Park from the social-media hype). But I will say that it can be done if you do your homework.

Summerlyn’s friend who lives in Santa Barbara, Sarah, decided to join us and before we knew it the three of us were on a long, windy road in Yosemite National Park. We had the windows down and the music cranked up for nearly two hours before we rounded a turn and BAM, there was Yosemite Valley in all its glory. The sun shined through the Valley, and Half Dome and El Capitan stood proudly in the distance. We drove through a tunnel, stopped in a parking lot, and our jaws dropped. It was magnificent. Epic. Awe-inspiring. It looked just like it does in the movies.

So much has been written and said about this magical valley, I feel like I can’t explain it. Words don’t do it justice.

Summerlyn taking a break next to one the lakes we camped next to.

We continued on through the park until we found our trailhead on the side of yet another long, windy road. The trail was covered by a thick forest, but it eventually opened up into a large meadow filled with wildflowers and views of the High Sierras. These mountains are so unique and so different from the Rockies, the mountains I grew up with. They’re more slope-y; the massive granite batholiths lift into the air and are sculpted by huge glaciers. Eventually, we reached the lakes we would camp at for the next two nights at about 10,000 feet. There was hardly anyone there, which was astonishing. Peace and solitude can be found in Yosemite National Park.

On the route up to Mt. Conness

The next day, we decided to head up to summit Mt. Conness (12,589 feet), the third highest peak in Yosemite, that straddles the boundary between the Park and Inyo National Forest to the East. It was both Sarah’s and Summerlyn’s first 12er, and Sarah’s first real summit! I was so excited for her and to welcome her to the peak-bagging addiction. We hiked up a gully, which was a bit steep and loose, into a broad basin. Then we approached the ridge of the peak, which was marked by huge cliffs on both sides. Our path up the ridge was, in some places, only a few feet wide with steep, thousand-foot drops next to us. The rock we stood on was solid. It was awesome.

At the summit, we could see Half Dome far out, marking Yosemite Valley. “What?!?!?! That’s Half Dome?? This is INSANE,” I thought to myself. While I was in mountain-climbing mode, I realized how easy it was to forget where exactly I was. We signed the summit registry, hugged each other, and marveled in our joy of standing on top of a mountain for a while before beginning our descent.

The rest of the hike back to camp was hot and exhausting. Once at our home for the evening, we stripped down to our bare skin and dove straight into the lake without hesitation. There was no one around. The cold lake water felt so, so good on our aching feet and bodies. For the rest of the afternoon and evening, we frolicked in the wildflowers, journaled on the lake’s bank, napped in the shade, watched the sun turn the cliffs above us a pastel pink and the meadow at our feet a lime green, had a few deep conversations about our womanhood, and ate an entire pot of curry. We slept so well.

On our way home the following day, we stopped in Yosemite Valley one last time. I wanted to stand in the meadow that everyone in the movies stands in and stare up at El Capitan. So we did. It truly takes your breath away. I teared up a bit as I looked up at The Dawn Wall and The Nose, and picked out the features that I’ve read and heard about. I have nothing but respect for the history of this revered landscape.

Back in Santa Barbara, I’ve had a bit of post-trip depression. Although it’s hard to be sad when my evenings are filled with surfing and sunsets on the beach. Life is pretty great these days. If anything, I’m filled with love. Love for Yosemite Valley, love for the Sierras, and love for the lonesome alpine lakes that we found in the Park. I love that I have two beautiful, badass lady friends. I love that we support each other on these epic adventures and through life. And I love that we have the opportunity and the privilege to visit places like Yosemite. I can’t wait for the stars to align again.

Yusuf looking back at me from one of the Upper Blue Lakes

Views of Dolores Peak and Middle Peak (both 13ers), from the trail up Boskoff Peak

Views from the summit of Hayden Mountain South

Columbines on a slope overlooking Lower Blue Lake

Looking up to the top of the sketchy pass, Yusuf can barely be seen.

The basin surrounding the pass

Lessons From the San Juans

June 23, 2021 in Colorado

I looked up and saw Yusuf standing at the top of the pass, nearly 80 feet above me. Between us, was a steep gully comprised of the loosest scree I have ever set foot on in the mountains. He shouted down to me, “It’s pretty loose Halam, try going around to the other side of the cliffs.”

I slowly moved around the base of the cliffs and saw Yusuf from the other side. I began moving up the pass. But with each step up, I felt like the rocks would give way and I’d begin sliding down the steep slope. Sometimes, I did slide—but I was somehow able to hold my balance and not fall down the entire mountain. I froze up. Tears started streaming down my face as I debated with Yusuf whether or not I could make it up to the top of the pass. My limbs were shaking with every step. I have never been more terrified in the mountains.

One of my good friends from college, Yusuf, has been living in Telluride, Colorado and working remotely for over a year now. He’s always loved the mountains that reside there, the San Juan mountain range, so in a way, Covid has helped him really live his dream. He’s constantly climbing mountains—14ers, 13ers, he loves the summits and his evolving goal of climbing the hundreds of peaks in Colorado. It’s an addiction for him.

Yusuf finally convinced me to visit him in Telluride in May. I drove 6.5 hours from Evergreen, only to find a few days of bad weather in the San Juans. It rained for almost three days straight, the entire time I had planned to visit. But we managed. We hiked to countless waterfalls within the box canyon that Telluride sits in, all the while Yusuf played tour-guide and showed me around his little mountain town. Even though I hardly saw any mountains, I was hooked.

It took less than a month for me to return for another visit. I am headed to California for all of July, so I figured I’d stop by and go on a few adventures with Yusuf before heading further west. And this time, I was truly awed by the San Juans.

We started off by climbing Boskoff Peak (13,123’), which is just South of Wilson Peak, Mt. Wilson, and El Diente, all 14ers which are some of the most Southern peaks in Colorado. We were on trail for most of the day, except for the ridge up to the summit. Seeing the massive summit block of El Diente and the ridge-line connected to Mt. Wilson was insane. The San Juans are exceptionally rugged—we can thank the work glaciers do for that.

The next day, Yusuf and I hiked in to the Blue Lakes Basin, which sits at the base of Mt. Sneffels, another 14er. The trail was inconsistent and clearly old, but interesting nevertheless. As we approached Lower Blue Lake, our jaws immediately dropped. And they remained dropped for the rest of the hike as we climbed up to the upper lakes. The views were breathtaking. The lakes all sparkled a cloudy, turquoise hue, which I later learned is due to a phenomenon called “glacial milk”. As glaciers move around in their basins, they grind up the material that sits underneath them into a fine powder, which makes its way into streams and lakes. This super fine sediment, or “milk”, sits suspended in lakes and reflects sunlight in a weird way, causing the lake water to appear a milky turquoise blue.

On our third day together, we summited Hayden Mountain South (13,206’), which is about halfway between Ouray and Silverton along the Million Dollar Highway. The weather was perfect, the trail was steep but defined, and the ridge and views were epic. We stood on the summit with 360-degree views of the San Juans. To the North—Wetterhorn and Uncompahgre, to the East—the Red Mountains, to the South—the Weminuche Wilderness and the Chicago Basin peaks, and to the West— the Mt. Sneffels Wilderness. I’ve never seen such epic views.

On my fourth day in Telluride, I had to do a bit of work in the morning. Yusuf and I decided to do a sunset hike to the top of a pass that would give us great views of the Island and Ice Lake Basins, which are classic San Juan lakes. The forecast looked great, so we headed out after I finished up my work and got off a Zoom call.

We drove through the small town of Ophir, and began hiking around 3pm. We made our way into a huge basin. We couldn’t find a trail, so we relied on Yusuf’s inReach to show us the way to the pass. I usually like hiking off trail, but I was instantly reminded of the luxury of a defined path as Yusuf led me through a section of thick willows on a steep slope next to a waterfall. He had sped off without me and left me to fend for myself in the bushes. Once through the brutal section of bushwack, I was beat. I had a bit of a headache going and was worried that our off-trail adventure would continue way past the sunset, even though it wouldn’t be totally dark until after 9pm.

Yusuf wasn’t worried, so I somewhat hesitantly followed him up to the base of the pass. I’ve climbed steep slopes before in the mountains. I’ve also climbed loose slopes before. However, as I stood at the foot of the brunt of the pass, with over 100 feet of extremely steep and extremely loose terrain in front of me, I was a bit unnerved. “Oh boy, this will be interesting,” I thought to myself as I began up the face after Yusuf, who was already about halfway up.

The first half of the pass wasn’t anything too crazy. A very faint trail made up of scree switchbacked its way up. But eventually, the trail faded and I stood at the base of a huge outcrop of cliffs. To my left was a super loose section of choss that pitched straight up to the top of the pass. It was clear that people had hiked up and down this face, but it seemed to be nearly impossible to find the best way through the loose rock. To my right was Yusuf, scrambling up a steep and even more loose gully. As I stood at the base of the cliffs, Yusuf called down to me, “do NOT enter the gully until I reach the top and give you the all clear!” A few rocks tumbled down, knocked loose by Yusuf’s climbing. I was instantly nervous.

A few minutes later, Yusuf looked down at me from the top of the pass. “The view is incredible, like seeing some of our favorite places in Utah for the first time!” To me, that meant I would likely tear up at the sight of the lakes and the peaks beyond. I was so excited for that view. He then shouted, “but the gully is really sketchy!!!”

We continued to yell at each other over the deafening wind and tried to come up with a game plan for how I would best get up to the top. Yusuf has spent a lot of time in steep, loose terrain like this. So he’s used to it. I, however, am not. We agreed it would be best for me to avoid the gully and try heading up the section to the left of the cliffs.

A few minutes later, I found myself stuck on a small rock, which seemed to be the only rock on the entire face of that mountain that didn’t slide out from underneath me as I put my weight on it. I really wanted to see those lakes. So I kept looking around, trying to find a route through the scree. I felt totally helpless and stranded. Yusuf was only 80 feet above me, but I could barely hear him over the wind. Of all the mountains I have summited, of all the scrambling I have done, of all the steep runs I’ve skied—I've never felt like I had pushed myself totally outside my comfort zone. Until this moment. From where I was standing, there was no clear or easy path to the top. Tears started streaming down my face. It was getting late. I was shaking, I felt terrified to move, I was frozen on this extremely steep and extremely loose face. All I wanted was to be back down on the grassy tundra below us, or to be lying in my bed in Evergreen, or to be fly fishing with my Dad in our favorite spot in Colorado. I wanted to be off that damn mountain.

Yusuf kept calling down to me and eventually we decided that I should not attempt to continue climbing. He coached me back to safety at the base of the cliffs and carefully made his way down the steep gully to join me, knocking hundreds of rocks loose and sending them flying down next to me as he descended. I gathered my emotions and we hiked down together to the base of the pass. We stopped, Yusuf gave me a big hug and apologized for dragging me up there. We emptied the gravel from our shoes, I ate an entire veggie burger in approximately 2 minutes, and we discussed what had happened.

“It’s not abnormal for people to freeze on intense terrain like that,” Yusuf explained to me. Baby steps are important and pushing our comfort zones from within ourselves is absolutely a good thing. But jumping into something, or pushing our comfort zones from outside ourselves is not. We both agreed that I simply wasn’t ready for something that extreme, especially when I wasn’t feeling 100% due to a headache (and hunger for a veggie burger, and probably some mild exhaustion from the past few days of adventuring). I could absolutely do it physically, but doing it mentally proved to be a challenge.

We continued down into the basin and found a semi-defined trail. The sunset began casting incredible light into the basin, illuminating the bright reds, oranges, and yellows of the jagged peaks. I paused several times during our hike down and admired the scenery. I was back to my normal self—grateful to be in the wilderness. But a feeling that I haven’t felt in the mountains in quite some time washed over me, humility.

I was humbled by the steepness and looseness of the pass. I was humbled by the great and vast ruggedness of the mountains. I was humbled by the San Juans and our feeling of remoteness. I was humbled by the lesson I had learned about pushing my limits and what it feels like to reach those limits. I bet most people go through life never experiencing something like that. Even though it was truly terrifying, I was grateful for finding mine.

I left the San Juans this morning with a new respect for the wilderness, and particularly for the mountains. What can these great peaks and endless views teach us? What do they whisper to us as the wind whips around their spires and through our hair? What lessons can we learn from their majesty, from their relentlessness, and from their intensity?

As I gazed out into the basin lit up with sunset colors and followed Yusuf down the trail to the car, I felt an enormous gratitude. The mountains had pushed me and I had pushed me. I found a new pocket of my personality that I had never known before—true fear. It was so powerful and so beautiful. Even though I didn’t get to the top of the pass and didn’t get to see those lakes, I am eternally grateful for the mountains and for their capability to lead me to new places within.

A sandstone arch in Southeast Utah at sunset (name of this location is purposely left out).

Be Responsible, Keep our Wilderness Wild

May 15, 2021 in Utah

I first heard of Moab in 2015, while scrolling through Instagram. Millions of people have seen photos of its iconic sandstone arches and magnificent canyon views. They certainly drew my Mom and I to Moab for a week-long trip that year. We did all the classic hikes and activities for a first-time visit to Moab, and I have been returning to its epic vistas ever since. In the last few years I’ve read Edward Abbey’s beautiful desert writings, I’ve slept countless nights under the stars, and I’ve put many miles on my feet in desert sand.

Covid has been tough on everyone. No doubt about it. Summer is coming, people are getting vaccinated, and understandably—people want to get out of the house and out into the great outdoors. It’s time for the Great American Road Trip to the National Parks, all of our country’s greatest treasures! Moab, and its Parks, are certainly on the list of must-sees for many Americans eager to get outside.

But in Moab, among the iconic sandstone arches and magnificent canyon views, lies a fragile ecosystem. One where life can literally be destroyed by stepping only one foot off-trail.

I spent the last five days showing a good friend of mine these places—he had never been to Utah before, he had never been West of Vail, and he had never even seen a dark sky (how crazy is that)! I loved watching his face light up as he gazed up at the arches for the first time and as he walked along shale towers standing hundreds-of-feet tall. It’s something that everyone deserves to and should experience. The wilderness is magical and the desert is certainly something special. I’m incredibly lucky that I get to show him places like these.

But what blew both of our minds on our little adventure were the crowds and traffic that we had to navigate through—in the middle of the week, in May! The traffic getting into Moab was rough, waiting a half-hour to get into one of the nearby National Parks was frustrating, and hiking out into the desert to an iconic arch only to be greeted by over 100 people, many of which were standing in a line waiting to get their picture taken under the arch, was mind-boggling. We watched tourists feed ravens, we watched older couples purposely walk off-trail and disturb ancient soil crust to avoid a few small rocks in the trail, and we were amazed by the number of graffiti left behind on desert rocks.

In a sense, we were horrified by the things we watched the masses do to a beautiful world, which we are all lucky and privileged to witness. How do people walk on this Earth with no regard to keep it beautiful and with no respect for its lands? I know this is a question that environmentalists, Native peoples, and others have been wrestling with for generations, but it was eye-opening to see it happen right in front of us.

My friend and I instead enjoyed our limited time in the National Parks close to Moab and went on a few longer hikes off the beaten path, a short drive outside of Moab where we hoped there would be significantly fewer people. We were amazed by what we found—only 45 minutes outside of town and the trailhead parking lots had plenty of spots, people actually had trail etiquette, there was no notable graffiti, and we felt that we could find little spots and moments to ourselves with views and features just as good as those in the National Parks. The people who did their homework, who appreciated the wilderness for being silent and without the angry masses, respected the desert just like we did. This was our type of adventure.

It’s easy for me to look at that long line of traffic waiting to get into a National Park and be cynical. But these people are here to see something amazing, just like I am. I’m guilty too—I have purposely tagged my posts on Instagram with the names of these places, in the hope of getting more likes (I’m changing my ways), and I’ve wandered way off trail just to get a photo. And because of Instagram and a million other reasons, people are visiting National Parks at record numbers, and covid-times make phenomena like these even harder to predict.

If we all think about how our cars, food, trash, actions, feet, Instagram posts, hashtags, and thoughts are impacting our most beloved national wonders, we can start to limit our impact to keep our Parks and our wilderness pristine. So maybe don’t sit in an idled car waiting to get into a busy National Park at peak season, maybe don’t feed the ravens, read the sign explaining how crypto-biotic soil crust can be destroyed from one footprint and then maybe stay on the trail, and maybe consider not tagging your Instagram post with the name of the National Park you were in. After all, the place itself is worth more than the number of likes you get on your picture!

The desert is truly a life-changing place—it certainly changed my life. Learning about how our actions impact the places we, as a country, love, can help us to preserve their life-changing qualities and beautiful vistas so that everyone can continue to visit them for generations to come. Remember: take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints. The mystery of the wilderness is part of the fun, so let’s be responsible to keep these places wild.

A Solitary Miracle

October 22, 2020 in Utah

With the exception of long river trips in the Grand Canyon, it’s been over a year since I’ve done a multi-day trip in the backcountry. In college, it seemed like I was off the grid every chance I could get; from weekend to week-long trips, I was constantly switching my phone to airplane mode, exploring, photographing, and writing about my adventures. The world is a different place now, between COVID-19 and the apocalyptic blanket of smoke along the Front Range from the West’s wildfires. And I too, am in a different place now. I seem to be endlessly working, paying my own bills, and trying to stay fit. No more studying though, hurrah!

This new chapter in my life is busy, so I jumped at the chance to do a five-day trip in The Maze when a friend from college invited me to tag along nearly a month ago. The day before our departure date crept up quickly, and before I knew it I had to get my sh*t together: buy food for myself for five days, do a load of laundry, tie up loose ends at work, run by REI, and dust off my backpacking gear. But somehow, I just wasn’t excited. Something about this trip didn’t capture my interest as trips have done in the past. I have no earthly idea why, and as I look back on what became one of the best trips I’ve done in a long time, I can only smile.

The last five days we spent in The Maze District in Canyonlands was different than my previous trips there, we piled into my friend’s lifted Toyota FJ Cruiser to tackle the hardest sections of four-wheeling roads in the park. There would be no 14-mile approach to The Maze, no 30-pound packs, and no worrying about campsites and water sources. I was grateful for that.

It turns out that the Maze from a 4wd vehicle is as good as it gets. We packed 22 gallons of water for the four of us, plenty of food and snacks, beer, hard kombuchas, a bag of wine, camp chairs, books— and we could go far enough out into the canyons of Utah to see only a handful of people over five days. We day-hiked in the Maze itself and camped at Standing Rock and Doll House. The stars were epic and the desert was silent among its colorful cross beds and thick brush of juniper and pinyon pine.

On day three, we left the FJ parked at Doll House and loaded up our packs for an ultra short backpacking trip out to the Confluence Overlook, the one major sight I hadn’t seen in The Maze. The trail wound its way through Needles-like spires and fields of cryptobiotic soil. We laughed at how old we all felt—we used to hike 10+ miles per day through the desert with a minimum of 10 pounds of water on our backs! And yet this little 5-mile hike was killing us!

Eventually. the trail ran up to the edge of a 2000-foot cliff overlooking the Colorado River. We were close to the Confluence, and the sheer drop and empty space before us shocked our souls. We continued North along the trail for another mile or so, until we reached a point where the Confluence could be seen. We made it to the overlook.

We scrambled out to a point and made our way around the rock ledges carefully, avoiding the deadly drops that were on three sides of us, with the fourth being a narrow path back to safety. We were on the edge of the world, the canyon walls cascaded down to the river, the mighty Colorado River, which was met by the Green in the heart of Canyonlands. All of this was set by the stunning backdrop of the La Sal Mountains outside of Moab.

We spent the rest of the evening playing bocce ball, reading, cooking our delicious curry dinner, and watching the stars peak out through the darkness. We found a few scorpions near our tent and headed to bed, hoping they wouldn’t find a new home in our shoes overnight. In the morning we sat up on a rock at the Overlook, made coffee and read Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire, specifically the chapter “Terra Incognita,” where Ed and his friend Waterman descend into the Maze. We chuckled at Abbey’s libertarian ideas and related to his struggle getting into the Maze. As we read the sun began illuminating the canyon walls and they glowed a brilliant red. The sky was golden, the river blue and cool below.

In the decades since Abbey and Waterman explored the Maze, it has remained largely untouched. The nearby Arches National Park, and even the other two districts of Canyonlands, see significantly more people. The Maze is incredibly challenging to get to—you must commit at least a few days when planning a trip. And for that, it sees so few people. For us, and likely for Ed Abbey, the Maze is a solitary miracle. Especially in the crazy time that 2020 is turning out to be, places like the Maze can save us all. Keep them quiet, keep them lonely, and keep them wild, so when we start to lose our excitement for visiting these amazing places, we can quickly remember all they can teach us.

My good friend and roommate, Michelle Roby, descends the Class 3 Crux of Wetterhorn Peak.

Smoky Summits

August 25, 2020 in Colorado

The wildflowers are in full bloom, the mountains are entirely free of blankets of snow, and the days are hot and endless—it’s mountain climbing and wildfire season in Colorado.

My three roommates and I are working in Boulder and trying to find our post-graduation paths through the craziness of COVID-19. Adding another element to the chaos that has been 2020 so far, the wildfire smoke and air pollution along the Front Range has been shocking. In an effort to escape it all, we decided to drive a few hours south to Colorado’s San Juans this past weekend for a few adventures.

We arrived at our first trailhead late Friday night, and woke up at 5:30am Saturday morning to begin our ascent up to San Luis Peak, which stands at 14,014 feet. The trail was nothing too exciting, it was Class 1 and about 3,400 feet of elevation gain over 11 miles. An easy day in the mountains. I was grateful since I hadn’t been above 8,000 feet since early July. I was desperately out of shape.

We summited around 10:30am. Wildfire smoke hazed out our view, we could barely see the mountains neighboring our own. On our way back to the car, we discussed how shocked we were that the smoke from Colorado’s wildfires was still visible this far south in the state. It hadn’t really rained anywhere in over a month.

How did this happen? How did our state burst into flames so quickly? We had a decent winter; our snowpack was recorded to be over 100% of average. The answer is both fairly simple and incredibly complicated.

Climate change—the number of hot, dry summer days in Colorado has increased nearly every year in the last decade. These hot days start earlier too, in May, instead of late July and early August. The snowpack melts off and the landscape soaks it up earlier in the spring, leaving the summer to be brutally hot and brutally dry. Climate change also changes the normal weather patterns, altering the monsoon cycles and leaving us without a regular afternoon thunderstorm. Things are looking pretty bad here in Colorado, and many scientists think the impacts of climate change are just getting started.

We woke up even earlier Sunday morning after a long evening of trying to get our Subaru Outback up a gnarly four-wheel drive road. Wetterhorn peak was on the agenda for the day, which featured nearly a mile of Class 3 scrambling, 3,300 feet of gain, and seven miles, all for a summit at 14,015 feet. We began our trek in the dark and made it to treeline by sunrise. We turned right at a trail junction and found ourselves in a wide open basin, filled with lateral moraines from ancient glaciers. We climbed higher and higher, over boulder fields, until eventually reaching the saddle, where we turned right to follow the Class 3 ridge up to the summit.

We stopped to collapse our trekking poles and switch out our hats for climbing helmets. The ridge honestly wasn’t anything too crazy. I find that photos of Class 3 pitches (and higher) usually look worse than they actually are. But it’s still worth being overly cautious, you could easily take a deadly fall.

After about an hour of scrambling, we summited Wetterhorn and were greeted on the wide summit by other climbers. Smiles were all around, it was a beautiful day in the mountains, even though they were mostly obscured by smoke.

As we continue into the dog days of summer, it will likely remain hot and dry. Fires will burn, maybe even into October until the first snow falls, and the air quality throughout the state will remain arguably dangerous. What can we do?

Environmental problems related to climate change often seem out of reach of the ordinary American citizen—they’re too big, with too many stakeholders involved, and solutions cost way too much money. However, there is one thing we can all do: vote. Vote for those who are advocating for climate solutions, for renewable energy, for the protection of our public lands, for the sustainable use of our natural resources. Voting for delegates who are willing to stand up against climate change caused by human activity is the easiest and most important way we can work to protect Colorado’s forests, summers, and landscapes.

My roommates and I agree with this sentiment, and that the climate change clock is ticking—we must act now to preserve the landscapes that we so dearly love. By voting and taking action against climate change, we can work to prevent massive forest fires, improve our air quality, and make 14er summits more enjoyable for everyone.

In the Desert, When it Rains, It Pours

July 26, 2020 in Grand Canyon

Every Grand Canyon boatman talks about the craziness of a desert monsoon. In late July and August, thunderheads and rain blow through the Canyon, and if you’re lucky enough, it might just rain where you’re camped along the river. I thought they were totally full of it, until a few nights ago.

I just returned from a 21-day trip in the Grand Canyon, working as a fisheries technician to help USGS, more specifically Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center, with an ongoing study of juvenile humpback chub, and endangered fish species in the Colorado River. This was my fourth trip down the Canyon and as always, I learned lots about its many ecosystems, critters, the makings of a successful river trip, and a thing or two about myself.

A few days into the trip, we were at a campsite at River Mile 62 when a few other techs and I decided to go for a short hike across the river from our camp, upstream to the Little Colorado River (LCR). We hiked along the Beamer Trail to the Confluence and bathed in the warm and milky blue waters of the LCR. It was a wonderful relief from the 110-degree heat and the chilly Colorado River. As we were waiting for one of the boatmen to pick us up, it started to thunder and rain. The sun still shone overhead and reflected off all the little rain droplets, leaving us in awe of a sparkling rain shower that lasted about five minutes. It was magical—but not a crazy downpour like the boatmen all rave about.

Over the next two weeks, it threatened to rain many times. The clouds would build nearly every afternoon, providing us with much-needed shade, slightly cooler temperatures, and a bit of humidity. It even sprinkled a bit one morning before we went out to catch fish. We always waterproofed our camps before going to work, especially if there were already clouds on the horizon. We all hoped and prayed for clouds, for shade, for coolness, and for some sweet, sweet moisture. But it never really rained.

By the second-to-last day of the trip, I was in disbelief that I would ever witness a Grand Canyon monsoon. As usual, there were clouds all morning and it cleared up during the afternoon. We ate a wonderful lasagna dinner—complete with spinach, zucchini, and meat sauce. The night crew went out to start electrofishing. The sunset was brilliant.

About five minutes after the sky’s colors began fading for the night, a strange orange glow was cast on the Canyon walls and in the looming clouds downstream. Then the lightning started. First with flashes, then with bolts, then with loud bangs. I grabbed my camera that I had already stashed away, ran down to the beach, and starting shooting. This was the storm we had all been waiting for.

The bolts disappeared behind the clouds and the canyon walls downstream were veiled by a blue haze. The boatmen all shouted in excitement, “It’s coming! Time to make a run for it!” Those like me, who hadn’t yet witnessed a monsoon, followed the boatmen in a excited panic to a little alcove in the Tapeats sandstone between the kitchen and the groover. Nevermind the dozens of scorpions, bats, snakes, and spiders that probably all called the alcove home. The winds picked up and the wall of water moved upstream towards our camp.

The sky unleashed more water than I had ever witnessed before in a span of about five minutes. It was violent, beautiful, peaceful, and chaotic all at the same time. We cheered and shouted and thanked the heavens and the spirits. We did something right that day, something right enough to deserve water, the elixir of life. The world was surely telling us something.

Just like that, it was gone. The storm continued to move upstream. We called out to our friends who hadn’t made it to shelter under the alcove and were joyous to hear that they survived the crazy storm. The air was cooler and damp, and the sand was patterned with the thuds of raindrops. There was a strange calmness in the Canyon, almost as if every critter, plant, and rock sighed in great relief. I made it back to my cot and set up my tent, only to be comforted and startled by lighting flashes and the sound of sweet rain all night.

Heading down the Western Ridge on Tabeguache Peak, Colorado.

Pandemic 14ers

May 24, 2020 in Colorado

On a windless, hazy morning in September 2019, my friend, Katherine Feldmann, and I stood on the summit of Handies Peak, a fourteen thousand-footer in the San Juan Range of Colorado. I gazed off at the other 14ers surrounding our mountain top— Redcloud and Sunshine, which we had just climbed the day before, and others like Wetterhorn and Uncompahgre, which I probably wouldn’t climb for many years. I was a senior in college and my plan was to move out of Colorado and explore the wildernesses of a new state. Exactly which I was unsure, but my time in my home was limited and that day would be the last spent on a 14er for quite some time.

Oh, how the world has changed since that morning on Handies.

Yesterday, Feldmann and I climbed our first 14er of the season, Tabeguache Peak, or as our friends and I have dubbed it, “Tab-a-guac”, “Tab-a-gucci”, “TAB”, etc, etc. As the first peak of the season typically reminds us, we were desperately out of mountain-climbing shape and 14ers are so much bigger than we remembered. Tabeguache was Feldmann’s 40th fourteen thousand-foot summit in Colorado out of 58 total. Her plan is to finish climbing all 58 this summer and finishing another 18 summits before winter is an aggressive, but likely do-able, itinerary. My unexpected plan for the near future is to keep her company for most of the remaining 18.

We woke up in the back of Feldmann’s Subaru Outback at 6:00am and were on the trail by 6:45. The first mile through the trees nearly destroyed our tired legs and lungs (I had hiked about 10 miles the day before and Feldmann had biked around 15). We reached a junction and headed into a wide basin covered with bristlecone pines and intermittent snow fields. We still couldn’t see the summit of Tabeguache by the time we were on a saddle between two thirteen thousand-foot points and a long ridge-line. Heading east, we hiked and scrambled over a few false-summits until reaching the top of Tabeguache, which was marked by a fist-bump and a few laughs with other peak-baggers relaxing on the summit.

COVID-19 seemed to escape us all as we sat on top of a mountain in the southern Sawatch Range in Colorado. Our world as we know it has been completely upended. We all know that our lives will never be the same. Within just a few weeks, my plan of leaving Colorado to be a raft-guide in Glacier, Montana during my year off between undergrad and law school has dissipated. My graduation ceremony at Folsom Field at the University of Colorado, which is usually packed with thousands of people, was cancelled and replaced with a virtual ceremony, which I watched alone from my couch in Boulder. Feldmann’s in-person defense of her Honors Thesis, which she had been preparing for several years, was moved online to Zoom, where her family, friends and I could all watch from our bedrooms. I’m sure everyone that stood on the summit of Tabeguache yesterday felt the hard punch of the coronavirus in the last two months.

It’s impossible to escape the change that a global pandemic has inflicted and it’s impossible to not miss the lives that we all lived before. And we all likely have it easy—we’re simply enjoying the sunshine on top of a 14er, healthy as can be and escaping our home quarantines of sorts. We kept our 6-foot distance and some of us wore masks and we all took comfort in being outside in an unconfined, circulating air space. The news cycle is more depressing than ever, but the world is far from over. Our lives may have done a 180, everything might have been put on hold— but the mountains are still here, as tall as ever.

I thought my 14er days were over last September, but as I readjust my plans for the next chapter of my life, I look forward to many more beautiful days in the mountains of Colorado. In a way that I never expected, I will remain in Boulder for another year to work and climb mountains with Feldmann. It’s not my dream life post-graduation, and a part of me is dreading the alpine starts, 4o mile per hour winds, postholes, sketchy downclimbs, and false-summits that come with Colorado’s 14ers. But I hope these trivial challenges remind me that sometimes life takes an unexpected turn and the only thing I can do is make the best of it. After all, mountain sunrises, sock tans, class 3 ridges, and long days with one of your best friends are truly pretty rad.

My good friend, Katherine Feldmann, capturing the sunrise through Mesa Arch on her iPhone. Canyonlands National Park.

Another Desert Sunrise

March 09, 2020 in Utah

My alarm began buzzing at 5am. I sat up and saw a yellow, nearly full moon setting to the West. It was a chilly, dark morning in the desert. I woke up Feldmann, who was sleeping next to me, and the other eight hikers in our group, who we had only known for the last 16 hours or so as we drove across the Colorado Plateau together for a weekend in the desert. We all piled in the car and drove out into the darkness to find Mesa Arch in Canyonlands National Park.

I had woken up early to witness the sunrise through Mesa Arch many times before and knew the routine. We gathered in the trailhead parking lot, I grabbed my camera bag, and we began the short walk out to the Arch. There were dozens of photographers already lined up and waiting for the sun to come up. The earliest probably got there at least an hour before. A Saturday in early-March with a good weather forecast, it was bound to be busy.

I chuckled to myself as I found a perfectly good spot to shoot next to the army of photographers and checked the time, 6:30am—only 15 minutes before sunrise. All of the others, with their massive ten-pound tripods and Canons and Nikons, shooting timelapses and hundreds of versions of the same photo through the Arch, got here hours before us. I knew a tripod definitely wasn’t necessary, and the shot through the Arch is honestly pretty hard to get right unless the sunrise is perfect or you’re willing to over-edit in post-processing. Nevertheless, the sun rose and its light was exactly what all of us photographers were looking for. The other hikers and I watched in awe and silence, embracing the warmth of the desert sun.

As I sat on a wall of sandstone, with nothing before me but sweeping cliffs, buttes, and canyons-within-canyons, I reminisced on all the trips I’ve led to the desert in the last three years for the CU Hiking Club and all the great friends I’ve made and people I’ve met. I’ve certainly learned a lot.

We made oatmeal for breakfast and were on the trail by 10:30am. On the agenda for the day was Syncline Loop, a roughly 11-mile trail in and around the Upheaval Dome in Island in the Sky. Feldmann and I had never done it and we were excited to be on a new trail (to us) in the Moab area. It often seems like there’s only a few big hikes left in southeastern Utah that we haven’t done.

During our hike, I got to know the others in the group and pointed out landmarks, named a few sedimentary layers and answered lots of questions about the desert. Nothing unusual for a Hiking Club trip to Moab. Nearing the end of the hike, we were all pretty tired from our lack of sleep and everyone was mostly quiet. The sun’s harsher light had faded and the desert was quiet and pastel. The rocks, cross-bedded with ancient sand dunes, preserved wind directions and stories of rivers and oceans from the past. As we walked around, in and out of canyons, my mind once again began drifting back to past trips to the desert, and I couldn’t help but smile.

My first trip to the desert with the Hiking Club was in February 2017, I was a freshman. I knew so little. Since then I’ve led trips to Arches, the districts of Canyonlands, Bears Ears, Goblin Valley, the San Rafael Swell, Capitol Reef, and even the Grand Canyon. I’ve led day hikes, weekend and week-long backpacking trips. Each has given me life-long friends, each gave me a book of memories, and each taught me a few things about myself.

People change. Landscapes don’t. At least from a human perspective. I’ve seen the sun poke out from under Mesa Arch and illuminate a vastness of canyons out from underneath it multiple times. The person within me who first witnessed it is surely different than the person who watched the sun warm the cracked desert earth a few days ago. While the sun will surely rise and Mesa Arch will surely glow and the photographers will surely line up behind the Arch every morning, our lives are constantly changing and I am constantly changing.

Recently, I’ve realized that time isn’t linear. My time as a kid, in college, and with the Hiking Club went so fast. I’m now a senior, about to graduate, and nearly ready take the plunge into the canyons of adulthood. In May I will be leaving Colorado to move to another state. I will be away from home for real for the first time. I’ll really be on my own. I’ll miss the adventures and the chaos and the unbridled joy that Hiking Club trips to the desert have brought me. I’ll miss my friends. But this new chapter of my life is coming and cannot be stopped. My life is calling, and I must go.

The Mountains Are Dangerous

August 18, 2019 in Colorado

In the last several years, I have spent a lot of time in the wilderness. From backpacking trips, to 21-day river trips, to scrambling up 14,000-foot peaks, I would call myself a fairly experienced outdoors-person. Almost two years ago, I recognized that my friends and I occasionally end up in dangerous situations and became a certified Wilderness First Responder. I would say that my decision-making, medical, and navigation skills are above average, and those of my adventure buddies are as well. All of this aside, I never feared for my life before yesterday.

Two friends, Evan and Jason, and I decided to summit Mt. Meeker (13,911 feet) via the Loft Couloir. The route consisted of a four-mile approach to Chasm Lake (nearly 11 miles total roundtrip), a long section of Class 2-3 scrambling up the couloir, a sketchy summit, and almost 5000 feet of elevation gain. We were stoked for a challenge and to be avoiding the crowds on Longs Peak, and NOAA’s weather forecast looked nearly perfect. We decided to leave Boulder around 6am and arrive at the trailhead by 7. We were fast hikers, and we weren’t concerned about Colorado’s infamous afternoon summer thunderstorms since the forecast looked so great. This was our mistake.

At 7am we left the Longs Peak trailhead as planned and reached Chasm Lake by 9. This part of Rocky Mountain National Park, and the greater Rocky Mountains, is one of my favorites. Longs Peak itself is epic. With unique views of the peak from every angle, meadows of Columbine flowers, waterfalls, and crystal-clear lakes, it is simply an alpine paradise. We turned left and began hiking past Longs’ Ships Prow, a famous triangular butte of granite and schist, and up the Loft Couloir that splits Longs Peak from Meeker. This section was filled with loose rock, but wasn’t very exposed, so we cruised up it. We noticed a few climbers on an exposed buttress on the North face of Meeker and all three of us acknowledged their level of badass. About two-thirds of the way up, the hiking switched to Class 3 scrambling. The rock was solid and the path was obvious. We were safe.

Near the top of the Couloir on a long section of scrambling, we came across a hiker wearing all black clothing, steel-toed boots, and was carrying a gallon jug of water in one hand as he tried to move up a slab of slippery granite with limited holds. Jason talked him through his sketchy climb and he reached safety easily. He followed us up to the top of the Couloir and into to the Loft itself and we continued chatting with him. He was planning to summit Longs, and it became immediately obvious to us that he had no idea of the complications of the Loft Route to the summit. He wanted to avoid the crowds along the Keyhole route, which was fair, but didn’t do his research of the more difficult route that he chose. Jason, who had completed it last summer, explained the technicalities of the route beyond where we were standing. He didn’t seemed too thrilled, and even mentioned to me that he didn’t know everything that he brought with him in his pack.

We wished him luck and continued along our route to the East up Meeker and watched him wander along the Loft towards Longs. We last saw him standing near the edge of the Couloir, checking out the view.

At 11:15am the three of us summited Meeker and were in awe by its narrow summit of solid rock. We could barely see the knife-edge along the Eastern ridge, which we had been contemplating crossing the day before. We decided against it; it was a little too windy. By 1:00pm we were back at Chasm Lake, where there were still many hikers enjoying the views, and by 1:30 we reached the Chasm Lake/Keyhole Route trail junction. We passed a few people heading up and said hello to the hikers relaxing at the junction. We were feeling great.

The sky started turning dark over Longs as we began our 1.5 mile descent through the open basin to treeline. Aware of the increasingly-possible storm heading towards us, we began to hustle down the trail. Not five minutes later, I was sprinting down the mountain behind Jason and Evan. It was hailing. There were flashes of lighting every few seconds— totally surrounding us. The storm was right on top of us, and we were completely exposed. Aside from the peaks behind us, occasional cairns, and trees hundreds of feet below us, we were absolutely the tallest objects in a wide-open area. Mother Nature was attacking us from every angle and we were completely helpless.

I’ve never been a runner, and I honestly did not believe I was capable of trail-running before yesterday. It’s amazing what adrenaline can do for you. I’m also a frequent ankle-sprainer, so as I ran down that mountain towards safety, I was laser focused on every foot placement—that is, until a giant bolt of lighting struck several hundred yards away from me and responded with dozens of curse words from pure fear.

Minutes later, the three of us made it to treeline. Evan sprained an ankle pretty badly, we were all shaken, but we were safe. Adrenaline was still pumping through me, I couldn’t stop talking about what we had just witnessed, and we eventually stopped to wrap Evan’s ankle. As we debriefed ourselves, we realized the number of people we passed as we ran for our lives, and the dozens of people still at the junction, still at the Lake, and surely still on the summit of Longs. Did they survive those 10 minutes of hell? What about the inexperienced hiker we met in the Couloir? What about the climbers we watched with awe on that epic buttress? They were surely still up there.

As we continued walking through the trees to the trailhead, the Sun finally poked out and the sky cleared. Of course, as soon as we were well in the safety of the trees. The storm left as quickly as it had arrived. We made it back to the car around 3pm and back to Boulder by 4. A long day to say the least and the three of us definitely learned a few lessons.

Mother Nature doesn’t mess around. She simply doesn’t care what your experience level is, how skilled you are, or if you’re “medically certified”. The wilderness is a dangerous place and good decision making is at the root of your safety on adventures. Based on a weather report from a reliable source, we decided to leave late, extremely late, for a long day in the mountains. When people say the weather in the mountains can change from perfect to absolute hell in a matter of minutes… they’re not kidding. We may have been fast and experienced hikers, we may have decided against crossing the knife-edge and made countless other good decisions, but a little bit of bad luck combined with one bad decision resulted in us running for our lives.

This isn’t anything new to the three of us. We know the wilderness is dangerous, we know Mother Nature is unforgiving. But as we drove home yesterday we all became grateful for this reminder. Never completely trust the weather report, start early, summit by 10am, return treeline by 12pm, and always, make good decisions.

A Mobile Science Experiment

July 24, 2019 in Grand Canyon

The three weeks I just spent in the Grand Canyon were not a vacation by any means. As a volunteer for Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center (GCMRC), a subunit of USGS, I helped with a larger study of juvenile humpback chub. Mike Yard, a fisheries biologist at GCMRC, runs several of these trips each year, collecting data on the population and distribution of the chub. I was lucky enough to go along for the ride, squeeze and tag lots of fish, and learn all about the problems the species face.

The chub are a native and endangered species in the Canyon, and their survival depends on the success of the little guys. On one of our first nights in the Canyon, Yard made it clear to me that from a strictly biological standpoint, the humpback chub can no longer be considered “native fish” in this stretch of river. Glen Canyon Dam has fundamentally changed the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, from the temperature to the turbidity, to the river channel itself. While it is easy to point fingers at Glen Canyon Dam directly, Yard says that he suspects the lack of organics flowing through the modern Colorado River as a result of the Dam are a significant factor to the decline of the chub. But, he also made it clear to me several times that he, as a scientist, can never be 100% certain as to what’s going on underwater.

These days, the humpback chub are primarily concentrated around the Confluence of the Little Colorado River (LCR) and the Colorado (river mile 61.7), the mouth of Havasu Creek (river mile 157.3), and near Fall Canyon (river mile 212). Yard and other scientists believe the fish like the slightly warmer temperatures and nutrients flowing from the LCR and Havasu, but the population explosion near Fall Canyon is largely inexplicable aside from slightly warmer water temperatures.

For each trip that Yard and GCMRC puts on, he hires 6 boatmen (one for each of the six boats), at least four electro-fisherman, and a few volunteers. They spend two nights trout fishing upstream of Lee’s Ferry, and a night near House Rock Rapid (river mile 17.1). Lee’s Ferry is a gold-medal trout fishery, so part of his study is to monitor the trout populations before studying the native species. Next they travel downstream to the LCR (river mile 62) for six nights of fishing, then it takes a few travel days to get to Fall Canyon (river mile 212), where another six nights are spent fishing, before taking-out at Diamond Creek (river mile 226).

By fishing, I mean hoop-netting and electrofishing. And with the amount of fish that we end up with each night, it honestly should be called “catching”. Upstream of Lee’s Ferry, we were up until 3am both nights catching fish and processing them; for a total of nearly 1500 fish in one night. At Fall Canyon, we caught nearly that in one day just from hoop-netting! I worked a 12-hour shift that day on the processing boat, measuring, weighing, and tagging fish. At the end of the trip, we had caught more than 10,000 individuals— that’s more fish than I’ve ever seen in my life.

Compared to my last science trip in 2017 with Arizona Game and Fish (AZGF), this trip was much, much more intense. AZGF mostly does fish monitoring, or collects data to get a general idea of the overall population trends and distributions of the various native species throughout the Canyon. We worked our way through the entire Canyon, setting 20 or so hoop nets each night and checking on them during the day. Yard at GCMRC, calls himself “greedy” when it comes to data. He works tirelessly day after day in the intense heat of the Canyon (over 115 degrees on some days), to collect as much data as possible. He’s working towards answering specific research-based questions about the chub, like why they’re declining and why they’re doing well in specific places in the Canyon. On Yard’s trip, we only sampled for native fish in two locations: below the LCR and at Fall Canyon instead of throughout it. We spent six nights in each location and set 120 hoop nets in both stretches of river. For me, this was crazy, and I loved it.

One day, below the LCR, while waiting for our next batch of fish to be brought in from the hoop-netters, I asked Yard why we, as in the general population, should care about the survival of a single native species such as the humpback chub. For the record, I definitely care, I was just curious how he answers this question because I get asked it as an environmental studies major all the time. He gave me a few reasons, here they are in quick bullet points:

The humpback chub, as with any species, are an integral piece to the giant puzzle we call Planet Earth. If we want to further understand how our Planet works, the humpback chub are just one piece of the puzzle.
Everything in the natural world is interconnected. If the humpback chub die off, another species certainly will, creating a slippery slope of extinction. We’re already seeing this around the world with the effects of climate change.
We should (arguably) take responsibility for our actions. We dammed the Colorado River and completely altered its natural ecosystem. Now that we realize the adverse effects of our actions, we should work to find solutions and to protect an innocent species for their intrinsic value so we can preserve the natural world for a sustainable future.

Whether or not the humpback chub will make it as a new nonnative fish in a changed Colorado River, we can’t be sure. But with the help of Yard and other scientists, we’ll certainly gain a better understanding of their habits, which hopefully increase their survival.

Possessed by the Canyon

July 21, 2019 in Grand Canyon

I sit in my tiny, dirty hotel room in Flagstaff, Arizona, and try to produce the words to summarize my feelings towards the last three weeks of my life. I’m stuck, with a classic case of writer’s block. Writing about this collision of deep emotions, dramatic landscapes, and endangered organisms is no easy task.

I look to my journal that I attended to each night on our journey down the mighty Colorado and to Edward Abbey’s Down the River, which also accompanied me, for inspiration. I think back to a night spent about halfway through my 20-something day adventure, where I sat on an outcrop of metamorphosed black rock and watched the stars begin to poke out from the darkening night sky. That night, I wrote in my journal:

It’s twilight and we’re deep in the Granite Gorge. So deep— a glimmer of the Redwall Limestone can barely be seen from only one angle of camp. So deep— the Tapeats Sandstone is hundreds of feet above us, the same ancient layer which we had made our home next to during the last week. So deep— the heat radiates off the canyon walls, even after the Sun has long ceased to cook its surface. A sliver of moon pokes out between clouds, the stars are as bright as ever. I sit on a slab of Vishnu Schist, my favorite layer in the Canyon, which overlooks the river and no doubt has undergone millions, if not billions, of years of intense heat and pressure, only to be revealed and sculpted by the Mighty Colorado River. What a courageous formation. I’m mesmerized under the light encased within the canyon walls. Endorphins, pure happiness, and wonder course through my veins. I’m back, and I am more grateful than ever before to be here. The outside world no longer matters, I belong here, in the bottom of the Grand Canyon. This place is a drug. Addicting, exciting— it lures you in and is a bitch to leave behind. The roar of the whitewater’s deepest holes, the boatmen’s endless chatter, the fascinating history… I can’t get enough. I’m so incredibly lucky.

There were several nights on my third trip through the Grand Canyon where these intense waves of happiness hit me. It is moments like these, that endlessly inspire me, bring tears to my eyes, and remind me to be grateful for my experiences.

Back in February, I reached out to Mike Yard, a fisheries biologist at Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center, which is a subunit of USGS, about accompanying him as a volunteer on a three-week river trip. Yard does several of these trips each year to study the humpback chub populations, an endangered native fish to the Colorado River. It seems like it was just yesterday when we agreed that I would be a part of his July trip during a phone call. Once we hung up, I nearly cried of excitement as I sat in a King Soopers parking lot and realized that I found a way back to the Canyon. Now those three weeks have passed, and I’m struggling to wrap my head around the mirage of events that occurred on our 21-day, 20-person, 10,000-plus-fish-captured adventure.

The three weeks were a time warp. As a whole, they flew by. I can’t believe they’re already over. But during the trip on a daily basis, time moved ever-so-slowly. Completely cut off from the outside world (except for the boatmen’s occasional late-night sat-phone conversation), the days dragged on. It seemed like decades went by. In a good way though, especially once shade hit our camp in the late afternoon and we became temporarily relieved from the flaming orb of death. I feel like I’ve missed so much from the outside world. I know that I really missed nothing.

Aside from all my new knowledge of the humpback chub and other fish in the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, as well as a few tips and tricks from the boatmen, I’ve learned (more like been reminded of), one key thing. The Grand Canyon is where I’m meant to be. There’s a reason it keeps calling back to me, there’s a reason I can’t stop thinking about it, there’s a reason I daydream about it during lectures and exams. One of the boatmen said about two weeks into our trip, “you have a deep, dark future down here,” meaning I’ve clearly caught the river bug and I’m doomed to an eternity in the Big Ditch. This doesn’t seem so terrible. As long as a “deep, dark future” means nights under the stars, hard work in 115-degree heat, epic sunsets, cool mornings, and dozens of runs through Lava Falls.

I’m not as sad to leave the Canyon as I have been in the past. One way or another, I know I’ll find my way back. I’m simply possessed by the drug that is the Grand Canyon. I realized this under the stars in the Granite Gorge as I wrote in my journal, “This place is a drug. Addicting, exciting…” and Edward Abbey so perfectly explains this in his essay, “In the Canyon” from Down the River. He writes:

The Canyon belongs to itself, to the world, to God, for whatever those grand abstractions are worth. And so far as the term “possession” has meaning, it would be more accurate to say that the Canyon possesses us. Those who love it are possessed by it. We belong to the Canyon, having known it a little and loved it too much, as indeed all those who love the land, who love the earth, belong to it and consign themselves to it and finally return to it.

A New World of Fly Fishing

June 14, 2019 in Fly Fishing

My dad and I have been fly fishing in the tiny mountain streams and rivers of Colorado since I can remember. We’ve gotten pretty good at it over the years. Saltwater fly fishing has always been a foreign entity compared to our little world of trout streams, seemingly with less delicacy and much bigger fish. A friend of ours convinced us to try it, and specifically in the beautiful saltwater flats of Belize.

We arrived at the airport in Belize City, made our way to the town’s port, and hopped on a boat for a 90-minute ride east to Turneffe Flats. If you consider yourself to be a hardcore fisherman, Turneffe is definitely on your radar. It’s known for its miles of untouched shoreline, bonefish, tarpon, and big permit fishing, all via the intensive accuracy and precision of a fly rod. I had heard of Turneffe before, but I didn’t know much about it. In all honesty, I didn’t really understand where Belize even was until we headed out into the Caribbean.

The islands are 36 miles offshore. I’ve never been one to enjoy going so far out to sea that you can no longer see land. As soon as I head that “36 miles” I knew this trip would be pushing my comfort zone. We arrived at the resort and were greeted by the entire staff on the dock. There were only 14 guests staying at the resort this week. We were so far out, surrounded by hundreds of islands of mangrove forests and so few human beings— but we were oddly comfortable.

Our first day of fishing was hard. The big and small differences proved to be challenging for my dad and I as we tried to adapt to this new world we had entered. The immediate obvious difference to me was that we were fishing in the ocean, meaning we were in the fish’s world and they can go wherever they want. If we spook them, they can swim miles and miles away from us, never to be seen again. It’s not like they’re confined to a small stretch of river bounded by rocks and rapids like the trout in our friendly mountain streams. The second difference was that the majority of these fish have never seen a person before. They get spooked very easily, so quietly wading, moving slowly, and effectively casting to the nose of the fish is essential for success. The third major difference, and arguably the biggest challenge my dad and I faced, was casting the bigger and heavier rods. Sure, we learned to double haul with our eight weights before we left and we could be precise with a few false-casts on the river. But once we were out on the flats with a ten-weight, standing on the edge of our skiff, with our guide shouting to cast perfectly at 11:00, 40 feet off the boat NOW with no time for even a single false-cast, into a strong ocean breeze to a permit that we couldn’t even see: we didn’t stand a chance.

Our guide, Eddie, was the most patient man we had ever met. We warned him this was our first time fishing saltwater and he promised he could bear with us as we struggled to learn his ways. He succeeded in finding us lots of fish every day. He wasn’t ever upset as we spooked each and every permit we encountered, he helped us search for tarpon in the mangroves, he slowly walked us up to schools of bonefish, and he explained gently why his lighter, homemade version of a shrimp fly was exponentially better than the store-bought shrimp we brought with us. But most importantly, Eddie helped us catch a few bonefish, the easiest saltwater fish to catch on the Turneffe Flats, giving us hope that we could actually be successful in saltwater fly-fishing.

Eddie grew up at Turneffe, on a tiny island about a 20-minute boat ride away from the resort. He fished and learned where and what lived in each and every corner of the flats, and in the deepwater. He knew exactly where the fish were at each location he took us to, he could spot a 30-pound permit several hundred feet away in turquoise blue water, and his casting skills left us dumbfounded.

But what my dad and I especially noticed about Eddie, and even the rest of the resort staff, was that he was incredibly happy. Undoubtedly, life has thrown many curveballs at him as he grew up on these islands. He still radiated happiness, gratitude for his fortune at living in Turneffe, and amazement at the abundance of life living in his backyard that he gets to see everyday. We realized this incalculable quality is rare among the people we meet, and so we named it “The Eddie Factor”.

After two days of fishing with Eddie and a couple hooked bonefish, we promised him we’d return just to fish with him. We loved spending time with him, his positive energy, and his contagious happiness. We were intrigued by this whole new side of fly-fishing that we had discovered and were eager to improve. There are hundreds of big permit waiting in the flats and we are now determined to cast to them.

Sign up to receive email alerts for new blog posts!