The Wilderness Within BY Y I T K A W I N N
Deep in the wilds of the Pacific Northwest, a motley bunch of runners taps the imaginative realm beyond races on a quest for joy, camaraderie and mysticism.
I ’ D O R I G I N A L LY M E T G E O R G E O R OZ C O at a fatass-style 50K in this very place, Tiger Mountain, five years earlier, in 2011. We’d become fast friends, bonding over our mutual love for the trails. It wasn’t long after that that he began poring over maps with the idea of creating a 100-mile linkup of local mountains and foothills. His vision was to create a “sea-level Hardrock,” a route with some 30,000 to 40,000 feet of vertical climb that anyone could go attempt anytime, independent of lottery luck, financial resources, altitude adaptation or travel constraints. For many runners with full-time jobs and families (like Orozco, who once told me having two full-time jobs was “good sleep-deprivation training for ultras”), such an opportunity immediately piqued local interest.
22
DIRT ANNUAL / 2017
GLENN TACHIYAMA
I T I S PI TC H -B L AC K dark in the woods, just past 3 a.m., when I see the eyes. They catch in my headlamp beam, yellow and beady and low to the ground, about 15 feet in front of me. My legs freeze while my heart turns into a jackhammer. I can now see the full body of the mountain lion as it shifts, slowly and silently, from a lazy crouch to standing on all fours. Though I have no previous experience with mountain lions to draw from, I sense that this one is more curious than aggressive. A gentle breeze stirs the leaves of the trees around us. For the better part of the past two days, I’ve been plodding through these mountains in a solitary reverie. It is my second night out in the woods, and I’m less than two miles from my finish line—the High Point Trailhead and terminus of the Issy Alps 100, an unofficial course wending through the mountains east of Seattle. I back slowly down the trail while adrenaline continues its frantic gallop through my system. As I ponder the possibility of not finishing this very arbitrary thing I’ve set out to do, I shake my head and think, Damn you, George. It isn’t the first time someone’s cursed his name in these mountains.