ow, my hammies
My hamstrings are tight today. Super tight. I'm a day off schedule this week for the Plan, so yesterday was cardio day. I got up, did 15 minutes of light yoga stretching and took Buddy for a walk. Then I debated doing cardio or not because I knew I was going to work my ass off at SAR training. I did no cardio and boy am I glad.
I showed up at training at Current Creek up on Berthoud Pass last night and looked up at what we had to climb and said, "Thank god I didn't already work out today. This is going to kill me." We ascended about 600 feet on a slope that varied between 45 and 65 degrees. That's stupid steep, people. Oh yeah, and we had our packs on our backs and technical gear (ropes, main/belay line gear bags, and the Stokes litter) to carry up. I sort of hung back away from the pile of gear to see if I could the manly men to grab everything (there were a couple more people than items of gear). And they did, so it was just me and my pack. I went up last because I know I'm slow (I'm clumsy and super scared of falling) and I hate to hold people up. It took me 18 minutes for the ascent and we stopped about 300 feet lower than originally planned. My muscles were screaming, but it was a good scream.
I got to run the main line with the break rack finally. This is the only part of technical rope rescue I have yet to do in nearly two years with the team. I should have learned this early on, but I keep getting paired on main line with a particular team member who insists she'll be in charge and I can just feed her rope and watch to learn. Um... watching is great, but eventually it kinda helps to know what it feels like to control the fucking break rack. You know, in case of a problem? *head desk* But I got to run the break for both our descents. We had one subject with three litter attendants and both descents went smoothly. First descent we just went down about 100 feet then let the guys carry everything back up. Second descent we set up a secondary station mid-mountain so that we could lower to the end of our ropes, transfer to a secondary main and belay set-up to continue down the mountain. We needed a third station to get to the bottom (we only took up two 200 foot ropes -- one main, one belay -- because no one wanted to carry more and do knot passes) but it was pitch black at that point so we tore down at the end of the rope and just carried gear down the last bit.
Walking down steep scree (there were downed trees and loose rocks everywhere) in the pitch black was an experience. And since I stayed at the top station on main, I had to walk down with my gear, plus the empty main line rope bag and the main line gear bag (about 8-10 lbs.). I'm amazed I didn't fall on my ass.
It was a great training and I definitely got my workout in. You want to work your hamstrings and glutes hard? Climb a steep hill. Want to make it harder? Add weight. There's no better leg workout in the world than backpacking hilly terrain.
I showed up at training at Current Creek up on Berthoud Pass last night and looked up at what we had to climb and said, "Thank god I didn't already work out today. This is going to kill me." We ascended about 600 feet on a slope that varied between 45 and 65 degrees. That's stupid steep, people. Oh yeah, and we had our packs on our backs and technical gear (ropes, main/belay line gear bags, and the Stokes litter) to carry up. I sort of hung back away from the pile of gear to see if I could the manly men to grab everything (there were a couple more people than items of gear). And they did, so it was just me and my pack. I went up last because I know I'm slow (I'm clumsy and super scared of falling) and I hate to hold people up. It took me 18 minutes for the ascent and we stopped about 300 feet lower than originally planned. My muscles were screaming, but it was a good scream.
I got to run the main line with the break rack finally. This is the only part of technical rope rescue I have yet to do in nearly two years with the team. I should have learned this early on, but I keep getting paired on main line with a particular team member who insists she'll be in charge and I can just feed her rope and watch to learn. Um... watching is great, but eventually it kinda helps to know what it feels like to control the fucking break rack. You know, in case of a problem? *head desk* But I got to run the break for both our descents. We had one subject with three litter attendants and both descents went smoothly. First descent we just went down about 100 feet then let the guys carry everything back up. Second descent we set up a secondary station mid-mountain so that we could lower to the end of our ropes, transfer to a secondary main and belay set-up to continue down the mountain. We needed a third station to get to the bottom (we only took up two 200 foot ropes -- one main, one belay -- because no one wanted to carry more and do knot passes) but it was pitch black at that point so we tore down at the end of the rope and just carried gear down the last bit.
Walking down steep scree (there were downed trees and loose rocks everywhere) in the pitch black was an experience. And since I stayed at the top station on main, I had to walk down with my gear, plus the empty main line rope bag and the main line gear bag (about 8-10 lbs.). I'm amazed I didn't fall on my ass.
It was a great training and I definitely got my workout in. You want to work your hamstrings and glutes hard? Climb a steep hill. Want to make it harder? Add weight. There's no better leg workout in the world than backpacking hilly terrain.