Days Getting Shorter

Wow, it's been nearly two months since I posted anything here. Not sure where the time went. I guess I've had a fair amount of adventures to keep me busy in this time. Went out to Pine to Palm 100 to pace a friend for 30+ miles, Volunteered as an aid station captain at the very exciting and very entertaining UROC 100k, took a great 4 day weekend camping trip to Utah with the little one, and then just some nice time settling into a routine here in Colorado for what will quite likely be my last year ever living in this area. I haven't been running a whole lot. In fact, not at all in the past few weeks. Just taking things really easy and getting outside in other ways: walking, biking, fishing, backpacking, gathering firewood for the winter.

My body still feels "off", but my mind has felt better the past couple weeks than it has in a long time. It's actually been really nice not to run at all recently because my body is still telling me to take it easy, and it helps my mood a lot when I just listen and do what my body is saying. I do hope to be able to be fairly active this winter, as winter is easily my favorite time to do things outside in Colorado. Hoping to dust off the snowshoes and the nordic skis and get some good time in on both this winter. Hopefully I can use that as a good springboard to go into spring and summer back in Alaska.

I'm getting really excited for another season of running camps up there, as well as some other projects I have in mind once I'm back in Alaska. For those of you interested in the 2014 edition of Alaska Mountain Ultrarunning Camp there are spaces still open in all 3 sessions, but there is a really great sale on flights to Juneau right now, with tickets from most destinations in the lower 48 lower than I have ever seen them! Unfortunately this sale ends on October 29th, and this is a long way out to plan a trip for next summer, but I thought I would mention this in case anyone is planning to come to camp, but just hasn't made the commitment yet. If you book your flights in this next week you are likely to save $400+ on airfare!

The other thing about camp that I want to mention again is that we are still looking for contributions for the scholarship program. We had amazing support for this program last year, and are excited to continue this program in 2014, but we still need a lot of funding to reach our goal of providing 3 full scholarships. You can get all the information on the program and instructions on how to contribute here.

Patience Makes Perfect

Another summer in Alaska has come to an end and we are now back in Colorado for Corle's last year of school here. After this year we will be back in Juneau to live year round. Our time here in Colorado has been great, but I am definitely looking forward to getting back to living in one place year round, having all of our stuff in one place (as opposed to storage units and various houses/apts). We have lived in 7 different places in the last 4 years, but once we move at the beginning of next summer we might be staying in the same place for several years. The thought of that sounds really nice after all this moving around.

My health has continued to generally improve with time. I had a great summer in Alaska in which my improved health allowed me to get out on some great adventures in the mountains. I didn't at all try to run with any kind of everyday consistency, but on two different occasions (once in June and again in late July/early August) I was able to put in some pretty decent time out in the mountains for 2 or 3 week stretches. It would be a stretch to say I was feeling great on any of these outings, but compared to how horrible I felt for most of the past year it's hard to complain. If my health improves as much in the next year as it has in the past year then I will feel 100% sometime in the not so distant future.

This said, back in Colorado now I can certainly feel that it is taking some time to feel strong and energetic. It may be that I'm just recovering from a few very strenuous weeks my last few weeks in Alaska, or maybe my body is responding to the 7,500 ft. altitude that I'm living at here, or maybe just a natural regression in my health/energy, as I have had dozens of phases throughout this whole ordeal in which I inexplicably feel much worse than the previous several days or weeks. At any rate, I'm planning to take it really easy until my body feels better and then hopefully I can get out on some good autumn outings here in Colorado before resting up and moving into a 2014 in which I can hopefully return to stretches of everyday running and see where that takes me. I miss running everyday, and being in shape to be able to race anytime I want, but more than anything I just like to be able to get outside and explore my surroundings on a regular basis. I feel so fortunate that I was able to do this as often as I was this summer, and I look forward to moving gradually back into a place in which I can pretty much do this whenever I want to. 

Despite my still compromised health I was able to put on two amazing sessions of camp this past summer. We had our best summer yet, and are super excited to be planning on three more sessions for next summer. Check out the website if you are interested in that. Entry is now open!

In the meantime, I'm enjoying being a family man. Marrying Corle this past summer was probably the smartest thing I've ever done, and the fact that she comes with such a rad kid makes the deal even that much sweeter. Our days back in Colorado have been filled with making our new house here into a home for the three of us and this has been incredibly enjoyable. Beyond this I've been slowly taking on a few new hobbies to fill some of the void of not running so much and certainly I have a few projects in mind that I hope to put some more energy into in the coming months. 

In short, life is good, although I do still have a ways to go to feel like my old self physically. In the meantime it's been fun (and challenging) to figure out how to navigate through my life without the physical health that I had grown so used to. I'd be lying if I said it's been easy, but if my experience of this past year has taught me anything it's that sometimes we just need to keep faith, and practice patience, and keep moving forward. Our minds and our bodies have an amazing ability to heal and recover, but we need to be willing to give them the space to do so.  

Season Three In The Books

Last week we completed the final session of Alaska Mountain Ultrarunning Camp for 2013. Somehow these camps just keep getting more satisfying and more fun to be a part of. We had the best week of weather we've ever had for a camp and ended up getting out on huge mountain runs all week. In 5 days we were out for nearly 30 hours, about 25,000 ft. of vertical gain, and about 70 miles! Amazingly it was sunny and warm for every minute of this time!

We are currently in the process of finalizing dates for the 2014 camps. There will likely be three sessions, but keep an eye on this website or over on the camp website for the official announcement sometime in the next month or so. We will also be continuing our very popular and very effective scholarship program for 2014. I will be updating the scholarship information on the camp website for 2014 sometime in the next few weeks, but we are always taking contributions to help fund the program. Check out the "scholarship page" on the camp website for info. on how to contribute.

Here's a few photos from the recently completed session:

The Good Life

Wow, I guess time flies when you're having fun. This is certainly the longest I have ever gone without a post on this blog. Certainly not because I haven't had anything to write about, but because my mind has been in other places away from writing.

I've been up in Alaska since the middle of May and it's been a nearly perfect summer up here. After a non-existent summer last year, we have had one of the nicest summer's I've seen here. It's been a little cooler and wetter in July, but in the month of June it pretty much didn't rain here at all.

The nice weather and my improved health has allowed me to get out on some great mountain outings this summer. I still haven't tried to get back to running everyday, but generally I have been able to get out on a couple long mountain outings each week with a shorter run or two mixed in each week. Aside from this I have had two short stretches with a heavy load on my body and it has seemed to respond okay to the increased physical stress. I still feel a long way from what I would call "normal", but I do feel so much better than I have in about a year.

The first short stretch of fairly regular running was back in mid June for the first session of Alaska Mountain Ultrarunning Camp. We had a perfect week of weather that week, a great group of participants, and my body allowed me to take part in about 20 hours of running in 5 days! Not something that I thought would be a possibility a few months ago.

A couple weeks after this Corle and I got married, and during that time I was able to get in some great long runs with many of my best friends in the world who were here for the wedding. The day before the wedding I went out with about 15 or 20 friends and did one of the most satisfying runs I have ever done in my life. It was one of those days when I felt so lucky to have so many great friends and to have the health to be able to get out in the mountains and enjoy such beauty with so many wonderful people.

For a "honeymoon" we took a trip over to Sitka and spent a week living outside. Some car camping, some backpacking, and some sea kayaking. The backpacking trip was a hike across Baranof Island from Sitka to Baranof Warm Springs. I had heard of a few people doing this hike, but went into it with little to no sense of exactly what we were getting into. It turned out to be a fairly epic route that was much more challenging than I expected. It felt more like a light mountaineering trip than a traditional backpacking trip. I was certainly not disappointed by this surprise. This trip was one of many things I have done this summer that remind me of just how much I feel drawn to the land here in Southeast Alaska. It has become, without question, the most appealing landscape in the world to me.

Coming up this week we have another session of Alaska Mountain Ultrarunning Camp, and then a couple more weeks in AK before heading back to Colorado for our last stint in Boulder. When Corle graduates next May we will be returning to Juneau to once again live here year round. The time in Boulder has been great, and I'm looking forward to one more season there, but I feel so lucky to be returning to Alaska to live full time again. It is the place in the world where I feel most at ease and most comfortable with my surroundings. I feel more connected to the land when I am here than I do anywhere else, and I feel like my lifestyle here supports my recovery from whatever it is I'm recovering from better than anywhere else.

Not sure what my next several weeks/months will bring in terms of running. I think I'm still a long ways away from feeling like I want to try to run everyday, and potentially get into shape to try to push my body in any serious way, but I do notice myself starting to feel hints of a desire to do that at some point in the perhaps not so distant future. I guess time will tell.

Here are a few of my favorite photos from my adventures this summer:

Getting Old

I turned 37 this past weekend, but other than that things are about the same with me. Some decent days with my health, and some not so decent days. Slowly I think I'm coming to a much better emotional place with all of this. I obviously would still love to feel 100% healthy and strong, and ideally I would love to feel this sooner rather than later, but I have also come to a place of better acceptance about the whole thing. I may never again in my life feel as healthy and strong as I did 2 or 3 years ago (or even just a year ago), but I know that I'm gradually feeling better, and I find myself everyday feeling very fortunate to have regained the health that I have. In August, September, October, and most of November I would have given anything to have just one day in which I felt as good as I do today. Of course, now today I want more. I want to feel this much healthier again. I've very aware though that I might need to wait another 4 or 5 months for this to occur. If there's been one consistent thing in all of this it's that my condition never seems to improve significantly from day to day, but rather from week to week, or month to month. At some point I expect to feel healthy enough that I look at this slow change as a good thing. When we are feeling the way we want to feel we don't want there to be any significant change.

Total change of subject: Winter has finally come here in Boulder. We have had about 3 feet of snow in the past week, and from what I hear there may be another storm on the way next week. I've been able to tell that I'm finally (after nearly 3 years living here during the school year) feeling a little more attached to the land and the culture in this part of the world. Previously I've cared about the land in this area because I care about many of the people that live here, but I haven't had a personal emotional attachment to the land. Colorado has been in the midst of pretty severe drought for quite some time now, and it may sound harsh, but I haven't really cared one way or the other whether the drought continues or the drought ends. I still see that's it's one of those things that is beyond our control and in the larger picture doesn't really mean a whole lot, but I do recognize that these phases of dry climate are hard on life in this area. Whether it's vegetation, wildlife, or humans, pretty much every living thing will have a slightly better next several months because of the snow that's falling now. I think I now have enough attachment to this place that for the first time I take some small amount of solace in this reality.

On one more note, entry is still open for this summer's Alaska Mountain Ultrarunning Camp. The July session is essentially filled up, but there are still a few spaces left in the June 11-18th session. I know some people have been reluctant to sign up because of my health, but I do plan to definitely go forward with the camps as planned. At this point I'm fairly optimistic that I'll be able to lead most or all of the runs during the camps, as I have now begun to get out for short runs 4 or 5 days a week (I even ran a 5k race this past weekend, albeit I'm not sure I broke 40 minutes). If I improve as much in the next two months as I have in the past two then I should be able to lead all the runs with relative ease. Not to worry though, even if my health does hold me back I have some great local help lined up to lead any runs that I'm not able to take part in. Another fun way to look at it: this might be your only chance to come run with me in Alaska with the dynamic in which I'm the one that you're waiting up for :)

April Showers

Wow, how did it get to be April? I feel like a few weeks ago it was July. I guess that's just as well as I've been "sick" for the past 8 months. At least the time has generally seemed to go by quickly. I have continued to make overall improvement in my health, and now when I have "good days" I feel almost normal. Unfortunately I still have some "bad days" mixed in when I feel pretty shitty. The good thing is that now when  I don't feel good it's generally isolated to general fatigue, and not so many of the more acute, debilitating symptoms that I had most of the first 4 or 5 months. I even just recently put together a stretch of 3 weeks in which I was feeling the best that I've felt since this all started last summer. Unfortunately it hasn't lasted as I feel not so great again this week, but "not so great" now would have been a good week a few months ago. It's been hard sometimes to keep the larger picture perspective and remember how much better I am doing than I was at one point, but when I stop and consider specific markers and symptoms, it's really easy for me to definitely say that I am feeling way better than I was last fall.

I still find it necessary to be very conservative with my physical activity (something that I'm not always able to pull off), but it's been so nice these past couple months to be able to more or less do a little bit of activity everyday. The hard part has been not overdoing it when I do feel good. I think I did this last week. We were out in Utah for spring break, the weather was perfect, I was feeling the best I've felt in 8 months, and I definitely did more physical activity than I have in a long time (mostly in the form of a couple decent length MTB rides). The hard part though has been the reality that my symptoms seem to ebb and flow somewhat independent of anything that I do. Sometimes it seems like I take it really easy for several days and I still feel horrible and other times I feel like I'm on the edge of doing too much, but I continue to feel great for several days. I think what is going on is that there is a lag time of several days between what I do physically and how I feel. In this sense I don't feel good from resting soon enough to totally trust that I need the rest, and I don't feel tired out from physical activity soon enough to back off and let my body catch up with my desire to be outside having fun. Overall though, I'll take this balancing act any day over the big questions of last fall which tended to be more something like: "what is that stabbing pain in my neck?" or "why does my right hand go numb every time I sit down in a chair?" or "why did I piss 35 times yesterday and 3 times today, even though I drank the same amount of water each day?"  These are all somewhat exaggerated examples, but only somewhat.

The point is, I'm getting better, but I still have a ways to go. The great thing is that with the improved health and the beginning of spring like weather my mood has been much better. I always get a little depressed when I don't feel so good, but at least now the depression isn't mixed with so much fear and confusion. I still have no idea if I'll ever be able to run the way that I used to (or if I even want to), but I do know that I am getting better and better with the passing months, and with time my life will be able to return more or less to "normal", in any ways that it hasn't already. It's so nice to finally be able to wake up each day knowing that I will have the health to pretty much do anything that I want to, with the exception of running for several hours. For that I will have to wait several more weeks, months, or longer.

FluidFlex

I've worn Montrail Mountain Masochist on nearly every run that I've done in the past 4 years. They are by far the best shoes I have ever worn. I have tried several other shoes in this time, but my feet and my body have become so adapted to the Mountain Masochist that I find pretty much everything else fairly uncomfortable. I've found a few shoes here and there that I use for very specific conditions. For example the Montrail Badrock, with their really wide toe box and huge lugs on the outsole are perfect snow running shoes. On well over 90% of my runs though I have worn the Mountain Masochist.

I wear them on the most rugged, gnarly trails and I wear them on roads. Wet, dry, hot, cold, mud, sand, snow - pretty much every condition and every surface. It's been really great to have a shoe that I trust so much and feel so comfortable in, but I'm also aware that I've adapted so much to this one particular shoe that it's nearly impossible for me to wear anything else. As long as Montrail keeps making these shoes, and making them the same way, I have nothing to worry about. The reality though is that four years is a really long time in the running shoe industry. The Mountain Masochist are one of the few shoes in existence that are more or less the same as they were four years ago. Lucky for me. It's been a good run (sorry for the silly pun, I couldn't resist). For all I know Montrail might make the Masochist for another four years, but I'm not counting on it.

Enter my current health issues that have pretty much eliminated all running for me over the past 7 months. I try to find the good in all situations, and one thing that has been nice about not running for so long is that my body has essentially reset, thus I am no longer adapted so entirely to one shoe. I'm sure I will do a lot of running in the Mountain Masochist in the future, but it's been nice as I begin to run a bit more (I've been running one or two days a week the past several weeks) to explore some new shoes and actually be able to have a more natural response to them, rather than just wishing that I was wearing the Masochist. Through this process there is one shoe that I have become really excited about: The Montrail FluidFlex.

I've worn them on the last 3 or 4 runs I've done and absolutely love them so far. I've run in 4 or 5 shoes in the past that are less than about 8.5 ounces, and these are the first ones that don't feel too minimal to me. They pretty much feel like the same amount of support and stability as the Masochist, at 3 ounces lighter per shoe! I'm sure some of this is a result of the dynamic I mention above, and if I tried these shoes after I had just run a couple thousand miles in the Masochist over the last 7 months (instead of zero) they might feel a lot different. This said though, I have also been running a bit lately in the Montrail Rogue Fly, and although I like these shoes a fair amount, they feel like they support my feet and my body so much less than the FluidFlex (even though they are the same weight).

To make a long story short: if you haven't yet tried the FluidFlex I highly recommend them. Another good thing about them: at $90 a pair they are a steal compared to so much else that's on the market nowadays. For some reason, as the average shoe has been stripped down more and more the price has skyrocketed. Obviously this has everything to do with the demand for minimal shoes, but it's cool to see that Montrail isn't playing the game of charging $125+ for a pair of minimal shoes that so obviously uses far less materials and technology than other, more traditional shoes.

48 for 48

The Iditarod Trail Invitational to McGrath is now over (8 or 9 racers are continuing on the full distance to Nome). 48 people started the race just over 10 days ago now, and every single one of them finished within the 10 day "limit". Of all the amazing things that happened in this race this year, this is by far the most mind boggling. From my 3 times starting this race I feel like in any given year the odds of finishing the race are probably somewhere around 50/50. Last year the majority of the field dropped out without even making it 100 miles. Obviously the trail conditions are everything in this race, but 350 miles is really damn far no matter what the trail is like. I have never heard of a 100 mile race in which every starter made it to the finish. To have this happen in a 350 mile race, in Alaska, in the dead of winter is nothing short of amazing. Good work to everyone out there. Sure wish I could have been a part of the "fun".

ITI Analysis and Other Observations

It's been quite some time since I've posted anything on here. Not a whole lot is new with me. Still far from recovered, but slowly getting a bit better with the passing months (with some definite bumps in the road along the way). As my health improves I'm becoming gradually a bit more active, but my main focus lately has been on things other than running. It's easy for me to go for a hike or a bike ride and take it really easy. With running though it's not so easy for me to keep it mellow. For this reason I've mostly been avoiding much running, as a means of avoiding overdoing it too soon.

I took a trip with Elle out to southern Utah a couple weeks ago. Forgot how much I love it out there. I'm not sure exactly what it is even, but I can be anywhere in the Utah desert and just walk off into the landscape and explore for hours on end. Most places I've ever been I need to seek out things within the landscape that interest me: creeks, mountain viewpoints, interesting plants, etc. In Southern Utah though, I can be anywhere and just walk off through the land and be entirely captivated by the simplest things: sand, rocks, juniper trees, pine cones, etc. Even in Alaska, where I love the land so deeply, it isn't as intriguing to me on a micro scale as is Southern Utah. Corle and Elle have spring break in 3 weeks, and I'm counting down the days, because we're taking off to Utah as soon as they're both out of class for 9 days.

The past week I've spent closely following the Iditarod Trail Invitational. It's been a crazy year for this race (I guess every year is a crazy year for this race). The top 7 or 8 bike finishers all broke the previous race record. The interesting thing about this is that they really weren't riding any of the stretches any faster than many previous years, they just didn't take any rest. They were certainly aided by a trail that didn't seem to have any serious bad stretches (unlike last year in which the entire trail was pretty much "bad"), but more than anything I think there were just so many strong riders that they just kept pushing on with no rest. This seemed to break a few of them, but many of them were able to hang on to the end, going more than two and a half days without any legitimate sleep! It will be interesting to see if this is a trend that continues into future races (when the trail is good). My approach to this race has always been to rest a little more than most people, and then move faster when I am on the move. This is in the foot division though, in which you pretty much have to sleep because you are going to be out there well over 4 days no matter how you do it. On a bike though, it seems like this year's race may open up a door in which riders at the front of the pack essentially ride the race with no sleep. Of course this all is dependent on trail conditions, and in well over half the years to come it just won't be an option at all to finish in under 3 days (at which point you almost certainly need to mix in a more substantial amount of rest).

In the foot division, Dave Johnston went for it right from the start and made the first ever serious threat to Steve Reifenstuhl's race record of 4 days 15 hours. In the end Dave came up about 4 hours short, but his run could have changed some things for the way this event is approached by runners in the future as well. Until this year I think most people (myself included) thought that Steve was essentially a maniac, and that no one would ever make a serious attempt at doing this race faster than he did on foot. I can put together the pieces in my mind to see how you could do this race in about the time that Steve did, but this would be absolutely best case scenario, as soon as one thing goes wrong that sets you back 2 or 3 hours you are not going to make it. My thought has always been that over the course of 350 miles something will have to go wrong. For this reason I have always thought of Steve's record here as the most impressive performance I am aware of in endurance athletics. I still feel this way, but it was really cool to see Dave come so close to cracking the puzzle. Can't wait to hear Dave's perspective on it. My guess is that he can easily pick out some areas in which he could have made up 4 hours, because that's just the way racing is.

Beyond this I was super stoked to see my good friend Joe finish as strong as he did. He tied for second in the foot division, and his time is certainly one of the fastest ever on foot for a rookie in this race. Normally I don't take much credence in the idea that being a rookie is a huge disadvantage in a race. Even in a 100 mile race you really don't need to have much knowledge of the race and the course to have a great race. You are going to go out and run the entire course in one shot, it will typically be marked quite well the full distance of the course, and at the end of the day all you really need to do is go out and run the thing as fast as you can. Course knowledge might be able to get you and extra 10 or 15 minutes, but when people talk about past experience on a particular course meaning anything much more than that I think they are over dramatizing the  situation. In the case of the ITI though, I do think race experience is a huge factor. You aren't doing this race in one strong push as fast as you can go. You are constantly making decisions about when to push on, when to rest, when to push hard, when to take it easy. You go through several different phases over the course of the race in which you are so worn out that you can't continue to move. You rest and then move on. The management of these cycles is the most important part of doing the ITI quickly. As Jeff Oatley, one of the most accomplished ITI cyclists told me: You are constantly making decisions about what to do at a given time in the race based on where you will be and what you will be doing 50 or 100 miles down the trail. If you have never seen what lies in the next 50 or 100 miles you will have a much harder time making the most efficient decisions. Yes, it could be said that this dynamic exists in any race that you do, and to some degree I suppose it does, but in the ITI you go beyond a tipping point in which this kind of knowledge and experience can go from making a 10 or 15 minute difference to something more like a 15 or 20 hour difference (or more). All of this said though, I'm pretty sure Steve Reifenstuhl was a race rookie when he set the race record in 2005 (which either debunks my whole theory here, or makes his performance all that much more impressive - probably a bit of both).

I've Come A Long Way, But I've Still A Long Way To Go

I've been plugging along getting ever so slowly more and more healthy. At times it's been really hard because it's most certainly not been a continuous path of improvement. Over the course of weeks and months I have had definitive improvement, but I have stretches of a few days at a time in which I feel worse than I did previous to that. It's these phases when I have the hardest time staying positive and upbeat about my health. Luckily these "bad" stretches never seem to last more than a few days at a time.

This said, I have been able to start to be a bit active most everyday. Some days this means just biking to the store and back or doing a little 30 minute strength/balance/flexibility routine at home, but on good days I'm able to get out and run for 30 or 40 minutes or bike for 10 or 15 miles. I still haven't had a single day in over 6 months now in which I would say I've felt 100%, but it's nice to finally be in a place where I can at least do a little something with my body most every day.

As I start to get a little more active it's been interesting to begin to notice just how out of shape I've gotten. It's been so long since my muscles have been as weak and undeveloped as they are right now. It would have been great to never sink as low as I have, but at the same time I feel like I'm being given a great opportunity to do the whole getting into shape thing all over again, and with a lot more knowledge and experience than I had the last time around. Should be fun to see where that takes me.

Currently I'm in Alaska for a short one week visit. Got out yesterday on a 4 hour mountain snowshoe on a ridge line that I've never been on before. After a couple month stretch in the fall in which my health was so compromised that I thought I might never run in the mountains again it feels so nice to be back to the point in which I have the health to head up into the mountains and explore new places and absorb the energy of remote, largely untraveled places. It might sound dramatic, but I certainly got pretty emotional about being able to do something like this yesterday, after not even having the option to do this for 6 months. I still have a long ways to go to get back to anything resembling "normal," but yesterday was a huge step in moving closer to where I want to be eventually.

In other news, I was recently interviewed for the current Talk Ultra episode. Some stuff about Western States 2010 (as well as my thoughts on Western States this past year), Iditarod Invitational, and my current health struggles (among other things). Click here to listen.

Also, a little update on this summer's Alaska Mountain ultrarunning camp sessions:  we are still taking applicants for both sessions. There are 3 or 4 spaces left in each session so if you want to join us for a week in running paradise this summer try to get the application/deposit to us soon to guarantee your space. Click here for all the info.  Also, we are still taking applications for need based camp scholarships until the end of February. Here's the link for that.

That's about all for now. Spring is just around the corner. Get out and enjoy these last several weeks of winter, all the while gaining a little more energy each day with the lengthening days, the warmer weather, and the promise of a new season. I know this is what I'll be doing these next several weeks.

A Vacation In Photos

Just returned from a 3 week "vacation" to Juneau. I felt pretty good most of the time I was there so I was able to get outside more than I have since last summer. Couldn't have asked for better timing to have three weeks of good health, because there is simply unlimited stuff do in the outdoors around Juneau. As wild and remote as some of these photos look the vast majority of these were taken in places that you can walk to in an hour or less from the center of town: