In mountaineering there are no rules. Everybody can draw his or her line. My line, my style, is that I don’t use supplementary oxygen. I don’t enlist Sherpas to transport my equipment and supplies. I climb in as small a team as possible. It is in the harsh environment of high altitude—being exposed and vulnerable on a mountain—that I feel most alive.So far I have summited five 8,000-meter peaks without oxygen: Gasherbrum II, Broad Peak, Dhaulagiri, Lhotse, and Makalu. I came very close on K2 and Shishapangma. On Shishapangma, after a 13-hour single push from the base of the south…
Author: Uphill Athlete
In 2014, after watching a Discovery Channel docuseries about commercial climbing on Mount Everest, I texted a good friend of mine: What do you think about climbing Everest? His response was quick and to the point: Mike, there’s no way you’re going to climb Everest. Okay, I wasn’t going to do it the next day, and I’d have to lay down a lot of groundwork, but I believed it could be possible. I started putting together the pieces that would be required if I ever got the chance. Over a five-year span, I overhauled my life to facilitate being faster,…
The purpose of this article is to discuss the reasons for active recovery, and give some examples of how you can be more effective in your own training with a more appropriate approach.
“Go big or go home.” That’s what my youngest son said in January 2017 when we decided to do our first ultra-distance trail race. I was 62 years old, my son a spry 28.I started running in 2015. I’m a competitive guy and I like taking on new challenges. I quickly ticked off a handful of road half marathons and one road marathon, all on top of my first love—rock climbing. Then rotator cuff surgery put my climbing on hold in late 2016, and I found myself needing something to do so I could keep drinking beer. My son suggested…
This video shows you how to improve your skimo striding and bounding technique. Ski striding and bounding are great tools for training. Ski striding is a lot like walking uphill but with an extra hip thrust, creating a more fluid movement. Striding requires the heel placement and leg extension to be farther forward than just walking. Ski bounding is a faster, more powerful version of ski striding. Using the same basic technique, all you do is add power and more drive to get to bounding. The foot is still out in front while maintaining a solid hip swing. Bounding is…
Winter-sport athletes face a unique problem when it comes to training for their disciplines. Cross-country ski racers train seven to eight months of the year—NOT doing their sport—in preparation for a four-to-five-month racing season. These athletes have had to become very clever about sport mimicry to fool their muscular and nervous systems into believing that they are doing something very close to skiing. They call this dryland training. Off-season training can be just as beneficial for skimo racers, who would be wise to experiment with some of the methods and techniques their cross-country brethren rely on between winters. Skimo Off-Season…
I love running downhill. So much so that for the ultras I run I tend to subtract the downhill miles from the overall distance to make it more manageable to wrap my head around the undertaking. Years ago, while teaching technique clinics, I quickly realized that not everyone shares this love. While I wanted to work on uphill technique, more people were interested in how to go downhill without knee pain, ankle injuries, or blown-out quads. I’ve come up with three tips that can help with your downhill prowess: engage your core, look down the trail, and practice a quick…
I was a few months into an academic desk job in the Southeast when I got the call. Would I like to return to the West Coast and rejoin a US Special Operations Force (SOF)? A position had opened up and it was mine if I wanted it. Hell yes, I wanted it. I missed the West Coast culture and the Cascades. I despised the humid low ground where I was living and missed having mountains like Mount Rainier and Mount Shasta visible from the highway. I had moved away from my alpine objectives and lamented the lack of a…
Many people have asked me why I go to the small village of Chukung high in the Khumbu Valley of Nepal to do an annual “training camp.” Actually, “training camp” is a bit of a misnomer; really it should be called a “pre-acclimatization camp.” Even though once I’m there my main focus is running and fast hiking, the primary goal is to jumpstart my body’s acclimatization to high altitude.The reason that calling it a training camp isn’t quite right is that, at altitudes this high, the body won’t respond to training stimuli in the usual way: neither fitness, speed, nor…
At the 2019 Audi Power of Four Ski Mountaineering Race, I learned that you can have a tough day and still come out on top. It’s all about arriving with consistent training, a solid strategy, and a specific goal. And it helps to have a teammate who complements your weaknesses. You can suffer through the race’s 26 miles and 10,000 feet of gain on just one of those elements, but the Power of Four is best approached with all four “powers” in your quiver.This would be my fourth time competing in the race. My first go at the Power of…