The Western States Endurance Run is billed as the world’s oldest “official” 100-mile trail race. And to put such an event on, year after year, takes a lot of people and a lot of attention to detail. One of the most popular spots on the epic run from Olympic Valley, California, to Auburn’s Placer High School stadium, is the Rucky Chucky checkpoint, at mile 78, where the trail crosses the American River just below .

After a season with low snow, water flow rates can be controlled through retention at an upstream dam. When the water levels can be lowered, runners cross the river on foot, with cables and volunteers to help. But for years like 2023, after epic snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains, flow goes over the dam and cannot be controlled.

This year, like other big snowmelt-induced, high river flow years on the American, rafts were required to transport runners across. Chris Thornley, the younger brother of race director Craig Thornley, is in charge of all things that have to do with the river crossing.

“Since Craig took over 10 or so years ago, he put me in charge of river crossing safety,” Chris says. On race weekend, Chris uses his own personal raft, and then they rent additional rafts and hire guides from a local commercial rafting company to float runners across the river.

Craig and Chris might know the course and the area better than anyone else. In 1978, when they were 14 and 8, the two boys set out on a solo camping trip along the American River. That year they woke to runners shuffling by on their way to the mile 85 aid station. “We saw this guy come up running, he was super dirty, and he was asking if we knew how close the aid station was. We had no idea what he was talking about,” Chris said. But the moment stuck with both brothers as a kind of magical thing.

“Craig and I didn’t talk about that experience until much later,” Chris said. “We both remember it being an important moment—witnessing the headspace that someone was in after running more than 80 miles. We both felt the same way.” Chris and Craig’s family went on to volunteer at aid stations for years. Both brothers experienced every inch of the course and have since understood what those first runners they saw as kids were going through.

Besides running, Chris has also been rafting and boating his whole life. He now has an expert level of water rescue experience. “[For Western States 100] we run four rafts at the peak times, starting at about 10 P.M. through about 4 A.M. And we’re just running four rafts in an egg beater fashion so we have a constant flow.”

Chris ran Western States in 2006, and recalls that being a raft year as well. “I had to wait 40 minutes or more for a raft, and I was at the back of the pack so it wasn’t really about racing, but I was thinking, I have to get in under 30,” he says, referencing the 30-hour cutoff time for the race. When runners exit the water they have 22 miles left to the finish.

“So when I became responsible for the river crossing, I told Craig it’s really worth the extra money to have more rafts. This year the longest anyone had to wait to get in a raft was maybe one minute.” The whole raft crossing only takes two minutes, so it’s very efficient these days.

What’s More Popular: Raft or Rope?

The first time a boat was used to cross the river was in 1980. “It was an old aluminum fishing boat,” Chris said. “The captain of the boat in 1980 was Bob Suter. And since then we’ve used boats about 12 times.”

After his many years stationed at the river, Chris thinks there’s a pretty even split among runners who would rather cross the river on their own versus being in a raft, and it usually has a lot to do with the weather and the time that they’re crossing. During a hot year, the leaders might prefer to cool their core down and fully immerse in the river. But if you’re crossing in the dark, when things have cooled down significantly, being completely wet even for a few minutes might take a lot of energy and leave you chilled during the ensuing miles.

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Athletes also have to think about chafing—if they get completely wet, they often lose all of the benefits of their lube. In addition to being a raft and water safety guy, Chris Thornley and his wife Stacy are the founders of Squirrel’s Nut Butter, an anti-chafing and skin restoration salve company.

“For the leaders, in general, they don’t really care about being sopping wet or having wet shoes,” Chris said. “It’s more those later in the day and further back in the pack that are kind of happy to keep their feet dry.” Regardless of whether it’s a raft year or an in-the-water year, Chris always has a stash of Nut Butter on both sides of the river.

Enjoying the Ride

During this year’s race on June 24-25, Chris noticed that many athletes seemed happy about the raft ride. “It was a cooler weather year, and I had a bucket in the raft full of river water, so they could cool down with that. For a lot of runners, I think they felt like it was very cool that a boat took them across the river.”

Chris usually films his raft action with a GoPro, which he did this year as well, but he was also featured in the first ever live-feed of the race on YouTube. Although in previous years he’s seen some athletes in dark places by the time they reach the river, this year seemed generally very positive, with runners in good spirits and happy to be there. Thornley forgot to wear his GPS watch to track how many trips he made, but says it seems like at least 100 crossings.

Chris says. “A lot of times, especially with the leaders, they’re grinding so hard. But Courtney stood out. She was obviously in the zone but so able to show her appreciation. And not just for the cameras. It’s a genuine appreciation. And it is magic. Everybody can see it.”

RELATED: Courtney Dauwalter Sets Back-to-Back Course Records at Hardrock and Western States

When Things Go Wrong

In 2016, Jim Walmsley notoriously “took a swim” while crossing the river. When he arrived at the river it was impossible to keep feet on the rocks, so he opted to swim without the aid of the cable. And he ended up being swept a short distance downstream and exited on his own. At the time, there was some discussion as to whether Walmsley would be disqualified if he had been helped out of the water. (He would not have been.)

But that was a rare and never repeated instance, partly due to how fast Walmsley arrived at the river. Two years ago the race signed an agreement with the state that the water would be lowered early enough so that runners would all have the same experience. Previously, the water flow had been left high enough for recreational users to have a full day on the river, and then the water would be lowered in the evening, around the time that most runners arrived. But Walmsley ran so fast that when he arrived in 2016, the water was still raging.

“We signed a 40-year agreement that says lowering the base flow will happen way earlier [in the day] to allow those 14-hour folks that are crossing at four o’clock in the afternoon to have a much safer crossing,” Chris said. And in years when the flow can’t be controlled, Chris is on raft duty.

The Future of the Crossing

While this was a record-breaking year for California snowpack, could an even bigger snow year change the river crossing entirely? What happens if the river flow is so heavy that Chris and the other rafters can’t possibly row across?

“​​If we had needed to do the crossing in conditions like they were on our Memorial Day training weekend, that would be very difficult,” he says. “The flow was significantly higher—for sure double if not triple what it was for the race—and that actually would have been very challenging.”

In such a situation, Chris says they would have to come up with a new system for getting across the river. “We most likely would have to go to some sort of tethered highline system, with a tether on the raft, because otherwise you’d be pushed downstream.” Chris said that because the race is well into the season he’s not worried about that kind of thing happening. “This was a record-breaking snow year, so it would take something even beyond that.”

Climate change is prompting more and more intense versions of all different kinds of weather, so big snow seasons probably won’t be rare, but for now, the runners at Western States are lucky to have Chris Thornley making sure they make it to the other side.

The post Meet the Rucky Chucky Raft Crew of Western States 100 appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Kieran Abbotts is a PhD student at the University of Oregon, studying human physiology. He earned his master’s degree in Metabolism and Exercise Physiology at Colorado State University. The lab where he now works studies exercise and environment and stressors on physiology. In other words, he’s an expert on how the chemicals in the body work during exercise, and what happens when things get out of whack.

“Essentially, there are two kinds of training. There’s functional overreaching, which means you stress the body with hard workouts and long runs. Then you provide adequate time to recover, and you induce adaptations,” Abbotts said. This kind of training is ideal—your body is getting stronger. “You want to be functionally overreaching as an elite athlete—so that you’re making progress and becoming a better runner, but also giving yourself adequate recovery.”

And then there’s non-functional overreaching, which can feel the same to many athletes, but it’s very different. “With non-functional overreaching you’re essentially doing the same thing—big workouts, stressing the body—but not giving yourself enough time to recover. And so you start doing damage.” That damage might take a long time to show itself, Abbots said, but it eventually will.

This might be the most important thing to know about being an athlete at any level. Non-functional overreaching is exactly the same as very healthy training, except without enough rest. And rest is different for everyone, which makes it exceptionally easy to slip from functional overreaching into damaging non-functional overreaching without realizing it. Without adequate rest, the body begins to break down instead of build stronger.

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Stress Is Stress

Professional ultrarunner Cat Bradley, 31, living in Hawaii, has experienced fatigue and burnout in various forms, including just after in 2017.

Winning a big race is great, but it also means all eyes are on you—the pressure is high to stay on top. “After winning Western States, I took a month off, but I was still running at a high level. And for lack of a better term, I felt like I had a gun to my back,” Bradley said. “I wanted Western States so badly, and after I won, so many things happened and I never shook that gun-to-the-back feeling. After a while, it led to burnout. I had to take a mental break.”

For many athletes, finding success can be the stress that makes non-functional overreaching feel necessary. How can you take an extended break when you’re winning and signing new sponsor contracts?

A second version of burnout for Bradley came when she went through an especially stressful situation outside of running. She was dealing with such extreme daily emotional stress in her personal life that everything else was affected, including running and training. When the body is enduring stress, it doesn’t know (or care) what the cause is. We can’t put our life into silos. If there’s stress in one’s life, everything else needs to be adjusted. It doesn’t matter if that stress is “just work” or illness, or relationships.

When you’re overtraining or chronically overstressed, your body is creating higher levels of “catecholamines,” hormones released by your adrenal glands during times of stress like epinephrine, norepinephrine, or adrenaline. “Having those chronically high levels of overstimulation and not enough recovery, you wind up with a desensitization,” Abbotts said. “Overstimulation also causes decreased levels of plasma cortisol. Cortisol is the stress hormone, and it plays a very important role in your physiology.”

When you’re exercising or stressing the body, cortisol will go up, to help the body deal with the stress. But if you’re constantly requiring lots of cortisol, your body will eventually down-regulate. It will adapt and then you’ll have low levels of cortisol. This means trouble dealing with physical and mental stress.

In February, Bradley experienced her most recent version of burnout, and it happened mid-race. Bradley was running the Tarawera 100-miler in New Zealand. Besides training for such a big race, she was also working full-time and planning and preparing for her wedding, which was just days after the race. On top of everything, travel to the event was incredibly stressful.

“I was in fourth place, I could see third, and at mile 85, I passed out and hit my head on a rock,” Bradley said. “We can talk about the reasons that I fainted, but I really think my brain just shut down—it was too much.”

For Bradley, reaching burnout has a lot more to do with outside stressors than the actual running. But now she’s aware of that—she continues to work on not reaching the “gun-to-the-back” feeling. The need to please others. The fear of losing fitness in order to take care of her body. It’s an ongoing process, but an important one.

Overdoing Is the American Way

Professional ultrarunner Sally McRae said, based on her observations, Americans are really bad at taking time off. “I’ve traveled the world and Americans are really bad at resting,” she said. “It’s part of our work system. You go anywhere in Europe and everyone takes a month-long holiday. You have a kid and you take a year off. We’re not conditioned like that in America. It’s like you get one week and then after you work a decade, you get two weeks of vacation.”

For McRae, avoiding burnout and overtraining has a lot to do with creating a life that’s sustainable. She started working when she was 15-years-old, so she realized earlier than most that life couldn’t just be working as hard as possible to count down to retirement.

“Perspective is massive when it comes to burnout. My goal every year is to find the wonder and the beauty and the joy in what I do. Because it’s my job, but it’s also my life,” McRae said. “And I really believe we’re supposed to rest—it should be a normal part of our life. Whether that’s taking a vacation or taking an off-season. I take a two-month offseason and I have for a long time.”

RELATED: Why You’re Tired All the Time

One of the most important parts about rest and not overstressing the body is that everyone is different. An overstressed body can lead to hormonal imbalances, which in turn affects everything.

“When you’re overtraining, you tend to get mood changes and have trouble sleeping,” Abbotts said. “Two of the big things that stand out are, you’re exhausted but you can’t sleep. And the other is irritability—mood swings, and depression.” When you get to the point that you’ve overstressed your body for so long that the chemicals are changing, pretty much everything starts falling apart.

And even though everyone is different, you’d never know that from looking at social media. “I know social media makes it seem like ultrarunners are running 40 miles a day, doing a 100-mile race every other weekend,” McRae said. “And that’s insane. You’ve got to be in touch with yourself. It’s very different to wake up and feel sore or tired, but if you wake up and feel like you have no joy in the thing you’re doing, you need a real break from it.”

How Can the Running Community Do Better?

Elite ultrarunner and running coach Sandi Nypaver wants runners to get more in touch with how they’re feeling and less concerned about numbers or what anyone else is doing.

“I have to have honest talks with people I’m coaching. I need them to feel like they can tell me how they feel, because sometimes they think they have to stick to the training plan for the week no matter what,” she said. “But the plan is never set in stone. It’s meant to be adjusted based on how you’re feeling. Some weeks we might feel great and not need to change anything, while other weeks we might have to totally crash the plan and do something else.”

It’s easy to judge ourselves against everyone else, especially when results and reactions are so public and available.

“It’s easy to say, ‘if that person only took three days off after a big race, and now they’re already back to training, that must be what you’re supposed to do,’” she said. “But even at the highest level, training is different for everyone. Resting is different for everyone.”

“Something that’s really, really hard for many runners to understand is that once you’re not sore anymore, that you’re still not recovered,” Nypaver said. “A lot of research says that things are still going on in your body for up to four weeks after, for certain races, depending on the distance.”

Sometimes it’s difficult to be aware of subtle signs when the soreness is gone. “Convincing people that they need to chill out for a while, even past the soreness, can be really difficult.” But after a huge effort, and before the next, people rarely end up saying things like, “I really wish I hadn’t rested so thoroughly.” Part of it is actually having a recovery plan. Putting rest days on the calendar, focusing on foam rolling and mobility on days that you’re not “doing.”

“And, actually just relaxing. Taking it easy. It’s not just a running model, we live in a culture where we’re always being asked to do more,” Nypaver said. “I wish instead of always thinking about doing more, we’d focus on how we want to be more. A lot of us want to be more relaxed and less stressed and happier and enjoy our lives. We need to put our attention on that instead of trying to do so much. It’s something I struggle with all the time.”

We don’t get validation for resting, relaxing, and being present because there’s no tangible thing to show for it. There’s no “be really calm often” challenge on Strava. But the bigger rewards are great. You just have to trade in immediate dopamine hits for a much more balanced, happier life.

Simple, right?

“One thing I’m doing, and asking my athletes to do, is to write down your intentions,” Nypaver said. “One of my intentions is to chill out more this summer and enjoy it. I grew up thinking it’s all about running, and I have to go all-in on running. But having other outlets, other things that I like to do, is so important.”

When you’ve reached burnout—an extended period of non-functional overreaching, prolonged rest is the only way to let the body fix itself.

“Once you are overtrained, you need to stop training,” Abbotts said. “It’s just kind of the bottom line. Maybe some people can get away with greatly reducing their training load, but most of the time you need to stop. You need an extended amount of time off.”

There’s nothing glamorous about rest. There’s no prize money in relaxing. But it’s the absolute key ingredient in extended performance, and in a much healthier, happier life.

The post Why Burnout Is More Complicated than You Think appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

In many ways, Vibram mountain athlete ’s trip to Denali has been in the works for more than six years. In April, 2017, she went to Mexico and climbed Pico de Orizaba (CitlaltĂ©petl), North America’s third highest peak. That planted the seed for her—it made her start thinking about big mountains, even bigger ones than in her backyard of Silverton, Colorado.

“It was my first time at really high altitude,” Edwards said. “And I liked it.”

With a summit elevation of 20,310 feet, Denali is the tallest mountain in the world from base-to-peak on land. The current women’s Denali FKT stands at 21 hours, 6 minutes, set by Katie Bono in 2017. The men’s FKT was set in 2019 by Karl Egloff in 11 hours and 29 minutes. The ascent involves moving from base camp at 7,200 feet, straight up a ‘Z’ shaped ridge for more than 13,000 feet over 15 miles, passing through 14 Camp at 14,000 feet, where many people spend days or weeks acclimating.

But Edwards didn’t go to Alaska just to hunt down an FKT. “I’m really lucky because I have a teammate, , who is also going to be there, and we could team up, if we’re feeling good, which is kind of exciting,” she said.

But they won’t be the only women on Denali this month. will also be there, too, likely making her own FKT attempt. “She’s the queen at this stuff,” Edwards said.

Even though Edwards has stacks of accomplishments and accolades—she represented the USA at two World Championship/World Cups in skimo, came in second at UTMB Oman 130K in 2018, first at Ultra Trail Mt. Siguniang (China) in 2017, and second in Trace des Ducs de Savoie (France) in 2016 — sheÌę isn’t boastful or full of ego. In fact, she thinks that kind of attitude gets in the way.

“This is going to be a big learning experience for me. I always tell people, ‘I don’t even know if I’ll like it, but I want to find out.’”

Edwards’s favorite days in the mountains are when she’s doing a little bit of everything—running, climbing, and skiing. “People always like to say, she’s a skier, she’s a runner, but I don’t like to pigeonhole myself. I like to do it all.”

Her first true love, however, was skiing. “It was the first sport I ever did. It’s where my heart is.” So this attempt on Denali will likely include skis. It largely depends on conditions, but Edwards isn’t going to be strict about her mode of getting up or down—whatever feels most logical.

state that at least 50 percent of the time on an FKT attempt must be running and/or hiking versus other sports, so in the eyes of the FKT powers that be, attempts that include mostly uphill and/or downhill skiing don’t “count.” But that doesn’t seem to bother the athletes on skis.Ìę

Strength Training Is Key

One thing Edwards has focused on for this trip, more than she has in the past, is strength work. “We really focused on deadlifting,” Edwards said. “I worked hard to get to nearly three times my body weight.” She knew she’d likely lose weight on the expedition, so she wanted to go in strong.

Edwards also focused on Zone 2 workouts, where the heart rate is kept at between 60-70 percent of the maximum. This is because she anticipated a lot of slow, steady climbing at high altitude. “This isn’t something you decided to do and train for like a race,” Edwards said. “This has been an incredibly long, slow build. Just a lot of slow training and racing and being in the mountains.”

At 38, Edwards knows this is the ideal time for a challenge like Denali. “This is something I wanted to do five or six years ago, and maybe physically I was there, but mentally? Hell no. I’ve learned so much from racing and doing other projects at altitude.” Edwards said that when she was younger she was a lot more ego-driven, and that’s fallen away almost entirely. Now her focus is on being the best version of herself. “I see this as an incredible opportunity for me to be my best, whatever that means.”

A Relative Comfort

Edwards and her team headed into Denali National Park on Saturday, May 20. They packed food and provisions for three weeks. They planned to take a lot of time to fully acclimate, practice different sections of the route, and look for an ideal weather window.

“It’s really, really important that I understand the route entirely,” Edwards said. The goal with the time leading into the potential FKT attempt is comfort. “I want to make sure I’m comfortable with everything—even comfortable with the risk that’s involved. And if the window opens up and I feel good and my guides feel good about me and the conditions and the weather, then yeah, we’ll see. But it’s all really up in the air, and that’s OK.”

Edwards has been on enough big mountains and enough adventures to know that much is out of her control. Last year she won the Midstate Massive Ultra Trail 50 miler and placed fourth in the Ouray 100 Mile Endurance Race. She also wanted time on Denali to soak it in—to fully immerse herself in a place that she has never experienced. “It’s paying your dues and paying respect. This isn’t something you waltz into and get it done.”

It’s easy in the ultra endurance sport world to get caught up in success and winning, but Edwards has learned there’s no such thing as failure if you’re listening to your body and your mind. “Something that gets me a little upset, especially in ultra running, is the mentality of finishing at all costs.” Edwards has learned that, actually, it’s a lot more important to listen and adapt. “What it really comes down to is self-love. I love myself too much to not listen to what my body’s saying. There are certain things you can push through and then there are things that you have to listen to and not go further.”

A Mountain Full of Women

With Edwards, Green, and Maciel all on Denali at the same time, one might think the air will be full of competition, but that’s not the way Edwards sees it at all.

“What’s better than a mountain full of badass women?” She’s looking forward to the companionship and the community. More than anything, though, she wants more women climbing Denali and more women taking on big adventures. “It’s the trip of a lifetime, and I want to soak it in and enjoy it for what it is. And come back in one piece. Every single one of us.”

The post Meredith Edwards Is on Denali, Gunning for an FKT appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Anyone who has spent significant time running has likely experienced a flow state—“getting in the zone”—the mental experience of deep presence and moment-to-moment immersion. People often report this state as if they were feeling part of a rhythm. While in the flow state, runners recount getting part of a song stuck in their head. Sometimes it’s just a beat, sometimes even a single word.

If you haven’t experienced this version of “flow,” it doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong, but if you have, you’re not alone. And while there’s no strong correlation or causation, there seems to be a considerable overlap between musicians and long-distance runners.

Perhaps that’s because the brain gets a similar response from running and, say, playing the piano. Playing a musical instrument is the brain equivalent of a full-body workout. Unlike other activities that require intense brain work, like chess or puzzles, playing an instrument recruits almost every part of the brain, including multi-sensory responses. Making music requires vision, sound, movement, and memory, and similar things go on in the brain while running.

Your Brain on Music

Dr. Amy Lauer is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Mount Mary University, holds a PhD in Neuroscience, and happens to also trail run and play the violin. She cites from the University of Arizona to help explain brain activity in runners and musicians. The study looked at the brain scans of 18- to 25-year-old cross-country runners, and a control group of adults of the same age who hadn’t engaged in sustained moderate-to-vigorous physical activity for over a year.

“Researchers focused on functional connectivity,” Lauer said. “The way our brains function is through different groups of neurons talking to each other. So functional connectivity is connections between areas of the brain that are geographically separate from each other, but functionally related.”

Researchers looked at how the brain functions at a resting state. “Participants were told to do nothing in particular, to relax,” Lauer said. “There are specific brain networks that kick in when we’re not doing anything—when we’re mind-wandering, or imagining things about the future, or remembering things from the past. If we’re doing nothing, cognitively, there’s a brain network known as the default mode network that takes over.”

Other studies show that activities such as playing a musical instrument, which requires fine-tuned motor control, can alter brain connectivity and function. But this investigation really looked at the impact that more repetitive aerobic exercise, like running, has on brain structure and connectivity.

The findings of the 2016 study suggest that both fine-tuned complex motor activities (playing music) and endurance running may promote similar brain changes. In the runners, functional connectivity was much stronger than in non-runners, “pretty much across the board in the default mode network, as well as motor networks,” Lauer said. Greater functional connectivity generally helps a person do things like plan, make decisions, and switch easily between tasks, so it makes sense that trail runners do well with the problem-solving nature of the sport.

To better understand this connection between running and musical composition, here are three top musicians who have unique perspectives on their own experiences as trail runners.

Ben Gibbard | Ultrarunner, Frontman for Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service

, lead vocalist and guitarist for Death Cab for Cutie—who just released their new album, “Asphalt Meadows”—also excels at ultra-distance trail running. Gibbard completed his first road marathon in 2011 and quickly switched to the trails and longer distances. These days he takes on anything between 50K and 100 miles.

For Gibbard, writing and playing music is very different from trail running, but there are some significant overlaps. “For me, trail running or ultra running is a place where I can escape to. I’m often thinking about music, but I’m not necessarily composing music in my head,” says Gibbard. “To me, running gets me away from the anxiety of creativity. My goal as a runner is to give myself ample space and time away from creative impulses.”

When Gibbard was first finding his way as a musician, he remembers needing to constantly be working on music, or his talent and inspiration might evaporate. Now he feels much differently, that it’s necessary to have varied ways of being.

“I do think that writing is very much like running,” he says. “Writing anything–certainly as a songwriter and musician–is a muscle that you need to exercise. If you let those muscles atrophy, it’ll take you a while to get back up to the level and the quality of work that you were able to do when you were exercising those parts of your brain more frequently.”

In that way, Gibbard thinks of making music as being very similar to training as a runner. “If you’re training for a 100-mile race and you spend a lot of hours in the mountains and you’re feeling really fit, it will still be a challenge, but you’ll be able to accomplish it. If you just get off the couch and run 100 miles, you might be able to do it, but you’ll end up severely injured or it won’t be the experience you probably want.”

Gibbard sees similarities in the passion of the music community, where he found his start, and the trail and ultra running community. “The strongest parallel between my career as a musician and my love of trail running is that when I came up as a musician, it was a very grassroots kind of thing. When Death Cab started, the idea that you could make a living playing music was laughable. There was nothing about the style of music that we were playing that telegraphed ‘you can make a living doing this.’ The early days of touring with the band, we were playing small, all-ages shows, crashing on people’s floors who came to the show. It was this very community-oriented scene.”

When Gibbard first got into trail running, he says it felt very similar. “It felt like everybody was doing this for the love of doing it. There’s a similar passion coming out of punk and independent music circles that requires you to love what you’re doing, because it’s not going to be easy, and it’s probably not going to be lucrative.”

It’s one of the things that Gibbard loves most about the sport—the shared passion that fills the air. “Why else would we go out and spend 12 hours on a weekend running in the mountains? Because we love it — that’s the only reason we’re doing it. There’s no prize money, there’s no glory. You’re doing it because you love it.”

The goals Gibbard sets in music, and in running, occasionally mirror each other. “When you hear something new—a band or a song that feels familiar, but also so fresh and new, that’s a special kind of accomplishment, and it’s something that I’m always chasing. With running, it’s similar. It’s never going to be easy. Every time you do a race, especially long ones, you’re going to stumble across some problem that you have to solve that you’ve never had to solve before. That’s what keeps me coming back to both.”

Liz Derstine | Appalachian Trail Record Holder, Pianist, and Songwriter

Distance runner , trail name Mercury, is currently pursuing a Master of Music at Longy School of Music of Bard College. She also holds FKTs on the Appalachian Trail (women’s supported, northbound), Long Trail (women’s self-supported), and the Pinhoti Trail (women’s self-supported). She recently became the last woman standing (4th overall), after logging 109-miles, at Aravaipa Running’s 2023 Last Person Standing event.

Derstine can’t imagine life without music and running.Ìę She started playing the piano when she was seven years old. She took private lessons through high school and picked up other instruments along the way.

“I started to become more interested in rock and pop music in the late 90s,” says Derstine. “I picked up guitar, bass, fiddle, and mandolin.” She continued playing music through college and earned a BA in music with a performance piano focus. She then toured the world with RAC and got a taste of the rockstar life.

The thing that kept her grounded was running. “I started running the summer before my freshman year of high school. My dad suggested that I join a sport because it was a new school, and I think he was worried about me making friends. So I joined the cross-country and track team.” Derstine finds that the two passions keep her balanced. “I stopped running for a few years to focus on music during college, but then realized I really missed it and was still kind of doing it on my own, so I joined my college cross-country and track team my senior year.”

When Derstine finished competing at the college level, she fell in love with trail running. “I started to really nerd out on trail running,” she says. “When I first began spending time on trails and thinking about doing the Appalachian Trail, that opened up a whole new can of worms.”

Derstine went to an Appalachian Trail workshop led by Warren Doyle—famous for having hiked the AT more than anyone else—to learn more about the route. Doyle offered to help Derstine if she wanted to go for a record. “I met [Doyle] out in New York—he was already helping some other hikers on a supported trip. He’d drop me off at the beginning of the day, and we’d just see what happened—see how far I could go. I didn’t know anything about ultra running at that point.”

The first day out, Derstine started around noon and did 20 miles before dark. She felt good. “The next day I started in the morning and did 40,” she says. “Then the third day and I did another 40 miles and it was just really fun. Doyle was having a great time meeting me at different road crossings, and it was this natural fun thing. I got completely hooked.”

When Derstine decided to go for the , music became part of her flow state. “It really was just me in my head out in the woods.” Derstine got into a repetition and started creating melodies. “It just kind of happened in this meditative state. I saw these little melodies, which just started to formulate in my head. They were very repetitious, probably because what I was doing was very repetitious. I remember it all being an unexpected part of the journey.” As Derstine continued north, four or five melodies kept her company, over and over. Nothing complicated, just simple chords. She was averaging over 40 miles a day, topping out at 69 miles in one day, sleeping less than four hours a night.

When she finished the trail, she almost immediately composed a collection of songs for the piano. “After I finished the AT, I spent a week recovering in Philadelphia with my parents. They have an apartment and a piano, and I remember thinking, ‘Boy, I’ve had these songs etched into my brain.’ I sat at the piano and made them into something ”

Derstine thinks of music and trail running as intertwined. She’s not constantly thinking of music when she runs, nor is she longing to run when she’s making music, but they’re two equally important parts of her. Deep down, there’s something about the two that’s very much the same.

Kyle Richardson | Mountain Runner, Percussionist

is a Colorado-based professional runner and mountain athlete who is best known for his high-stakes, high-speed endurance feats in the Rocky Mountains. He’s also a formally trained who has created percussion soundtracks for various films and brand partners. For Richardson, all of life is rhythm, repetition, and beat. Like Gibbard and Derstine, he doesn’t actively attempt to compose music while he’s on the trails, but he’s aware of how rhythmic running can be. It fits into how he thinks.

“A lot of times I’ll think about it on the downhills, where I can let loose a little bit more and tap into some of the more playful rhythmic kind of stuff,” says Richardson.

Richardson thinks about running and music in similar ways because of the repetition necessary for both. He’s the kind of person who doesn’t get bored running the same trail over and over again, or playing the same song on repeat until he’s mastered it.

“Playing percussion requires a lot of repetition to build your skill set and learn the rudiments,” he says. “It’s all about just doing it over and over and over again with the metronome. You’re always trying to reach a state of perfection, which is really hard to achieve.”

For Richardson, it’s the same on the trails. “My brain works the same way with running. I run the same mountain every day. There’s something about the stability of doing the same thing that allows me to track my progress. I feel like I can dive into the nuances of how to be more efficient.” Once Richardson knows a song or a trail intimately, then he can have fun with the details—how he’s holding a drumstick, how quickly he takes a turn on the trail.

Richardson just released his second film, “,” which combines running and music in Brazil. In Tempo, the first film, Richardson was the main character, and it was set in the Flatirons of Boulder, Colorado. But in the second film, the focus is on other characters, and the feelings we all get when we’re out on the trails. “It’s all about the feelings that we get when we’re out in these wild places and then, too, the feelings we get when we’re playing music,” he says.

Functional Connectivity and Creative Flow

Gibbard, Derstine, and Richardson all acknowledged that it’s difficult for them to turn their brains off—to assign real mental rest. Their do-nothing state is usually filled with thoughts, and not necessarily because they’re creative geniuses who are constantly composing and orchestrating, but because their brains seem used to near-constant problem-solving.

One thing Dr. Amy Lauer finds interesting is that it’s unclear whether music and running create functional connectivity, or if people are born with it. “What you can never tell from these kinds of brain imaging studies is whether it’s the doing of the music and the running that has caused the changes in functional connectivity, or if these people were born with brains that are just functionally more connected, and that’s why they happen to be drawn to music and running.”

Lauer is also quick to avoid generalizations. While there’s interesting overlap in musicians who excel at trail running, there are plenty of trail runners who have no interest in music. “How many ultra runners out there have no musical ability whatsoever?” She says. “Clearly there’s some overlap here [between musicians and runners]. But we need to be cognizant of the rest of the Venn diagram.” In other words, there are some interesting studies and findings, but nothing incredibly conclusive about runner brains or musician brains.

In many ways, everything we face in life could be considered a “problem,” a word that loses its negative connotation if we think about the creative process of solving that problem. For many trail runners and musicians, living in the problem — in the flow — is about as good as it gets. Practicing over and over, in slightly different ways. Flexing the brain so that it learns how to connect and perform even better. Whether it’s through rhythm, melody, or pace, the brain’s ability to learn and direct us is endless.

The post What’s the Connection Between Running and Playing Music? appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

To walk into Boulder, Colorado’s Neptune Mountaineering—one of the nation’s most storied outdoor gear shops—is to step simultaneously into the past and the future. Founded in 1973 by accomplished climber Gary Neptune, the store is a monument to mountaineering, with a vast collection of historic artifacts on display beside shelves of new gear. It’s a museum, a state-of-the-art retail space, and a community gathering hub all in one.

It’s also lucky to be around. Like many retailers, Neptune Mountaineering has struggled with profit margins and the bottom line over the years. It dodged a few close calls, changing hands and even surviving bankruptcy, but somehow, the store has managed to do more than hang on. It’s become an icon in both the community and the outdoor industry at large.

In September 2021, the business traded hands for the fourth time in its five-decade history. With a new chapter beginning for Neptune, there’s no better time to look back at the wild ride the shop has navigated to get where it is today.

A Wing, a Prayer, and a Barefooted Businessman

The first thing anyone needs to know about Gary Neptune is that back when he founded his shop, he preferred to be barefoot as much as possible. In his younger years, the now 74-year-old mountaineer was the kind of guy who challenged himself by using minimal equipment on his climbing adventures—or none at all. Neptune’s climbing rĂ©sumĂ©, by any measure, is stacked. He’s stood on the summits of Everest, Makalu, and Gasherbrum II, as well as countless other peaks in the Himalaya, Andes, and the American West.

This is important to understand because it tells you something about the early character of Neptune Mountaineering. Initially, the retailer was nothing more than a small boot- and climbing shoe- repair operation—more a place for Neptune and his friends to tinker thanÌęanything else. The shop’s main clientele consisted of other elite climbers in the area.

Read more:

“I started the shop because there was another guy in town who repaired boots and sold a little climbing gear,” Neptune says. “But he was incredibly slow. It would pretty much take him all summer to fix your boots. A friend of mine convinced me that if we could buy some machinery, it would be a nice little niche [for us]. I liked handyman things, so I did it.”

The whole store, including the machinery Neptune needed to get started, cost about $14,000, he says. For years, the shop didn’t even have a cash register, and saw little return on Neptune’s initial investment. “We squeaked through for a number of years with a gross curve that was so flat you couldn’t tell if it was up or down,” he says.

Neptune discovered the hard way that growing a business for mountaineers meant giving up some of that mountaineering himself. One saving grace: The store’s location on the Front Range meant that he could at least climb locally on a daily basis. “That was why I located the store in Boulder and didn’t move away,” he says.

Neptune Mountaineering Hits Its Stride

After a full decade of barely making it, things finally started to pick up around 1983. This happened largely because, by then, the store had made a name for itself in the community. Talk to any climber who lived in Boulder during that time, and you’ll likely hear a Neptune Mountaineering story.

Part of that name-making involved inviting climbers and adventurers to the store to expound on their lives, work, and travels—a common practice now, but groundbreaking for a retail shop half a century ago. The events were a huge hit with customers. “Gary was always thinking about the bigger picture of the community rather than filling the cash register,” says Rick Hatfield, a ranger at Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks, who often gave talks at the shop about nesting raptors and how the climbing community could help protect them. “In working with Gary, we all realized the value in collaborative efforts. Neptune has always been more than just a store.”

It was during this time that Neptune also started building out his collection of climbing and mountaineering artifacts, an effort that would eventually become the store’s renowned Neptune Museum.

Like so much else at the shop, the museum was a community effort. Though Neptune collected many of the pieces himself—including, famously, the disembodied, frostbitten toe of his friend and fellow climber Malcolm Daly—many items were donated from fans in Boulder and others around the world. (Today, you can trace the evolution of outdoor adventure equipment as you walk through the 17,000-square- foot store. Although Neptune eventually sold the shop in 2013, he never let go of the museum, which he still owns and curates.) The museum helped the store become a true destination for adventurers embedded in Boulder’s outdoor community. Even if a customer was just stopping to drop off skis for a tune-up, it was easy to linger, wandering around and marveling at the artifacts.

Neptune watched other stores in the area come and go over these years. Specialty shops that couldn’t harness Neptune’s magic cropped up here and there, lasted for a while, and then closed down. REI and other national outlets came to town as well. Through it all, Neptune kept a calm head and stuck to what he knew—offering expert advice and goods for serious mountaineers, and building community.

“I’m not afraid of competition,” Neptune says. “I like competition as long as people are trying to be better in their own way. What I really don’t like is the race for the bottom—cheaper, cheaper, cheaper. That’s not good for anyone.”

Disaster Comes Knocking

Once Neptune hit its stride, there was little competitors could do to diminish its power in the Boulder community. The store moved several times, eventually landing at its current home—an expansive building tucked into a strip mall on the south side of town—in 1993. The space expanded with each move, as did the product mix. What once had been a shop for only the most serious mountaineers became more welcoming of newcomers and more accessible to first-time outdoorspeople.

Neptune’s career fell into place, and after 40 years of running the show, he found himself ready to retire. In 2013, Neptune sold the business to Backwoods Retail, a Texas-based operation that, at the time, ran 10 specialty shops. Everything seemed in order; Neptune felt good about the future of his store and legacy.

Read more:

But all was not peaceful and prosperous for long. According to Neptune, soon after the sale to Backwoods, communication became nearly impossible with the new owners.

Sales dropped off. The community feel of the store began to evaporate. Just a few years after the sale, Neptune Mountaineering was in serious trouble. By 2016, Backwoods owed nearly $70,000 in back rent on the store’s lease and far more to suppliers. The business filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. Many in the community thought their beloved shop was about to disappear forever.

Back from the Brink

If it weren’t for Shelley and Andrew Dunbar, the business would almost certainly be nothing more than a memory today.

The Dunbars, Boulder locals who had made a name (and a formidable living) for themselves in the outdoor industry by distributing Australia-based Sea to Summit’s products in the U.S., were longtime patrons of Neptune Mountaineering. Unwilling to see their community shop die, they swooped in and bought the business out of bankruptcy in 2017. They invested more than $1 million to renovate the space, opening it up, adding lots of light, and installing cool features like a climbing wall.

The shop needed a Hail Mary to save it. No idea was too bold. “Our personal motto was that you need to be a fearless retailer,” Shelley says. “That means you can’t be afraid to try new things. But it’s hard. Most retailers tend to take the safe path.”

The Dunbars were willing to take the kinds of risks that paid off. “[Customers] want to see evolution,” Shelley says. “They need to get excited about things and discover things. We fell on our faces a couple of times betting on products that didn’t sell, but people came back to us because things were different. It’s not like you have to try ideas that go against your brand and your ethos. But taking a few chances is good.”

One of the most important changes the Dunbars made was to the product mix. “We launched what we called the Neptune Lab,” Shelley says. “We found brands and products that were crowdfunded, mainly products that had been funded by Kickstarter. The reason that people use something like Kickstarter is because they can’t get into a retailer; they can’t get exposure.” The Dunbars were ready to take a chance on exactly those products. Some flopped, but some absolutely killed. “One example of a new category we tried was packrafting,” Shelley says. “We brought in a line of packrafts called Alpacka—a small Colorado company—and they were wildly successful.” The new products helped convince the Boulder community that Neptune Mountaineering was once again a place of forward-thinking expertise.

The Dunbars understood instinctively what Backwoods hadn’t: that Neptune couldn’t survive without the deep community feel that had characterized its earliest days. That understanding led to the launch of Neptune’s cafĂ©, which provided a place for locals to gather and get reacquainted with the store they thought they’d lost.

Within a few years, Neptune Mountaineering had been rescued from the brink. “It was a lot of fun bringing Neptune back,” Shelley says. “We’re very proud of what we were able to do.”

The Story of Neptune Mountaineering Continues

The Dunbars will be the first to tell you that they never intended to run Neptune forever. Theirs was a rescue mission; the next chapter of leadership always belonged to someone else.

It took them a while to discover exactly who that person would be. In September 2021, after more than a year of entertaining offers, the Dunbars sold the business to Maile Spung and her father, Bob Wade, owners of another legacy retailer, Ute Mountaineer in Aspen.

Like the Dunbars, Spung and Wade are a family with deep ties to outdoor retail. Wade founded Ute Mountaineer in 1977, just four years after the launch of Neptune. The two shops grew up alongside each other, and in some ways it’s fitting they’re now playing for the same team.

Read more:

“Neptune has always had this sentimental place in people’s hearts in the outdoor industry,” Spung says. “There’s a feeling of responsibility to the Boulder community to make sure the shop they know and love continues to run the way they want it to.”

For this reason, Spung is determined to maintain close ties to Gary Neptune, the business’s true beating heart. “Gary’s excited to bring some new pieces to the museum—a dogsled, some old backpacks and Nordic boots—and we want to focus on helping him keep that history alive,” Spung says.

As for Neptune himself, he feels this changing of the guard is a step in the right direction. “Maile grew up doing this, and for some reason she enjoys it,” he says, laughing. “She knows how to do pretty much everything. I think she’s a little bit like me in that she doesn’t have her nose in a computer all the time, although I’m sure she’s better at all of that stuff than I am.”

There’s a twinkle in his eye as he muses on the continuation of his life’s work. Any true adventurer would recognize it: the thrill, the challenge, the promise of unexplored territory. Neptune Mountaineering has wended its way through some tricky and beautiful terrain over the last 50 years, but the journey seems far from over. The best may be yet to come.

This story first appeared in the Winter 2022 issue of our print magazine under the headline “Neptune’s Wild Ride.”

The post Boulder’s Neptune Mountaineering Is About to Turn 50. We’re Lucky to Still Have It. appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

To walk into Boulder, Colorado’s Neptune Mountaineering—one of the nation’s most storied outdoor gear shops—is to step simultaneously into the past and the future. Founded in 1973 by accomplished climber Gary Neptune, the store is a monument to mountaineering, with a vast collection of historic artifacts on display beside shelves of new gear. It’s a museum, a state-of-the-art retail space, and a community gathering hub all in one.

It’s also lucky to be around. Like many retailers, Neptune Mountaineering has struggled with profit margins and the bottom line over the years. It dodged a few close calls, changing hands and even surviving bankruptcy, but somehow, the store has managed to do more than hang on. It’s become an icon in both the community and the outdoor industry at large.

In September 2021, the business traded hands for the fourth time in its five-decade history. With a new chapter beginning for Neptune, there’s no better time to look back at the wild ride the shop has navigated to get where it is today.

A Wing, a Prayer, and a Barefooted Businessman

The first thing anyone needs to know about Gary Neptune is that back when he founded his shop, he preferred to be barefoot as much as possible. In his younger years, the now 74-year-old mountaineer was the kind of guy who challenged himself by using minimal equipment on his climbing adventures—or none at all. Neptune’s climbing rĂ©sumĂ©, by any measure, is stacked. He’s stood on the summits of Everest, Makalu, and Gasherbrum II, as well as countless other peaks in the Himalaya, Andes, and the American West.

This is important to understand because it tells you something about the early character of Neptune Mountaineering. Initially, the retailer was nothing more than a small boot- and climbing shoe- repair operation—more a place for Neptune and his friends to tinker thanÌęanything else. The shop’s main clientele consisted of other elite climbers in the area.

“I started the shop because there was another guy in town who repaired boots and sold a little climbing gear,” Neptune said. “But he was incredibly slow. It would pretty much take him all summer to fix your boots. A friend of mine convinced me that if we could buy some machinery, it would be a nice little niche [for us]. I liked handyman things, so I did it.”

The whole store, including the machinery Neptune needed to get started, cost about $14,000, he said. For years, the shop didn’t even have a cash register, and saw little return on Neptune’s initial investment. “We squeaked through for a number of years with a gross curve that was so flat you couldn’t tell if it was up or down,” he said.

Neptune discovered the hard way that growing a business for mountaineers meant giving up some of that mountaineering himself. One saving grace: the store’s location on the Front Range meant that he could at least climb locally on a daily basis. “That was why I located the store in Boulder and didn’t move away,” he said.

Neptune Mountaineering Hits Its Stride

After a full decade of barely making it, things finally started to pick up around 1983. This happened largely because, by then, the store had made a name for itself in the community. Talk to any climber who lived in Boulder during that time, and you’ll likely hear a Neptune Mountaineering story.

Part of that name-making involved inviting climbers and adventurers to the store to expound on their lives, work, and travels—a common practice now, but groundbreaking for a retail shop half a century ago. The events were a huge hit with customers. “Gary was always thinking about the bigger picture of the community rather than filling the cash register,” said Rick Hatfield, a ranger at Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks, who often gave talks at the shop about nesting raptors and how the climbing community could help protect them. “In working with Gary, we all realized the value in collaborative efforts. Neptune has always been more than just a store.”

It was during this time that Neptune also started building out his collection of climbing and mountaineering artifacts, an effort that would eventually become the store’s renowned Neptune Museum.

Like so much else at the shop, the museum was a community effort. Though Neptune collected many of the pieces himself—including, famously, the disembodied, frostbitten toe of his friend and fellow climber Malcolm Daly—many items were donated from fans in Boulder and others around the world. (Today, you can trace the evolution of outdoor adventure equipment as you walk through the 17,000-square- foot store. Although Neptune eventually sold the shop in 2013, he never let go of the museum, which he still owns and curates.) The museum helped the store become a true destination for adventurers embedded in Boulder’s outdoor community. Even if a customer was just stopping to drop off skis for a tune-up, it was easy to linger, wandering around and marveling at the artifacts.

Neptune watched other stores in the area come and go over these years. Specialty shops that couldn’t harness Neptune’s magic cropped up here and there, lasted for a while, and then closed down. REI and other national outlets came to town as well. Through it all, Neptune kept a calm head and stuck to what he knew—offering expert advice and goods for serious mountaineers, and building community.

“I’m not afraid of competition,” Neptune said. “I like competition as long as people are trying to be better in their own way. What I really don’t like is the race for the bottom—cheaper, cheaper, cheaper. That’s not good for anyone.”

Disaster Comes Knocking

Once Neptune hit its stride, there was little competitors could do to diminish its power in the Boulder community. The store moved several times, eventually landing at its current home—an expansive building tucked into a strip mall on the south side of town—in 1993. The space expanded with each move, as did the product mix. What once had been a shop for only the most serious mountaineers became more welcoming of newcomers and more accessible to first-time outdoorspeople.

Neptune’s career fell into place, and after 40 years of running the show, he found himself ready to retire. In 2013, Neptune sold the business to Backwoods Retail, a Texas-based operation that, at the time, ran 10 specialty shops. Everything seemed in order; Neptune felt good about the future of his store and legacy.

But all was not peaceful and prosperous for long. According to Neptune, soon after the sale to Backwoods, communication became nearly impossible with the new owners.

Sales dropped off. The community feel of the store began to evaporate. Just a few years after the sale, Neptune Mountaineering was in serious trouble. By 2016, Backwoods owed nearly $70,000 in back rent on the store’s lease and far more to suppliers. The business filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. Many in the community thought their beloved shop was about to disappear forever.

Back from the Brink

If it weren’t for Shelley and Andrew Dunbar, the business would almost certainly be nothing more than a memory today.

The Dunbars, Boulder locals who had made a name (and a formidable living) for themselves in the outdoor industry by distributing Australia-based Sea to Summit’s products in the U.S., were longtime patrons of Neptune Mountaineering. Unwilling to see their community shop die, they swooped in and bought the business out of bankruptcy in 2017. They invested more than $1 million to renovate the space, opening it up, adding lots of light, and installing cool features like a climbing wall.

The shop needed a Hail Mary to save it. No idea was too bold. “Our personal motto was that you need to be a fearless retailer,” Shelley said. “That means you can’t be afraid to try new things. But it’s hard. Most retailers tend to take the safe path.”

The Dunbars were willing to take the kinds of risks that paid off. “[Customers] want to see evolution,” Shelley said. “They need to get excited about things and discover things. We fell on our faces a couple of times betting on products that didn’t sell, but people came back to us because things were different. It’s not like you have to try ideas that go against your brand and your ethos. But taking a few chances is good.”

One of the most important changes the Dunbars made was to the product mix. “We launched what we called the Neptune Lab,” Shelley said. “We found brands and products that were crowdfunded, mainly products that had been funded by Kickstarter. The reason that people use something like Kickstarter is because they can’t get into a retailer; they can’t get exposure.” The Dunbars were ready to take a chance on exactly those products. Some flopped, but some absolutely killed. “One example of a new category we tried was packrafting,” Shelley said. “We brought in a line of packrafts called Alpacka—a small Colorado company—and they were wildly successful.” The new products helped convince the Boulder community that Neptune Mountaineering was once again a place of forward-thinking expertise.

The Dunbars understood instinctively what Backwoods hadn’t: that Neptune couldn’t survive without the deep community feel that had characterized its earliest days. That understanding led to the launch of Neptune’s cafĂ©, which provided a place for locals to gather and get reacquainted with the store they thought they’d lost.

Within a few years, Neptune Mountaineering had been rescued from the brink. “It was a lot of fun bringing Neptune back,” Shelley said. “We’re very proud of what we were able to do.”

The Story of Neptune Mountaineering Continues

The Dunbars will be the first to tell you that they never intended to run Neptune forever. Theirs was a rescue mission; the next chapter of leadership always belonged to someone else.

It took them a while to discover exactly who that person would be. In September 2021, after more than a year of entertaining offers, the Dunbars sold the business to Maile Spung and her father, Bob Wade, owners of another legacy retailer, Ute Mountaineer in Aspen.

Like the Dunbars, Spung and Wade are a family with deep ties to outdoor retail. Wade founded Ute Mountaineer in 1977, just four years after the launch of Neptune. The two shops grew up alongside each other, and in some ways it’s fitting they’re now playing for the same team.

“Neptune has always had this sentimental place in people’s hearts in the outdoor industry,” Spung said. “There’s a feeling of responsibility to the Boulder community to make sure the shop they know and love continues to run the way they want it to.”

For this reason, Spung is determined to maintain close ties to Gary Neptune, the business’s true beating heart. “Gary’s excited to bring some new pieces to the museum—a dogsled, some old backpacks and Nordic boots—and we want to focus on helping him keep that history alive,” Spung said.

As for Neptune himself, he feels this changing of the guard is a step in the right direction. “Maile grew up doing this, and for some reason she enjoys it,” he said, laughing. “She knows how to do pretty much everything. I think she’s a little bit like me in that she doesn’t have her nose in a computer all the time, although I’m sure she’s better at all of that stuff than I am.”

There’s a twinkle in his eye as he muses on the continuation of his life’s work. Any true adventurer would recognize it: the thrill, the challenge, the promise of unexplored territory. Neptune Mountaineering has wended its way through some tricky and beautiful terrain over the last 50 years, but the journey seems far from over. The best may be yet to come.

The post Story of a Gear Shop: How Neptune Mountaineering Has Survived 50 Years in a Changing Market appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

When the pandemic dissolved offices across the country, my husband and I, like many others, sold our house in greater Denver and headed for the mountains. We picked Salida, Colorado, a place we had visited many times, in every season, as an escape from suburban life. We’d head to the mountains as often as possible to camp, hike, mountain-bike, and ski. Full-time life in Salida seemed like a dream. I’ve lived in a lot of different places, but this was the first time I had chosen a home because I wanted to be there; not for a job, not for a person, just for the place.

We moved on Halloween, 2020. “Thriller” echoed down the street as we carried boxes into the house. As tends to happen in Colorado, fall conditions lingered. We got tons of warm November afternoons that begged for exploration. I felt at home right away, but I wanted to know every mountain and every trail. I wanted to be one of those people who looks out and names all the peaks and tells you all the back ways to get there.

I went to my new local bike shop and asked for a gravel-ride recommendation. One of the mechanics suggested I check out Droney Gulch, a 25-mile loop from Salida with great views of Mount Shavano. He pointed it out on a Ìęhanging on the wall. I picked up a copy. On one side, it has 62 trail recommendations, and on the other, the local fourteeners. The Droney Gulch loop was one of the best rides of my life. Empty gravel roads take you right up to the base of snowcapped mountains. I soon bought a second copy of the map and hung one in the kitchen and one in my office. I wanted to look at it all the time.

I got in touch with the couple who made the map, Mary and Grant Morrison. They met in a cartography class at the University of Colorado Boulder in 1980 and started making mountain-biking maps before the sport was really a thing. Then they kept making recreational topo maps for places throughout Colorado and Utah, researching and updating them meticulously so that each map reflected the area’s growing trail systems. Their trail recommendations are their own personal favorites, found over years of exploring each area.

After I spoke with Mary and Grant, I decided I’d attempt as many trails on the map as possible, on bikes and on foot. I created a spreadsheet. On January 1, 2021, I picked a trail that seemed doable in the snow: Sunrise at Narrow Gauge, a five-mile out-and-back just a short drive from our house. Wearing snowshoes and lots of layers, my husband and I walked through icy snow at sunrise. Phenomenal pinks and oranges lit up Mount Princeton, the Arkansas River Valley, and the Chalk Cliffs. The next weekend we brought our pup and hiked the Midland Trail in Buena Vista in snow boots. With each new trail, I couldn’t wait for the next.

January also brought my 40th birthday. I don’t think too much about birthdays, but I have a twin brother, and I always imagined doing something big with him for our 40th. He lives in New York City, and with the pandemic locking down travel, we didn’t get to have our epic birthday together. So I dug into the map. My husband and I camped in our van at the base of Ruby Mountain and hiked Turret Trail in 16-degree weather. I sent my brother a photo of the sunrise.

I loved having a project that required so much work to accomplish. Each week I looked at the weather and conditions and decided what I wanted to take on. It was like dipping into a box and pulling out a new toy.

Over the course of the year I got more confident. At the beginning of the project, I always brought my husband or a friend along, or at least my dog, but by midsummer I went out alone. I got a thrill out of being intimidated. I spent some nights at trailheads in our camper van so that I could get a predawn start on huge climbs. Just sleeping alone outside—even in a vehicle—felt like newfound freedom. I began to crave being fully immersed in the outdoors. When I’d head out at 4 A.M.Ìęon a massive hike, I’d concentrate on my breathing. I’d sing little songs when I felt there was a large animalÌęnearby. I made videos with my GoPro so that I had someone (myself) to talk to. I took particular satisfaction in watching my fitness improve. By midsummer I was handily passing other hikers gasping from the altitude. There were so many times when I was the first to arrive at the summit for the day. It was exhilarating.

I also got better at being in the wilderness. I learned to pack enough food, enough water, enough layers, a first aid kit, and traction devices, even when snow and ice seemed unlikely. I learned to always turn my Garmin InReach on, test it, and stay in touch with my husband about my progress and plans. I studied the map so much that I could see it in my mind and know exactly where I was when I was out on a trail. I knew where the river was, which peaks I was seeing, which direction I’d have to walk to hit town, and where other trails would intersect.

A year later, I’ve still got a few trails to check off, and life in the map has become less about completing my spreadsheet and more about knowing my backyard. I jotted down notes after each trek in aÌęjournal. I repeated the trails I loved several times. Over the course of the year, I was in the map nearly every day. I covered more than 8,500 miles and climbed nearly a million vertical feet. But the appreciation I gainedÌęfor the landscape by traveling through it is much more important than the numbers.

Recently, I was mountain biking and someone on theÌętrailÌęasked me which peaks weÌęcould see. I pointed out each one with confidence. I also could have told them a story about being on top of each one, but I pedaled on.

The post This Year, I Hiked Every Trail in My Backyard appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

On June 26, 2020, Ryan Paul MiettinenÌęJr., 22, struck and killed Coleen Huling, 29, and Melissa Williamson, 25, with his Mercury Mountaineer SUV in London Township, Michigan. He fled the scene, and according to theÌę, never surrendered the vehicle to authorities. Miettinen was charged with two counts of failure to stop at the scene of an accident when at fault, resulting in death. Last weekÌęhe struck a plea deal. AÌęcounty judgeÌęsentenced him to 9 to 40 years in prison on each count. Miettinen must serve at least 18 of those years before becoming eligible for parole, and could spend all 80 years behind bars. The judge also ordered Miettinen to pay a total of $250,200 in restitution.

șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű OnlineÌęcovered the deaths of Huling and Williamson in December, as part of our #2020CyclingDeathsÌęproject, in which we tracked every cyclist killed by a driver over 12 months. At year’s end, we wrote obituaries for nine of thoseÌęriders, whichÌęincluded those of Huling and Williamson, a young couple who met through mutual friends, loved exploring the rivers and trails near their home in Ypsilanti, Michigan,Ìęand had just signed a lease to move in together. The Friday afternoon they were killed, the pairÌęwere riding their bikes from Huling’s parents’ home, where they had been pet-sitting, into town to get some food.

“No amount of time will bring our daughters back,” says Matthew Williamson, Melissa’s father, who is also a cyclist and had been training with his daughter for the 328-mile Pan Ohio Hope Ride in the weeks leading up to her death. But Miettinen’s sentencing does bring to end the ten-month limbo of court dates and litigation for the two families. “It allows for all of us to begin the healing process,” he says.

A maximum sentence like this is rare. In a recent study, data was collected by cycling advocate David Cranor for the nonprofit Greater Greater Washington. Between 1971 and 2019, there were 132 cyclists killed by drivers in the Washington, D.C., area, and 87 percent of the drivers weren’t charged with a crime. Only 8 percent served time. In the 697 deaths we tracked in 2020, we found reports of criminal charges in only a small handful of cases. More oftenÌęcases go the way of the one involving John Giumarra III, who was charged with a Ìęafter killing Angela Holder in Bakersfield, California, in 2017. Giumarra had a blood-alcohol level of 0.18, a record that showed multiple DUI charges, and he left the scene. Still, the judge ordered Giumarra to complete a mere 90 days of custody via work release,Ìę100 hours of community service, andÌęfive years of probation. More recently the news reported on the high-profile case of former NBA star , who was riding his bike when he was struck from behind by a driver and paralyzed. Though she also left the scene, theÌędriver was .

“Generally speaking, drivers who kill cyclists, even in obscenely negligent circumstances, rarely face criminal consequences that equate to the atrocity of their actions,” says Peter Flax, former editor in chief at Bicycling and a lifelong bike advocateÌęwho has written extensively about traffic safety for cyclists. “Typically, to get a sentence that lines up with a fatally negligent act,Ìęthe motorist needs to meet at least one of a few special criteria—to be massively impaired by drugs or alcohol, to be driving at a crazy speed, or to be a nonwhite driver who kills a white victim.”

Miettinen is reported to have been driving recklessly when he hit HulingÌęand Williamson—he swerved, struck them, and then sped away and eluded police for hours. His speed was in excess of 60 miles per hour;Ìę. The investigation showed that Miettinen had been smoking marijuana earlier in the day, though intoxication could not be proven. Miettinen has an arrest record that includes 13 prior offenses, including felonious assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated assault, reckless driving, and disobeying a police officer.Ìę

“As a cyclist myself, I am all too aware that many individuals are under-prosecuted in these circumstances,” says Matthew Williamson, who had been hoping for the maximum punishment.Ìę“Sometimes it is due to lack of existing case law. Other times it is because of an underlying perception that bikes have no business on the road.”Ìę

“In general, the criminal-justice system looks at cycling cases—meaning a driver hitting a cyclist—as ‘just an accident,’” says Megan Hottman, an attorney in Golden, Colorado, who has been handling cycling cases for 11 years. (șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűÌępublished a profile of Hottman in 2015. It was written by cyclist andÌęlongtime șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű contributor Andrew Tilin, who was later struck and killed by a driver in Austin, Texas, while changing a flat tire by the side of the road.) An avid cyclist herself, Hottman has dedicated her life to advocating for cyclists and holding drivers accountable for their crimes. But in her entireÌęcareer, she’s only seen a few drivers adequately sentenced, she says. These cases are automatically made lower priority because district attorneys want to focus their time and attention on the “really bad criminals,” she says, even though the damages caused in driver-cyclist crashesÌęcan be expensive and life altering, resulting in death or spinal-cord and brain injuries. Cases involving a driver hitting a cyclist are often classified as traffic violations, rather than misdemeanors or felony offenses, and overwhelmed courts move these violations through the system as quickly as possible, she says.Ìę

In a successful case, where a driver gets the maximum sentence, as Miettinen did, Hottman says it’s due to the perfect combination of law enforcement doing an exceptional job, a prosecutor asking for the maximum sentence and being willing to take it to trial, and a judge who really pays attention to the case and allows the family and loved ones to come in and talk in court. “It’s so significant when a judge shows a case like this the attention it deserves,” she says.Ìę

In an impact statement to the court, Kerri Williamson, Melissa’s mother, wrote that the average life expectancy for a woman today is 76 years. “So, in my opinion, Ryan stole 51 years of Melissa’s life and 47 from Coleen.ÌęEven if he had been sentenced to 98 years in prison it would not have been an ‘eye for an eye.’ÌęHe will continue to get to have contact with those he loves. I can’t say that I am ‘happy’, because I feel that is doing an injustice to my daughter and Coleen, but it is what I had hoped for.” Kerri says that nowÌęshe and her familyÌęand Huling’s familyÌęneed to give themselves permission to move on,ÌęandÌę“to live the way Melissa and Coleen would have wanted us to.”

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