Silverton

This is where I live now:

Spending the summer in Silverton is basically the ideal living situation. From a practical point of view, the town is at 9300 ft. and the mountains rise well over 4000 ft. above that for miles in every direction. I can live and train at high altitude on the Hardrock course and be as prepared as possible when July 8 rolls around. From an aesthetic point of view I get to look at and run up beautiful mountains all day long. And from a social point of view I get to hang out in a really cool small town with all the locals. The people who live in Silverton come from all over and do tons of different jobs, but they are all here for a similar reason, and that seems to revolve around the mountains.

When you get out here, blog-reader (as I'm sure you will), come on into the Cafe Mobius and say hi. Mobius is a really sweet coffee shop run by mountain running badass Megan Kimmel, who refuses to talk about her race schedule but repeatedly leaves town to crush races. She's really cool.

This morning I tried to run up to the top of Kendall Mountain, which towers above the town. The road curves around to the south face and then switchbacks up to the top. My logic was that the south face, which sees so much sun, should be at least passable. But above timberline the road was literally nonexistent. The snow was deep enough to hide even a bump indicating its path, so I gorilla-walked straight up to the ridge, using my knuckles as pseudo-ice-axes. At the top the wind was so cold and powerful I decided to turn around, but going down was no easier. By that point the sun had warmed the snow enough that I started breaking through the crust with every other step, which hurts. A lot. But I made it down to blog another day. The mountains here are incredible.