The whole one-day ascent topic has got me to writing about hiking style in general:

Striking a balance between
swiftness and "etiquette"
-------------------------

First, I must confess that as a young man, my friends (McInnis & Miller) and I used to sprint all the way down the rugged trail of a large mountain, shocking all the hikers that we "flew" past. (We were mostly air-born.)

It's a confession because these days there are ultra-endurance mountain runners whose approach to exploring mountain ranges and summiting strikes me as sacrilegious (a bump up from "lack of etiquette"). They train year-round just to break speed records in the wild. Carrying no pack and wearing only running shoes and running shorts, the very fastest of them can ascend and descend the Grand in just three hours, or achieve multiple summits in a day.

Surely you think that I must just be jealous. No; as a young man, my cross-country running friends and I could have been one of them. However, such a concept regarding expeditioning didn't exist back in the mid-seventies. And I'm glad.

I like my current approach to mountain expeditioning. It's in between the way we typically did it in the seventies (too much equipment and food) and today's ultra-runners. I now take a lighter approach regarding equipment and food, but still embrace simply brisk, unhurried hiking -- a form of etiquette in nature, even when alone in the wilderness. And of course being judgemental is part of my own nature.

With that as preface.. Being in very good cardiovascular condition makes mountain expeditioning both far more enjoyable (fatigue is no fun) and far safer. Just imagine the options for safety margins you afford yourself by being fit; and that in turn yields even more enjoyment due to lack of worry. Above all, being fit affords opportunities for deeper penetration into the mountain ranges and more summit successes.

As further bonus, training for mountain expeditioning is about as much fun as the mountain adventure itself. And that's even when you don't make a game of it, which I do.

Part of my game is to test myself on an old favorite hike of mine -- Pike's Peak. It's a fun goal to see whether or not I can match or exceed my best performance on that hike. It is a thirteen mile hike with 7500 feet of elevation gain -- just a little more elevation gain than the Grand Teton, but a much longer hiking distance (which does add greatly to the hiking time).

Five years ago, at age 64, I had an easy time of it hiking to the summit in four hours and ten minutes, carrying eleven pounds on my back. After doing the conversion for weight carried, I discovered that my time would have put me into first place for the 65-69 age group in the annual foot race to the summit. (Second place in the 60-64 age group.) And I'm glad that I didn't sacrifice etiquette in the process!

I had moderately intended to test myself on Pike's Peak this year after climbing the Grand Teton, but abandoned the idea after my calculations just prior to the Grand told me that I probably wouldn't match my 2018 time.

In retrospect, considering how effortless the Grand was for me, I probably could have matched my 2018 time on Pike's Peak. So.. looking forward to Pike's Peak after next year's expeditioning and upper Exum summit route.


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